The Triple Agent

Humam al-Balawi was a straight-A student destined for a medical career when he posed for this photograph in his senior year of high school. (Associated Press)

Humam al-Balawi’s father, Khalil, was a school administrator, teacher of Arabic literature, and father of ten children. When he was a boy, his family were forced to leave their home in what is now Israel after the partition of Palestine in 1948. They settled in Jordan, becoming part of a Palestinian refugee community that grew to nearly two million people. (Joby Warrick)

Balawi turned down more lucrative medical opportunities to work in this United Nations medical clinic in a Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Amman. While tending to refugee women and children, he developed a secret identity as a jihadist blogger, writing anti-Israel and anti-Western screeds that eventually attracted the attention of Jordan’s intelligence service. (Joby Warrick)

Balawi’s Turkish wife, Defne Bayrak, was a journalist for a conservative Istanbul newspaper when the two met in an online chat room. A fluent Arabic speaker, she translated a biography of Osama bin Laden into Turkish. (Courtesy of CNN)

Ali bin Zeid, a captain in Jordan’s General Intelligence Department, commonly known as the Mukhabarat, was a cousin to Jordan’s king. He went on off-roading excursions to relieve the pressure of counterterrorism work. Bin Zeid took charge of the Balawi case and believed he saw potential in the young doctor to become a double agent for the West. (Courtesy of Fida Dawani)

Former Army Ranger Darren LaBonte fought the Taliban in Afghanistan as a CIA paramilitary officer before moving to Jordan to work on counterterrorism cases. He became the CIA’s American case officer for Balawi. (Courtesy of the LaBonte family)

Osama bin Laden (left) went deep into hiding after 2002, becoming so isolated that his influence over al-Qaeda’s decisions diminished. His top deputy, Egyptian-born Ayman al-Zawahiri, narrowly avoided a CIA attempt on his life in 2006, and afterward taunted President George W. Bush in a videotaped diatribe, saying, “Bush, do you know where I am?” (Courtesy of SITE Intelligence Group)

Sheikh Saeed al-Masri, al-Qaeda’s long-time financial chief, rose to take charge of the terrorist group’s day-to-day operations. He gradually came to see an opportunity in the young Jordanian doctor who turned up in Pakistan’s tribal belt in the spring of 2009. (Courtesy of SITE Intelligence Group)

Jennifer Matthews helped lead the CIA’s search for al-Qaeda terrorists in Washington and London, and by early 2009 she was in line for her first command posting in a war zone. She had been in Afghanistan only three months when CIA officials put her in charge of the agency’s first meeting with Balawi. (Courtesy of David Matthews)

Elizabeth Hanson was barely thirty and already a seasoned CIA “targeter” when she was dispatched to Kabul to help the CIA track down senior al-Qaeda operatives. She helped put the agency’s unmanned Predator aircraft on the trail of Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan. (Courtesy of the Hanson family)

The CIA relied on its fleet of Predators to strike terrorists in places where U.S. troops couldn’t go. The pilotless planes can hover for hours to conduct surveillance and can fire laser-guided missiles at targets with unparalleled accuracy. The Predators have killed hundreds of suspected terrorists in Pakistan in dozens of strikes since 2008. (U.S. Air Force photo by Lieutenant Colonel Leslie Pratt)

Michael V. Hayden, who became the Bush administration’s third CIA director in 2006, saw signs that al-Qaeda’s strength was increasing in Pakistan’s tribal belt in 2007. He pressed the Bush administration to ramp up lethal Predator strikes in an effort to prevent another September 11–style terrorist attack against the West. (Courtesy of Nikki Khan/The Washington Post)

The leader of the Taliban alliance in Pakistan, Baitullah Mehsud, became the focus of a massive U.S.-Pakistani search in 2009 after intelligence linked him to a possible dirty-bomb plot. A CIA missile struck him on August 5, 2009, on the roof of his father-in-law’s house in northwestern Pakistan. (Courtesy of SITE Intelligence Group)

After the killing of his cousin Baitullah, the charismatic Hakimullah Mehsud (middle) took the reins of Pakistan’s Taliban alliance and talked openly of targeting the American heartland. Initially suspicious of Balawi, he came to regard the Jordanian physician as an instrument for exacting revenge on the CIA. (Courtesy of SITE Intelligence Group)

The town of Khost lies on Afghanistan’s eastern fringe in territory long controlled by the Haqqani network, allies to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The city’s greatest landmark, a blue-domed mosque, was built by the clan’s patriarch, Jalaluddin Haqqani, a friend of Osama bin Laden. (Joby Warrick)

