How a CIA hit on al Qaeda ensnared a US citizen in Afghanistan

By Jonathan Landay

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -As a crowd looked on, uniformed Taliban surrounded the Toyota Landcruiser in which Mahmood Habibi, a naturalized U.S. citizen, sat. Other Taliban smashed open the door of his Kabul apartment, emerging later with his laptop and papers.

Blindfolded in the back seat, Habibi and his driver were driven off by gunmen sporting shoulder patches of the Taliban’s feared secret police, the General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI), according to several witness…