Table Of ContentAnnotation
A stunning narrative account of the mysterious Jordanian who penetrated
both the inner circle of alQaeda and the highest reaches of the CIA, with a
devastating impact on the war on terror.
In December 2009, a group of the CIA’s top terrorist hunters gathered at a
secret base in Khost, Afghanistan, to greet a rising superspy: Humam Khalil al-
Balawi, a Jordanian double-agent who infiltrated the upper ranks of alQaeda. For
months, he had sent shocking revelations from inside the terrorist network and
now promised to help the CIA assassinate Osama bin Laden’s top deputy.
Instead, as he stepped from his car, he detonated a thirty-pound bomb strapped to
his chest, instantly killing seven CIA operatives, the agency’s worst loss of life
in decades.
In The Triple Agent, Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Joby Warrick takes us
deep inside the CIA’s secret war against alQaeda, a war that pits robotic planes
and laser-guided missiles against a cunning enemy intent on unleashing carnage
in American cities. Flitting precariously between the two sides was Balawi, a
young man with extraordinary gifts who managed to win the confidence of
hardened terrorists as well as veteran spymasters. With his breathtaking accounts
from inside alQaeda’s lair, Balawi appeared poised to become America’s greatest
double-agent in half a century-but he was not at all what he seemed. Combining
the powerful momentum of Black Hawk Down with the institutional insight of
Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side, Warrick takes the readers on a harrowing journey
from the slums of Amman to the inner chambers of the White House in an
untold true story of miscalculation, deception, and revenge.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
LIST OF PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
MAPS
PROLOGUE
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EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A NOTE ON SOURCES
NOTES
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Quotations in this book that are designated by quotation marks are the
recollections of individuals who heard the words as they were spoken. Italics are
used in cases in which a source could not recall the precise language or when a
source relayed conversation or thoughts that were shared with him by a
participant in the events described.
LIST OF PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
The White House
President Barack Obama
James L. Jones, national security adviser
John Brennan, chief counterterrorism adviser to the president
Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff
Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters, Langley, Virginia
Michael V. Hayden, CIA director, May 2006 to February 2009
Leon Panetta, CIA director, February 2009 to June 2011
Stephen Kappes, CIA deputy director
Dennis C. Blair, director of national intelligence
Amman, Jordan
Darren LaBonte, CIA case officer, Amman station, CIA station chief,
Amman station (identity classified; name withheld)
Ali bin Zeid, captain, Jordanian General Intelligence Department (GID),
aka the Mukhabarat
Ali Burjak, aka Red Ali, Mukhabarat counterterrorism chief, bin Zeid’s
boss
Humam Khalil al-Balawi, physician and blogger
Khalil al-Balawi, Humam’s father
Defne Bayrak, Humam’s wife
In Afghanistan
Jennifer Matthews, CIA base chief, Forward Operating Base Chapman
(“Khost”)
Harold Brown Jr., CIA case officer, Khost
Scott Roberson, CIA security chief, Khost
Dane Paresi, security contractor, Xe Services LLC, aka Blackwater, Khost
Jeremy Wise, security contractor, Xe Services LLC, aka Blackwater, Khost
Arghawan, Afghan detail security chief, Khost (last name withheld), CIA
deputy chief of station, Kabul station (identity classified; name withheld)
Elizabeth Hanson, targeter, Kabul station
AlQaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan
Osama bin Laden, alQaeda founder and leader
Ayman al-Zawahiri, alQaeda’s No. 2 commander, deputy to Osama bin
Laden
Osama al-Kini (given name Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam), senior
alQaeda commander for Pakistan
Abdullah Said al-Libi, an alQaeda operations chief, leader of alQaeda’s
“Shadow Army” in Pakistan
Sheikh Saeed al-Masri (given name Mustafa Ahmed Muhammad Uthman
Abu al-Yazid), alQaeda’s No. 3 commander
Baitullah Mehsud, leader of Pakistani Taliban alliance, Tehrik-i-Taliban
Pakistan (TTP)
Hakimullah Mehsud, deputy TTP leader, cousin to Baitullah Mehsud
Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, alQaeda senior leader and Islamic scholar
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (given name Ahmad Fadeel al-Nazal al-Khalayleh),
Jordanian-born leader of alQaeda in Iraq, killed in U.S. missile strike in 2006
Abu Zubaida (given name Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein), first
“high-value” terrorist operative captured by the CIA after the attacks of
September 11, 2001, and the first to be subjected to waterboarding
MAPS
