elaborating a little further:
could it be that relations between Us, Saudi Arabia and Yemen are duplicitous and mistrustful enough to
– it appears he indeed was a double agent, in the sense of my previous post: he worked for the Saudis, but gave information directly to the CIA and, it appears, the bomb directly to the FBI;
– Yemen complained “that Washington had shared no information with them”; might well be Yemen AND Saudi Arabia; maybe the whole sting plot was conceived and handled exclusively by the CIA; (admittedly, it could be that Yemenis want to distance themselves from the operation because they don’t want to be associated with the subsequent drone strike);
– AP probably knows this, and maybe unconsciously, maybe maliciously, used the term “double agent”
in any case, there’s a question: who, in the Us, would want to blow the wistle on this operation? (this very fact throws a different light on the whole operation)

Posted by: claudio | May 9 2012 14:44 utc | 3

Watching NBC News last night all the huff and puff was how great the US security agencies are to fold this new threat and there was a little mention of cooperation with “friendly” agencies. So the pattern was to take credit for this while still mentioning, but not mentioning other agencies.
No matter the local political reasons were to take credit for this i still hold that AL Qaeda is a Saudi organization and although some split took place after Bin Laden went his way, the organization is still Saudi managed to their purposes. There has been a lot of Al Qaeda presence in Libya and Syria that i believe strongly were sent by Saudis to spread terror. Double Agent my a**, these guys are owned and controlled by Saudis and do the dirty work for those who want to stay in the background.

Posted by: ana souri | May 9 2012 15:11 utc | 5

oh very strange things tend to happen in Saudi Arabia
http://www.securitymanagement.com/news/saudi-suicide-bomber-hid-ied-his-anal-cavity-006178
http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/bombing-will-not-alter-saudi-policy-on-militants

Posted by: somebody | May 9 2012 15:30 utc | 7

He could of course also be a triple agent, or even a quadruple agent!!!!!!
Would 2 Double agents equal one Quadruple agent??
Enquiring minds wish to know . . . . .

Posted by: Marmite | May 9 2012 15:41 utc | 9

Uppping or creating ‘islamist’ terrorism has been a tough, extremely challenging, row to hoe.
Shoe bombers, panty bombers, you’d think it was a fashion mag, it is pathetic.
Even desperately poor Muslims in dire straits don’t fall into traps. Finding one who will is like looking for a needle in a haystack. And even then, they don’t perform, mess it up, confess before the act, have to be coerced, threatened, manipulated, etc.
All – all – studies of ‘terrorism’ in the past ten years show that, in the West, 99% of damage / attacks are made by home grown groups, radicals from the left, the right, by separatists, and by wedge issue ppl (e.g. animal rights.)
Attacks by these are not covered much in the media, even if some ppl died, or were disfigured, etc. They pass by unnoticed. In CH, for ex. we have had attacks against banks with letter bombs that kill and maim – who ever heard about that? Nobody! – It was all hushed up.
Terror is Islam…

Posted by: Noirette | May 9 2012 16:22 utc | 11

Why is the U.S. media using this nonsense “double agent”?
from the reuters link:

Yet global jihad is not the main public concern of Ansar al-Sharia, which has set up de facto administrations in captured towns

there’s that framing again, they are trying to position the Ansar al-Sharia as a government in the minds of americans. from wiki:

Ali Abdullah Saleh and Islamist militant forces, possibly including elements of al-Qaeda, for control of the town of Zinjibar and its surroundings as part of the wider insurgency in the self-declared Islamic Emirate of Abyan. Many of the Islamist forces operating in Abyan province refer to themselves as Ansar al-Sharia

the ‘double agent’ lingo is framing their agent as an agent of the “self-declared Islamic Emirate of Abyan”.

Posted by: annie | May 9 2012 18:23 utc | 13

somebody, most likely.

Posted by: annie | May 9 2012 20:22 utc | 15

Victory has a thousand fathers; defeat is an orphan.

John F. Kennedy, “A Thousand Days,” by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr [1965]., p289. Comment made by JFK in the aftermath of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, 1961.

Maybe it’s just whoever can claim credit is doing so. But, my, it’s a whole lot of info coming out about what appears to be an undercover agent….

Posted by: jawbone | May 9 2012 20:32 utc | 17

The point seems to have been to reveal the bomb-maker al-Qussou, who was then subsequently killed by drone attack, though he was also supposedly killed once before.
As Saudi intelligence is said to have done everything, one wonders what is the US role.
I have no idea what happens in Yemen, on the ground. Someone is feeding them responses to the drone attacks. Are they accurate? I have very great doubts. They must be sources close to the president. They must have interests to give positive responses to the US.
So what’s the worth of anything we hear from Yemen?

