And how can we trust the spooks to protect us if they can’t protect themselves?{C}
From antiwar.com:
A week after the deadly CIA bombing at Forward Operating Base Chapman in the Khost Province, evidence continues to trickle in about the attacker, Jordanian informant Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, but questions continue to linger about how such a high-profile attack was able to be carried out.
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Seven CIA employees died and another six were injured in what was the deadliest single attack on the CIA since 1983 — when eight of the agency’s employees were believed to be among the dead after Islamist militants bombed the US marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 Americans.
Al-Balawi, the “triple agent” said to be behind the 30 December blast, was a Jordanian doctor and former Islamist militant whom the authorities believed they had turned against al-Qaeda. Reports suggest the CIA considered him their best lead on al-Qaeda in years. The result? Al-Balawi wasn’t even given a “rudimentary security screening” upon arriving at the Khost base last week. As Time’s Joe Klein writes:
. . . this suicide bomber, a Jordanian doctor named Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, was the CIA’s worst ever security breach. In an era when grandmothers are routinely screened at airports, al-Balawi was whisked into Forward Operating Base Chapman, the CIA headquarters for the drone war against al-Qaeda, without so much as a pat-down. He was then ushered into a meeting with 13 CIA operatives and his Jordanian handler.
He then blew himself up.
Hmm. The same spooks and security guys who want to introduce body scanners and racial profiling at airports, to secure our skies, can’t even secure their own military base in the middle of a war zone. Ironic, huh?
NOTE: My column in this week’s magazine on the so-called Underwear Bomber and our (excessive and inflated) fear of terrorism can be read here.
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