Newsweek interviews CIA bomber's wife

Soft-spoken and composed, but unmistakably angry, the wife of the suicide bomber who killed himself and seven employees of the CIA in Afghanistan on Dec. 30 says flatly, “My husband was anti-American; so am I.” About that, there are no regrets…

Al-Balawi “started to change,” says his wife, after the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. By 2004, she says, he began to talk to her about his strong belief in the need for violent jihad against Western occupiers of Muslim lands, but he was not part of any organization or group. “He followed all of them, but from a distance,” she says. “He was constantly reading and writing. He was crazy about online forums. He would go onto them and write severe, extremely hardline comments. He would cite verses from the Quran that talked about the need for jihad, and then write very tough comments based on those verses or on the sayings of the Prophet.”…

Asked if she could confirm what other sources have told NEWSWEEK Türkiye, that al-Balawi was offered as much as $500,000 by the CIA and $100,000 by the Jordanians to track down Al Qaeda’s leadership, Bayrak said only, “It might be true.”