The Triple Agent

LaBonte’s chief complaint: too many people. Fourteen intelligence operatives and a driver were about a dozen too many, by his way of thinking. Both LaBonte and bin Zeid had worked with numerous undercover agents in Afghanistan and the Middle East, and in their world, informant meetings were almost always small. One officer would drive to the pickup point while his partner would sit in the backseat to pat down the agent for wires or weapons. At Khost the officers from Amman were barred from leaving the base—the risk of kidnapping was judged to be too great—but still, LaBonte believed in small meetings for security’s sake. Even the most trusted informant was usually kept in the dark about the agency’s operations and was never allowed to know the names or faces of CIA operatives other than his handlers. That was for everyone’s protection: The less the informant knew, the less he could give up if he was caught by the other side and threatened with torture or execution.

Logistics aside, LaBonte had a bad feeling about where things were heading, a sense of foreboding that he mentioned both to bin Zeid and to the friend he spoke to on Skype. Whether it was just anxiousness spilling over from two weeks of uncertainty and boredom or something more—his famous “spidey sense,” perhaps—was unclear.

“Both he and Ali [bin Zeid] were feeling skeptical,” the friend said. “They were not aloof to the fact that this guy could be bogus, and maybe just looking for money. There were no red flags, and nothing that suggested the guy had flipped. But who sits next to Zawahiri and then takes part in an operation to kill him?”

Others, including several of the heavily armed men in charge of keeping the CIA officers safe, had similar misgivings. During the practice run, security chief Scott Roberson and Matthews clashed sharply in an incident later described to CIA investigators.

Roberson, though also new to the base, had spent much of the decade protecting top U.S. government officials in Baghdad, honing his instincts during the worst years, when insurgents were staging hundreds of attacks a day. On the day of the rehearsal, several officers witnessed Roberson and Matthews stepping away from the group for a heated argument conducted in hushed tones. Afterward, witnesses said, Roberson walked to where security guard Dane Paresi was standing and shrugged. Whatever the nature of the dispute, it seemed to those watching to be settled.

Around this time, Paresi, the former Green Beret, complained to colleagues at Blackwater about the security arrangements. And ex-SEAL Jeremy Wise, just two weeks into his assignment at Khost, e-mailed a SEAL friend on December 21 hinting that he had had differences with the agency’s civilian managers in the lead-up to an important operation. “Sometimes it’s your job to say something—‘Sir, I don’t think you should do that. It’s not a good idea,’ ” he wrote.

After days of such conflict, LaBonte finally decided to appeal to his CIA supervisors in Jordan. He sat down to type out an e-mail to the Amman station chief, copying several of the station’s other managers, warning that the Balawi case was in danger of veering off the rails.

There are three problems, he wrote, according to an officer who read the note. Then he listed them.

There are too many people involved.

We’re moving too quickly.

We’re giving up too much control by letting Balawi dictate events.

The e-mail created a stir in Amman. The station chief read the contents carefully, but decided not to intervene. The case was too important and must proceed, he told colleagues.

Whether CIA managers in Langley saw the note before Balawi’s arrival is unclear. It was never forwarded to Matthews, who in any case knew LaBonte’s concerns by heart.

Later, as final arrangements for Balawi’s visit were being made, Khost’s security chief offered a word of advice to a colleague who was planning to go to the meeting to see the informant who had generated such excitement.

Roberson cautioned the officer, Stay far away from this.

The passing of Christmas only deepened the misery bin Zeid and LaBonte were feeling. When they arrived at Khost, the two Amman officers had planned on a short visit and a quick meeting, but now they were in their third week on the base with little to do and no Balawi in sight.