Vetting the Muslim agent properly would have been absolutely out of the question. It would have been an unacceptable level of “Islamophobia.”
“Former senior CIA officer recalls double agent’s betrayal,” CBSNews, December 30, 2020 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
In this episode of Intelligence Matters, host Michael Morell interviews Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior CIA intelligence service officer who had a 26-year career in public service. He looks back to the day that seven service members were killed by suicide bomber Humam al-Balawi, who was working as a double agent. Polymeropoulos talks about why it was important to interview al-Balawi in person, the mistakes that were made, and what important lessons he still keeps with him.
…MARC POLYMEROPOULOS: Balawi was a Jordanian doctor, he came on the radar screen of the Jordanian security services in that time period, he was first involved, as many are, on chat forums. So he’s speaking out against the West, praising martyrdom operations and as Jordan is a close CT partner of us at the United States government, we became aware of him as well. When you think back, there was nothing particularly special about that. We monitor a lot of individuals such as Balawi, and certainly every Middle Eastern service is going to monitor its own people for for extremist tendencies.
MICHAEL MORELL: What happened to him in January of 2009?
MARC POLYMEROPOULOS: The Jordanians finally arrested him, he crossed the line a bit, guys are monitoring these chats. You’re looking at kind of what they’re espousing, you know, violence, but I think he crossed the line. So, they did arrest him and they claimed to then have turned him in prison. And so, you know, it’s almost considered a jailhouse recruitment, but it’s very common, of course, in Middle Eastern intelligence circles. You know, the host governments can have a great deal of control over what happens to the family members, for example. So it’s not a traditional recruitment in the sense of how the CIA would conduct a full cycle of recruitment with a lot of vetting, a lot of time on target. But it’s not dissimilar to what, you know, Middle Eastern services do and we in the USG, you never met Balawi. Then they send him off to Pakistan almost on an operation. So the Jordanians send him off, we’re in the background. And ultimately, it’s an attempt, one of in fact many such attempts one would make to ultimately infiltrate al-Qaeda. But at that time, it’s an operation that we’re paying attention to. But but nothing really that’s kind of burning for us until somethings happened later on, which I think we’re going to get into.
MICHAEL MORELL: Today, we have with us Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior CIA operations officer, and he is with us as part of our latest series on real life spy stories. Marc, do you know, perhaps you don’t, what the conversations were like between him and the Jordanians? I mean, did this recruitment happen quickly? Did it take a period of time with of conversations with him?
MARC POLYMEROPOULOS: It was relatively quickly. I think it was probably not a great deal of personal meetings. It was a jailhouse recruitment and then it was some more meetings after his release and getting ready to deploy. Ultimately, it’s again, it’s not something unusual for a Middle Eastern service because the belief is always that they have leverage over an individual due to family members still being present. So, I mean, we were aware of what the Jordanians were doing. The key part was not necessarily even the nature of these discussions. It was what would he do once he hit South Waziristan?
MICHAEL MORELL: Do you know what he was promised in return for working for the Jordanians? I mean, obviously, staying out of jail was one, right, but you know what else?
MARC POLYMEROPOULOS: Right. That’s a great question. I think it would be kind of the usual kind of mix of financial incentives and just, you know, staying safe, staying out of jail. You know, they appealed to kind of just patriotism to him. So, again, the Middle Eastern services are not necessarily like us in terms of our ability to kind of throw around a lot of money and it would almost be, using a different set of kind of motivations for recruitment. And a lot of it has to do with being a coercive threat against the family. It’s something that Middle Eastern services actually are quite effective at, especially the Jordanians.
MICHAEL MORELL: So they send him and the idea is for him to penetrate al-Qaeda, to get to know the al-Qaeda guys and hopefully to be able to report back on what he learns once he gets inside the group. Correct?
MARC POLYMEROPOULOS: Right, so he leaves and I believe is the spring of 2009 and he actually he makes it to South Waziristan, a hub of al-Qaeda activity. A place where I spent years later, I spent a lot of time staring across from eastern Afghanistan. And so Balawi after months of kind of growing contact with the local extremists and terrorists. The Pakistani Taliban invite him to come live with them and then he drops off the radar for some time. And again, we are extremely busy in the counterterrorism world with our Jordanian partners and many others so at this point, we just wait and see. We know he’s there and we’re just seeing if he ever does resurface.
MICHAEL MORELL: Then the Jordanians eventually got two messages from him, right, that were particularly interesting. Can you tell us about those messages?
