Word: taliban
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...with a moment when the Agency is under political attack in this country on issues ranging from torture to intelligence failings prior to the Christmas Day airline-bombing plot. But the Khost attack is also evidence of the intelligence nightmare we face in Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda and the Taliban, which controls much of the territory, are able to blind the U.S. mission on the ground by continuing to run suicide bombers at us. (See pictures of double agents...
...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...
...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...
...ideologue and second-in-command who is believed to be hiding in Pakistan's tribal wilds. Al-Balawi was a known presence on radical Islamic websites; he was Arab; and, like al-Zawahiri, he was a trained doctor whose medical skills were needed in treating al-Qaeda and Taliban war casualties...
...Balawi, a seemingly trusted agent, switch sides? The Jordanian intelligence sources who spoke to TIME speculate that al-Balawi had become enraged at the Americans for killing a high number of civilians in their hunt for al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders. And al-Balawi, who felt partly responsible for these deaths because of his role in pointing out the targeted villages in which al-Qaeda militants had been hiding, may have been consumed by guilt. "It's very possible that he decided to take revenge for the death of these Muslim civilians," says a senior Jordanian official. (See pictures...