The Triple Agent: The al-Qaeda Mole who Infiltrated the CIA [Hardcover]

Joby Warrick (Author)

Book Description

Release date: July 19, 2011

A stunning narrative account of the mysterious Jordanian who penetrated both the inner circle of al-Qaeda and the highest reaches of the CIA, with a devastating impact on the war on terror.
 
In December 2009, a group of the CIA’s top terrorist hunters gathered at a secret base in Khost, Afghanistan, to greet a rising superspy: Humam Khalil al-Balawi, a Jordanian double-agent who infiltrated the upper ranks of al-Qaeda. For months, he had sent shocking revelations from inside the terrorist network and now promised to help the CIA assassinate Osama bin Laden’s top deputy. Instead, as he stepped from his car, he detonated a thirty-pound bomb strapped to his chest, instantly killing seven CIA operatives, the agency’s worst loss of life in decades.
 
In The Triple Agent, Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Joby Warrick takes us deep inside the CIA’s secret war against al-Qaeda, a war that pits robotic planes and laser-guided missiles against a cunning enemy intent on unleashing carnage in American cities. Flitting precariously between the two sides was Balawi, a young man with extraordinary gifts who managed to win the confidence of hardened terrorists as well as veteran spymasters. With his breathtaking accounts from inside al-Qaeda’s lair, Balawi appeared poised to become America’s greatest double-agent in half a century—but he was not at all what he seemed. Combining the powerful momentum of Black Hawk Down with the institutional insight of Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side, Warrick takes the readers on a harrowing journey from the slums of Amman to the inner chambers of the White House in an untold true story of miscalculation, deception, and revenge.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Bob Baer Reviews The Triple Agent

Robert Baer is the author of two New York Times bestsellers: Sleeping with the Devil, about the Saudi royal family and its relationship with the United States; and See No Evil, which recounts Baer's years as a top CIA operative. See No Evil was the basis for the acclaimed film Syriana, which earned George Clooney an Oscar for his portrayal of Baer. Baer writes regularly for Time.com and has contributed to Vanity Fair, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. He is considered one of the world's foremost authorities on the Middle East.

I’ve never read a book like this, a detailed and compelling postmortem of an intelligence failure. In a driving narrative Warrick tells the story of how the CIA came to suffer its worst loss ever.

Since Khost I’ve taken more than a passing interest in how precisely the tragedy came about, how more than a dozen CIA operatives let themselves be caught in an ambush like this. Needless to say, my ex-colleagues could talk about nothing else in the months afterwards. But no one could give me the detail that explained it. Warrick’s finally done it, better than any CIA “damage assessment” could ever hope to.

The story of Khost has much wider significance than a tragic event. Warrick paints a picture of a CIA obsessed with technology – drones, iris scans, intercepts. No one at Khost spoke the local language, no one set foot out of base, and the officer in charge had no real field experience. She knew nothing about Afghanistan or Pakistan. Yet she was not only put in charge, she was handed the CIA’s first mole inside al Qaeda - and put in charge of overseeing the assassination of al Qaeda’s number two, Ayman al Zawahari.

The Triple Agent is not only the best book out there on the CIA’s hunt for al Qaeda, it’s the best book on post-9/11 CIA, bar none. Read it.

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Review

Praise for The Triple Agent

"Mr. Warrick has reconstructed, in vivid and telling detail, the sequence of events that led Humam al-Balawi to kill seven CIA operatives in a suicide attack in Afghanistan in December 2009....It is a chilling tale, told with skill and verve."
—The Economist

"The Triple Agent is a page turner....It's a must-read for counterterrorism and spy junkies."
—Associated Press

"Warrick is a brilliant reporter and a fine writer.... This is as gripping a true-life spy saga as I've read in years."
—Bob Drogin, LA Times

"A riveting, heart-wrenching tale."
—The Washington Post

"[An] accessible and fast-paced debut....[Warrick] gives this story a cinematic feel with suspensful foreshadowing, rich character development...and a remarkable amount of heart."
—Publishers Weekly

"Warrick has pieced together a fast-paced and compelling narrative that reads like a Hollywood screenplay. He provides a rare look at the careers and personal lives of CIA officers, including the courageous women who played key roles....Spellbinding."
—The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Insightful and riveting.... Mr. Warrick adds a wealth of new detail to a narrative that reads like the best spy fiction."
—The Washington Times

