The Rest Is Classified - 109. Hunting Al-Qaeda: The CIA’s Deadliest Day (Ep 4)

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

Nine people dead. A severed head laying motionless in the rubble. Silence punctuated by screams. The moments after the 2009 Camp Chapman attack sound like something out of a horror film, but this was the devastating reality for those who trusted an Al Qaeda double agent to deliver on his promises. In this episode, David and Gordon reach the climax of their series on one of the deadliest days in CIA history.  ------------------- Make someone a Declassified Club Member this Christmas – go deeper into the world of espionage with exclusive Q&As, interviews with top intelligence insiders, regular livestreams, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, and weekly deep dives into original spy stories. Members also get curated reading lists, special book discounts, prize draws, and access to our private chat community. Just go to ⁠https://therestisclassified.supportingcast.fm/gifts⁠ And of course, you can still join for yourself any time at ⁠therestisclassified.com⁠ or on Apple Podcasts. ------------------- THE REST IS CLASSIFIED LIVE 2026: Buy your tickets ⁠⁠HERE⁠⁠ to see David and Gordon live on stage at London’s Southbank Centre on 31 January. ------------------- Try Attio for free at ⁠⁠https://www.attio.com/tric⁠⁠ ------------------- EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ ⁠⁠https://nordvpn.com/restisclassified⁠⁠ Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee  ------------------- Email: ⁠[e-mail]⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@restisclassified Social Producer: Emma Jackson Producer: Becki Hills Head of History: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books, join the declassified club at the rest is classified.com. This episode is sponsored by HP. Most people are not counter-espionage experts, but that won't stop them getting targeted by cybercriminals, seeking to extract their secrets. HP understands that approximately 4 in 10 UK businesses have reported cyber breaches in the past 12 months alone. That's why HP business laptops, desktops, and workstations bought directly on HP store

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Find out more about how HP can protect your business at HP.com forward slash classified. Podcast listeners benefit from a 10% discount on all business PCs, printers and accessories using the code T-R-I-C-10, Terms and Conditions Supply. Welcome to the rest is classified. I'm Gordon Carrera. And I'm David McCloskey. And we are in the final part of our journey into the attack on the CIA base at host Camp Chapman in Afghanistan in 2009. And David, we left it last time with the base preparing for this meeting with the golden source, the person they think could take them to the heart of al-Qaeda,

a source whose importance is being briefed up to the White House and to the president and with some discussion about what the security precautions should be for that meeting. But meanwhile, let's go back to Balaoui himself, the source. He has been in Pakistan, in the tribal. areas with these group of jihadists whom he has told, as we heard previously, that he is in contact with the Jordanian intelligence service. And now he's going to be preparing his side of the meeting. Yeah, and this is where, you know, Balawi, as he's negotiating with Ali bin Zaid over the location for this meeting, is sent. I think it's fair to say, you know, as you get into

the late fall, 2009, that his Taliban and al-Qaeda hosts had decided that Balaoui could be an instrument of retribution for Baitullah Massoud's death. He'd been killed by a drone strike in August. And so Balaoui is sent to a training camp in North Waziristan and Pakistan. He does calisthenics, target practice, obstacle courses, studies bomb making, including the mechanics of suicide vests, roadside bombs in the evenings, they discuss theology. Balaoui is welcomed as a kind of, you know, older Arab doctor. He's older than a lot of the residents of the camp. He was also this famous, you know, blogger in S.A.S. Abujana, who many of them would know.

But Balaoui, as, you know, if you've been listening to this series, it would probably be no surprise to you that he struggles with a lot of the physical components of this. He struggles with the basics of firing on AK-47. He apparently is on this practice session where he's working in kind of pairs with a partner where they're on motorcycles and the idea is, can you pull up alongside a target and fire a weapon at the same time? The idea is, you know, you use this in a road ambush. And he's on this practice session. He's riding his motorbike. He loses control of the bike, slams into another motorcycle.

both of the vehicles spill over and on the fall he breaks his, his fibula. So he's in a lot of pain. Balaoui is in this period also invited to meet with a commander who's the operations chief for al-Qaeda in Pakistan. He got to moves in for a short stay on his compound. He's getting deeper and deeper into al-Qaeda circles in Waziristan. And again, he has tea with a Tia Abd al-Raman, who is, al-Qaeda is kind of a spirit.

