US spies failed to vet insider who hit Afghan base

Jordan tried to warn the CIA about an informer who later attacked the spy agency's base in Afghanistan last year, killing seven Americans, a US intelligence official said.Concerns about working with the informer had to be "weighed against the information he had already provided, and his potential to lead us to the most senior figures in Al-Qaeda," the intelligence official told AFP on Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Jordan tried to warn off the CIA about an informer who later attacked the spy agency's base in Afghanistan last year, killing seven Americans, a US intelligence official said Tuesday.Concerns about working with the informer had to be "weighed against the information he had already provided, and his potential to lead us to the most senior figures in Al-Qaeda," the intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.

The CIA ignored Jordan's warnings about an informer who later attacked a remote Afghanistan base last year, killing seven Americans, a US intelligence official said.Concerns about working with the informer had to be "weighed against the information he had already provided, and his potential to lead us to the most senior figures in Al-Qaeda," the intelligence official told AFP on Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The eighth man killed in a suicide bomb attack on a secret CIA base in Afghanistan last week was a captain in the Jordanian spy service known as the General Intelligence Department (GID), The Washington Post reported.The official Jordanian news agency Petra identified the man as Ali bin Zeid, saying that he was killed "on Wednesday evening as a martyr while performing the sacred duty of the Jordanian forces in Afghanistan."

A member of the Afghan army who acted as a prayer leader for troops has shot dead a British soldier in the year's first insider attack, according to officials in the region.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban militants attacked an army outpost near the eastern border with Pakistan on Friday, killing 13 soldiers, the Defence Ministry said. The attack occurred in a volatile province that serves as a major gateway for insurgents coming from Pakistan. Hostilities have surged as weather improves, allowing easier passage through the mountainous area.

CIA Director Leon Panetta revealed that a Jordanian doctor who killed seven agency operatives was about to be searched before he blew himself up at a US military base in Afghanistan."This was not a question of trusting a potential intelligence asset, even one who had provided information that we could verify independently. It is never that simple, and no one ignored the hazards," Panetta wrote in an article in The Washington Post.

A Taliban suicide squad armed with bombs and rockets attacked the largest US military base in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, injuring one NATO soldier and two civilians.An initial rocket attack on Kandahar airfield, which left the three wounded, was followed by a suicide bomb attack that sparked an hour-long gun battle, officials said.Two suicide bombers detonated explosives strapped to their bodies outside the base perimeter, aiming to clear the entrance for the rest of the group to breach the wire, Kandahar provincial spokesman Zalmai Ayobi told AFP.