CIA attack a blow but won't stop anti-terror hunt

[February 04, 2010]  WASHINGTON (AP) -- The use of pilotless drones was supposed to minimize U.S. casualties in the campaign to hunt and kill militants. But the deaths of seven CIA employees along the Pakistan-Afghan border has exposed an unfortunate truth: Drone strikes depend in part on good tips gathered through old-fashioned spycraft that sometimes goes terribly awry.

The deaths in Afghanistan last week were a severe blow to the expertise and talent pool of the CIA in a little-understood country where its spies are now most at risk. But the U.S. isn't pulling back on covert operations to hunt terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan and will go on taking chances on human tipsters.

The United States struck back at militant targets in Pakistan on Wednesday with explosives apparently launched from an airborne drone -- the latest of five such responses since the bombing that killed several top CIA operatives at a secretive eastern Afghan base reportedly used as a key outpost in the effort to identify and target terror leaders.

The past week's drone attacks were a lethal message that the Obama administration views its airstrikes as too effective to abandon, even though they are unpopular with civilians and the U.S.-backed governments in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The apparent strikes killed at least 13 people in an area of Pakistan's volatile northwest teeming with militants, who are suspected of directing the suicide attack last week across the border in Afghanistan.

The bomber, a Jordanian doctor identified as Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, apparently was a double agent -- perhaps even a triple agent -- who had been considered a key asset. Al-Balawi was invited inside the outpost facility bearing a promise of information about al-Qaida's second-in-command, presumed to be hiding in Pakistan.

Charles Faddis, a former agency case officer, said it was a major strike to agency operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"CIA is a small outfit," said Faddis, who recently published "Beyond Repair," a scathing assessment of the agency. "You don't lose this many people in one strike and not feel it acutely."

A message posted by a top al-Qaida leader Wednesday on jihadist Internet forums praised the bombing and said it was to avenge the deaths of a Pakistani Taliban leader and two al-Qaida figures: Baitullah Mehsud, Abu Saleh al-Somali and Abdullah Saeed al-Liby, respectively. Terrorist watchdog groups disagreed over whether the message, signed by al-Qaida's No. 3, Sheikh Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, was claiming responsibility for the attack.

Al-Somali was a senior al-Qaida operations planner who was killed in an American missile strike last month in western Pakistan, a U.S. counterterrorism official said. Mehsud was a Pakistani Taliban leader killed Aug. 5 in a CIA missile strike in northwest Pakistan. He was suspected of being involved in plotting attacks against the United States and Europe, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss covert operations.

The role of al-Liby could not be immediately determined.

There are no immediate plans to close the once-secret military base where the bomber killed the CIA post chief and wounded the Kabul deputy station chief, and the CIA is expected to quickly rebuild its operations there. The base chief, a woman, was a member of a small unit known as Alec Station created before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to track down Osama bin Laden, according to several former intelligence officials.

A U.S. intelligence official said the agency has increased the size and scope of its operations in Afghanistan and is continuing its counterterrorism mission as before.

Military officials said there may be additional security precautions for people entering the kind of forward operating base that houses the CIA operation. But the CIA controls many of the decisions about whom to meet and where, and how thoroughly to search a presumed informant.

Informants are sometimes invited to secure bases because of the security risk involved in sending undercover employees or other operatives outside the base, current and former intelligence and military officials said.

A federal law enforcement official said the bomber entered the base by car and detonated a powerful explosive just outside the base's gym, where CIA operatives and others had gathered. It was unclear whether the explosives were hidden in a suicide vest or belt, but they set off a "significant blast," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the investigation.

A small team of FBI agents, including bomb and evidence technicians, flew to the remote Afghan base soon after the blast, the official said. The team, which is working closely with the CIA, has since returned and is still trying to identify the components of the explosives.

Several current and former intelligence and defense officials said the deaths of the CIA agents and the others were a foreseeable cost of doing business with unsavory people in dangerous places.

"The attacks confirm what has been the CIA's view all along, that undertaking intelligence operations requires taking risks, and while those risks can be diminished by excellent tradecraft, hard work and smart people, they can never be eliminated," former CIA officer Steven Cash said.

The CIA is taking heat from some of its own former employees, however, for apparently taking unnecessary risks in this case by failing to search the bomber before he entered the base. They also raised questions about why more than a dozen U.S. personnel were close by when al-Balawi detonated explosives.

Two CIA operatives might have been plenty, former CIA officials said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss agency procedures.

Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who is senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy, said the agency now would probably be looking carefully at its other sources in the region to ensure they are legitimate.

"If the other side was running this one person against us, how confident are we of everyone else?" Riedel said. "You have to take a period to assess where you are."

[Associated Press; By ANNE GEARAN and PAMELA HESS]

Associated Press writer Adam Goldman in New York contributed to this report.

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