spiritual advisor. He's the guy who'd actually been in this video clip that Balaoui had sent to Ali bin Zaid in the GID. Yeah, validating himself. And he also gets introduced to a man named Sheikh Saeed al-Masri, who is the number three in Al-Qaeda and the operational chief for the whole organization. Always famously, one of the shortest-lived jobs in the Al-Qaeda, because they're constantly killed by drones in the CIA. This is the highest ranking member of al-Qaeda that's not in formal seclusion and hiding, right? And so they're constantly, constantly killed. Now, Joby Warwick, who we spoke to last week for club members on kind of how this story came about and who had, I think, access to the CIA's leadership profile

of Sheikh Said al-Masari describes the al-Qaeda guy thus. He says, the CIA's classified profile drawn from informants and intersubject communications was a portrait of an insecure cynic. who is hyper-controlling, manipulative, cunning, and deeply disliked by his subordinates. He surrounded himself with machine gun-toting guards while goading his followers to self-sacrifice with his trademark warning, if you do not march forth, Allah will punish you with a painful torment. It's a fun guy. And this is the guy that Balaoui crosses paths with in late 2009. Now, at this point, Masri is like the operational chief of Al-Qaeda. Right. So as he is looking at al-Qaeda in 2009, he's looking back and he's saying, we've lost more than a dozen senior leaders and hundreds of fighters to the Americans over the last year. How do we hit back? And I think just as Balaoui was seen as somewhat expendable by the Jordanians, although not to the same degree as we'll see, Masri sees Balaoui as an expendable as well and a potentially very valuable.

one. And I think there's a question hanging over this. Was the operation always conceived as an attempt to, at first, kidnap Ali bin Zaid? Because he's kind of the perfect target for al-Qaeda. He's a Jordanian royal. He's a member of an intelligence service of a country that is very close to the Americans and to the Israelis. And the idea seems to be, if Balaoui could lure, been zayed into Pakistan, the Jordanian could be tried before an AQ judge convicted and then probably beheaded in an internet spectacle. And Masri, this Al-Qaeda planner, I think, is trying to figure out, how do I use Balaoui to convince this Jordanian to come into Pakistan? And the video that really lit up, you know, the CIA, that was Mazzari's idea.

now al-Qaeda has a propaganda arm that's got a production studio they've got cameras and editing software and the idea was that a tia abdharaman and malawi and a handful of others would basically be actors they would shoot this video kind of obscure the scenes so it looks like this amateur video and then an aq production team and al-Qa production team would extract a short excerpt in balawi could send that to bin zaid and mossries idea is basically to slowly bait GID, slowly bait bin Zay. Rie lemon, yeah. Re-limin.

Don't offer too much too quickly, but get them interested, right? And it's Mossery, it seems, who cooked up the idea of the fake medical visit with Zawahari. The CIA knows a lot about Zawahari's medical condition because they've got all this stuff from the Egyptians. But, you know, who also knows a lot about Zahari's medical condition, Al-Qaeda. And so they can supply Balaoui with all of the details so that it matches the Jordanian and CIA understanding. And I mean, this is very similar to the way in which you see, you know,

double agent operations being run in the Cold War. They would talk about feeding chicken feed, which is true to the other side to convince them that the agent was real when in fact they were always under the control of the other side. And so, you know, what you're seeing is Al-Qaeda doing something which is kind of classic spycraft here, basically, of being smart enough to run patiently and over months a kind of operation of feeding the other side some interesting information. But I also think it is so interesting, isn't it, that it does look like the first plan was simply to get Bin Zaid to come to Pakistan to kidnap him. So there was never this plan to kind of go after the CIA necessarily.

We've been talking a lot in the last episode about sort of how did the CIA and the Jordanian? and see the case and interpret it. And even though there are some real doubts, there's, it seems like, incredible intelligence value in continuing to pursue him. This is the real side of the story. This is what happened. This is a deception operation that is cooked up by al-Qaeda senior leadership to use Balaoui just to lure the Jordanian.

