CAMP CHAPMAN ANNIVERSARY

An ongoing goal here at the Inglorious Amateurs will always be to honor the memory of those who have given their lives in the performance of their duties serving the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This month, we remember and honor the 7 Americans who were killed at Camp Chapman 5 years ago on December 30th:

Jennifer Lynne Matthews, CIA Officer
Scott Michael Roberson, CIA Officer
Darren LaBonte, CIA Officer
Elizabeth Hanson, CIA Officer
Harold Brown, CIA Officer
Dane Clark Paresi, CIA security contractor
Jeremy Wise, CIA security contractor

On 12/30/2009, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a Jordanian doctor and al-Qaeda triple agent detonated a suicide vest at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Chapman near Khost, Afghanistan. The detonation killed 7 Americans, a mix of contractors and CIA Officers, 1 Jordanian Intelligence Officer and an Afghan contractor. 6 other CIA officers were seriously wounded in the attack. The attack was the single largest loss of life by the CIA since the 1983 US Embassy bombing in Lebanon and carried a severe emotional toll through the Agency and the broader US intelligence community.

Al-Balawi had been arrested earlier in the year in Jordan, and reportedly had been turned as an agent against al-Qaeda. After several months of sharing information on al-Qaeda. Al-Balawi requested a meeting to share information on a senior al-Qaeda leader. That meeting was set to take place at Camp Chapman, Khost, Afghanistan, which would have been the first time the CIA had interacted directly with al-Balawi. Shortly after arrival at Camp Chapman, according to Washington post reporter Job Warrick in his book Triple Agent, after passing through 3 separate security checkpoints without being searched, al-Balawi’s vehicle arrived in the middle of the base where it stopped. As he exited the vehicle, he was approached by some of the waiting American officers to be searched. He detonated the bomb he carried prior to them reaching him.

Much has been written about the lead up to the attack, the attack itself and analysis of the various decisions made by those on site. I’ll not go in to those here except to say two things: First, it is easy to Monday morning quarterback an operation gone wrong when you were not there and with the totality of information available after the fact. It is much harder to truly say you would have made different decisions on site in the same time-frames with access to the same information at hand. Secondly, after action reports, especially in cases like this, can be invaluable as learning tools to protect our people in the future. That process though need not be a public dissection of the folks involved and their decisions. There is no legitimate public benefit served in that. The public need only know that the community is committed to learning from those mistakes and failed operations and that they will always carry a significant risk to the lives of our officers, a risk they themselves choose to bear in order to do the difficult jobs America asks of them.

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