Jamal Al-Fadl - Defection

Defection

After embezzling $110,000 from the organization, al-Fadl "defected". He contacted the CIA via the United States's Eritrean embassy and, receiving encouragement from FBI special agents Jack Cloonan and Dan Coleman (who were "seconded" to the CIA's Bin Laden unit), he returned (after staying in Germany for a while) to the United States, in spring 1996.

For the next three years Cloonan and his colleagues oversaw al-Fadl in a safehouse. From December 1996 Al-Fadl began to provide "a major breakthrough of intelligence on the creation, character, direction, and intentions of al Qaeda"; "bin Laden, the CIA now learned, had planned multiple terrorist operations and aspired to more" — including the acquisition of weapons-grade uranium. Al-Fadl, who had "passed the polygraph tests he was given", became a key witness in the US v. bin Laden trial that began in February 2001.

His upkeep during the first 12 years of his life in Witness Protection were deemed "expensive", as he was an "incessant troublemaker" who suffered severe emotional mood swings, a taste for womanizing and financial scheming.