christian women's attorney, steven j. teague, and he remembers ksm bursting into his office with a translater and a small posse of other arab students to lecture him about the iran/iraq war and why america's wrong about israel. israel turns out to be a very important point in his radicalization. more so than i would have thought. ..

>> host: this is yochi dreazenf" the central intelligence agency has been waging a shadow war against al qaeda and its allies in afghanistan and pakistan for going on a decade. it had won the biggest victories of the war when the cia working with a navy seal team tracked osama bin laden to a safe house in pakistan, identified him, raided the house until the person who have been the top american most wanted fugitive for almost a decade. there have been failures along the way. there have been losses. might just. >> guest: is written very gripping narrative book about one of those setbacks in the war which was a triple agent, not a double agent who will lead to the worst loss of life in 25 years when of opus dei base in

afghanistan, killing seven cia agent. my guess is joby warrick. he has covered intelligence now for the "washington post." it's great to have you here. >> guest: appreciate you doing this. >> host: let's talk about the title of the book, "the triple agent." history has a double agents. what made humam khalil al-balawi, what made him a triple agent? >> guest: a historical case. very unusual in the sense of agents come in various stripes, sometimes low level people who decide for whatever reason to sell secrets or sell their knowledge to an intelligence agency sometimes they're well-trained double agents who spend years behind the enemy lines, cultivating information. these are very special highly trained agents. our triple agent is none of these. he's someone who came from a very al qaeda sympathy, or sympathetic background. mitchard through some really

unusual circumstances to become an informer for the ca while really being in al qaeda's camp in terms of his sympathies. so he played this double game with us and it was essentially made him a triple agent. >> host: let's take a step back. if he's a triple agent, what did each person who dealt with -- he was a pediatrician. what did each person think they were getting from him before the bombing he carried out in afghanistan? >> guest: he came as a blogger for a jihadists website. he was a very radicalized young men, a smart young man, a doctor, someone who lived eight fairly normal life. he decided to write this very caustic internet blog under an assumed name and did this for a number of years in which he criticizes own government, jordan, criticize u.s. policy, criticize israel. it was very much pro-al qaeda and would sometimes take al

qaeda source and try to trick them a try to bring them down to language that ordinary young people could understand. he was quite good at this. he had a big following. someone who was agitating, educating and encouraging people to sort of be attracted to this course. he was arrested, getting my head of myself, because you become such an important personality to jordanian government said this guy has to be stopped. they arrested him. bring him into custody for several days and then try to flip them, tried to make him an informant. >> host: their concern was he was encouraging and inciting violence becoming a mouthpiece for al qaeda and becoming active himself and trying to find someone to physically become involved in the war against the united states and against israel. after he was arrested he made a very convincing conversion and became openly sympathetic to the

jordanian intelligence agency and their goal and eventually offered his services. said i could help you if you find a way for me to try, too great a role for me. centerpoint entry by this because this was so not a credentialed accuser well-known blogger in the jihad commuter he was a doctor. so he decided give it a try. as we discovered in the course of this year long narrative, his sympathies lay with al qaeda the whole time and he did not really make the conversion that everyone thought he made in the early 2009. >> host: at no point early on, were there people on the jordanian side? it was the jordanian who identified him ultimately to help work with them along with the cia. were there people who thought this is just too good to be true? >> guest: i think people have that question. there were events that made them very attractive. as the new administration in washington, january 2009 when this begins to unfold, a new

counterterrorism team in washington that is eager to get bin laden. this is the target that has eluded the bush administration, still red-hot on their lives. they're beginning to look around the world, how can we get people in place to help us accomplish this mission. so that your gene intelligence agency are looking around for possible candidates. this guy shows up and offers his services. in many ways it is appealing. it was a bit of a leap of faith to think discover the dream i don't accomplish something but in a sense that wasn't much cost of operating since the markham putting in place, so he could come up with. if he gets killed or lost to go to the other side, not much of a risk. not much loss. in that sense i think they felt it was worth the gamble even if there were flags being raised this guy could potentially do good, and if he didn't know i'm done. >> host: we will talk about this but what made it so appealing was the cia believed he could take them to a man also

we're. we'll come back to the animal but his history was shaped by his imprisoned by the egyptians where he was tortured and in the course of the torture radicalized even further than he had been. do you have the sense from talking to his family from what you know, did his treatment, did it take someone who is already radical and make them more radical? >> i think insensitive. i was expecting had been mistreated in the same way thousand where he had been mistreated and tortured exactly. it's good to be both studied the wardy that his motivation is intensity and ferocity, in some ways relates to his treatment in prison when he was tortured for several years still process goes cars on that abuse. in the case of al-balawi, he was brought into custody for only three days i didn't have much time with them. and conversations up i was jerking intelligence officer but with his own family, it appears

