As the sun heats up the thin air in the Khost province of Afghanistan, a constant mountain breeze swirls the lifeless dirt into a dervish-dance of dust. In the mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan, 18 miles from the Pakistani border, beyond which lies the Federally Administered Tribal Areas another 270 miles from Islamabad, center of Pakistani governmental authority; four CIA officials and their three contracted bodyguards meet with Captain Sharif Ali bin Zeid of Mukhabarat, Jordan's General Intelligence Directorate.
The topic of discussion, al-Qaeda's No.2 Ayman al-Zawahiri. One of Zeid's handles had urgent intelligence to pass along.
Less than a year before Dec. 30, Zeid "recruited" Jordanian doctor, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, 32, to travel into Afghanistan and infiltrate al-Qaeda to help track down key al-Qaeda leaders, stated the Financial Times and NBC News.
Traveling alone in a car, al-Balawi approached the Forward Operating Base Chapman to which he was allowed entrance without a formal search at the front gate, al-Balawi's first and only visit to the CIA base.
As the team of intelligence officials headed towards al-Balawi, he detonated an explosive device killing them all, while injuring another six. The greatest loss of life to the Agency since the 1983 bombing in Beirut; now a total of 91 stars adorn the wall dedicated to deceased members of the CIA at their headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
However, a severe breakdown in intelligence and espionage occurred to bring about this latest tragedy in the perpetual martyrs-crusade of al-Qaeda, to whom al-Balawi was affiliated.
Mukhabarat initially detained al-Balawi after he signed up with a group of doctors determined to aid Palestinian's during Israel's invasion last January, stated Newsweek.
After three days of detention, stated Defne Bayrak, 31, al-Balawi's widow, he was released. Collective offers of up to $600,000 from the CIA and the Jordanians' may have persuaded al-Balawi to accept his task as a Jordanian spy, said Bayrak, yet she never doubted her husband's true intentions towards Jihad.
After the United States invaded Iraq during 2003, al-Balawi "started to change," Bayrak told Newsweek.
"He was constantly reading and writing. He was crazy about online forums. He would go onto them and write severe, extremely hardline comments. He would cite verses from the Quran that talked about the need for jihad, and then write very tough comments based on those verses or on the sayings of the Prophet," said Bayrak.
Math time. 2009 - 2003 = 6 years
Six years that al-Balawi filled web pages and message boards with virulent voracity in regards to Jihad against the United States. So how could someone so passionately spiteful towards the Western World because of religious inclination be so easily swayed into their aid? All within three days?
Evan Kohlmann, a U.S. government consultant who monitors jihadi Web forums, believes al-Balawi was the brain behind the online handle Abu Dujinah. Although Kohlmann could not prove without a doubt al-Balawi commented online as Abu Dujinah, he has, "compelling reasons to believe it's the same person."
Those reasons include age, background, and a lengthy interview of Abu Dujinah published in, Vanguard of Khorasan, a Taliban magazine, Kohlmann told Newsweek.
"“He was actually an administrator on the now-defunct Al-Hesbah forum, previously al-Qaida's main chat forum," Kohlmann told NBC News.
Despite the fact, al-Balawi commented for half a decade in favor of Jihad, his allegiance stood firmly within the camp of infidels?
Yet al-Balawi somehow galvanized enough trust with his handler Zeid, that he not only gained entrance to a CIA base, but also lured CIA officials from Kabul to the remote location for the meeting.
That turn of events smells more like the hot barrel of a smoking gun rather than quality intelligence work.
Alas, this is the state of affairs the CIA has been in for a decade. The reliance on human intelligence (HUMINT) has been put on the back burner as signals intelligence (SIGINT) has heated up due to technological advancements in the arsenal of espionage.
Now armed with overhead satellite photography, radar imagery, predator drones, and audio monitoring programs with increasing sophistication, the CIA has laminated their old-fashioned past with a shiny array of devices utilized to keep CIA operatives off the streets.
Camp Chapman for example, provided intelligence for locating and choosing Predator drone targets, reported CBS News.
With more than a year of stunning success by Predator drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, killing dozens of high-valued al-Qaeda targets, you'd have to ask yourself why drop your guard in the middle of nowhere less than 100 miles from the areas al-Qaeda roams at the base where you decide to kill them? With an "agent" who's trust had been "proven" through a stream of low-key targets with furious and scathing fingers towards your way of life?
The problem is a paradigm shift in tradecraft (CIA security protocol) reliance. Many intelligence experts in the United States believe the CIA has begun to rely far too heavily on SIGINT, or "TECHINT" while neglecting the backbone of their business, human intelligence gathered through human interaction, reported BBC News.
Even former CIA director George Tenet believed technology would offer no benefit to intelligence without case officers on the ground. During 2001 alone he began training 10 times the amount of case officers within the CIA's ranks, reported Bob Woodward in, Bush at War. During the 1990s, when Tenet began his impressive rise through the intelligence hierarchy, the CIA had but 12 case officer trainees.
What this incident goes to show more than anything, is how little the United States has progressed in rooting out true terrorism in the world and how desperate it has made our intelligence service in getting concrete information as to al-Qaeda's location.
It has been years since the CIA has had a definitive location on al-Zawahiri, but how could they expect someone within the ranks of al-Qaeda for less than a year to gain conclusive information on the location of their No. 2? Considering the CIA has decades of experience in the country, this incident does not go to show Americans that hearts and minds have been won over there during those decades.
With the volume of case officers who've served in Afghanistan and the amount of intelligence gathered through their own relationships with local contacts and the CIA's close relationship with the mujahideen turned al-Qaeda you'd expect to have a well-oiled network by now.
But thus far the war on terror has shown to be no more than a lame nurturer of dissent.
Is it true? Are we still here? Back at the beginning?
While on the battlefield of espionage, the front line remains to be everywhere.
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