A Quiet American in Khartoum

The setting was as grand as it gets in Sudan's dusty capital. The red carpet stretched up the front steps of "Friendship Hall," built by China to honor its tight alliance with the regime of Lt. General Omar Al-Bashir. Inside, around a huge oval table, sat the intelligence directors of more than 50 African countries, convening in Khartoum for the biennial meeting of the Committee of Intelligence and Security Services of Africa (CISSA).

Then, just as Sudan's vice president was about to deliver the opening address, a lanky white man — hard to miss in this crowd — slipped into a front-row seat behind a small American flag marking his place at the table. Fresh from Langley, Va., the CIA's Director of Operations for Africa had arrived.

Back in Washington, it might have seemed shocking to see a senior U.S. intelligence official seated as a guest of a government on the State Department's list of sponsors of terrorism. Sudan has been on that list, and under U.S. sanctions, since 1993, while in May of this year President Bush announced additional measures against 31 Sudanese companies in response to the atrocities in Darfur.

But Khartoum is a long way from the klieg lights of Washington, and the CIA's links with Africa's biggest country are far from hostile, according to the officer who attended the CISSA event.

"The war on terror is as much on their minds as the Americans," he says. "The Sudanese are very much on top of the international situation. Sudan has always been very professional with us," says the officer. TIME cannot name him, he says, because he is "still undercover," laughing at the incongruity of making that claim while representing his country among about 500 African intelligence officers.

Despite the risk of blowing his cover, the CIA officer said he felt compelled to make the 6,500-mile trip to attend the two-day meeting. A simple glance at the map shows why: Sudan is about the size of Western Europe, and borders eight countries, including Libya, which only recently resumed diplomatic relations with Washington, and Ethiopia, from where U.S. forces launched strikes against al-Qaeda targets in Somalia early this year. Sudan's relatively porous borders make it a favored destination for people escaping various conflicts or transiting en route to others, and its Red Sea coast sits an easy boat ride across from Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden based himself and his network here after his expulsion from Saudi Arabia in the early 1990s, before departing for Afghanistan after U.S. pressure forced Khartoum to ask him to leave. In short, Arabic-speaking Sudan is an ideal American listening post, despite President Bush's pronouncements against Gen. Bashir.

And, with Sudan's intelligence chief, Lieut. Gen. Salah Gosh, installed for at the conference for a two-year term as head of CISSA, the U.S. will need quiet cooperation with Khartoum even more. Founded by the African Union, CISSA's aim is to share intelligence and operational logistics across Africa. Its establishment followed a botched coup in 2004 against oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, which was quashed by a rare, speedy intelligence operation involving South African agents. Still, the notion is ambitious: Several of those seated around the table have been adversaries at various points in the past.

To the CIA's representative, however, the event was a gold mine. As we stood chatting, a Zambian intelligence agent passed by to shake his hand, and arranged to meet him during a coffee break. "You see, this is why I come here," says the officer. Sitting next to the American at the conference table was the intelligence director of Algeria, another area of U.S. concern. "A little while ago, no one really knew about the GSPC," says the CIA man, referring to the militant jihadist group based in Algeria. Last year GSPC announced that it was transforming itself into al-Qaeda's representative in North Africa, and expanding its operations across the region. That is one of the most "worrisome" developments, says the CIA officer. "Africa could become a haven for terrorists."

Recent bomb attacks in Morocco and Algeria, as well as the fighting in Somalia, suggest that might already be the case. The CIA now has daily contact with Moroccan agents in Washington, according to Abdellatif Bendahane, Director of African Affairs at Morocco's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "We have very good relations," Bendahane told TIME last April. And expanding such liaison with all governments willing to fight al-Qaeda appears to be a priority, even when those governments may be politically at loggerheads with Washington.

On each delegate's seat sat a conference folder with an unfortunate grammatical error on its cover: "Khartoum receives CISSA with arms." At least for one quiet American, those arms were open.