he wasn't torture. you sort of come as you describe later he was humiliated was threatened. if you don't help us as all kinds of things that happened to that think happened happen to your family. he came from a palestinian family and their guests in jordan, vulnerable to losing their visas and passports indicate that a country of the country are losing their implement. one short and the fisa of this intelligence committee you don't have much choice but to cooperate. they had him where they wanted him. i guess he felt he didn't have, you either had to make a pretense of helping or truly become an agent for them and work with them. >> host: interesting in the book that i've been striking what he was first brought to mukhabarat and the slogan is justice has come, which is certainly, it's intimidating given more than ironic and more than tragic and ultimate what happens. we talked at the outset were jordanians thought he was one thing, the militants that he was something else, he had a

different persona. did his family, what did they know of him? did they know he wasn't really a doctor but he also had fairly radical beliefs? >> guest: he managed to keep this from his own family. they knew how he felt. they pretty much felt the same way. he comes from a family, palestinian origin. their ancestral land is back in israel and could look across the border to what is now cotton fields owned by a conglomerate, used to be family property. there's this sense of sort of injustice to the family, they've been persecuted and raw, living in exile. this is sort of what nurtured this young man as he came up. they were also exiled from kuwait because when the father of the bomber was a young man he moved to quit with them and try to work as a schoolteacher. after the first iraq war knows jordanians were kicked out of kuwait and sent back to jordan. they had the sense of the exiled and maligned all over the world.

i think this is part of, the sort of the families way of looking out the role in looking at the situation. at the same time no one had a sense of how far, how extreme he had become. when he decided to take on this false identity and write these cost savings on the internet know when he was doing it. even his wife. he had these internet hobbies but until he was arrested no one understood how involved in this al qaeda world he had become. >> host: did his wife no? for me in the book it sounds as if his father had the least clue, and then within a family it was his wife. what did she know? >> guest: she shared his ideology. she was turkish and met when he was in college. they had quite a number of things in common. some people say if anything she was more shrill than he was. it's kind of telling that when the children came into the family, they had two daughters, the oldest woman in after after

a palestinian hijacker. the second was named after document film maker who did a movie about the hijacker. they clearly have very strong sort of anti-israel and anti-american views. but it's not clear at all that she knew that he had this person not that he had created for himself online. she's never acknowledged that she knew this. i don't believe that he fully shared with her what he was doing. >> host: it wasn't he was just one but he was also posting links to video of attacks carried out against u.s. personnel in iraq, u.s. personnel in afghanistan, is that correct? >> guest: yes. he had the skill at doing it. he's a very clever man and not a bad rider in the sense he's very expressive, compelling. since of humor in his own way that most of us would find offputting. he would create links to the latest carnage of u.s. troops being killed in iraq.

and then have this gleeful commentary about you ought to see the roasted grains of u.s. soldiers and this and that. tried to be fun and sort of darkly humorous about it. this was his style. he had quite a large following. he became probably one of the four or five most important bloggers into islamic jihad is blogosphere. and nobody knew who he was which was striking. >> host: no one realized this was a pediatrician, a doctor, living in a modern relatively secular prosperous city. this is not someone in a cave in pakistan. so that's the bottom. let's take a step back. the personal on the cia base in khost, the base was led by jennifer matthews. and mother of three who lived in virginia, not terribly far from where we are now. she came in along the way in the aftermath of this attack for a lot of criticism. let's start at the beginning. why was she chosen for what was a very, very important post?

>> guest: she's a remarkable character in all right. she did as you say, she came under quite a bit of criticism after the attack for perhaps being naïve and maybe too trusting of this informant when he was coming onto the base. this was a woman who paid her dues with the cia and had become a repeat of about about a decade and a half the most knowledgeable al qaeda expert the cia had. she was there before al qaeda was known by almost anyone, arguing and agitating, paying more attention to these guys, and dangers. we should take this as a after 9/11 happened, her and her entire al qaeda branch in say a were screaming, we told you so. this was a huge mistake that we didn't pay attention to these people. we should have taken out al qaeda. she became even more sort of involved in helping capture some of the al qaeda figures, the very first high value detainee

that the cia captured was a guy so when she focus on. then that he was captured and brought to a prison in waterboarded, she was literally they are helping feed the questions, helping exploit the information he could provide. this is not someone who is naïve, not someone who had no experience. what she lacked was experience in a war zone. she's moving to iraq or afghanistan. she been overseas in london and geneva but she didn't have a sense of operational security at other officers who work overseas kind of take for granted that in hindsight is one of the biggest failings is sort of not having the people in a place who could understand if someone brought up onto the base. >> host: she is someone who have been linked earlier in her career to the other, the biggest failure of recent american history on the intel side, the