"The Triple Agent is a spy thriller like no other. Never has such a giant intelligence debacle been chronicled this vividly, this intimately. Riveting and harrowing, laden with deception and duplicity, it is a remarkable, behind-the-curtain account of the CIA’s darkest day in Afghanistan."
—Rajiv Chandrasekaran, author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City

“Absolutely first-rate, breakthrough reporting.”
—Bob Woodward, author of Obama’s Wars

“The Triple Agent is a superlative piece of reporting and writing. Joby Warrick manages to take the reader inside the CIA, Jordanian intelligence, and al-Qaeda. His intimate portraits of intelligence officers and the terrorists they stalk are unforgettable. The Triple Agent is one of the best true-life spy stories I have ever read.”
—David Ignatius, columnist for the Washington Post and author of Bloodmoney

“A startling and memorable account of daring, treachery, and catastrophe in the CIA’s war against al-Qaeda. The deadly buzz of unmanned drones, the fanatical drive of a suicide bomber, and the desperate hopes of the intelligence agents at outpost Khost are drawn together in a powerful and fast-paced story of our time.”
—David E. Hoffman, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Dead Hand

“The Triple Agent is by turns harrowing and heartbreaking, fascinating and frightening. Joby Warrick takes the reader deep inside the CIA’s biggest disaster since September 11, a monumental blunder that allowed an al-Qaeda mole, carrying a thirty-pound bomb, into the agency’s highly secret, frontline outpost along the Afghan border with Pakistan. The blast left seven agency employees dead and many questions unanswered, questions that Warrick skillfully answers in a tale that reads like a thriller and stretches from the dusty back alleys of Waziristan to the plush executive floor at Langley.”
—James Bamford, author of the bestselling The Puzzle Palace, Body of Secrets, and The Shadow Factory

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1St Edition edition (July 19, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385534183
• ISBN-13: 978-0385534185
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.2 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (70 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #256,056 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #5 in Books > History > Middle East > Jordan

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

92 of 97 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Bad Ending for a Good Story July 22, 2011

By Retired Reader

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Perhaps the best way to review this book is to state up front what it is not: it is not a scathing critique of CIA or the U.S. Intelligence Community. Those who buy it expecting to be inflamed by a stream of criticisms of CIA officers and trade craft will be disappointed.

So what is the book? It is a careful compilation of the events, actions, decisions and personalities that ultimately culminated in the tragedy at Camp Chapman (Khost). Warrick has built a somewhat breathless, but engaging narrative that describes in some detail how a string of seemingly unrelated events build with inevitability of a Greek Tragedy to a horrendous conclusion. Warrick followed what can be called the Bob Woodward style of reporting. That is he reports what is happening without passing judgment on any of the decisions, personalities or actions involved. Indeed one of the more attractive elements of his narrative is that he treats the late Jennifer Matthews with dignity and respect along with a good deal of sympathy. He does the same with CIA `targeters' like Elizabeth Hanson. He also treats Matthews' murderer Humam al Balawi with equal respect and dignity. This will undoubtedly inflame the legion of real and self-declared counter-terrorism `experts' who plague the Inner Beltway of D.C. as well as the many armchair foes of Islamic extremism. Yet the first step in developing any rational counter terrorist strategy is understanding who terrorists are. Warrick should be commended for his balanced and fair approach to what is still a highly emotional subject.

Although Warrick scrupulously avoids second guessing and judgments of any sort, his account does provide a good deal of evidence that CIA has not dealt with its counter-terrorism mission particularly well. For example his informants appear to conflate the Taliban movements with al Qaeda, treating both Taliban and al Qaeda targets as terrorists (a basic misunderstanding of Pashtun Culture). Also there is no evidence that Warrick presents that CIA analysts made any effort to understand the structure or motovation of either grouping.

Now all that being, said being fair and balanced is not the same as being factually accurate. Warrick, like Woodward, was entirely dependent on his informants, many of whom undoubtedly provided him with self serving accounts that may or may not square with the facts. So this book is good start a sorting out the events that ultimately ended in explosion at Khost, but it will take years for the full truth to be uncovered.

