The recent incident of the Jordanian suicide bomber who blew himself up at a Central Intelligence Agency base in Khost Province, Afghanistan, took many Jordanians by surprise, especially when they learned through the media about the depth of the cooperation between their government's intelligence service Mukhabarat and the United States in its "War on Terror." The Jordanian intelligence services recruited Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi and put him in touch with the CIA, and Jordan has since been deeply embarrassed by the fact that Balawi turned out to be a double agent.

Jordanians have also recently been made aware of the fact that an increasing number of their nationals have been volunteering to join the Taliban and al-Qaeda to fight against the United States in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Only days after the funeral of Captain Sharif Ali bin Zeid, the Jordanian Mukhabarat agent killed in the Khost attack, which was televised on Jordanian television and attended by King Abdullah II and other high ranking officials, a memorial took place for a Jordanian al-Qaeda member who was recently killed in a U.S. drone attack along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Bearded men poured into a reception hall in the town of Irbid to offer their condolences to his family.

His father was quoted in the Jordanian press saying that he was "proud of him and happy that he died a martyr fighting the Americans."

Most of these al-Qaeda members are known to be from the sprawling towns of Irbid and Zarqa which was the hometown of the late al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

This week, the Muslim Brotherhood and other opposition groups demanded that the Jordanian government drop its pro-America stance. In a statement titled "It Is Not Our War," they wrote, "We demand an end to the policy of what is called cooperation or security coordination with the Zionist enemy or the American intelligence agencies, and the withdrawal of Jordanian forces from Afghanistan."

According to the Associated Press, Zaki Saad, former director of the Islamic Action Front, the Muslim Brotherhood's political wing in Jordan, said that there was so much anger against the government's policies, and the marginalization of mainstream Islamist groups like his own, that it was driving radical young people into the arms of al-Qaeda.

"Balawi is not the first case, and he won't be the last," he said.

Jordan itself has experienced several terror attacks on its territories. In 2005, three suicide attackers detonated nearly simultaneous explosions at hotels in downtown Amman, killing 67 people and wounding more than 150 others. Many experts argue that it was after those attacks that the Jordanian Mukhabarat decided to work closely with the CIA in combating al-Qaeda.

On Thursday a roadside bomb exploded near a convoy of vehicles carrying Israeli diplomats in Jordan near the Jordanian village of Naour, as the convoy was traveling from Amman, the Jordanian capital, to the Allenby Bridge border crossing.

Although, there have been numerous threats against Israeli diplomats and visitors to Jordan since the two countries signed a peace treaty in 1994, this incident cannot be treated as an isolated one. Security officials have speculated that this recent attack on the Israeli diplomats might have been the work of a group affiliated with al-Qaeda or a Palestinian group. In either case, this is the second time in less than a month that the Jordanian Mukhabarat suffers from a breach in security...one too many for a small country like Jordan.

Article first published on the Huffington Post

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"The buck stops with me," declared President Obama on Thursday as he spoke about the results of an internal investigation into the failed Christmas Day airline bombing attempt. The president avoided blaming any particular agency or official for the security failures that allowed Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board an American airliner heading from Amsterdam to Detroit wearing explosives in his underpants.

Now, after the fact, this incident has sparked a renewed interest in Yemen, a country I warned about as a "powder keg" back in August, and a slew of new security measures at airports to make our travel experience more miserable than it currently is. Travelers will soon get used to going through full-body scanners, like they have gotten used to taking off their shoes at security checkpoints at airports, ever since Richard Reid, aka the shoe-bomber, tried unsuccessfully to take down another airliner in late 2001. Unfortunately, al-Qaeda and other groups will try to find other methods to bypass the new security measures until they succeed.

Last summer, Abdullah Asieri, one of Saudi Arabia's most wanted men, avoided detection by two sets of airport security including metal detectors and palace security, by borrowing a trick from the Columbian cartel. Asieri had a pound of high explosives, plus a detonator inserted in his rectum. His target was Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef, head of Saudi Arabia's counter terrorism operations. The bomb was remotely detonated via a cellular phone call, but the Prince miraculously was left lightly wounded. The assassination attempt failed, but al-Qaeda managed to defeat security.

The US security failure is not at airports, but rather with overseas intelligence agencies. The President did not name the agency, but I will: the CIA, which has done a shoddy job of gathering information in Arab and Muslim countries and has relied heavily on information provided by security agencies of corrupt and despotic regimes.

What Americans should be worried about is not the few failed attempts by the likes of Reid or Abdulmutallab, but rather by what happened recently with the suicide bomber, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a medical doctor who had been recruited by Jordanian intelligence and then agreed to work for the CIA. He was assigned a Jordanian handler who had a close working relationship with the CIA and was subsequently sent to Afghanistan to help locate top al-Qaeda leaders. In reality, he was also a jihadist sent to infiltrate US intelligence: a "triple agent!"

The reason this succeeded is due to the fact that Afghanistan is an intelligence nightmare, and the CIA does not have enough Arabic or Pashto speakers on the ground. This is also the case in Yemen, Somalia, and Northern Africa, a fact that was confirmed to me by a former CIA employee. Many of he CIA's so-called Middle East specialists lack the language skills needed to analyze the material provided to them and rely on translations, which, as part of my experience producing a news show from the Middle East, I have discovered can be misleading and inaccurate. Many CIA agents are no different than those so-called experts on al-Qaeda that one sees on CNN or FOX news.

This latest infiltration of the CIA is worse than a thousand Abdulmutallabs, and will certainly cause a setback to the agency for years to come, something that the President did not talk about.

Article first published on the Huffington Post

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