9/11 attacks. she was one single out for not better coordinated with the fbi in the run up to these attacks. >> guest: this is a very kind of something that resonate with her because as someone who did try to call attention to al qaeda before the attack, she felt she had been unfairly accused of not coming in, being a part of the cia's missing are the warning signs. there was an inspector general report that came out after the attack in 2004 that try to identify how things went wrong with cia, why they didn't see this, and she was on the list of officers, inspector general argued known enough to be able to kind of put all the pieces together, prevent some of these hijackers from coming to the united states. if something comes out in the book but it hasn't been reported but she was one of the which was recommended for possible disciplinary action. this is something that haunted her. i think it motivated her to want to redeem herself to show by going to a place like khost,

leaving her family back home in virginia, sort of, you know, overcome the stigma of having been identified as someone who is part of this colossal failure. >> host: may be two ways of asking the same question, but overcome the stigma or whatever guilt she may have felt? >> guest: i think i'll bit of both. probably not so much guilt. just a missing she did have to xp is sort of shadow that did come over. on a handful of people knew she'd been on this list of people recommended for possible disciplinary action. it was important for her to demonstrate her dedication to the cause, to fighting al qaeda and go overcome the stigma. >> host: in the book, seeing what she goes to see a mentor, an older person should dealt with at the agency when she's closer and decided to go to khost. he effectively tells her to go. you're not the right person for

this position. >> guest: a tough message for her to hear. the thing about jennifer if she came to the cia in the late '80s at a time when there were not that many women in senior positions. throughout her life she and her colleagues felt that they had to overcome the problem of being women. they were given lower level jobs for the most part at the beginning and they kept having to prove themselves again and again and again. despite this big network, still much a male oriented world. they are as capable if not more capable than anyone else. the idea summon telling her you can't do this, that struck her in sort of a special way and it's something else she had to prove that yes, i'm a woman, i can handle this job. the fact i have been to afghanistan, i would 120 pounds, have done a lot of weapons training doesn't include me -- exclude me. i think should prove it to herself and others. >> host: if we think about the shadow war with the intel world

we think of much human and the hard minute, night. on this khost, you had general matthews, but elizabeth, a young attractive but also very funny woman who can be beavis and butthead impression. so if jennifer was one spectrum, elizabeth hansen, what was her background and how did she adapt? aspect another intriguing person. a symbol of this new generation does come to the cia after 9/11. they call himself the windows generation because they are very computer savvy and very capable and very skilled at doing the kinds of things that the cia excels at which is bringing in all kinds of different streams of information. all these communications, capabilities, and some of the human intelligence and bringing together that helps them go after particular targets. her job, she is called a target

or. she would be essential assign a number of cases. here's some bad guys we need to go after. do whatever you need to do. draw whatever resources you need to draw on to try to help us figure who people are, where they will be and eventually put a missile on that person but this is not elizabeth hansen came up and how she happened to be a khost on this fateful day because she helped bring together intelligence that was hopefully going to lead the cia to go after a very important target, zawahiri himself. >> host: it's so striking. you describe in the book how both mike hayden, limp that his predecessor of the cia, leo but at a company secretary of defense was at the same time other bombing, these are men literally with powers of life and death. they are the ones who have to make the ultimate decision on a given strike. >> guest: that's new and people don't appreciate that. throughout the cia's history it's done all kinds of, it intelligence gathering using all kinds of means, breaking the

rules of other countries. this is the first time the cia is running a shooting war and being in charge every day of deciding we're going to attack this target in this country using missiles flying over enemy territory in a way that has never been done before. the guys at a gun this program, launched right after 9/11 thought it was going to be hugely controversial. the id of the message using a covert operation, sent these unmanned aircraft over the airspace of a friendly sovereign country and killing people would be extraordinary controversial. it was highly effective and everybody eventually saw it as a value added a way for us to reach terrorists in their homeland. if you think about what goes on in the decisions made every day, it's very difficult for them personally, especially for leon panetta, a very religious man who serve us with this idea he is basically putting a death warrant on the record basis for people who live half a world

away. >> host: i was also struck by your description of the precision of these weapons. we talk about robotic planes being operated either from operate any u.s. or or in afghanistan. but with the ability to hit a person straight on. you describe the killing of one of the main taliban fighters on the pakistani side of the border where they spotted him on a rooftop and a missile hit him straight. >> guest: got him straight in have to even though i've covert intelligence committee, written about drone strikes, people perhaps don't realize this is something the cia doesn't officially acknowledged that even exist. they can't say we're doing this. details about how it works and how decisions are made are very, very rare. as it turns out i was able to get greater access as i'm writing the story. it's remarkably controlled and remarkably precise. these machines have an ability to hit targets at day or night, very small targets from very far

away. they can change the course of a missile after it has left the aircraft. they can even teach if they decide someone has gotten away. people spent a lifetime trying to come up with numbers of having people killed axially because of these strikes. the cia has very careful record-keeping because they stick around with these drones after a strike takes place to see how many bodies, who was killed a moose taken away, did they get the guy? by their own mechanic these things have been remarkably effective in terms of getting the guys they want to get and very, very little collateral damage. >> host: one of the things you describe is we think about drones we think about from the point of view of the u.s. as a policy question, as a question of number of strikes which have gone up under the obama administration. can you describe what it's like for the militants on the ground here these drones a single bit all the time. they are the word that the describe it. >> guest: it's become, no

