CNN news 2010-01-08 加文本

2010-01-08 cnn

We have an update for you now on the U.S. Embassy in Yemen. Today it is back open and ready for business. Washington closed the embassy on Sunday because of the threat of an al Qaeda attack. A senior administration official says intelligence suggested four al Qaeda operatives may have been planning an attack on the compound. Today the embassy says Yemeni security forces have addressed those specific concerns.

A double agent, now blamed for last week's deadly attack on a U.S. base in Afghanistan. Seven CIA officers died in that attack. Their bodies were returned to the United States yesterday. Yet today we're learning a lot more about how the suicide bomber got through security. cnn Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr has been working the story and joins us now live. Barbara, this man had provided the CIA with a lot of useful information at least in the past, right?

Absolutely, Heidi. According to former senior U.S. intelligence officials, this man was a trusted agent of both the United States and Jordanian intelligence services. He had a track record of providing high-value information about al Qaeda targets and they thought, at least, that is what he was about to provide, possibly intelligence on the location of Ayman al- Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's number two. It doesn't get more important than that.

So when this attack happened last week, U.S. intelligence agents had met the man off base, put him in a vehicle apparently without searching him, drove him back onto forward-operating base Chapman, as we know, and he detonated his suicide explosives there. The bomber now identified as a Jordanian man with the name al-Balawi. He came from the same small hometown in Jordan as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the one-time leader of al Qaeda back in Iraq. He had a record of militancy. He had been arrested by the Jordanians. They thought they had rehabilitated him, if you will, that he was now loyal to the fight. But apparently, a double agent wound up killing seven CIA officers and a Jordanian military officer who was covertly acting as his handler. Heidi.

That's just tragic. All right, Barbara Starr this morning. Thanks, Barb.