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The Central Intelligence Agency managed to kill one of its most wanted terrorists in the world -- Al Qaeda leader Anwar al Awlaki -- in a drone strike attack in September 2011 after hatching a fake marriage plot with a Croatian woman.
Al Awlaki was linked with 2009's Fort Hood shooting and the foiled airplane underwear bomb that happened later in the same year.
The plot to kill al Awlaki revolved around a Danish CIA-Al Qaeda double agent, who was paid 250,000 dollars by the CIA in 2009 to find and deliver a European wife to the terrorist mastermind, the New York Post reports.
According to the paper, Morten Storm, the double agent, said that in 2010 he found a Croatian woman named Aminah through a Facebook page set up for fans of al Awlaki.
He used the money he got from the CIA to play matchmaker, and through a series of bizarre and chilling videos, text messages, and emails, he helped Aminah entice al Awlaki.
Storm said that apparently Aminah's wooing worked because al Awlaki accepted the proposal in a video of his own, saying, "If you can live in difficult conditions, don't mind loneliness, and can live with restrictions on your communications with others, that is great."
Storm revealed that with the courtship done, al Awlaki invited Aminah to meet up with him in Yeman, where the CIA was planning to kill the couple in a drone strike. He was subsequently killed in a CIA drone strike in September 2011.