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 base in Khost, Afghanistan, to greet a rising
superspy: Khalil al-Balawi, a Jordanian double agent who had
infiltrated the inner circle of al-Qaeda. For months, he had sent
solid intelligence on Osama bin Laden’s operations center and now
promised to help the CIA destroy the terrorist network. Instead, as
he stepped from his car, he detonated a thirty-pound bomb strapped
to his chest, instantly killing seven CIA operatives, the agen?cy’s
worst loss of life in decades.
In The Triple Agent, Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Joby
Warrick takes us deep inside the CIA’s war against al-Qaeda. His
account of the Khost attack exposes dangerous weak?nesses in an
intelligence agency that has become overly reliant on
remote-controlled drones, and he reveals the mysterious al-Balawi
to be a formidable, multilayered oppo?nent. Combining the powerful
momentum of Black Hawk Down with the institutional insight
of Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side, Warrick leads us to top
levels of the Obama administration, where desperation to capture
bin Laden led to tragic mistakes, and into the CIA, where the
stinging defeat set off new clashes over spycraft and ignited a
thirst for revenge.
關於作者:
JOBY WARRICK covers intelligence for the
Washington Post, where he has been a reporter since 1996. He
is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and has appeared on CNN, Fox, and
PBS.