MARC POLYMEROPOULOS: That’s right and one of the messages did cause quite a bit of stir. He actually sends a video which shows him sitting next to a senior al-Qaeda member close to the leadership circles and in touch, this was pretty solid evidence. That one would hope to have received, that it had gained the trust of the rank and file, also of senior al-Qaeda. So, in the intelligence business, we’re always trying to validate an asset. You do from information they provide and also from their bona fides. This really falls into the latter category. You know, you are who you say you are. And so there was considerable excitement in this video. There was also a message that indicated that Balawi, who remember, is a doctor by training, that Balawi might be in a position to personally treat Zawahiri. So here you go again and taking what you can call a liaison, source or developmental asset or, it’s kind of murky how you would consider Balawi. But but ultimately, he starts rising to the top of our interest level because he might have access to in fact, HPT2 and then he seems to provide some information that corroborates what we knew about Zawahiri’s medical condition. So, again, this is a big deal. Think about the hunt for Zawahiri was of such critical importance to the entire kind of global war on terrorism. And at that point, you start thinking that this is the best lead we’ve had to al-Qaeda’s senior leadership in years. I look back and I recall that we were very excited, we were encouraged. I remember writing an email to a colleague noting that this was it, this was the key lead that was going to lead us to HPT2. Looking back on that, you know, look at that with some trepidation now. But there was a palpable sense of excitement about this case, particularly these two messages that came in.
MICHAEL MORELL: So he goes from somebody who’s just on the radar screen and we’re not paying a lot of attention to, to all of a sudden possibly one of the most important assets we have. How fast that happened is really interesting. By the way, this was the moment of my first interaction with the case. At this point in 2009, I was, as you know Marc, the head of analysis at CIA. And I was visiting your space’s, I was visiting with you and your team and you and your boss, I remember cleared the room. Kicked out a bunch of people so it was really just the three of us. And you and your boss told me the entire story about Balawi. I don’t know if you remember that, but I still remember it like it was yesterday…
MARC POLYMEROPOULOS: Right. And in fact, there’s multiple layers of security. When you look back to what occurred, it’s pretty remarkable because there would not be just one search there would actually be several along the way. You know, no one thought this was going to be sitting down, and having a picnic or a barbecue with someone. Not only we had never met, but someone who had just been in, who had we thought infiltrated the most dangerous terrorist group on the planet. But ultimately, the security protocols broke down and he was treated as almost a visiting dignitary. Again to this day it kind of defies belief to me that that’s what occurred. You know, what more can really be said on that. We let our guard down on this and how it happened is just something that I think we’ll never know. And I say this painfully, too, because I knew all the officers involved. There was top notch people on the ground. There was a crack kind of security team we had. I would even to this day of trusted with my life, with every one of those members of the CIA team on the ground. Again several rings of security where you should have been searched and so on.
MICHAEL MORELL: So he pulls up, right? He pulls up in a car. He has a driver and he’s in the back seat and he pulls up in a car and there’s a number of officers waiting for him. He gets out of the car, what happens?
MARC POLYMEROPOULOS: Right, so again, there were several rings of security where he should have been searched. He wasn’t. He comes up to a location in which I believe a dozen officers were present at that point. Our security team did ask for him to step out of the car and they were going to search him. The problem is this was far too close to the kind of a team that was on the ground. And and before they could disarm him in any fashion, he had a suicide vest on. He detonated himself and seven of them were killed. I’ve been to that location at coast base. In fact, I was there a year later and there was still shrapnel holes kind of in the car gated steel roof. I slept in a guest house right there on site, which was certainly difficult psychologically for me. There was an attempt to search him at the last moment but it was far too late. He should have been searched by not only by U.S. personnel, frankly, by Afghan personnel in the outer ring of security. That should have been done far earlier and that was kind of normal protocols that for whatever reason, to this day, no one can really understand why they were not followed…
somehistory says
Reads like a novel…but, sadly not one.
There must have been someone in the first ‘ring’ of security who knew what he was about and allowed him through. Once allowed in, others might let down their guard…if searched, why search again?
moslims who show their loyalty to satan…as this creep did…cannot be trusted to “change.” And if he was threatened with the use of his family as possible targets of the government, that would be of little use to one who was so devoted to satan’s will. moslims are not known for caring so much for their families…esp those who turn out to be terrorists.
TimothyS says
So they get rid of Patriots like Stephen Coughlin and invite this guy in. Makes sense from what we’ve seen from the CIA in recent decades.
revereridesagain says
And with Senile Joe and Reparations Harris expected to ascend to the throne with the Muslim Marxist race-hustler Obama pulling the strings, things are not likely to improve there in the near future.
Ben Kennedy says
If Senile Joe is sworn in, Camala Harris will be leaving her camel dung all over the Oval Office.
William Garrison says
“Left of Boom” by ex-CIA agent D. Laux revealed that some/many of his supervisors seemed to be in the CIA just for “a job”. — serious “mission accomplished” was secondary.
Mojdeh says
Shame to CIA informant-er ,that let this happen. I am speechless..
gravenimage says
Unfortunately, this kind of thing happens all the time. There is even a name for it–“green on blue attacks”.