understating, the psychological impact. is a fiscal impact incentives disrupted al qaeda taking out leaders but the idea that you begin at any minute we are sleeping in your better driving in a car has a heavy toll on the way these guys are thinking, anyway the act. the pakistanis, the wording pashtun means peace. they think of them as these cds up 20,000 feet in the air that sometimes they can hit them. they almost never see them. the missiles themselves travel faster than the speed of sound. you never really see it coming. the great thing about the bomber, al-balawi and he describes some of this in his own personal rights and in some of his figure interviews, the sense of being in a taliban safe house are being in a compound. it's the fear of these things lurking out there in the dark someplace with all kinds of capabilities. if these guys can only imagine possibly could get killed at any

moment. so does lead to superstitious -- superstition, suspicion about who's doing the informing, all kinds of elaborate theories about how they find it and it is some kind of special marking the use or computer-chip, maybe some a spring something with a chemical that allows the planes to see them. it has led a number of cases to people being accused of spying for the west and our ex-gay because they think they are informants. sometimes history and sometimes it's not. >> host: if you're one of the unfortunates who they think, it is poorly for you. when you have that attitude of paranoia and pervasive fear and suspicion, when someone like, what was their reaction? did they have the feeding of this is too weird and too good to be true? he must be a spy. >> guest: how does a guy like this, someone who doesn't speak the local language. he speaks arabic and english. he comes from the country,

jordan, which is notorious in supplying informants in the past to denigrate intelligence service. he has all kinds of strikes against him, and i think, in fact i know that many of the operatives that were involved in the case fully expected he would be killed. this is just another reflection of the guys cleverness is he's able to work between these two worlds without getting himself killed for this number of months. he managed to make a allies on the al qaeda site. particularly this person who was a key taliban figure, who decided, and introduction was made and he said the guy was trustworthy. they needed medical help. this guy was a doctor so was able to supply it. he was able to win at least one really important ally who took care and protected him. and eventually the guys around

him begin to think this guy is okay. until the end though, you can see to the writings of people after al-balawi killed himself, some continue to be suspicious. al qaeda's official announcement was congratulations, you've finally proved herself to be true and worthy. but that little bit of question was their right to the very end. >> host: you note that one of the most feared militants in pakistan would mean the same room as al-balawi. he thought this was someone there to bring a missile into the building aspect some of the information came as the fortune of having helpers in pakistan. your journalists. and brought back stories about how these discussions would take place about al-balawi, do to rely can, do we not liking? there are divided opinions even among the haqqanis. some people think he is trustworthy and some not. as you say, decided this is probably a spy and i will not be in the same room with them.

after he was killed, a missile strike that cut in half, i think is concerned that al-balawi would not survive because he lost his main sponsor and others thought he was a bad guy and want to give. >> host: we'll talk further in the show, but that was in sum was a harbinger of what was yet to come. because the men who was killed, his family vowed revenge. they help planetary out this attack. >> guest: the cousin to the slain taliban there was a guy who was even more ambushes, a younger guy with lots of charisma. and also this sort of personal sense and a pashtun, travel since he needed to get revenge for the death of his cousin. so he inherits this young jordanian and try to reach out to the guys who killed his cousin and extract revenge. and so they were very much involved and planned what became

a massive revenge operation. after al-balawi did go to the cia base and killed nine people, they claim victory. this is our way to reach back and get revenge for the death of our guy. >> you describe some in the book i had never seen before and just found it really striking, when they realized, when he suspected he had a link back of some sort to the cia, this was before the killing, they decide they were tested effectively by having him relay information to the cia that they knew they wanted to would be in a certain car at a certain moment and then see what happens. what did happen? >> guest: is his remarkable story. it's one of these perhaps apocryphal tales but the taliban are convinced it's true and several related the same story to us. but he wanted to make the show, to project onto this guy was trustworthy so he arranged for his driver, is very faithful dedicate guy who drove around in

his car to pose as him and a certain car at a certain time. and information was relayed to transit through the knowledge it would be relayed to the cia. let's see what happens. and sure enough a missile strike takes place, the car is blown up, this man is killed. which seems like a very cool act but from the point of view and not only proved, you know, the bombers loaded but also sort of showed some sort demonstrate his own people, the part that i have. like i got this guy in my roster here's doing these great things for me. and he could even some of the cia to commit these acts. it was sort of a nice showcase for him as we'll. >> host: he was willing to effect would to have his own person killed for that reason had to and masood like his every time someone is killed by the cia it creates 10 recruits for me. >> host: we talked about this odd relationship between a doctor who spoke english and arabic, growth and a relative

family and masood, religious, very extremist, living in tribal lawless regions of pakistan. they formed a very effective relationship. another relationship you have in the is between a cia agent, and the transfer agent who runs. tell me about how those to work together and what fears if anything began to develop about. >> guest: two interesting men from different backgrounds. he is a creature day as those officer who was quite western by standards of his colleagues at intelligence agency. he studied in a state, had an internship with john kerry when he was in college. big baseball fan. he loved to talk about his time in american and he would take long trips and go see, he lived in boston so you go see red sox games, eat hot dogs.

