In 2009 Jordanian intelligence, the Mukhabarat, arrested, then seemingly recruited, a young medical doctor of Palestinian descent, Humam al-Balawi. Balawi was a widely known radical Islamic blogger, although not by his true name. Nearly a year later, after teasing the Jordanians and the CIA into thinking he was going to provide information on high-level al-Qaeda officials, Balawi blew himself up, along with seven CIA operatives at his initial meeting at the CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan.

Joby Warrick documents the operation that led to the disaster from the beginning to the post-mortems and investigations. An investigative commission called it a failure of imagination. The agency was used to being led on, scammed and lied to, but never imagined that a potential informer would do this.

Also noted, in the epilogue, is the tracking and killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011; the result of a decade of work, some of it performed by the officers who died at Khost. This is a well-written, edited and researched book that flows from beginning to end. ( )

A disturbing story of how an al-Qaeda double agent gained the trust of the CIA, only to become a suicide bomber and kill a number of agents in a regional headquarters in Afghanistan. It's an unfortunate and disturbing story, in which the CIA's eagerness to obtain inside information led to some shortcuts and oversights in security, with such unfortunate results.

Listening to this as an audiobook vs. reading the text may have made the book a little more difficult to understand, with a variety of Arabic sounding names blending and merging. As a result, I ended up repeating several sections to fully comprehend who was who, and who was being betrayed, which detracted somewhat from my enjoyment of the book. ( )

On December 30, 2009, a large group of CIA terrorist hunters at their base in Khost, Afghanistan, were anxiously awaiting the arrival of Humam Khalil al-Balawi, a Jordanian physician and double agent who had infiltrated Al-Qaeda’s inner circle. He had been providing them with amazing information on Al-Qaeda’s activities and they were counting on him to lead them to Osama bin Laden, America’s number one enemy, who had been hiding in the Afghanistan/Pakistan area for an extended period of time. His arrival had been postponed and delayed for several days and his arrival that day, his thirty second birthday, was much later than anticipated. But, when they received word that he was finally there, they gathered outside to give him a greeting which they believed his actions warranted. In order to protect his identity, he was accompanied by minimal staff and was rushed through the gates without being searched or inspected.
Big mistake. As soon as he exited the car, he set off a suicide bomb, killing himself, seven operatives and injuring most of the other people waiting to meet him. It was the agency’s highest loss of life in decades.
THE TRIPLE AGENT flows like a well-written thriller. In it, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Joby Warrick details Balawi’s life, his family, his motivations, his actions as well as the providing similar details about the Americans and Jordanians involved in his career as an agent.
Background: In 2000, the CIA and FBI had missed or mishandled warnings which might have prevented the attacks on 9/11. In early 2008, CIA Director Michael Hayden had identified all-Qaeda as America’s worst enemy and told President Bush that the US must fight it on its home turf inside Pakistan. Pakistan, an American ally, opposed missile strikes on its own soil and said they exacerbated the problem by radicalizing ordinary Pakistanis to join the extremists. Besides, “Al-Qaeda is not very strong, but you’ve made it into a ten-foot-tall giant....How can a handful of core al-Qaeda leaders seriously threaten the greatest empire in the world?”
Eventually, George W. Bush allowed gave the CIA the green light.
The US had been struggling to improve its antiterrorism program since 9/11. When Barack Obama became President, he promised to redraw the country’s counterterrorism priorities, starting with renewed commitment to capturing bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Aawahiri. We relied a lot on the cooperation of Jordan which had a program in place to identify and train spies. Because of Obama’s request to advance the program, Jordan rushed to find new informants omitting many of the vetting steps they had previously used. US agents and officers were also advanced without as much training as had been required previously. As one person observed,” “Americans are in too much of a hurry. Always, they want everything to happen right now.”
Al-Balawi was one of the new recruits. He was not reviews by the US. His reports were spectacular. So much so that some counterintelligence officers told CIA investigators they found his behaviour suspicious. Events in Pakistan were coming together too quickly, too easily. Tragically, their concerns never reached the CIA Base Chief, Jennifer Matthews.
The results were predicable.
THE TRIPLE AGENT is very thorough. It reads like a diary, heavy on details and facts. At the beginning, it includes a list of the principal characters in The White House, CIA headquarters, Amman, Jordan, Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan. The notes at the end are expanded. There was room for examining the veracity of some of the motivational factors but the author seems to have merely repeated how the speaker saw them. E.g,, Jordanian intelligence department captain Ali Bin Zeid says he was sitting on porch overlooking Dead Sea, “gazed at the fertile plains to the north and west, lands that had once belonged to the Arabs.” Before the Jews moved into the area, the land was desolate. It wasn’t until the swamps were drained and mosquitos eradicated that there were any fertile plains.
He also presents the Palestinian view about the Gaza war, blasting Israel without mentioning the actions of Hamas that led to the battle ( )

Just a fabulous read...this non-fiction book takes you into the background of how CIA agents work in the world of counter terrorism, while at the same time telling the story behind the suicide bombing of 7 CIA agents and others in Khost, Afghanistan. I usually have several items in process of reading - magazines, newspapers, other books...but had to put aside those other items at times to continue to read this. It reads very well - and its relative brevity as a non-fiction book is a plus. It sticks to the primary story line without adding in minute details about the people involved - something that many non-fiction writers find themselves doing. I still enjoy non-fiction - but this book stands out as one of the best I've read over the past 5 years or so. ( )

Interesting and worth reading. The author seems very credible and is a Washington Post reporter on the Middle East, national security, intelligence, etc. I often wondered how the author got so many details from super secretive groups (CIA, al-Qaeda, etc) or people who are now dead. This is a surprisingly complete story for such a recent and secret event. This isn't a fast-paced, sexy spy thriller. This is about people (on both sides) trying to figure out how to claim slow progress on the uncertain, dark, and tense battlefield of terrorism. The whole time their minds are also on their careers, their families, and the risks.

I think I would have preferred if the author hadn't given away the end of the story in the title and in the first chapter. Spy stories can be fun because of mystery and misdirection, but the author didn't really play with this or keep me guessing much. The end of the book seemed like a tribute to the Americans, which is probably appropriate but not very interesting reading to me.

I sort of wish I understood the motives of the bad guys better. The book didn't explain the attraction or justification for terrorism in the minds of its characters who were doctors or scholars, and I couldn't understand how they could get to that point. Maybe explaining Islamic or political rational for terrorism is a hot potato, and maybe that's a whole different book, but I felt like I didn't understand anyone's motivation.

I also didn't get a flavor for whether the overall work against terrorism was constructive or impossible. Is it a war that can ever be won by American or its allies? Maybe the author doesn't really know. Maybe none of us do. In the end it struck me that killing Americans was revenge for fallen terrorist comrades, and then killing bin Laden was revenge for fallen American comrades. ( )