But then he says no. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, initially, Ali bin Zaid had been supportive of the idea of meeting Balawi in Pakistan. I think because, again, he's so, Bin Zaid is so eager to make progress on this case. The CIA does hold plenty of meetings in Pakistan, but apparently the station in Islamabad nicks the idea because they didn't want the Pakistanis to find out. So Bin Zaid says no to, you know, a city of Pakistan. Balawi proposes Maransha, which is, you know, the city in the tribal areas. And, and, you know, you just kind of, there's this haranguing back and forth. And when bin Zaid says

Coast, well, okay, from the CI standpoint, Coast makes a lot of sense. It's controlled. It's your territory. Makes total sense. Now, if I'm Balaoui, though, what does Coast mean? It means you can't kidnap. It's not a kidnap mission anymore, is it? You've immediately lost the ability to do what you hoped would happen. Because, of course, in a kidnap mission, he survives, doesn't he? You know, they've used him to lure bin Zaid out to Pakistan, and then they captured him, and then, you know, he keeps going. suddenly going to host, as you can see, there's only one option for what he could be used

for in that situation, because he's not going to be bringing anyone out. It's a one-way mission, isn't it? It's a suicide mission. It's a suicide mission. We can maybe intuit something of how Balaoui felt about this because he was really adamant that the meeting not take place in Coast for most of December. He's trying a message saying, no, no, no, come out, come out. Yeah, come out. And, you know, I guess part of that could be that Al-Qaeda would have seen more value in a kidnapping operation, both for the purposes of potentially extracting ransom, but also for propaganda purposes in, you know, a gory decapitation video. But I think it's probably fair to say Balaoui also understands these dynamics and is not ready to die. I don't think

he does want to be a suicide bomb. That's, I don't. It's hard to know to put yourself in someone's mind, but he's going to do that. But of course, as well, again, you know, the hard thing of this story is not to look at it in hindsight, because he's probably thinking, if I'm going to be a suicide bomber, I'm going to get to the, maybe the outer gate at this camp and then blow myself up, and that's probably it. I don't think anyone, any one of them could have expected to do the damage that they end up doing. So you can also see from his point of view, if I'm going to go out there and for what, potentially. But he's still going to do it. He seems racked with sort of internal dissension and pressure and turmoil.

And at one point, Balaoui writes, I've often wished to know what is going on in the head of a martyr before the martyrdom seeking operation. It is now my turn today to fulfill the wishes of others. And he spends a lot of time, you know, in those few weeks beforehand worrying that he won't be able to do it. He'll be too cowardly to push the button, tries to convince himself that the intent is all that matters, because I think he may be thinking exactly what you just said, which is I might end up killing an Afghan guard at the base, and that'll be it.

He tries to convince himself that, you know, even if he's shot, Allah will honor his sacrifice. But all this back and forth culminates in the 28th of December, 2009, when Balaoui finally relents. And he tells Ali bin Zaid that he'll meet his driver in Marantia that day and that he'll come to coast the next day. the 29th of December. Now, at this point, the plan has been, has been set. And after he sends this message, Balawi and two of Al-Qaeda's, you know, propaganda guys, spend a lot of time recording videos, right? So they do video footage of Balawi firing an AK-47, doing it quite badly. He puts his crutch aside for the photos, because remember he had broken his fibula, and he's limping badly from that motorcycle crash. And I think this gives you a sense of just how important the propaganda

piece of this is for Al-Qaeda. Because Balawi ends up being more than a day late to his appointment on coast because of all the videos the Taliban wanted to shoot. And in one of the videos Balawi tries on the suicide vest that he will bring with him to coast. And I think it's really hard for us to understand that there's actually a whole almost enterprise inside the tribal areas geared toward suicide, right? Because there's actually a Pashtun tribesman who's known as Al-Qaeda's Taylor who lives in Waziristan and makes his living sewing suicide vests. And he makes Balaouis. So it's this kind of cotton vest, usually made out of surplus military gear. Frequently, the explosive would have been something that you could have cooked up at home,

but because Balaoui's target is so special, the tailor is using a plastic explosive called C4, much more powerful, right? So he puts a bunch of C4 in there, and then around that is kind of glued this layer of shrapnel. And this is everything from nails to little metal bits, ball bearings, and in this case, there's actually even jacks, children's jacks, that get glued in there. So, Balaoui puts this vest on, sits in the driver's seat of a white car, and records another video. And, you know, he says, you know, we will get you CIA team, inshallah, which means God willing, we will bring you down. And he's got kind of this tough guy persona he's acting here. Don't think that just by pressing a button and killing Mujah Hadini, we're safe, inshila, we'll come.