take trips to the mountains, down to the south to the blue ridge mountains, up to montréal. love to explore the mistakes. spoke perfect american english. the cia relied on because you some who do not only translate for them but also someone who understood both world. it was sort of a bridge between them. he became the case agent for al-balawi and his partner, his cia partner was a former range with special forces, strong, fought in iraq and then a paramilitary officer for the cia in afghanistan, sort of the deadly force skills. he came just before the story unfolds and becomes the counterpart, the senate counterpart to handle this case. the two of them develop a relationship which reflects the relationship between the cia and the jordanian mukhabarat. very close.

they traveled around the world together to try to take down terrorist networks. and very good fun. their wives were friends. the two of them were very good friends. they were the two that got sent to afghanistan for this fateful meeting to check on al-balawi and see what he had. >> host: you reference to the brink of the other interesting aspect, that he was a cousin of the king of jordan. >> guest: exactly. and for that reason he becomes an intriguing target for al qaeda when they're deciding how they will exact revenge. you have this means not only an agent of this government, which they all hate, the jordanians, they see as hostile to everything they stand for, friend of israel, he's pretty -- these treaty with israel. so this is something very special about him that makes him

an interesting character that al qaeda would love to see killed. >> host: another part of the book, he knew people would look at him differently because he was relative to the king and he hated it. it sounds as if he wanted to be known for his own reputation, not because he was a cousin of the king and not to be treated better because of it. >> guest: some of his friends called him the most on wrote of the royals. he had no pretenses to go time he pulled rank was when he could get things for his friends, his colleagues. there's a story about how you string in the desert with some of his intelligence officer friends. they got hungry so we ordered out a bunch of big macs to be sent out to the train place where they were. around town he drove right in his truck, had a couple of dogs. he blended in with the population. he was very unassuming. a lot of people were surprised after he was killed find that not only was the guy at intelligence officer at a cousin of the king. he didn't show it in anyway. >> host: initially their plan

was to come after him, right? they wanted to kidnap him, put him on some sort of mock trial. >> guest: exactly. he was the target. the cia became sort of a windfall at the end but in the beginning it was all about trying to isolate this guy, getting into pakistan somewhere, somehow so they could kidnap him. if they couldn't bring him away they were just kill them on the spot. the ideal thing would be to capture and kidnap inches have this credible propaganda coup of having this cousin of the king on display come on feel for people around the world to see, perhaps trying, perhaps perhaps execute him. >> host: in some ways had that happen it would not have been a trial that would have gone well for him. this would have been a show trial followed by execution. when did your plan shift away from trying to just get him to the believe that maybe, just maybe they could get the cia team as well.

>> guest: transixteen the point of contact with the intelligence community was arguing strongly to have some kind of thing take place in pakistan. it's a reflection of his own personal desire to be able to kidnap demand and also not sacrifice himself, which i think he is particularly into. they want this meeting to take someplace where they they control the circumstances. this period of weeks where balawi is bargaining for a meeting that would take some place else, take place somewhere else. you listed various cities and their shut down for various reasons. the only place that cia would agree to was an old base days when they could control access, they could control the possibility of spying. so they insisted on this thing happening inside the city at a base. when it was clear there was no give on this issue, then the idea began to blossom that we

can attack the cia itself. a challenge that didn't seem that easy at the outset. >> host: it was the cia's insistence on having the meeting on its own base, that was the seat of the destruction of that basic. >> guest: exactly. it didn't have to be, it was the closest to a base. it was right across the pakistani hills from where balawi was operating. it had heavy security and had come you know, all the people who need to be there for debriefing could quickly coming. it seem like an ideal place but it was strictly because accident of geography. the cia wanted to control this thing and wanted to make sure nobody else would recognize this guy. no spies would seem and be able to betray him later. >> guestlater. >> host: you described balawi -- of you clip of a doctor and

others that sets all of official washington buzzing. why was that so important? why was that reaction to that tape. >> guest: it shows how clever that this al qaeda operation was. they essentially, they understand us better than we like to think to do. there are more sophisticated. and giving it thought they knew the few ways to push the cia's buttons, to make them mad to meet this guy, so they did it using very clever western style tools. one of them was to send video that showed that balawi had gotten inside the tent of al qaeda, had come face to face and was meeting with senior operatives. one video clip in particular showed balawi standing next to this guy who was, rankings are always a little difficult with a kind but he was on one of their senior spiritual leaders. the two were sitting together in a few inches from each other.

