A page from the book I am reading ..

Triple Cross by Peter Lance tells how the US intelligence community were duped by Ali Mohammed a former Egyptian army captain. Mohammed had managed to infiltrate not only the FBI but also the CIA, he managed to keep them duped for decades. The book has 32 pages of photographs and is proving to be a good read so far. (off topic - my rss feed is shot to hell after installation of new software and I am not able to feed to BT main page.)

Couple of pages from the book:
After the devastating assault on its staff and leadership in Beirut, the CIA found itself playing catch-up in 1984. The Cold War was winding down; the new enemy spoke Arabic and used the Koran as a weapon to inspire US hatred in madrassas; militant schools from Islamabad and Kabul to Doha and Riyadh.

The Agency was hungry for insights into this new violent Islamic mindset - and so, when Ali Mohamed walked into the CIA station in Cairo, he had a distinct advantage. "He ends up connecting," says Cloonan. "Having been around the Egyptian military, having participated in Operation Bright Star, he has extensive contacts." Mohamed came to the Station Chief's attention, quickly but his acceptance by CIA was hardly a foregone conclusion." " The Agency to their credit, are a little bit suspect of him," says Cloonan. "They are wondering, "Is this a provocation? Is this something that the Egyptians are running against us?"

The Cairo chief of station is very concerned now about Ali's Islamic and fundamentalist leanings, because they obviously go to their Egyptian counterparts [to vet him]. Nevertheless, and this is an important point, the station chief sends out an Agency-wide cable that says, "This is the guy [and] this is what his background is. I'm a little bit suspect of him, but is anybody interested in him?" Cloonan says that the CIA station in Bonn, center for all Iranian-based operations, responded. "They express interest and Ali ends up being brought into the fold." But perhaps as evidence of the CIA's desperation for Islamic human intelligence (HUMINT), they apparently accepted Mohamed without subjecting him to a polygraph.

"It gets worse," says Cloonan. "He meets his CIA handler. They go through what they want him to do. He's supposed to infiltrate the Hamburg mosque that's being run by an Imam named Mohtashemi, with strong ties to Hezbollah. "To the Agency's credit, they've got a second source in the mosque. Ali goes in and out for a week. He has a couple of meetings with his CIA handlers who come down from Bonn." But within the week, says Cloonan, Mohamed betrayed the CIA. "He essentially gives up the operation. Based on what the second source says, Ali tells Mohtashemi and others that he is a plant."