Washington:
An Al-Qaida suicide bomber who killed seven CIA operatives in Afghanistan has claimed that he lured American and Jordanian intelligence officers into a trap by offering them doctored information about terrorist targets as well as videotapes of senior leaders of his group.
In a posthumous video message posted on an extremist website, Jordanian physician and double agent Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi claimed that he intended to kidnap only a single Jordanian intelligence officer, but then stumbled on an unexpected opportunity to attack a large group of Americans and their Jordanian allies at once.
"It wasn't planned this way," Balawi says in a 44-minute undated videotape released on Sunday by as-Sahab, the media arm of Al-Qaida.
He attributes the change to "the stupidity of Jordanian intelligence and the stupidity of American intelligence" services that invited him to Afghanistan to help set up a strike against Al-Qaida targets.
The video was apparently filmed shortly before the 32-year-old al-Balawi blew himself up at a CIA facility on December 30 in Afghanistan's eastern province of Khost where he'd been invited to reveal information on Al-Qaida No 2 Ayman al-Zawahri.
The attack killed nine people, including seven Americans. It was the deadliest attack on the US intelligence agency's staff in a quarter-century.
"They tried to entice me with money and offered me amounts reaching into the millions of dollars," The Washington Post quotes him as saying in the new video.
The video, if authentic, would be the second recorded statement to surface in which Balawi talks of his plan to penetrate Forward Operating Base Chapman, a highly secure CIA base in eastern Afghanistan's Khost province, The Post said.
US officials have acknowledged Balawi was a double agent who provided valuable intelligence over several months before being allowed to meet with US operatives at Chapman.
Balawi, who appeared in a military fatigues cradling an assault rifle and what appears to be C4 explosives, says the Jordanians spent thousands of dollars to settle him in Pakistan, and claims he intended from the beginning to strike a blow against the pro-US Jordanian government.
Balawi says he initially planned to capture or kill Jordanian officer Ali bin Zeid who served as his handler, but called off the plan. Meanwhile, he was enticing the Jordanians with videos. "The bait fell in the right spot, and they went head over heels with excitement," Balawi says.
To further solidify his handlers' trust, he sent coordinates of Taliban and Al-Qaida positions to the CIA, he says. Some of the information was erroneous, but Balawi says he would "throw in some accurate information which we thought the enemy probably already had knowledge of."
He said Jordan had provided information for the killing of Al-Qaida in Iraq chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2006 as well as that of top Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh, who died in a car bomb attack in Damascus in 2008.
The CIA declined to comment publicly on the new video, the report said.
In a posthumous video message posted on an extremist website, Jordanian physician and double agent Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi claimed that he intended to kidnap only a single Jordanian intelligence officer, but then stumbled on an unexpected opportunity to attack a large group of Americans and their Jordanian allies at once.
"It wasn't planned this way," Balawi says in a 44-minute undated videotape released on Sunday by as-Sahab, the media arm of Al-Qaida.
He attributes the change to "the stupidity of Jordanian intelligence and the stupidity of American intelligence" services that invited him to Afghanistan to help set up a strike against Al-Qaida targets.
The video was apparently filmed shortly before the 32-year-old al-Balawi blew himself up at a CIA facility on December 30 in Afghanistan's eastern province of Khost where he'd been invited to reveal information on Al-Qaida No 2 Ayman al-Zawahri.
The attack killed nine people, including seven Americans. It was the deadliest attack on the US intelligence agency's staff in a quarter-century.
"They tried to entice me with money and offered me amounts reaching into the millions of dollars," The Washington Post quotes him as saying in the new video.
The video, if authentic, would be the second recorded statement to surface in which Balawi talks of his plan to penetrate Forward Operating Base Chapman, a highly secure CIA base in eastern Afghanistan's Khost province, The Post said.
US officials have acknowledged Balawi was a double agent who provided valuable intelligence over several months before being allowed to meet with US operatives at Chapman.
Balawi, who appeared in a military fatigues cradling an assault rifle and what appears to be C4 explosives, says the Jordanians spent thousands of dollars to settle him in Pakistan, and claims he intended from the beginning to strike a blow against the pro-US Jordanian government.
Balawi says he initially planned to capture or kill Jordanian officer Ali bin Zeid who served as his handler, but called off the plan. Meanwhile, he was enticing the Jordanians with videos. "The bait fell in the right spot, and they went head over heels with excitement," Balawi says.
To further solidify his handlers' trust, he sent coordinates of Taliban and Al-Qaida positions to the CIA, he says. Some of the information was erroneous, but Balawi says he would "throw in some accurate information which we thought the enemy probably already had knowledge of."
He said Jordan had provided information for the killing of Al-Qaida in Iraq chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2006 as well as that of top Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh, who died in a car bomb attack in Damascus in 2008.
The CIA declined to comment publicly on the new video, the report said.
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