the act of sending that data to the cia said i'm inside the tent. i'm right next to these people. i did all kinds of damage. that got been very excited. there was a part to to this, which everybody's attention is on balawi now. and xc2 lives is the fact that he becomes the doctor to a al-zawahiri. he says i'm seeing this guy, trading him. by the way, here's all his carsey has. here's medical conditions, information he knows the cia will know as well. and by the way, i've got to pick up some medicine for an. i'm going to see me get in a few weeks. this is the kind of information that has eluded the cia for years. >> host: he was the number two behind bin laden. >> guest: and if you think about it, if you'd said the same thing about bin laden about bin laden sodomizing a bit too fanciful. this is too hard to believe. but al-zawahiri had been seen

since 9/11. seymore accessed. yet know the medical condition that everything made sense that balawi was telling the truth. so it was a perfect trap, perfect bait and it worked. >> host: because official washington not only takes a service to but azurite in the book, the instructor comes down to jennifer mathis and her team in khost is treat this man as a trusted asset even though as you point out no matter have ever met in. >> guest: no american who had hunted no american had ever met this guy. and yet this was so important. the potential rewards were so great that the case sort of quickly breezed to a number of white house officials including the president himself. this was a real chance to get al-zawahiri. we forget sometimes after the takedown of bin laden how long it had been a difficult and how

hard people had worked for so many years to try to get the number one and number two. and never came close. he was a chance to do it. everybody got excited ever wanted to have as quick as possible host that matches in the city. you describe the briefings in this. this went to the white house. >> guest: president obama was told himself this thing would take place. it was not sort of the present giving advice on say nothing should go, but the cia felt he should be informed so he was informed in person. >> host: one of the details in the book sort of documented is there such concern for the safety of balawi, that they told the afghan guards outside of the base to be turned away as he drove up. they were so afraid, not of him but a preserving his identity. >> this is extraordinary in hindsight. as sort of alluded to in the beginning, no double agent had ever killed himself. know have ever got into a roomful of cia officer

implements about. there was no precedent for that. no one was looking for that to happen. instead on the contrary, there was concerned of keeping this guy safe and keeping his identity protected. was elaborate about the plan for getting this got into see a face is how they're going to do without anybody knowing about the catholic and other pakistan before anybody missed them. how anyone can across amount, into a base were on a typical day to people outside the base waiting for jobs on this and that. some could be skies at him -- some could be spies. and important wisdom through. so not only are they not searching they didn't get a chance to look at them. he goes into the first entrance and customer guard stations before he is into the inner part of the base with the caa works. >> host: there is effectively an honor guard waiting to see them. you talk in the book about jennifer matthews was there, others were there. elizabeth hansen was there and the nets and their well-trained

operatives from blackwater appeared to be the first ones right before the explosion to think something is going terribly, terribly wrong. >> guest: exactly. in the days before the arrival of al-balawi, as i mentioned there was a lot of back and forth whether he would come to the base or not, when they begin to think about the exercise and rehearse it, or through the motions of how this happened, some of those lack water guards were concerned about the fact that this guy could be trouble. he might be an impostor of some kind. they were worried about security elements of this thing. but in the end to see 82nd support have a lot of people there, much more than you don't have in an informant meeting, just to try to squeeze as much information out of him as he possibly could. so you can always case officers. you have a physician come you had weapons experts who could help figure out the best way that balawi could go carry out

his mission and try to help children. so this was a big entourage of people, literally waiting for him to show up. the first ones that meet him and his driver of course are these guards who have the duty fight of searching them to make sure he is not carrying a weapon. that's when things go wrong. >> host: they noticed he is walking a little bit funny. they start to see his lip. >> guest: it's a dramatic scene. when he does get in the base, carpal still stuck on your three secure to authors that are ready to greet him what's the cia officer and the other to blackwater guards, they come up to the door, that amount, is being lined up other americans waiting to meet him. and instead of coming out the door, he does this strange maneuver of shuffling away from them across the sea to the other side of the door which becomes the first clue something is wrong. opens the door on the other side and starts to let himself out. he has a leg injury. he hurt himself which is a whole

nother story in a motorcycle accident before this takes place. he starts to make his way around the car and as he's walking he starts to chant in arabic, god is great, god is great. this is sort of the first thing that freezes everywhere and helps them understand this is not who we thought it was. this guy is about to do something terrible. >> host: and by that point it is tragically way too late. >> guest: and these guards, the blackwater guards, are not just agree officers but former special forces. one was former green beret. another is a navy seal. they been trained to take out people like this. they knew what they were doing. but here you have a man coming to the base who could well be the biggest informant, the most important informant that the agency has had continued. at what point do you decide to shoot him and not ask questions. so it's a moment where everybody froze and didn't know what to do. by the time they pieced together it was too late. he detonated the bomb post back you mentioned the caa agent, dog

loving, and user in the arab world, truck driving fun, their wives were close. get their wives have a sense before this come have a sick sense thinking something bad was happening as. >> guest: looking back, how many people in terms of family members sensed something was wrong. the wives of these two men were very close as we said. they begin to exchange text messages during the day, they had a bad feeling about this. they began to worry even before their husbands left to go to the meeting because it had been some apprehension, they detailed husbands were concerned about this case. and the wide said to them, this guy could be a suicide bomber. he said yes, he could be. but he felt, as others in the agency did, that he was so important that to at least confront the guy can, that it made it worse -- worth the risk.

