After a Decade at War With West, Al-Qaeda Still Impervious to Spies

Bombmaking materials linked to 14 men arrested in Barcelona in January. French officials were outraged when Spain disclosed the existence of a Pakistani informant, reporting to France, who had succeeded in infiltrating al-Qaeda. (Spanish Interior Ministry Photo Via Associated Press)

U.S. and European spy agencies have avoided sending their own undercover officers to training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan, officials said.

Few operatives, they said, have the language skills, personal backgrounds and knowledge of radical Islam that would enable them to talk their way into the camps. Plus, the political consequences of having a spy unmasked by al-Qaeda would be enormous, they added.

Beyond that, undercover officers usually require an extensive support network that would be hard to sustain for the several years it might take to worm into the al-Qaeda hierarchy, said a former senior British intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Undercover operatives might also find themselves ordered by al-Qaeda to organize a suicide attack or kill someone. "Which you can't let them do," the former British official said. "You have an obligation to prevent it from happening."

Attempting to wiggle out of such an assignment would only raise suspicions. Al-Qaeda people are "very canny about this sort of thing," the former official said. "They have this preemptive and fairly brutal approach. If you're suspected of being an informant or agent, you're dead."

Recruiting outsiders to serve as spies has its own challenges. The United States and European countries have restrictions on hiring informants with shady pasts. In 1995, for instance, the CIA adopted guidelines that require special approval to recruit paid sources who have been accused of human rights abuses or serious crimes.

Partnering with such people, moreover, can backfire.

Last month, authorities in Casablanca arrested a Belgian-Moroccan citizen, Abdelkader Belliraj, and charged him with plotting terrorist acts. Investigators said he worked closely with al-Qaeda and had met in Afghanistan with Zawahiri, the network's deputy leader, in 2001. During his interrogation, according to Moroccan officials, Belliraj confessed to involvement in six unsolved murders in Belgium in the late 1980s.

The case exploded into a scandal a few days later when newspapers in Brussels reported that Belliraj had served as a paid informant for Belgium's domestic intelligence service, even as his network plotted assassinations and robbed armored cars in Europe.

'Inside the Jihad'

But counterterrorism officials maintain the hope that one day they will succeed in placing someone inside al-Qaeda. The network does have a vulnerability, they note: It remains dependent on a fresh flow of outsiders to replenish its ranks, and agents could be introduced into that flow.

On March 6, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, an al-Qaeda commander, posted an audio recording on the Internet in which he advertised for recruits to fight NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The network has a particular need for engineers and doctors, he said, adding, "Your brothers in Afghanistan are waiting for you."

Al-Qaeda has also shown that it will accept newcomers from unusual backgrounds.