Inside a CIA agent's mission to infiltrate Al-Qaeda

Front Burner

After the events of Sept. 11, sweeping changes were made to U.S intelligence and counterrorism practices as part of the American-led 'war on terror'. Agencies like the CIA started focusing less on traditional forms of espionage, and became more of an organization centred on assassination and hunting non-state actors.

As part of that broader effort, a plan was born: what if the CIA were able to conscript a white American man to infiltrate the inner workings of Al-Qaeda?

Journalist Zach Dorfman spent years investigating one such deep cover operation — and tells us how the program reached the desk of then President George W Bush, and would chart the secretive intelligence agency on a course that would go on to define its future.

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