For the past 16 months, he had worked as a mole, posing as a militant jihadist in the Islamic State while passing critical information to a secret branch of Iraq’s national intelligence agency.
His record was stunning: He had foiled 30 planned vehicle-bomb attacks and 18 suicide bombers, according to Abu Ali al-Basri, the agency’s director. Captain Sudani also gave the agency a direct line to some of the Islamic State’s senior commanders in Mosul.
A 36-year-old former computer tech, he was, agency officials said, perhaps Iraq’s greatest spy, one of a few in the world to have infiltrated the upper reaches of the Islamic State.
But now, on this last day of 2016, as he cruised along the four-lane crosstown highway toward his assigned target, the markets of Baghdad al Jdeidah, he had a nagging suspicion that his cover had been blown.
Every day he remained embedded with the Islamic State was another day he risked his life. Today he had been caught in a small lie, the second in a matter of months.https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/12/...o-spot-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
His record was stunning: He had foiled 30 planned vehicle-bomb attacks and 18 suicide bombers, according to Abu Ali al-Basri, the agency’s director. Captain Sudani also gave the agency a direct line to some of the Islamic State’s senior commanders in Mosul.
A 36-year-old former computer tech, he was, agency officials said, perhaps Iraq’s greatest spy, one of a few in the world to have infiltrated the upper reaches of the Islamic State.
But now, on this last day of 2016, as he cruised along the four-lane crosstown highway toward his assigned target, the markets of Baghdad al Jdeidah, he had a nagging suspicion that his cover had been blown.
Every day he remained embedded with the Islamic State was another day he risked his life. Today he had been caught in a small lie, the second in a matter of months.https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/12/...o-spot-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
