The Triple Agent

The plan, according to a Pakistani Taliban official familiar with the details, called for Balawi to use his open channel to the CIA to order a missile attack on Baitullah Mehsud—only the real target would be a decoy, not the Taliban leader himself. Balawi was to send word that Baitullah would be traveling in a district called Ladha in a specific car, a Toyota hatchback model that local tribesmen have dubbed Ghwagai or “the cow.” Inside, posing as Baitullah, would be one of his trusted drivers. All other details about the car and its route would precisely match the description given to the CIA by Balawi.

It worked exactly as planned, according to a version of events related by two Taliban officials. A missile flattened the car, killing the man who had posed as the Mehsud leader. The incident was never reported by local news media and never confirmed by the CIA. But it became instant legend among Baitullah’s men.

Mehsud later claimed that the driver knew of the plan and consented to sacrifice himself to help his boss and assist Balawi’s efforts to prove his worth to the CIA. To outsiders it might seem an extravagant waste of a life. But the Taliban chief brought his own calculus to such decisions. Every American missile that lit up the sky over Pakistan, he said, was like a recruiting poster, driving more angry young men and boys into his camps.

“Every drone strike,” he would say, “brings me three or four new suicide bombers.”

On August 5, Baitullah Mehsud and a small group of trusted guards moved their quarters under cover of darkness to Zanghara, a tiny town a few miles east of the Taliban stronghold of Makeen. At the edge of the village was a large, high-walled compound well known to him. It was the home of his father-in-law, Malik Ikramuddin, and the young girl who had recently become his second wife. Now thirty-five and the father of four girls from another marriage, Mehsud had decided to put serious effort into producing a male heir.

Unknown to the Pakistani, his every move was being recorded. Two sets of mechanical eyes—a Predator drone and a smaller one hovering at close range—had trailed him to Zanghara and watched him enter the mud-brick farmhouse where he was staying. One of the drones maneuvered to get a clear view into the second-floor room where Mehsud was staying. In Langley, Virginia, six thousand miles away, a series of urgent messages pulsed through the corridors of the executive wing: The target’s identity had been confirmed. It would be a clean shot.

But suddenly Mehsud was moving again, padding around the upper floors of the house in his white shalwar kameez. The Predator’s pilot and weapons operator eased off on their controls and watched their screens. They would have to wait.

It was a brutally hot night, and Mehsud was restless. His diabetes made him constantly thirsty, and his legs were swollen and achy. Shortly after midnight he opened a small door and, trailed by a second robed figure carrying medical equipment, climbed out onto the roof. A full moon bathed the rooftop in light and illuminated Mehsud’s bearded form as distinctly as if he were onstage. There was a small mattress on the roof, and Mehsud walked over to it and flopped down, belly first. The second figure knelt next to him and began to set up what appeared to be an intravenous drip. The CIA’s analysts quickly concluded that the other person was a doctor. Could it be Balawi? It didn’t matter. The Predator team armed their Hellfires a second time.

The missile launch awaited only final approval from the CIA director, but now there was a hitch. Leon Panetta had authorized a strike on a second-floor bedroom, but Baitullah Mehsud was lying on the roof on the building. The change was not insignificant: Panetta had insisted on maximum precautions to prevent the deaths of innocents, particularly women and children. What if the missile caused the entire building to collapse? Panetta would have to sign off on the change, or not. And he would have to decide quickly or risk letting the opportunity slip away.

At that precise moment Panetta was not in his CIA office but in downtown Washington, attending a meeting of the National Security Council at the White House. A little before 4:00 P.M. Washington time, he excused himself from the meeting and walked into the hallway to take an urgent call. He frowned as he listened, visibly worried. For several minutes he paced the floor with his cell phone to his ear, asking questions and going over details and options. By some accounts there were dozens of people staying in the same house as Mehsud, including mothers with children.

“Is that thing going to collapse?” Panetta asked. “What’s in there? Are there women and family members around?”