Video Shows Suicide Bomber Saying Attack on CIA Post Was the Taliban's Revenge

At the same time, CIA director Leon Panetta, writing in the Washington Post, disputed suggestions that the CIA had shown "poor tradecraft" in letting the bomber, Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, through checkpoints at the base, saying he was about to be patted down before he set off his explosives.

To suggest it was poor tradecraft is "like saying Marines who die in a firefight brought it upon themselves because they have poor war-fighting skills," Panetta wrote

"This was not a question of trusting a potential intelligence asset, even one who had provided information that we could verify independently. It is never that simple, and no one ignored the hazards. The individual was about to be searched by our security officers -- a distance away from other intelligence personnel -- when he set off his explosives."

The video, carried by al Jazeera and television channels in the region, showed al-Balawi, in green camouflage fatigues sitting next to Hakimullah Mehsoud, who took over leadership of the Pakistani Taliban after Baitullah's death. Hakimullah and Baitullah are members of the same tribe but not closely related. The New York Times said Balawi's father confirmed that the man in the video was his son.

Balawi, who had been vouched for by Jordanian intelligence, said, ""We will never forget the blood of our emir Baitullah Mehsud. We will always demand revenge for him inside America and outside."

CIA officials had hoped Balawi could lead them to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number two man in al-Qaeda, the Washington Post said.

Terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman, also writing in the Post, said the attack on the CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan, as well as the al-Qaeda-backed attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day, show that the international terrorist movement has substantially changed its strategy compared to attacks like Sept. 11 which were designed to "deliver a knock-out blow."

Instead, Hoffman said, "al-Qaeda's leadership has now adopted a 'death by a thousand cuts' approach."

Hoffman warned that al-Qaeda is trying to confound U.S. efforts to connect dots of intelligence by "overwhelming, distracting and exhausting us. To this end, it seeks to flood our already information-overloaded national intelligence systems with myriad threats and background noise. Al-Qaeda hopes we will be so distracted and consumed by all this data that we will overlook key clues, such as those before Christmas that linked (Umar Farouk) Abdulmutallab to an al-Qaeda airline-bombing plot."