to you in an unexpected way. And then he kind of lifts up his left hand. And he says, look, this is for you. It's not a watch. It's a detonator. He says, this is my goal to kill you and to kill your Jordanian partner. And inshallah, I will go to paradise. He said, and you will be sent to hell.

And Jobi Warwick in his book, the Triple Agent, says, you know, with the final phrase, Balaue's voice cracked as though he restraining to fight back tears. And he looks away and the image goes dark. So at that pretty dark moment, let's take a break. And when we come back afterwards, we'll see how the final moments of this tragedy unfold. This episode is brought to you by Atio, the CRM for the AI era. Now, David, people think that SpyCraft is just car chases and secret codes, but an awful lot of it is just idling around, waiting for the action.

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Step into a winter wonderland filled with millions of dazzling lights, festive shows, rides, and holiday treats. Plus, Coca-Cola is back with Canada's kindest community, celebrating acts of kindness nationwide with a chance at 100,000 donation for the winning community and a 2026 holiday caravan stop. And learn more at canadaswunderland.com. Well, welcome back. It's mid-afternoon on the 30th of December 2009. Balaoui is heading for the border and for the border crossing at Gulam Kahn to take him from North Waziristan in Pakistan and into Afghanistan towards coast. Yeah, and I mean, Belaw is a mess at this point. You know, his legs injured.

He's wearing 30 pounds of metal and explosives fastened to his chest. He's got to be wondering, you know, as he said beforehand, if all of this is just going to be for nothing. And, you know, he's sitting on the Pakistani side of the border. He sees his driver, the driver that had been sent from Coast Base waiting for him. Drivers in a white sedan. He gets in. they're waved through and on their way to coast. At one point, they switch cars, they meet up with a red Subaru hatchback, get into that.

Balauey is 26 hours late. Because he's doing the videos, which is just going to raise the tension, isn't it, at the base? Yeah, exactly. Now, the car had been out of cell phone range for a while, but as they approach the city, Balaoui takes the phone from the driver and calls Ali bin Zaid using a phone number that he'd written down on a scrap of paper. al-a-a-a-a-le-Bin Zaid says peace be with you. Balaoui apologizes for the delay and again repeats his concerns about being searched by Afghan guards who might be spies. So he's basically saying, I'm really worried about being searched by Afghan guards who might then reveal to the Taliban, to al-Qaeda, that I'm meeting with you and that might need to be being killed.

So he's, I mean, so it's a smart card to play, isn't it? to say, don't let it in the Afghan guard search me. I just need to go straight to the CIA people, or to you specifically Bin Zaid, he's thinking. And what that, of course, is doing is it's sending a really important message into the CIA base at Coast, which is basically saying your desire for security is running directly in contradiction to your desire for a productive asset. with the top source that the agency is working right now. It's obviously a very devious, devilishly clever thing to be putting into, injecting into CIA at that moment in time. So Ali bin Zaid says, okay, yes, you don't want to treat you like a friend.

Now, the car slows down as it approaches the main gate at Co-space. And it passes through these kind of high walls, HESCO barriers, things like that, that narrowed down. as you drive in, so it brings the traffic into one lane, right? And trained on that lane is a 50 caliber machine gun. And the car passes through the main gate, and Balawi is not searched. This is one of the things that, you know, even now, 16 years later, continues, I think, to mystify a lot of people who are involved in this and it's really hard to talk about because I think the decision to not search him was made by people who were dead. Yeah.

And what else can you say? I mean, it's just worth spelling out, isn't it? If he had been searched, they'd have spotted it, he'd have detonated at that point and killed the guards who were searching him, but it doesn't happen. And so it passes that first checkpoint, and it's now into the base, isn't it? Yeah. And I think we don't know. I think it's possible that this was a very last minute decision.

