For CIA family, a deadly suicide bombing leads to painful divisions

http://patriciapolledri.com/publications.html
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Re: For CIA family a deadly suicide bombing leads to painful divisions


Excerpt:
For CIA family, a deadly suicide bombing leads to painful divisions
By Ian Shapira, Published: January 28
The call from the Central Intelligence Agency came on a December afternoon in
2009 while Gary Anderson was skiing with his three children. It's about your
wife, the agency man said.

Standing inside Eagle Rock ski lodge in Pennsylvania, Anderson pleaded for
details. The CIA official said simply: Where are you? We'll meet you.

Anderson suspected dreadful news about Jennifer Matthews, his college
sweetheart, his wife of 22 years and a CIA operative on assignment almost 7,000
miles away in Afghanistan. With several hours until the CIA meeting, Anderson
and his three children — then 12, 9 and 6 — hit the slopes for one more hour.
The father wanted to cling a little longer to normalcy, to a life between before
and after.

Finally, the Fredericksburg family got into their silver minivan and headed to a
nearby motel. There, in a sterile conference room, CIA officials told Anderson
the news: His wife, one of the CIA's top al-Qaeda experts, had just been killed
in an explosion at a base in Khost province, in eastern Afghanistan. There was
no mention of a double agent, no indication that six other CIA operatives had
died in the deadliest attack on agency personnel in decades.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Chapman_attack
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A Jordanian military intelligence officer, Al Shareef Ali bin Zeid, a cousin of
King Abdullah II of Jordan, and the base's security director, an Afghan named
Arghawan, were also killed in the attack.[11] Arghawan survived the initial
blast, but a U.S. soldier shot him in the head, assuming that he was a
participant in the attack.[15] On January 9, 2010, ABC News reported that eleven
people were killed in the attack.[37]

CIA officers who had traveled from Kabul to the base for the meeting, including,
according to sources familiar with the incident, the deputy chief of the CIA's
Kabul station, were among those injured.[24][67] The deputy chief of the Kabul
station is in grave condition at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, a U.S.
military hospital in Germany, according to several intelligence officials.[93]

The operatives stationed at the base were responsible for intelligence
collection on insurgents' networks in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, including
the selection of al-Qaeda and Taliban target for drone aircraft strikes, and
were also plotting missions to kill the networks' top leaders.[4][94] CIA bases
on the Afghan-Pakistan border gather intelligence in both countries and are in
contact with local operatives.[18]

CIA employees and contractorsCiting the sensitivity of their mission, the CIA
initially did not release the names of those killed in the attack, many of whom
were seasoned hands in the agency's counterterrorism operations.[4][6][95] All
officers were working as undercover agents.[92] U.S. officials said the dead
included five of the CIA's leading experts on al-Qaeda.[96][97] The chief of the
base, Jennifer Lynne Matthews, 45, a mother of three, started tracking al-Qaeda
before the September 11 attacks.[9] She had a history in counterterrorism dating
back to the agency's Bin Laden Issue Station

http://www.smh.com.au/world/cover-blown-but-king-of-spooks-keeps-quiet-on-the-we\
stern-front-20100107-lwun.html
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Cover blown but king of spooks keeps quiet on the Western front Ian Black
January 8, 2010

Suspected suicide bomber ... Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi.
KING ABDULLAH of Jordan looked suitably solemn at the funeral for Captain Sharif
Ali bin Zeid, the intelligence officer killed in Afghanistan by his own
agent-turned-suicide bomber.

But signs suggest the king has been badly discomfited by the unprecedented
public exposure of his nation's work with the CIA.

It is no secret that Jordan is the most pro-Western country in the Arab world.
Squeezed between Iraq in the east and Israel in the west, it has always been
pragmatic about both while remaining a close US ally.

http://milfuegos.blogspot.com/2010/03/cia-drug-trafficking-here-we-go-again.html
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Balawi says in a 43-minute videotape that he only expected to kill Zeid but that
it was an unexpected gift to kill the CIA agents. Balawi states: "We planned for
something but got a bigger gift, a gift from Allah, who brought us, through His
accompaniment, a valuable prey -- Americans, and from the CIA. That's when I
became certain that the best way to teach Jordanian intelligence and the CIA a
lesson is with the martyrdom belt." Dr. Balawi also describes how he was
recruited by the GID and then the CIA after his arrest in Jordan and how he was
sent to Afghanistan to work as an agent for the CIA spying on "Al Qaeda." Balawi
also states that GID helped in the 2006 killing by U.S. forces of Jordanian "Al
Qaeda" operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who hailed from Balawi's Jordanian
hometown of Zarqa, and the assassination by Mossad and the CIA of Imad
Mughniyeh, the Lebanese Hezbollah military commander, in Damascus in 2008.

Balawi's post-death comments are probably the most amazing CIA asset revelations
since CIA director William Casey granted The Washington Post's Bob Woodward an
extensive four-minute interview on the Iran-contra scandal as Casey was drawing
his last breath in his hospital bed in 1987.