Few double agent stories have ended with consequences as devastating as that of Humam Khalil al-Balawi. A Jordanian doctor and online jihadist, al-Balawi was believed by both Jordanian intelligence and the CIA to have been successfully turned and sent into the ranks of al-Qaeda. Over months, he earned the trust of his handlers by providing intelligence and claiming he could lead them to some of the world’s most wanted terrorists, including al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri. To the CIA, he appeared to be the breakthrough source they had been desperately seeking.
What happened next would become one of the deadliest intelligence failures of the post-9/11 era. On December 30, 2009, al-Balawi arrived at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan, where a group of CIA officers had gathered to meet their prized informant. Instead of delivering intelligence, he detonated a suicide vest, killing seven CIA personnel, a Jordanian intelligence officer, and an Afghan operative. The attack sent shockwaves through the intelligence community and exposed the dangers of running human sources in the unforgiving world of counterterrorism. Watch the video below to discover how one man convinced the CIA he was their asset while secretly plotting one of the agency’s darkest days.