Yeah, maybe because of that message. Maybe because of that message. What I do know from speaking with some people who were there that day was that, you know, Ali bin Zaid, who's having the communication with him, is extremely giddy and excited about this meeting because this is, you know, this is like the big break in the case. You can just see how these, you know, the guy calls on his way in and says, I'm terrified of, you know, of Taliban spies among the guards of being searched. And you just, you can see, you know, the sort of train wreck coming. So goes through the gate. The car turns left,

kind of barely slowing down as it zigzags around HESCO barriers. To the right of the car are more there's kind of high walls topped with barbed wire and there's an opening in one of those walls and the Subaru is steered through a second checkpoint which is open on the opposite side of the compound is a building with a metal roof and this kind of wide awning and this is where there's a large gathering of people that are outside waiting right part of this this group that are going to have have the meeting with Bilawi. Now, I also say that, you know, over in Amman station where this case started, it seems like what's going on is obviously being watched with extreme anticipation. And everyone's on their instant messaging program because everyone

in Coast Base is yellow on this instant messaging thing, which means they're away from their computers. Now behind the Subaru that's pulled in, the inner gate of the compound is pulled shut. Belawi is in the passenger seat sitting behind the driver. The driver stops the car in the middle of this gravel lot that's in front of the building. And Ali bin Zaid is there. He's wearing a camo hat. He's standing next to a guy in jeans and a baseball cap. Car door opens and Belawi's face to face with one of the CIA security officers. Because now the plan is to search. him, right? And he acts very suspiciously at that moment because he realizes it, doesn't he? He just kind of backs away, you know, and shimmies across the backseat. And this is where

you're there, you're thinking something's weird. Yeah, because he's moving across the car away from the security officer to the other side of the car. Yeah. And, you know, he gets out on the opposite side. Obviously, a lot of the Americans now are shouting at him, right, and trying to get control of the situation. But how he stands up. up quite painfully, I'm sure, because he's leading on his crutch for support, starts to hobble forward and his hand searching for the detonator. Now, the way that these suicide vests are constructed, you have to unzip a pocket to get to the detonator. And obviously, the person who's doing this is extremely nervous. Yeah, you don't want to accidentally set it off, basically. Accidentally set it off or do it too early when you're not close to the target. So the idea is you have to unzip so that you're you get closer to the intended target. So he's unzipped. He's kind of hobbling forward, his hand searching for the detonator. Now everyone is realizing that something's gone terribly wrong. The CIA group

is shouting. Belawi's path is blocked. He's surrounded by men with guns who are, you know, trying to get control of the situation. Blahy's finger is on the detonator. He can see Ali bin Zaid. Belawi's shoulder is grabbed, probably by one of the security guys. Belawi shuts his eyes. and then with his finger on that, it's just a twitch, just a twitch. It explodes with sufficient force to snap steel, and the heat of that explosion is going to climb to well over 4,000 degrees. The blast wave is going to go out at about 15,000 feet per second. It's powerful enough to lift the car off the ground and to actually collapse internal

organs of the people who are right there. The three security guys who are nearest to Bilawi are basically just sent hurtling backward. One is thrown against a truck that's more than 30 feet away. And the sound of that initial explosion is followed by this barrage of metal. The shrapnel that had been built around the explosive just tears outward and starts to rip through everything in sight. Now, the driver of the car, the three security guys, Darren Labonte, the case officer, Ali bin Zayed, the Jordanian case officer, they're killed, probably killed instantly by the blast because they're so close. Now, there's 11 others that are on kind of the far side of the car, and they're cut down by the shrapnel. And to give a sense of the power, and to give a sense of the power,

of it. I mean, shrapnel is sunk into the compound's main metal gate, which is like 200 feet away. CIA officers who went to coast in the years to follow talked about seeing, you know, sort of holes in like metal eye beams on the base compound that had been made by the ball bearings that flew out from the suicide vest. So the whole place is just scarred. Pretty much everybody is hit. But the shrapnel damage is random. Jennifer Math, was hit devastatingly so while one of the officers standing by her was kind of only mildly injured and we say mildly injured i mean awful injuries but but survive there was a targeter on the base who managed to kind of stagger to her feet and then run off between two buildings before

