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.
http://abcnews.go.com
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