Double Agent Disaster

The lead article in today’s New York Times is titled, “Suicide Bomber in Afghanistan a Double Agent.” It provides a new revelation about the bombing last week killing seven C.I.A. agents — the bomber was a double agent provided by the Jordanian government.

The article describes how the Jordanian spy service, the General Intelligence Directorate, provided the individual to infiltrate Al Jaeda and how the man was purportedly going to provide information about the location of Al Qaeda’s number two leader, the Egyptian doctor,  Ayman al-Zawahri. As a result, the double agent was never screened for explosives, and Al Qaeda gained a major tactical victory.

Well, I don’t have to be a C.I.A. agent to know that one of the first major rules of espionage is that you can’t trust anyone. But to not even take the most elementary precautions speaks very poorly of our intelligence service. It’s one thing to have airline security people make a glaring error, quite another one for our own operatives professionally trained in the field.

The C.I.A. bombing also creates a major internal division in our ranks. The government of Jordan and the C.I.A. have cooperated closely in the past, even though this is distinctly unpopular with the Jordanian people, especially in light of the Palestinian situation. One can only hope that cooperation will resume, even if in a more guarded manner.