Hamilton Says Attack Will Forever Change CIA

By Paul Bedard, Washington Whispers

Former 9/11 commission cochairman Lee Hamilton says the late December suicide bombing at a CIA base in Afghanistan will forever change how the agency handles informants. "This lesson is going to burn itself into the CIA. They will never forget this lesson," says Hamilton, the former Indiana congressman who now heads the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

The bombing, carried out by a double agent who had earlier supplied the CIA with information about al Qaeda, killed seven workers, including top-level agency officials working with the local informer at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost province.

Hamilton said he was amazed that the informant wasn't searched before entering the base. He said all people should be searched, no matter who they are. "You put General Petraeus through this," he said, predicting that anybody entering war zone CIA bases will be searched now.

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