The first Americans to arrive in Khost after the fall of the Taliban were a CIA-led team of Special Forces troops and paramilitary officers. They established Forward Operating Base Chapman, now known to most officers simply as Khost, at an airfield outside of town. It became a key outpost for gathering intelligence in eastern Afghanistan and in the Taliban heartland just across the border. (Courtesy of Charles McComes)

Jeremy Wise, thirty-five, fought in Iraq as a Navy SEAL before leaving the armed services in 2009. Newly married with a young son, he received an offer to work for the security contractor Xe Services LLC, formerly known as Blackwater. Wise traveled to Khost in mid-December 2009 for his first deployment protecting CIA operatives in Afghanistan. (Courtesy of Dana Wise)

At forty-six, Dane Paresi was one of the oldest and most battle hardened of the Americans at Khost. As a Green Beret, he had won a Bronze Star for his role in destroying a column of al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters in eastern Afghanistan. Paresi also had recently joined Blackwater in hopes of building up a nest egg for retirement. (Courtesy of Mindy Lou Paresi)

Harold Brown Jr., thirty-seven, was a onetime army intelligence specialist who worked in private industry before returning to government to work for the CIA. At Khost, his first overseas posting, he was invited to help evaluate the Jordanian informant, Balawi, who claimed to have connections to al-Qaeda’s inner circle. (Courtesy of Janet Brown)

Scott Roberson, thirty-eight, busted drug dealers as an Atlanta police officer and protected U.S. dignitaries in war-torn Iraq before joining the CIA in 2009. He became the head of security at Khost and sparred with CIA managers over how to handle security for the planned meeting with Balawi. (Courtesy of the Roberson family)

Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, a senior al-Qaeda leader in Pakistan, appeared with Balawi in a fabricated video designed to convince the CIA that the Jordanian doctor had penetrated the terrorist group’s inner circle. (Courtesy of SITE Intelligence Group)

Al-Qaeda commissioned a special suicide vest for Balawi, using military-grade C4 explosives as well as about fifteen pounds of steel pellets and other metal fragments to serve as shrapnel. The device, though snugly strapped to the bomber’s midsection, could be easily detected by anyone brushing against it. (Courtesy of SITE Intelligence Group)

Humam al-Balawi posed for several “martyrdom” videotapes before beginning his mission. In this video, he showed off the detonator he would use to set off a suicide bomb strapped to his chest. “Don’t think that just by pressing a button and killing mujahideen, you are safe,” he said, referring to the CIA and its Predator attacks. (Courtesy of SITE Intelligence Group)

In another martyrdom tape, Balawi (right) appears seated with Hakimullah Mehsud, his host in Pakistan. “His conscience did not allow him to spy on Muslim brothers for the infidels,” Mehsud said of Balawi. (Courtesy of SITE Intelligence Group)

The CIA’s Darren LaBonte (left) and the Mukhabarat’s Ali bin Zeid posed for a snapshot at Khost on the day before Balawi’s arrival. The two were partners on terrorism cases in Jordan and became close friends before they teamed up for the Balawi case. (Courtesy of the LaBonte family)

Jordanian agent Humam al-Balawi entered the CIA base through this gate and was waved by without a search. CIA operatives often insisted that high-level informants have no contact with Afghan guards at the base, for fear that their identity might be compromised. (U.S. government source)

The meeting was set to take place inside the CIA’s heavily guarded compound within the Khost base. Balawi was driven past three guard stations before pulling up outside the building where he was to meet with bin Zeid and the Americans. He was greeted by a group of sixteen intelligence operatives anxious to debrief him. (Courtesy of Tim Brown/GlobalSecurity.org and GeoEye)

CIA director Leon Panetta (left, front) vowed to strike back against the al-Qaeda leaders responsible for killing the seven officers at Khost. In June 2010 he presided over a ceremony adding new stars on the CIA’s Memorial Wall for the slain officers and contractors. (Courtesy of CIA Public Affairs)

Under Panetta’s direction, the CIA targeted Hakimullah Mehsud and al-Qaeda’s No. 3, al-Masri, in a series of missile strikes in the spring and summer. Panetta acknowledged that “systemic” problems had contributed to the CIA’s deadliest day in a quarter century. (Courtesy of Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post)

Ethan Wise embraces the flag that draped the coffin of his father, fallen security guard Jeremy Wise. (Courtesy of Katrina Clay)