Washington Post, 10 Feb 10: As deputy director of Yemen’s feared internal security agency a few years ago, Mohammed al-Surmi was in charge of monitoring al-Qaeda extremists. But he also allegedly lived a double life, feeding the terrorist network information to uncover informants within its ranks. Surmi was removed from his job, but still wields influence: He is now deputy mayor of the capital, Sana’a, where some residents call him “His Excellency.”

Surmi is a testament to the obstacles the Obama administration faces as it deepens its partnership with Yemen. U.S. and some Yemeni officials remain concerned that radical Islamists and corrupt officials who can be bought off by al-Qaeda still pervade the Political Security Organization, the country’s largest security and intelligence agency, which is vital to America’s counterterrorism initiatives here. “Al-Qaeda has a very aggressive effort to get whatever information they can from those individuals,” said a senior Obama Administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

In 2006, al-Qaeda militants broke out of a maximum-security prison in 2006. Today, senior Yemeni officials acknowledge that PSO officials with sympathies to al-Qaeda facilitated the jail break. “It could not have happened without people deeply inside the PSO,” said Abdul Karim al-Iriyani, a former prime minister and current political adviser to Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. . . . .