i believe they felt enough precautions would be taken that if he was, if there were problems for some reason he could be found out and caught. as it turns out, the guy wa wast searched until he got within a few feet of these men and blew himself up. >> host: there were others in that horrible day, others among the dead, who had written warnings about all the things that they were uneasy about. those warnings effectively were ignored. >> guest: e-mails saying we're going to fast with this, too many people involved. he had serious concern. they were others as well back in jordan. the jordanian intelligence agency, one of the senior officers had met with the cia before, before these two men went to afghanistan for the meeting, saying be careful about this guy. everything he is saying makes us wonder that maybe he is not what he seems. maybe is leading into an ambush. so there were red flags, but

interestingly every time that somebody raise a caution there was some counter arguments. it wasn't that the caa was being dismissive of the warnings so much as there were plausible explanation. in the case jordanians there was a lot of infighting, they are sort of notorious for. there's this concerned that maybe people don't want this guy to go because they want the glory for themselves where they feel like they are worried that he's climbed the letter to quickly. there's all kind of infighting going on. the caa took these words into consideration that they're able to counter. spent a line in a book that i found very powerful. when he described how this was a failure of imagination, and the way in which he described it is the eagerness of war-weary spies wanted it to be real. that resulted me the family, was it not? >> guest: i think so. seen not just by people locally

at the base but back in langley, virginia, ncaa headquarters. for senior officers compete with years experience in counterterrorism, people have been trying to get al qaeda now for eight years saw a chance to do something really important. the other officers told me, everyone wanted to be part of this because it seems historic, scenic israelis on that people can imagine back to the takedown of bin laden when they're getting close, this is a stroke of income something change history, something that go down in history books. they want this to happen and i think they were just a bit too credulous. it moved quickly to try to exploit the information the guy had before it was too late. so that speed and desire to try to move things along quickly allowed them to drown out the cautions and warnings that were coming from areas places. spent in the aftermath, jennifer matthews and the others, longer in the caa. she came in for a lot of criticism by former agent, current agents speaking

anonymously because there's much time studying this as you have, does she deserve any of the blame? >> guest: mistakes were made and the caa has been very circumspect in their own into the reviews in not letting her and just sing very generally that business in person or no single comment that caused this to happen. i think in private conversations agency officials will say among the things that went wrong were some decisions that were made locally to overrule concerns that some of the security officer said, overall some of the concerns that the case officers had about how may people should be involved i in e meetings are these were decisions made locally at the base with the blessing, however, of people back in likely. so if whatever responsibility that she might bear, it was shared by her supervisors who are aware of every step of the process, who knew what she was doing. signed off on her plans, and so if she committed infractions i

think there's sort of a long list of people would be guilty of the same offenses. >> host: i'm curious just to talk about how this book came together. caa families don't typically talk about loved ones were killed in the line of duty, especially something as high profile as this attack. what did you find as reported in terms of their willingness to talk, and then when you have the book finished, he had descriptions that are somewhat graphic of the wounds suffered by some of the fallen cia operatives, jennifer, elizabeth account of the families react to sing on the printed page description of their loved one of with her corpse was like right after this tragic attack? >> guest: one thing they all had in common, is this curiosity. it's very much the same curiosity that i has as i set out to do this, is they really wanted to know what happened. in the caa world it's hard to get correct answers. the caa did eventually have to

families, brought each of them into agency headquarters and had debriefings and try to answer questions. and still to this day i think a lot of them are just puzzled how could this have happened? how could these mistakes have been made? so they want answers. is there a way of reaching out to new sort of way of trying to understand themselves what went on. and each of them interestingly had a little insight, just based on personal conversations with their loved ones, sometimes text messages, e-mails that reflected concerns of that person in the days before the attack took place to in the end, the sense that i got, the feedback i got back was a sense of gratitude that someone had tried to sort of explain the facts as best as he could, as an outsider looking in, which is never going to be perfect. but trying to put all together. it was unpleasant reading i think in some cases but it's unpleasant to try to look into the eyes of the bomber who is someone that has been sort of demonized as he surveys should

