The Triple Agent

Normally such an opportunity would be thrilling for a new base chief looking to cement her reputation. But after weeks of waiting and endless quarreling about arrangements—with her staff, with Langley, and, indirectly, with the informant himself—her enthusiasm was gone.

Multiple outsiders, including CIA chiefs in Langley, Amman, and Kabul, wanted to be in on the Balawi operation. But no one person was clearly in control. Meanwhile Balawi might show up at Khost tomorrow, or the next day, or maybe not at all.

At least the first problem, of control, could be fixed. Matthews had never been shy about asserting herself. Yes, her decisions were being challenged, but if it happened on her base, Jennifer Matthews decided, she would be in charge.

The pressure had been exquisite. Perhaps two dozen people in the world knew about the pending visit by Humam al-Balawi, but one of them happened to reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. President Barack Obama, in his second briefing about Jordan’s “golden source,” had been told of CIA plans to meet with the informant in Afghanistan. He knew that the man would be scrutinized and vetted by an agency team and then armed for his mission against one of America’s most determined adversaries, al-Qaeda’s No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The president of the United States would be awaiting news of the extraordinary events at Khost.

As the person in charge of the details of Balawi’s visit, Matthews sat down at her computer one wintry afternoon to create the most important ops plan of her life. She had to devise a way to transport Balawi to Afghanistan, win his cooperation, provide training, and send him home again without being missed or noticed. In two decades of CIA work, nothing she had written had come close to this. Many weeks later agency veterans studied Matthews’s plan and marveled at its elegant simplicity.

Timing would be critical. As Matthews figured it, the CIA had about nine hours, just barely longer than a Washington workday, to accomplish all of it. The first hurdle was the extraction from Pakistan. Balawi could find his way to the border town of Ghulam Khan, but he would need help crossing the border and the Taliban-infested mountains beyond. Helicopters were out of the question, and sending SAD officers or other Americans would be too risky, she decided. They would draw attention to the informant, and if they were stopped, they would likely be kidnapped or killed. A trusted Afghan would be sent to the border instead.

Balawi would need a cover story—a plausible reason to be away from his Taliban hosts for several hours—and the CIA came up with a clever one. As Zawahiri’s new doctor he needed to go to Miranshah to find medicine for his famous patient. The agency would provide Balawi with a package to take home with him: pills and salves to relieve the old diabetic’s poor circulation and skin problems.

The next hurdle was getting Balawi in and out of the base without compromising his identity. The chief worry, Matthews knew, was the front gate. There could well be Taliban spies among the Afghan soldiers who manned the outer perimeter, and there almost certainly were some among the local civilians who congregated near the gate to apply for work or seek medical care. At Khost, the CIA had always whisked key informants through the main gate without an ID check so their faces would not be seen. An agent as valuable as Balawi would merit even greater precautions.

Finally, there was the meeting itself. Matthews envisioned an all-hands event. Langley needed to know whether Balawi was real or just a talented con artist, so Matthews would call in her experienced case officers to ask questions and study the agent’s body language. Balawi presumably would know details about a great many terrorist operatives other than Zawahiri, so Matthews needed her best al-Qaeda and Taliban experts with her to take advantage of what might well be the agency’s only chance to interview an al-Qaeda double agent. Most important, if the Jordanian were indeed ready to lead the CIA to Zawahiri, he would need special training and perhaps tools. Technicians would show him how to send secret signals to communicate where and when a strike should take place. The agency had numerous gadgets in its tool kit, including a cell phone that could take and send digital photographs that appear ordinary in every way, except that they are encoded with hidden geographic coordinates. The image, once deciphered, would reveal exactly where on earth it was taken.