WORLD
January 9, 2010 | By Mark Magnier
A Pakistani television station aired a video Saturday allegedly showing the suicide bomber who hit a CIA outpost in Afghanistan telling the Pakistani Taliban leader that he had shared U.S. and Jordanian intelligence secrets with fellow militants. He also urged militants to strike other U.S. targets in retaliation for the killing of the leader's predecessor last year in a U.S. missile strike. Although its veracity could not be immediately determined, the video is a powerful recruiting tool and its content potentially embarrassing to the U.S. spy agency.
WORLD
January 9, 2010 | By Greg Miller
The suicide bomber who carried out an attack on a CIA firebase in Afghanistan detonated the device as he was about to be searched and used an explosive so powerful that it killed agency operatives who were as far as 50 feet away, a U.S. intelligence official said Friday. The details shed new light on how the attacker, a Jordanian physician thought to possess valuable intelligence on Al Qaeda's inner circle, was able to kill seven CIA employees and contractors and his Jordanian handler and injure six others despite a heavy security presence at the base.
WORLD
January 6, 2010 | By Greg Miller
The bomber who killed seven CIA employees at an agency forward base in Afghanistan had never been to the compound or met with agency operatives before the attack, U.S. officials said Tuesday. The absence of any previous encounter adds to the confusion over how the attacker -- posing as an informant with valuable information on Al Qaeda -- was able to make it past security with a bomb apparently strapped to his body and lure seasoned CIA operatives to their deaths last week. A U.S. intelligence official said that the bomber had provided a stream of useful information to the CIA after being presented by the Jordanian intelligence service as an Islamic militant who had switched sides and was now willing to work against Al Qaeda.
WORLD
January 5, 2010 | By Greg Miller
The suicide bomber who killed eight people at a CIA compound in Afghanistan was a Jordanian recruited by that nation's spy service who lured operatives to a meeting with a promise of important new information about Al Qaeda's inner circle, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official. The bombing last week killed seven CIA employees and a Jordanian intelligence officer who is believed to have served as the main point of contact with the informant. The disclosure that the deadliest incident in recent CIA history may have been the work of a double agent suggests a new level of sophistication in Al Qaeda's efforts to retaliate against the agency, which is responsible for an intense campaign of Predator drone strikes on the terrorist network in Pakistan over the last two years.
WORLD
January 1, 2010 | By Julian E. Barnes and Greg Miller
The suicide bombing that killed seven CIA employees at a U.S. base will temporarily slow U.S. intelligence-gathering in eastern Afghanistan, but the agency will not retrench its ambitious buildup in the country while it conducts a security review, officials said Thursday. Military and intelligence officials were scrambling to determine how the bomber penetrated a forbidding network of barriers, barbed wire and watchtowers at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khowst province near the Pakistani border, and made his way deep inside to set off a thunderous blast.
NATIONAL
December 29, 2009 | By Greg Miller
The White House this month issued a classified order to resolve mounting frictions between the nation's intelligence director and the CIA over issues including how the agency conducts covert operations, U.S. officials said. The intervention reflects simmering tension between the two most powerful players in the U.S. intelligence community: Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair and CIA Director Leon E. Panetta. The memo maintains the CIA's status as the nation's lead spy service on covert missions, rejecting an attempt by Blair to assert more control.