CIA bomber says he lured targets in Afghanistan with doctored intelligence

WASHINGTON - The suicide bomber said to be behind the December 30 attack on a CIA base in eastern Afghanistan claims in a posthumously released recording that he lured U.S. and Jordanian intelligence officers into a trap by sending them misleading information about terrorist targets as well as videotapes he made of senior al-Qaeda leaders.

According to the Washington Post, the bomber, a Jordanian physician named Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, also claims that he intended to kidnap only a single Jordanian intelligence officer, but then stumbled on an unexpected opportunity to attack a large group of Americans and their Jordanian allies at once.

“It wasn’t planned this way,” Balawi says in an undated, 44-minute videotape released Sunday by as-Sahab, the media arm of al-Qaeda.

He attributes the change to “the stupidity of Jordanian intelligence and the stupidity of American intelligence” services that invited him to Afghanistan to help set up a strike against al-Qaeda targets.

The video, if authentic, would be the second recorded statement to surface in which Balawi talks of his plan to penetrate Forward Operating Base Chapman, a highly secure CIA base in eastern Afghanistan’s Khost province.

A Taliban group in January released a taped message in which Balawi says he was avenging the death of Baitullah Mehsud, a Taliban commander killed last year in a CIA missile strike.

U.S. officials have acknowledged that Balawi was a double agent who provided valuable intelligence over several months before being allowed to meet with U.S. operatives at Chapman.

Six Americans and three others were killed in the deadliest attack on the U.S. intelligence agency’s staff in a quarter-century. (ANI)