He was a catch, a gold mine. The first and only mole ever to infiltrate Al Qaeda at such a high level. And the CIA was eager to meet him. On the afternoon of December 30, 2009, practically everyone who worked at the agency's base in Khost, Afghanistan, plus a few visitors—fourteen people in all—gathered outside in front of a makeshift interrogation center. The mole was due any minute. The point of the welcoming committee was apparently to show respect for the man, a Jordanian doctor named Humam Khalil Abu-Malal al-Balawi—to make him understand how important he was to the CIA's war on Osama bin Laden.
A red station wagon had been dispatched to pick up Balawi at the Pakistan border ten miles away, the base's Afghan driver at the wheel. At about 4:30 p.m., the car pulled up in front of the interrogation center. When Balawi stepped out, he kept one hand in his pocket. According to press accounts, this caught the attention of a security contractor from Xe Services (formerly Blackwater), who moved to search Balawi. But a former CIA officer with knowledge of the agency's internal investigation of the incident told me it was the mole's handler in the Jordanian intelligence service—the man who'd recruited Balawi in the first place—who first suspected something was wrong. What tipped him off ? Balawi started to pray: There is no god but God…