Posted by: alexno | May 9 2012 22:03 utc | 19

Cynthia @ 20: Yup!

Posted by: ben | May 10 2012 1:58 utc | 21

Don’t apologise, b. The law of averages says you’ll be wrong one day. But today wasn’t it.
Ex-CIA agent, Robert Baer, poured a deluge of cold water on the entire story in this interview. Baer all but accused the CIA & FBI as trying to look stupid.
Underwear bomber reported to be secret service agent
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2012/s3499283.htm

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | May 10 2012 5:38 utc | 23

in all seriousness, who is the intended audience of this tripe? nobody gives a rat’s ass, except for a handful of insiders and their watchers (you guys). outside of that, the planet continues to revolve around the sun as it has done for billions of years and will continue to do until we determine we were maybe wrong about that perspective, as well.

Posted by: wenis | May 10 2012 11:49 utc | 25

that doesn’t answer the question or address the point, ben. it may get your rocks off and validate your superior misery, but outside of that, did anyone see the tree fall? i say the answer to that is no, no one outside of the small group of actors and watchers will ever know the difference without a proper context, and that context for them may never be possible if they don’t have the capacity to perceive it. considering that, isn’t it just a ritualistic circle jerk for a small band of brothers?

Posted by: wenis | May 10 2012 14:54 utc | 27

@ 27 & 28.
You’re probably both right.
Obama has already delivered several State of The Unicorn Addresses.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | May 10 2012 15:57 utc | 29

ruralito comes for the daily fix. might as well keep the rubber band on considering the frequency of the dosing.

Posted by: wenis | May 10 2012 16:46 utc | 31

So everything is futile? Oh, better just go to sleep then, and don’t bother getting up.

Posted by: Alexander | May 10 2012 17:52 utc | 33

I dunno maybe I’m being denser than usual, and despite wenis’ assertions to the contrary this stuff does matter. Big lies are often laid upon a foundation of many little lies. The little lies create the artificial continuum and the big lie planted right in that spreads outside its place in space and time to inhabit mass consciousness. We need to examine every little lie we can. Why?
Setting aside the ‘know your enemy’ stuff, now and again when the liars get caught out on a ‘little lie’ it undermines their false reality – enlightens lots of humans and can trigger a big reaction against the liars.
But I go back to my dense and lumbering consideration of this particular situation.
To me the bloke is a double agent and he was infiltrated into the Yemen opposition with Saudi help.
The Saudis who despite what amerikans are told to believe don’t subscribe to the entire imperial regime that puts amerika at the top and Arabs way down the pecking order.
Maybe the King and his close relatives go for that, but yer average Saudi official (well the few I’ve met) are like most officials outside amerika who are forced to go into a package sold to them as the lesser of two evils – resistance & therefore chaos – or reluctant subservience to keep the peace a little longer. They’re nationalistic and mistrusting of amerikan motives.
The Saudis probably used contacts to put the guy in Yemen in the belief he would report on opposition activity aka intelligence gathering.
In general most Saudis prefer the ME to be quiet with their brothers in the Yemen not getting shot & blown up all the time.
However unbeknownst to the blokes working with the spy, & maybe but only maybe, known to a prince or two in charge of Saudi intelligence, this bloke wasn’t just a Saudi spy, he is an amerikan agent provocateur who instigated the operation to manufacture this ‘bomb’. Prolly he sourced the materials and maybe the recipe as well.
As soon as the thing was made the agent grabbed it so Oblamblam could scare the voters back in amerika, & took off with it alerting the alleged bomb-maker who went into hiding.
The bomb was delivered straight to the seppos back at langley or wherever those scum sucking low life spooks are currently hanging out. In one foul swoop seppos thinking the whole terror thing is getting a bit old are ‘straightened out’ and the crims running the scammer scam have a protection against other seppos whining about intrusions on privacy or their penis’ being touched by minimum wage ‘security guards’.
The reason amerika’s media were so quick to retract the statement about him being a double agent, wasn’t that it would alert the Saudi intelligence officials – too late they already discovered that a while back altho maybe they had been semi-placated about being tricked into yet another amerikan lie about Arab=terrorist.
It is one thing to be tricked by pretend friends n allies then apologised to, if the deceit is kept reasonably confidential.
Quite another to have amerikan abuse of their credulity trumpeted around the world in gloating headlines.
Hence the quick retraction.
To me that seems to be an explanation that reasonably fits the facts.

Posted by: Debs is dead | May 10 2012 23:20 utc | 35

so when I see the media using the phrase I usually presume that there’ s something else happening which some group, some ‘they’, want to distract people from noticing.

Posted by: Marmite | May 11 2012 4:57 utc | 37