collapsing to the ground and you know the piece of shrapnel like smaller than a marble had been the only thing that hit her and it had pierced the veins and arteries leading into her heart and she She died. Balauey's head bounced against the side of a building and came to rest in that gravel lot. And of course, medics, you know, come running. And the CI medic who gets there on site, you know, basically says, look, without immediate surgery, five of these people are going to die within minutes, including Jennifer Matthews. There is a Russian-built MI-17 helicopter, which is property of the Afghan army. And it's on the compound. It's pressed into. service and basically begins taking the wounded to Camp Salerno, which is a few miles north of Coast City proper, and there's a more extensive battlefield hospital there. Now, Jennifer Matthews stops breathing on the short chopper flight. The shrapnel had apparently torn away a chunk of her neck, one of her legs had been nearly stripped of skin and muscle, and her heart is basically motionless. And all the while, those same time screens in Amman,

They're all yellow still. And the team there knows that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. Frantic surgeries continue for hours. The people who are stabilized get placed on helicopters to go to Bogram, you know, Air Base in Kabul, where other doctors and other medical teams will take over. But seven CIA officers are dead. Ali bin Zaid, the Jordanian case officer is dead. So is the Afghan driver and six more CI officers are grievously wounded in what is the deadliest day for the agency during the war on terror.

I mean, it's awful to hear about it now. I mean, I can remember that it took a few days for it to emerge what had happened. The rumors started to filter out that there had been some kind of explosion at an American base in Afghanistan. done. And that's what I remember hearing first. Those rumors started pretty quickly. But then within a few days, it became clear it was a CIA base. And then it became clear how awful it was and how serious it was and how many had died. Then actually quite quickly and partly because of those videos which are going to come out from the Al-Qaeda Taliban side, the story that it was a kind of double, triple agent, whatever you call him, who tricked the CIA quite quickly will come out. I mean, I had one awful memory, actually, of being asked to go on to the BBC and talk about it. And at that point, I knew Jennifer had been killed, who I'd know. And I should have said, no, I won't go on and talk about it. But I just thought, this is my job to go on and talk about this thing,

I'm a security correspondent. And also, if I have to say, well, I knew her, so I'm finding it a bit difficult, then that would also raise all kind of questions to be what I had, you know. So I just thought, okay, I'll go do it. And I remember going on the BBC channel to talk about it. And the question from the presenter was something like, isn't this a kind of an amazing story about double agents and deception? And I remember feeling almost physically sick as I came off, you know, having to answer it.

Because of thinking, it is an amazing story, but I actually knew one of the people who died. And I found it intensely, you know, kind of difficult to talk about it because I felt I had to and I had to kind of, you know, talk about it. But I then came off and actually felt awful, actually, having to talk about someone. who died. And you realize how often actually as a journalist you talk about things which are extraordinary stories and, you know, and it is an extraordinary story in some ways, but that actually most of the time you don't know someone who died in it. And therefore, it's a reminder that actually but people, real people are dying in these stories. And it's, you're talking about the death of people and people who other people will know. And it was a kind of quite a kind of powerful

reminder about the burden of talking about these things in which people are dying. And I guess also, so, you know, devastating for the CIA to have suffered something like that, fueled a desire, I guess, also to take revenge again, wasn't it? Immediately after that, you get a wave of drone strikes, don't you, from the CIA to go after those behind it, which I guess is that visceral desire to hit back for retribution as what's happened. The desire for retribution makes a lot of sense, and it starts pretty much right after the bombing, right? And really, continues at a pretty blistering pace through much of January. It's probably the highest intensity drone actions since the predators were introduced back in 2004. And what is going to

happen over the next half a year is that everybody who was involved in planning that operation from the al-Qaeda Taliban side is going to be dead. And, you know, I think The idea that this is a war, you know, was pretty roundly emphasized by C.I. Director Panetta, who just a few days after the bombing basically said, look, you know, when you're at war, there are risks you take, but we're a family. We have to be a family. We now have to pull together to not only deal with the pain of the loss, but also to pull together to make sure that we fulfill the mission. We hit them hard this past year and they're going to try to hit us back. but we have to stay on the offensive. And that is definitely what happened in the aftermath of Coast. And I think, boy, there's, you know, how do you tie up a story like this? I mean, there is some truth to the idea that, well, okay, this is a war. When you're in a war, the other side has agency and can do things and pushes back.

