Washington:
Three weeks before a Jordanian double agent set off a bomb at a remote Central Intelligence Agency base in eastern Afghanistan last December, a CIA officer in Jordan received warnings that the man might be working for Al Qaeda, according to an investigation into the deadly attack.
But the CIA officer did not tell his bosses of suspicions -- brought to the Americans by a Jordanian intelligence officer -- that the man might be planning to lure Americans into a trap, according to the recently completed investigation by the agency. Later that month the Qaeda operative, a Jordanian doctor, detonated a suicide vest as he stood among a group of CIA officers at the base.
The internal investigation documents a litany of breakdowns leading to the December 30 attack at the Khost base that killed seven CIA employees, the deadliest day for the spy agency since the 1983 bombing of the American Embassy in Beirut. Besides the failure to pass on warnings about the bomber, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, the CIA investigation chronicled major security lapses at the base in Afghanistan, a lack of war zone experience among the agency's personnel at the base, insufficient vetting of the alleged defector and a murky chain of command with different branches of the intelligence agency competing for control over the operation.
Some of these failures mirror other lapses that have bedeviled the sprawling intelligence and anti-terrorism community in the past several years, despite numerous efforts at reform.
The report found that the breakdowns were partly the result of CIA officers' wanting to believe they had finally come across the thing that had eluded them for years: a golden source who could lead them to the terror network's second highest figure, Ayman al-Zawahri.
As it turned out, the bomber who was spirited onto a base pretending to be a Qaeda operative willing to cooperate with the Americans was actually a double agent who detonated a suicide vest as he stood among a group of CIA officers. "The mission itself may have clouded some of the judgments made here," said the CIA director, Leon E Panetta, who provided details of the investigation to reporters on Tuesday.
Mr Panetta said that the report did not recommend holding a single person or group of individuals directly accountable for "systemic failures."
"This is a war," he said, adding that it is important for the CIA to continue to take on risky missions.
The investigation, conducted by the agency's counterintelligence division, does, however, make a series of recommendations to improve procedures to vet sources and require that CIA field officers share more information with their superiors.
Mr Panetta said that he also ordered that a team of counterintelligence experts join the CIA counterterrorism center, and to thoroughly vet the agency's most promising informants. It is unclear whether any action will be taken against the CIA operative in Jordan who chose not to pass on the warning.
The agency is a closed society that makes precious little public about its operations. It is sometimes loath to investigate itself, and at times has resisted punishing people for failures.
In 2005, for instance, Director Porter J Goss rejected the recommendation of an internal review that "accountability boards" be established to determine which senior CIA officials should be blamed for intelligence breakdowns before the September 11 attacks. Mr Goss said that punishing top officers "would send the wrong message to our junior officers about taking risks."
Current and former CIA officials said that the decision not to hold officers directly responsible for the bombing was partly informed by an uncomfortable truth: some of those who may have been at fault were killed in the bombing.
In particular, the officials said there was particular care about how much fault to assign to Jennifer Matthews, a Qaeda expert at the CIA who was the chief of the Khost base and who died in the attack.
One former CIA officer with Afghanistan experience said there was bitter internal debate at the spy agency over whether Ms Matthews -- who had little field experience -- ought to singled out for blame for the security lapses that allowed the bomber, Mr Balawi, onto the base.
"There's a lot of built-up emotion over this, because one of the primary people accused is Jennifer, and she's not here to defend herself," he said.
Several family members of the victims of the Khost attack, reached by telephone and e-mail on Tuesday, declined to comment about the CIA report. Mr Panetta said that families would be informed about the report's conclusions in the coming days.
The warnings about Mr Balawi came from a Jordanian intelligence officer. Mr Panetta said that it appeared that the CIA operative in Amman, Jordan, was dismissive of them because he suspected that the Jordanian was jealous that one of his colleagues had a close relationship with Mr Balawi, and might have been trying to scuttle the operation.
As he detailed the report's conclusions, the CIA director provided new details about the unraveling of, and deadly conclusion to, Mr Balawi's operation.
Mr Panetta said that the General Intelligence Department, the Jordanian spy service that is a close CIA ally, had first told the Americans that Mr Balawi might be willing to become a CIA informant. Over a period of months, he said, the Jordanian doctor provided information from the tribal area of Pakistan to establish bona fides with his handlers.
A meeting at the Khost base was set up for the Americans to meet Mr Balawi in person, to discuss specific ways that the Jordanian doctor might be able to consistently pass along information to the CIA.
Mr Panetta said that because he was considered a reliable source, normal security procedures were eased: Mr Balawi was not subjected to screening at the perimeter of the Khost base, and a large group of CIA officers gathered to greet him when he arrived.
CIA officers became suspicious however, when Mr Balawi chose to get out of the car on the side opposite the security personnel, who were waiting to pat him down. The security guards drew their guns, and Mr Balawi detonated his suicide vest.
The force of the bomb killed the seven CIA employees, the Jordanian intelligence officer who was Mr Balawi's handler, and an Afghan driver. Six more CIA officers were wounded in the attack, but Mr Panetta said that the bomb could have been deadlier had Mr Balawi's car -- which blunted the explosion -- had not been in between the bomber and most of the Americans.
Current and former American officials said that the final report on the Khost attack went through several drafts, in part because an already complex investigation was made even more difficult by the bomb's devastating impact.
As Mr Panetta said, "A lot of the evidence here died with the people."