To Hunt Awlaki, CIA Found Him a Bride

Before killing Anwar al-Awlaki in a drone strike, the CIA tried an unusual tactic to hunt him down: It tried to get him hitched, according to a Danish newspaper's report. The agency reportedly hired an al-Qaeda double agent for $250,000 to set up the couple. The spy, a Danish convert to Islam named Morten Storm, furnished the newspaper with "proposal" videos and emails purportedly sent between Awlaki and a Croatian woman named Aminah, ABC News reports.

Storm found Aminah on Facebook after Awlaki told him in 2009 that he wanted to marry a European Muslim. "I am 32 years old and am ready for dangerous things," Aminah allegedly wrote. "I am ready to die for the sake of Allah." Had the plan worked, "both of them would (have been) killed in an American drone strike," Storm told the paper. Instead, Awlaki's aides told Aminah to get rid of her secretly-bugged suitcase when she arrived in Yemen, thus foiling the plot. The marriage, however, apparently worked out. Aminah later wrote to Storm seeking a suicide mission to avenge her late husband, but al-Qaeda bosses rejected the idea. (More Anwar al-Awlaki stories.)