And, you know, the reality is that since 9-11, there have been 52 stars, including the seven from coast, that are added to the CIA's memorial wall at Langley to honor fallen officers. So, you know, the CI is not a particularly big place. That number doesn't seem big when you think about the number of American soldiers killed in those conflicts or certainly when you think about just the total mayhem of the sort of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and throughout the Middle East. since 9-11, but inside a really, really small group like the CIA, I mean, 52 people dying in these sort of conflicts since 9-11, 7 and coast in one day, it's a pretty massive toll. And I remember, again, I wasn't working on this at the agency, but I was in in 2009. And psychologically, it was a really hard time at CIA. And, you know, you talk to people who were involved in this even now.

Right? And they, not necessarily people who were in Coast, but people who were involved in the case in some way. And they would say it was the absolute worst thing that they ever experienced over the course of their agency career. I mean, one of one of my friends who was interviewed by the task force that got stood up internally to sort of look at this, who was involved in the case, basically said, you know, like you to the task force, you can't make me feel any worse than I feel now. And I think there was a lot of blame to go around and no one sort of thing to, to blame for this happening. Yeah. I mean, the scars, I think you're right. The scars run deep and still when you speak to people about it today, it still certainly feels quite raw. And I do think that it was compounded, I think, by some of the blame games that you saw afterwards. I think there was some kind of unpleasant stuff written, particularly about Jennifer, which I think some of it was. a bit sexist. Some of it was kind of case officers, retired case officers, often going,

well, you know, that's what happens if you get a little analyst, run an important base or station or do this kind of stuff. And, you know, I found that kind of depressing because, you know, you can pick apart mistakes. And I think we have done and we've talked about the mistakes in a kind of sensible way without it turning into that kind of apportioning of blame the way I think some people did afterwards, using it maybe for different agendas. And I think there are important lessons. I mean, there are important lessons. I think CIA, I'm sure, learnt those lessons, you know, about the risks of getting to invested in sources. And, you know, as you put it falling in love with sources, about the risks of how you run the security of

those cases. I think just about the simple fact that actually these terrorist groups were capable of running kind of complex double, triple agent cases against the CIA, which I think they'd maybe been underestimated of this. So I think there were, there were lessons to be learned from it, even if you don't get into the kind of blame side of things. Yeah. It's certainly true that if, and in fact, I actually think one of the lines in the, or, you know, kind of a piece of the internal agency review basically was like, look, there was going to be a suicide bombing in Coast that day, because you can't not meet with this guy.

you're going to meet with him. The potential intelligence value is so great that it's worth the risk of having a meeting. So that's going to happen. Balaoui is going to get in the car with that suicide vest on and he's going to show up at the outskirts of coast base. Even if you have grievous doubts

about the extent to which the Jordanians have ever controlled this guy And you go all the way back upstream into this case and say, this guy's a true believer. It's really hard to recruit true believers. He's been outside of your control for the better part of a year. And it's bad, which I think Darren Labonte had kind of said things like that. Even if you think that's true, because he might be able to lead you to Zawahiri, you're still going to take the meeting. which means that he's going to show up outside a coast and it's going to be a sort of high threat meeting

where do you kind of close something like this out? I think it's I was having a conversation with one of the guys who was involved in this and he said that it's still you know it's something that just hangs over him his role in this and could he have done more have stopped it. And all of this kind of trade craft, the complexities of running this, you know, this kind of case for all of the families, you know, this is still something that

it's not history, right? This stuff really carries through to the present, to the present day. And I think it's true of everyone inside the agency who is involved in this, is that, you know, it's still something that people get choked up about and that they carry through with them. and always will. Yeah. So I think that's the place to end it. Rest in peace to those who passed in that awful attack, but an important story to tell, I think. And so thank you for joining us on this four-part series on The Rest is classified. Tough as it was, I think it's also been, as I said, a kind of important story. So thanks for listening. And we'll see you next time. We'll see you next time.