Word: al-qaeda
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...face of the U.S. embassy in Lebanon, killing eight members of the Beirut station, among many others. But this suicide bomber, a Jordanian doctor named Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, was the CIA's worst ever security breach. In an era when grandmothers are routinely screened at airports, al-Balawi was whisked into Forward Operating Base Chapman, the CIA headquarters for the drone war against al-Qaeda, without so much as a pat-down. He was then ushered into a meeting with 13 CIA operatives and his Jordanian handler...
...base, with fewer handlers. But everyone wanted to evaluate this guy in the flesh. The fact that al-Balawi wasn't given even a rudimentary security screening speaks to the credibility he had built up over time, feeding valuable information to Jordan's General Intelligence Department, a trusted CIA partner. "This was an extremely sophisticated, well-thought-out operation," a former senior intelligence official told me. "It took years to set up. And quite frankly, we didn't think al-Qaeda had that capability." (Several intelligence sources told me they thought the operation was run out of the al-Qaeda...
...there was also a quieter and potentially more profound reaction: Given the skill of this operation, how trustworthy are the other sources the CIA has been using to help target its drone attacks against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan? The standard claim has been that the CIA's human intelligence against al-Qaeda--and other threats--has improved dramatically in recent years. "In a very perverse way, this attack may be the best testimony of all that human intelligence has improved," said the former official. But spies are, by nature, paranoid, and there will be suspicion now that...
...suppressing its extremist threat. In Yemen, with little government ability to monitor released former Gitmo detainees in the hinterlands of the nation, a program could probably not guarantee the Saudi level of success. And even Saudi Arabia's 15% recidivism rate is problematic: the No. 2 leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the group that allegedly trained the Christmas Day bomber, is a graduate of the Saudi program...
...offshore facility. A special task force set up a year ago concluded last fall that the U.S. doesn't have sufficient evidence to successfully prosecute any of the Yemenis in either civilian or military courts. Still, the task force concluded, about half of the prisoners are devoted members of al-Qaeda and therefore too dangerous to release. (See pictures of the conflict in Yemen...