Intelligence services have experienced great difficulties in placing or recruiting agents within al-Qaida affiliates
Few examples of a successful infiltration of al-Qaida networks have come to light in recent years. This is in part an inevitable result of the secrecy that surrounds such sensitive operations. But it is also because they are very, very rare.
Even Middle Eastern intelligence services have experienced great hardship in successfully placing or recruiting agents within al-Qaida affiliates, let alone within the tight-knit central core of the group. Western services have, as far as it is known, always collaborated with allies such as Saudi Arabia who have the necessary local expertise, language skills and cultural background for an extraordinarily perilous undertaking.
The case of the would-be "underwear bomber" appears to be a textbook example of success. Run with Saudi Arabian allies – senior CIA officials have frequently sat on the deep sofas in the Riyadh office of Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the man who runs the kingdom's security operations – the agent appears not only to have scuppered a sophisticated bomb plot, handed the device to his handlers and given information that led to a drone strike killing one of the most wanted local militant leaders, but also to have got out safely.
If what we are being told is true, this is a major coup. The fact that its target was al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (Aqap), the most effective and dangerous affiliate group, makes it all the more significant.
One unanswered question is how long the operation had been running. More than two years ago, western intelligence received information from within Aqap that allowed it to find parcel bombs sent from Yemen to targets in the US. It is not impossible that the man who drove out of Yemen with the underwear bomb last month was the source back then, too.
There will be some celebrations in the counter-terrorist community. Such operations are rare, if not entirely unknown. One success was the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the main operational organiser of the 9/11 attacks, who was found in Rawalpindi, the northern Pakistani garrison town, in 2003. A man close to Mohammed but working for the Pakistani ISI and the CIA texted his handlers from a toilet during an evening of conversation and food. "I am with KSM", he told them.
A few hours later, the then al-Qaida number three was in the custody of Pakistani authorities, who later turned him over to the US. According to a recently published book, Hunting in the Shadows, by the analyst Seth Jones, the source of the text was handsomely rewarded by the US. The source's motives appear to have been predominantly financial, and his identity was not disclosed even to the then president, George Bush, Jones reports.
Last year, a British official told the Guardian that inside information from overseas – probably Pakistan – had allowed UK services to move against at least one major plot between 2008 and 2009 targeting the UK. Evidence heard in several trials in recent years have provided clues that agents have occasionally been placed by services within at least the more marginal networks of al-Qaida groups in Pakistan and elsewhere.
There have been spectacular failures too. The most obvious came in December 2009 when a Jordanian-born doctor blew himself up at a CIA office in a US base in Afghanistan, killing seven CIA officials. Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi had been recruited by the CIA and Jordanian intelligence after being picked up for supposedly pro-extremist activities in his homeland. But he appears never to have abandoned his commitment to the jihadi cause, and his pledge to his handlers that he would lead them to Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's then deputy and now leader, was never credible.
Before Balawi died he recorded a video in which he claimed he had refused millions of dollars to work for the US. His case was exceptional, however. Like the successes, most failures inevitably go unreported.