be but he was a real person, and to see them as a flesh and blood person is a bit disturbing. and certainly reading about the explosion itself and once that happened, it was a very horrific scene, very painful but i think it's all part of the closure for a lot of these families to try to cope with this and understand it and digest it somehow. they seem largely grateful for the. >> host: do you think the portion of trying, as you do in the book, to make balawi a real person, reading that, do you think that was the hardest part? >> guest: sunset was big and yet i think it's important and perhaps not so much for them but for all of us to understand that this kind is not a caricature. he's not some guy who was in the cave he was some ill or poor peasant is being paid 100 bucks to kill some people with the promise of going to some eternal reward. this is someone who's very sophisticated, who is learned. he is educated the west. he in some ways could understand us and identify with us, and i

think we have to look at this guy in the face, understand what he did and the fact that there are many other people out there who feel exactly as he does. >> host: i think it's worth pointing out that the second of the masood, the one who vowed revenge, and are duly got their revenge, he was dismissed for a long time as a bug but it's also responsible for a failed attacks in new york. aspect this is all kind of interesting all interconnected, the same guy who helped sponsor this attack by balawi is also responsible in this sense was failed attack on times square, which shows reach of these people living way out in these remote recesses of tribal country in pakistan, without a great deal of resources or ability to travel, and yet we are able to project a threat right to the largest city of the united states, this famous times square. so it's not insignificant what

they can do and are continuing trying to do. >> host: during the cold war we start talking double agent. i would like to end there as well. during the cold war it was kind of easy to know what the formulas, at least in theory for turning someone. it was bribery, blackmail,, money. how do you flip someone, can you flip someone who is as committed and ideologue as humam khalil al-balawi turned out to be? >> guest: it may turn out to be impossible. this was one of the warnings from the jordanians that it's appropriate and something that in hindsight people are thinking about. again, all kinds of informants. they can be modified very simple things like money, like sex. in fact, we talked to say officers were in afghanistan and are able to make tribal leaders loyal to them just by giving them the viagra. something as simple as that episode was dedicated, a real believer whose ideologue, puts his beliefs and years ahead of everything else in his life,

like balawi did. it's almost impossible. deep down they may like it, and they try to deceive you, but ultimately they don't change. this guy was tainted from the beginning. and even though he made his pretense of becoming an informant for the caa all along he was a jihadists. >> host: does that suggest to you that the world, going for it would not be about turning someone, not about necessarily catching someone but it will be more and more of the robotic planes dealing death as we talked about invisibly, death from above just that that may be part of the. this apartment is for difficult and years long task of trying to change hearts and minds, as hard as that is, but we see balawi's motivation, what turned him into his them, were sort of the depression he thought pakistan have gone through, and also a sense that there was, the united states was hoping support a

regime in israel that was inflicting pain on people he was treating everyday at his clinic. this is something was very close to his heart. it's a tough problem to solve, but when there's peace in the east and when there are ways to sort of fix these problems that have instigated ill will toward america for years as we tackle those problems, try to address them, that's another way to practice but it's something that takes a very long time. we have lots of problems to do with enemy than just keeping people like balawi from doing bad things to us in afghanistan. >> host: i think a lot of people to death of osama bin laden's there's a feeling the war on terror is over. and as you both make clear, it isn't. people that live in caves, livable parts of the world, they still have the intent, the desire and in many cases the capability of at least trying to carry out if not successfully ultimately carrying out attacks within the u.s. >> guest: as has been said

many times, they can go many times, they only have to succeed once adored to kind of communicate the message they want. the times square bomber didn't work. if it had worked to would've completely different sort of another sort of history changing event. we just don't know what other plans are in the works perhaps. >> host: this book to something amazing that it takes a story that you know the ending at the start and it makes a gripping policy. joby warrick, a great book and thanks for joining me today. really enjoyed it. >> "after words" agenda we can booktv at 10 p.m. on saturday, 12 and 9 p.m. on sunday.

and 12 a.m. on monday. you can also watch "after words" online. go to booktv.org and click on afterwards on the upper right side of the page. >> this is a sad day i have to say in mrs. kennedy's life. this is the red room and the reason i show this is that was the first from that she completed in restoration. but this was the day of her husband's funeral. she insisted that she meet those who are coming from afar, those were diplomats, the diplomatic corps from abroad. so she stood with her brother-in-law, senator edward kennedy to arrive, and she insisted on greeting everyone who had come to pay their respects to her husband. on a more gloomy note, a team we remember her for her state entertaining. in the short amount of time that was she was in the white house, and it's only a little over 1000 days, she and her husband through 16 state dinners. in the first term, or four years

of the w. bush term, they held i believe it was too. now, mind you, 9/11 happened during that time. they were security issues, but that bush is from texas were just not as interested in the. they were not as interested in state entertainment. day when his interest in bringing people from abroad and entertained them in the white house. the kennedys love that lifestyle. they both came from the northeast. they both have ties to new york city. president kennedy had ties to hollywood going back to his father's day there as a hollywood mogul in the 1920s. so they loved it that glimmer and that the nosh of entertainment. but they also, particularly mrs. kennedy, loved the arts. so she would use each and every one of these state occasion to bring artists to the white house. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org.