The Triple Agent

“I don’t know if you understand this yet, but you are America’s combatant commander in the war against terrorism,” he said. More than the Pentagon, the FBI, or anyone else, Hayden continued, the CIA was responsible for hunting down terrorists in foreign countries and stopping them before they could strike. Other CIA directors had carried out similar missions in bygone years, but now the job was different: For the first time in the agency’s history, “stopping” the bad guys meant killing them.

“You will be making decisions,” Hayden said, “that will absolutely surprise you.”

Panetta listened politely, but Hayden’s final point struck him as a bit dramatic. At military posts, a change of command was often greeted with ceremonial flourish: boot clicks and salutes and theatrical rhetoric. It would be weeks before Panetta fully understood what Hayden meant.

On his way out, Hayden stopped by the White House for a final meeting with the newly elected president. In an Oval Office briefing with Barack Obama, the general mentioned a pair of targets the agency had been monitoring in northwestern Pakistan. Hayden had authorized a strike, and the agency’s team was waiting for the right moment, he told the president.

Later that morning, after the meeting had moved into the White House’s Situation Room, Hayden was asked about the Pakistani operation. What about those two targets?

Hayden made a quick call on his secure phone.

“Check,” he said, “and check.”

Hayden left the meeting a few minutes later amid appreciative smiles and handshakes.

They certainly seem supportive, he thought, appraising the young president and his security team with guarded approval.

He had officially passed the baton. Now it was their turn.

2. HAUNTED

London—January 19, 2009

A winter squall was whipping through central London’s Grosvenor Square, scattering newspapers and tourists and pelting Franklin Roosevelt’s caped statue with sheets of rain. Jennifer Lynne Matthews peered from her office window into the thick weather, barely able to see.

It was another soggy Monday in London and the start of the final stretch of a nearly four-year stint as the CIA’s chief liaison on counterterrorism to Britain. Soon she would be on her way either back to Virginia or to an entirely different location—perhaps even Afghanistan—and the uncertainty was making her anxious. The morning’s cable traffic had brought unsettling news. The FBI was chasing a possible threat by Somali terrorists to blow up the inaugural parade for the newly elected president, Barack Obama, due to begin in less than twenty-four hours. In Afghanistan, insurgents had attempted an unusually sophisticated double suicide bombing just outside the CIA’s secret base near the city of Khost. First, a minivan was blown up at the front gate, killing and wounding mothers and young children who had been waiting in line to see the base doctor. As guards and troops rushed to help the wounded, a truck, sagging under the weight of a massive bomb, came barreling down the main highway. A few well-aimed gunshots by an Afghan soldier had killed the truck’s driver and averted a bigger disaster.

She studied the item, habitually fingering the thick shock of brown hair that spilled across her forehead. Was this the kind of place she wanted to be? Matthews was forty-four now but looked younger, her body lean from years of running and her angular features showing no trace of wrinkles. She was nowhere near retirement, but after two decades of CIA work, her career choices were becoming increasingly momentous. If nothing else, another overseas posting would mean a better pension when the time finally came.

Still. Afghanistan.

Matthews sat back in her chair and stared into the gloom outside her window. Office workers were slogging through the square with their umbrellas, and some of them would be heading to pubs later that day for celebrations marking the end of George W. Bush’s presidency. Glad though she was to see certain members of Bush’s security team leave town, Matthews would not be celebrating. She reserved great disdain for Bush’s former defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, one of a half dozen men she blamed for letting Osama bin Laden slip away when the CIA had had the terrorist in its crosshairs. But the prospect of an Obama presidency had been more unsettling to some of her former comrades in the agency’s Counterterrorism Center. Candidate Obama had condemned the agency’s past use of waterboarding and had even called it torture, suggesting that investigations, public hearings, and even criminal charges were on the agenda.