I’ve been watching new info trickle in for the past 24 hours, and the more I see, the number I get. He fed the agency honest-to-goodness actionable intelligence about jihadis to build up his credibility, to the point where he came to be regarded as their best asset in years. They looked the other way when he posted on jihadist online forums, accepting his assurances at face value that he was only saying what he was saying to fool the enemy — even though, of course, he wasn’t. Finally he told them that he had big news about Zawahiri, which drew a phalanx of CIA officers eager to land the biggest of the big fish. So eager, in fact, that he reportedly wasn’t given a polygraph before being taken to the base and was allowed to skip checkpoints before arriving at the rendezvous point.

Which brings us to Scarborough. According to his sources, the bomber detonated within seconds of stepping out of the car. How can that be, though? Wouldn’t the agents have been waiting for him in some sort of room? The only explanation I can come up with is that he told them he had info on Zawahiri that was extremely time-sensitive — so much so that they shouldn’t spare a second and should rush out to meet him when he pulled up. Is that what happened? Like I say, mind-numbing. Exit quotation: “I have no idea how a potential hostile ends up standing next to at least 13 CIA personnel… I have never heard of anything as unprofessional.”

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