The Triple Agent

He drove to his parents’ house and arrived in time to see the second plane hit the south tower. He and his mother then watched in disbelief as one tower collapsed, and then the other. When Camille turned to her son, he was crying.

Within weeks, LaBonte was privately taking Arabic lessons while sorting through his options for landing a meaningful role in the fight against terrorism that was just getting under way. He considered, and then rejected, the idea of reenlisting in the army; it was unlikely that he would end up in the job or unit that he wanted, he reasoned. Instead he decided to sign up with the U.S. Marshals Service, a law enforcement arm of the Justice Department that tracks down fugitives and protects federal courts. His Ranger experience landed him a coveted spot on the marshals’ special operations team, yet it quickly became clear to LaBonte that the job was not the one he was looking for. Instead of searching for suspected terrorists, he was spending his days tracking down drug dealers.

LaBonte then applied simultaneously for positions at the FBI and CIA. The FBI called back first, so he enrolled in the bureau’s academy in Quantico, Virginia. He won commendations as a cadet for leadership and shooting skills, and after graduation he landed a prime spot in the bureau’s New York office, working for an organized crime unit investigating the city’s Mafia families. Still, he burned for something more.

At last, in 2006, the CIA came through with the offer he had been waiting for. The intelligence agency saw in LaBonte a combination of skills that were most in demand five years into the global war against al-Qaeda: the tactical abilities of a Special Forces soldier, combined with the resourcefulness of a classic CIA case officer. LaBonte was among a handful of CIA recruits who would be trained for both jobs. He catapulted to the front of the waiting list for the agency’s training school, the former Defense Department reservation in southern Virginia known as the “Farm.” Months later he was on his way to Iraq and then to Afghanistan.

This job felt right, at last. His comrades and commanders were impressed by the enthusiasm of the young ex-Ranger who was always the first to volunteer for difficult assignments and the last to complain about the hardships the group endured. Though less experienced than some of the older combat veterans, he distinguished himself for his clearheadedness and sharp instincts during firefights. One officer who fought next to him in Afghanistan was struck by LaBonte’s “total confidence in who and what he was.

“He was living his calling, without pretense or guile, brag or boast,” the former comrade said. “Darren believed his predestined role was to serve as a professional warrior, a protector for those less able to protect themselves.”

Such qualities were on display one summer night when LaBonte led a two-man surveillance mission in Kunar Province. The men were walking alongside a river when a sudden noise alerted them to an approaching Taliban patrol. The Americans froze and hugged the riverbank as the insurgents filed into view, then paused in a clearing a few yards from their hiding place. A dozen fighters arrived, then two dozen, and still more. At last the group swelled to more than one hundred Taliban fighters, all armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades and obviously staging for some kind of attack. They lingered for several minutes, so close that the two Americans could hear their conversations. If any one of them had wandered a few feet toward the river, the pair would almost certainly have been discovered.

The other man was new to the CIA base and had never been in such a scrape. LaBonte kept a hand on his shoulder and whispered words of encouragement.

“Don’t worry, everything is going to be OK,” he said.

Eventually the insurgents moved on, and the two men scurried back to their base—but only after relaying the Taliban group’s coordinates to the nearest NATO dispatcher.

As the months passed, though, LaBonte slowly lost some of his early optimism about the tide of battle against al-Qaeda. By the time he arrived in Jordan, he was convinced that bin Laden and his followers were winning the ideological struggle, appealing to ever larger numbers of young Muslims who could serve as fodder in the next wave of suicidal strikes against the West. He brooded about the attacks that were surely coming and worried about how to safeguard those he cared about most.

That list was topped by his wife and baby daughter, now with him in a Middle Eastern country in which American officials had been targeted for assassination. It also included bin Zeid, who he feared, was being swept along by the collective enthusiasm for Balawi, a double agent whose achievements already bordered on the implausible.

“This guy is too good to be true,” LaBonte flatly told an ex-military friend in late autumn.