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding Journalism July 21, 2011

By Failsafe

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I eagerly awaited the release of this book (on July 19th) and promptly devoured it in two days when it finally popped into my Kindle. I was not disappointed. The author has, in my opinion, assembled an outstanding account of the events leading up to (and subsequent to) the tragic terrorist attack that left several CIA Officers, security personnel, a Jordanian Intelligence Officer, and an Afghan driver dead. Joby Warrick seems to have done an incredible amount of research and interviews for this book, all of which are appropriately cited/footnoted. This book also serves as a great overview of CIA HUMINT and Predator drone operations along the Af-Pak border region and within Pakistan's ungoverned tribal areas. His overview of the Taliban commanders and Haqqani Network personnel was clear, concise, and reminded me of the thorough, yet user-friendly text of Steve Coll's Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Wars. It is easily the best account to date of US intelligence and military activity in this turbulent region. Warrick also did a commendable job with introducing the reader to the backgrounds and personalities of both the bomber as well as his victims; you will feel like you know them all and will be appropriately outraged and saddened by this operation's outcome. We as readers also get to be flies on the wall for the happenings at CIA Headquarters and at the White House, which places a proper perspective on the entire ill-fated operation and its aftermath. Finally, Warrick's book serves as a way to critically think about all the factors that led up to this attack. Was there too much oversight from CIA's bureaucracy or not enough? Were there too many people involved in this operation or too few? Was CIA too drunk on the excitement of this double agent operation or was their enthusiasm for killing Ayman Al-Zawahiri appropriate and spot-on given the circumstances? I'll keep my opinions to myself -- there's already been enough second guessing on this case -- but if nothing else, this book will make you sincerely grateful for the efforts of those on the front lines of the battle against Al Qaeda and will make you painfully aware of the sacrifices they and their families make. Thank you, to all who serve and thank you, Mr. Warrick, for an outstanding journalistic work.

32 of 35 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Triple Mayhem- CIA, Jordanian Intelligence, Al Qaeda July 23, 2011

By prisrob TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Joby Warrick writes about the Middle East, diplomacy and national security for The Washington Post's National desk. He has covered the intelligence community, WMD proliferation and the environment, and served as a member of the Post's investigative unit. Joby Warrick, in this book, has proved that he is an exceptional writer and storyteller.

Joby Warrick delves into the stories and histories of the main characters in this story, and the main agent, known as the 'golden source'. Humam al-Balawi is at the center of this story. He was a reserved young physician in his homeland of Jordan. He and his wife had met in college, married and had two children. He became engrossed in on-line radical groups and became a loud spokesperson, which is how he came to the attention of the Jordanian Intelligence. He was recruited and he was theirs. He was then introduced to the CIA, and he became one of theirs. He met with the Al Qaeda, and, again, he became one of theirs. We also meet Ali bin Zeid, who is a Jordanian intelligence captain, a cousin of King Abdullah II of Jordan, and the only one in the group who had ever met Balawi. And, Darren LaBonte, an ex-Army Ranger who was a CIA officer assigned to the agency's Amman station. Ali Zeid and LaBonte were close friends who often worked cases together. Jennifer Matthews, a career CIA agent, who needed one more good station success to ensure her a high level desk job at Langley. She had some demons to conquer and was assigned as the CIA station chief at Khost, the CIA's operating base in Afganistan. Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistani Taliban, a man with an ego as big as his pot belly. He was on a 'wanted list' and was tracked by one of the best. Elizabeth Hanson, a thirty year old member of the CIA. She was a 'looker', blond and lithe. She loved the life of the CIA, she was a targeter, a job that took intelligence and persistence, and she was one of the best. She garnered clues from all over the world and with the use of computers, she was able to track the terrorists and target their death by drone.

The person who truested their instinct the most, LaBonte, was concerned about whether al-Balawi could be trusted. He appealed to his Amman supervisors. "We're moving too quickly. We're giving up to much control by letting Balawi dictate events." He was overruled. The Amman station chief said if there was ever a moment to take a risk, it was now. And, so the fateful meeting was arranged, and the waiting began for the agent to arrive and hand over evidence about the Al Qaeda. The tension is palpable, the future of all of these people is in the results of this meeting. Finally, Humam al-Balawi and his handlers arrive.

While reading this story, I could better understand the courage it took for the CIA to undergo its mission in Pakistan, to track down and finally kill Bin Laden. The years of research and tracking it takes to uncover one plausible clue at a time, is wearing. It takes persistence and a cool level head to undergo this kind of scrutiny. Mistakes are made and in the CIA that often means people die and futures are ruined. Joby Warrick has given us a glimpse into the minds of our spies, our CIA agents and how 'The Company' is led. This is a real treat for a spy mystery afficianado. The suspense is kept at high level, and the writing is superb. The stories of those involved kept me entranced in this story throughout this book. A rare event, indeed.

Highly Recommended. prisrob 07-23-11

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