There have been many others–including the horrifying massacre at Ft. Hood.
revereridesagain says
This incident is very effectively dramatized in the movie “Zero Dark Thirty”.
Walter Sieruk says
The sad and tragic reality is that the old saying is true. Which is that “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Two of the many examples of this are the writings of Karl Marx and the sincere people who have embraced Islam and their religion.
Rob Porter says
I’m no longer astounded by what happened in this case. For decades an admirer of the U.S., faults and all, the admiration is gone, but great sympathy remains for decent Americans like Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, David Horrowitz and all who strive for a restored America. But for its security services, FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, etc., only disgust exists. For too long they were headed by dregs of humanity, John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, the disgusting Jeh Johnson, etc.. Had the Trump administration performed a thorough clean-out of left-wing Obama loyalists, invited in Robert to again instruct the various U.S. services on Islam and restored the old education material on Islam that Obama’s mob threw out, the U.S. would be in a different position today. Instead the U.S. is hopelessly compromised and if the utterly crooked Joe Biden becomes president will be dead in the water, never to return.
William Snow Hume says
Dr. BALAWI was simply an Al-Qaeda infiltrator. To be a true “double agent”, he would needed to have belonged to a third party group, such as Islamic State of Iraq, or the Haramayn, or Hizbu al-Tahrir. For example, many dual-citizens of Israel and the US act as true “double agents” when they perform intelligence work in places such as Yemen or Iraq. It is very important not to misuse such terms as “double agent”.
With that being said, the problem is that the US tends to completely “outsource” much of its intelligence work. It relies uncritically on the intelligence assessments by foreign governments. The problem does not stop with the story of Dr. BALAWI. We have made many intelligence blunders in the Arab world, because we relied unduly on Israel. We have made plenty of mistakes in south Asia, because we relied unduly on Pakistan. We have made mistakes in West Africa and the Sahel, because we uncritically rely on the work of France, which in turn is tainted with misdirection by its own infiltrators-citizens of colonial North African background.
Right now, we are completely unprepared to deal with the imminent emergence of yet another Islamic State venture by the Global Gathering in Baluchistan, on both sides of the Iranian-Pakistani border. It’s so easy to use Plastic Surgery to “turn” certain Mexican-Americans into Baluch people. Compared to an Arabic or some Turkish language, Baluch “is a snap”. India and Iran are jointly working with on-site spies to stir up trouble in Baluchistan; in fact they have openly talked about it. Are we prepared to monitor what they are doing “on the ground”? Will the US be keen to India’s employments of true “dual agents” who are also IS-Baluchistan members, when IS-B starts to help IS-K to overcome the (Afghan) Taliban? Of course not. Were we to produce US-born spies, it would undermine the entire “System of Expertise” at the CIA, which involves top-level outsourcing. Outsourcing to people like Dr. BADAWI.
How I would like to know what MARC POLYMEROPOLOUS has to say about the preparedness of the US for the coming crisis in Baluchistan. WSH
Infidel says
William – why would Balochistan be anyone’s business? Let China and Pakistan spend up all their energy combating them. The idea that Iran is in cahoots w/ India is false: Iran is now a pro-Pakistan country for a few reasons. One – Pakistan’s relations w/ both the US and Israel are worse than ever. Two – both countries are allied to Beijing. Also, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates have been warming up to India and snubbing Pakistan, earning Pakistani resentment and driving them into the arms of Turkey. Included in this is Saudi Arabia stopping its oil donations to Pakistan, and the latter is now smuggling oil through their common border w/ Iran
Also, remember that Balochistan is a region that’s partly in Pakistan, partly Iran and its people are sunni. Iran doesn’t want an independent Balochistan outside its borders any more than it wants an independent Kurdistan outside its borders, which is why they’re happily working w/ Pakistan on suppressing the Balochs. Then there is CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) which is enriching Paki generals and partly premised on China exploiting Baloch resources, and that’s what has stepped up Paki crackdowns in Balochistan in recent weeks.
All that said, the non-muslim world should be as leery of supporting the Balochs as they are about supporting the Uyghurs
Evangeline Golding says
Are you really lumping Israel in with pakistan and france????
Israel produces most the best and most accurate intelligence in the world, and the world has benefited greatly from the courage and ingenuity of their intelligence agents.
Especially the US.
gravenimage says
That William Snow Hume is blaming Israel for Musims murdering Americans is just grotesque. The truth is that the West would be *much* worse off were it not for Israeli intelligence shared with them.
Dennis V Sinclair says
As one Russian leader stated: We will sell (the United States) the rope they hang themselves with.
Political correctness is more leftists nonsense, like the “cancel culture,” tearing down statues, BLM and Antifa aimed at the heart of this country.