The physician from Jordan who killed seven CIA personnel in a suicide bombing last month at an outpost in Afghanistan had provided key intelligence appearing to confirm the deaths of ranking al-Qaeda and Taliban members in U.S. drone strikes, the Washington Times reported yesterday (see GSN, July 29, 2008).
The CIA and FBI are now reassessing the information provided by double agent Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, as is the National Counterterrorism Center.
"When something like this happens, it's logical — and indeed prudent — to review information associated with an intelligence asset, especially one who wasn't trusted completely to begin with," according to one intelligence official.
"Various agencies — primarily the CIA and the FBI — are in the process of doing precisely that," the official said. "The asset had provided information that was independently confirmed through other means. And certainly no one relied exclusively on what he provided to reach any conclusions about the fate of senior terrorists who have recently died."
Drone strikes in Pakistan are believed to have eliminated about 15 top-level al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives since August 2008, including Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud and al-Qaeda chemical and biological weapons specialist Abu Khabab al-Masri.
In at least one case, though, an al-Qaeda member who had been reported dead following a drone attack later turned up alive.
Insiders and observers said it was unlikely that al-Balawi alone would have been trusted to confirm the deaths of extremists.
"Nothing in the reviews that have occurred to date have reversed any conclusions about the deaths of senior terrorists," a counterterrorism official said.
"The U.S. relies on multiple sourcing because it is so embarrassing to find out that the dead are still alive," said analyst Anthony Cordesman, a former intelligence official at the former U.S. Defense Department (Eli Lake, Washington Times, Jan. 13).