Bomber Lured CIA to Meet With Intel on Bin Laden's Deputy

Jan. 5, 2010— -- The suicide bomber that killed some of the CIA's top al Qaeda hunters lured the agents to the meeting by claiming he had just met with Ayman al Zawahiri, this country's most wanted terrorist after Osama bin Laden, sources told ABC News today.

Zawahiri founded al Qaeda with bin Laden and the two men have been at the top of the CIA's hit list since Sept. 11, 2001. The U.S. has posted a $25 million reward for each of them.

The informant-turned-bomber, a 36-year-old Jordanian doctor named Humam Khalil Muhammed Abu Mulal al-Balawi, told officials he had just met with al Zawahiri and had intelligence to share. Al-Balawi had been recruited by Jordanian intelligence to get information on al Zawahiri, sources told ABC News.

The promise of getting a bead on Zawahiri prompted one of the CIA's top analysts to travel last week from Kabul to the remote CIA listening post at Forward Operating Base Chapman in the middle of Taliban country near the Afghan-Pakistan border.

Al Balawi had been to Chapman previously and because of the information he was promising, CIA officers told Afghan guards to allow him past the first of three checkpoints without searching him. They also told the guards to vacate the area, sources told ABC News.

When al Balawi detonated his bomb, he assassinated seven CIA operatives and the Jordanian intelligence officer who recruited him out of a Jordanian prison cell.

While the U.S. and Jordan mourned their deaths, a Web site from al-Balawi's tribe described him today as a hero and said it was the most devastating attack against the CIA in the last 30 years.

The explosion tragically demonstrated the dangers inherent in battling terrorists and recruiting informers while behind the lines and surrounded by the enemy.

"Any double agent operation is only as good as the double agent," Reuel Gerecht, a former CIA officer who spent nine years in the clandestine service in the region, told ABCNews.com.

Mistakes, he said come with a lethal price tag.

"The biggest danger... is if you're working against a target whose objective is to kill you, then you pay a very high price for failure," Gerecht said.