Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield

50. “Now They’re After My Son”

SOMALIA, WASHINGTON, DC, AND YEMEN, 2011—It was 11:35 p.m., Washington time. President Obama walked down the hallway leading to the East Room of the White House. He took his place at the lectern in a dark suit with a red tie and an American flag pin on his left lapel. “Good evening,” the president began. “Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.” The president did not mention the SEALs or Admiral McRaven. “At my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability,” the president asserted. “No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.”

In the ensuing weeks, controversy would swirl as White House officials leaked details of the operation that turned out to be wildly false or exaggerated. Although the administration explicitly said that the operation was “kill or capture,” and not an assassination, bin Laden was unarmed when he was killed and the weapons that were recovered in his bedroom were not loaded. Yet a senior administration official who briefed reporters soon after the raid claimed that bin Laden “did resist the assault force” and “was killed in a firefight as our operators came onto the compound.” In reality, the raid was far from the dramatic firefight described initially by White House officials.

In the span of less than twenty minutes, the SEALs had shot seven of the eleven adults in the compound, killing four men and one woman. According to Pakistani officials, both women and children were injured in the raid. Peter Bergen, who gained access to the compound and many witnesses, alleged that all of those who were injured appeared to have been unarmed. The international human rights group Amnesty International described the raid as illegal in its annual report for 2011. “The US administration made clear that the operation had been conducted under the USA’s theory of a global armed conflict between the USA and al-Qaeda in which the USA does not recognize the applicability of international human rights law,” the report asserted. “In the absence of further clarification from the US authorities, the killing of Osama bin Laden would appear to have been unlawful.”

The day after the operation, Brennan delivered an error-filled press conference that purported to give details of the raid. Brennan opened by claiming bin Laden was killed in a firefight and that there was no opportunity to take him alive. He later added that bin Laden used women in the compound as human shields. “Thinking about that from a visual perspective, here is bin Laden, who has been calling for these attacks, living in this million dollar-plus compound, living in an area that is far removed from the front, hiding behind women who were put in front of him as a shield,” he said. “I think it really just speaks to just how false his narrative has been over the years. And so, again, looking at what bin Laden was doing hiding there while he’s putting other people out there to carry out attacks again just speaks to I think the nature of the individual he was.” Brennan also alleged that one woman who died was shot while shielding bin Laden, though she was actually killed with her own husband. The White House was later forced to retract Brennan’s comments.

The leaks from the White House sparked outrage in the Special Ops community and ultimately led Bissonnette, one of the SEALs who had shot bin Laden, to write his own book on the raid, under the pen name Mark Owen, called No Easy Day, which he said he wrote to set the record straight. So many former SEALs and other Special Ops veterans began speaking out that McRaven issued a directive ordering all current and former Special Ops Forces to stop speaking to the media.

The night Obama had announced bin Laden’s death, thousands of Americans poured into the streets in front of the White House and in New York’s Times Square, chanting, “USA, USA!”

Victims’ families from the 9/11 attacks spoke of bin Laden’s death bringing closure. But the al Qaeda leader’s demise had breathed new life into Washington’s global war.

JSOC, once shrouded in secrecy, had overnight become a household name and was lionized in the media. The Disney Corporation actually tried to trademark the term “SEAL Team 6,” and Zero Dark Thirty, a high-profile Hollywood film, was put into production; the filmmakers were even given access to sensitive material.

While the battle over the leaks—and varying and contradictory narratives over how exactly bin Laden was killed—raged in the media, behind the scenes the White House was deeply immersed in planning more lethal operations against High Value Targets. Chief among these was Anwar Awlaki.

IN APRIL 2011, Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a Somali man the United States alleged had links to Somalia’s al Shabab, had been captured by JSOC forces in the Gulf of Aden. Warsame was aboard a small skiff when he was snatched by an amphibious team. US counterterrorism officials alleged that he had met with Awlaki and was building ties between al Shabab and AQAP. The JSOC forces took him to a military brig aboard the USS Boxer, where Warsame was held incommunicado for more than two months before being transferred to New York and indicted on conspiracy charges and providing material support to al Shabab and AQAP.

Although the Obama administration won praise from some in the civil liberties community for trying him in federal court rather than sending him to Guantánamo, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was not permitted to see him until after he had endured two months of regular interrogation on board the Boxer. Nor was Warsame given access to lawyers. Warsame’s case ignited a legal debate over the Obama administration’s policies on capturing and detaining terror suspects, particularly in light of the widening counterterrorism campaigns in Somalia and Yemen.

The executive orders that President Obama had issued two days after he was sworn into office required the US government to provide the ICRC with notification of, and timely access to, any persons in the custody of the US government. To those who had long fought the Bush administration’s detainee policies, the Warsame case indicated that Obama was violating his own executive orders. “This is illegal and inexcusable. It means in effect that Mr. Warsame was disappeared for this period with all the attendant dangers such hidden detention engenders. It is reminiscent of early Guantánamo Bay and CIA ‘black site’ detention,” alleged the Center for Constitutional Rights. The group accused the Obama administration of “stretching” the meaning of the original Authorization for Use of Military Force granted by Congress to enable pursuit of the 9/11 attackers and using it a decade later “to capture and detain, perhaps indefinitely, anyone it claims is a terrorism suspect anywhere in the world.”

But the Obama administration was not simply capturing or detaining suspects: It was interrogating them as part of its intensifying campaign to hunt down terrorists. After Warsame’s capture, US officials anonymously boasted to major US media outlets that he had provided them with actionable intelligence. The action sparked by that intelligence would not be in Somalia, but in Yemen, against one of Washington’s most wanted targets.

“I WANT AWLAKI,” President Obama told his counterterrorism team. “Don’t let up on him.”

Bin Laden was dead and Ayman al Zawahiri would soon take his place as the head of al Qaeda central, but it was the US citizen running around the badlands of Yemen that Obama and his team had labeled America’s new Public Enemy Number One. Obama was a constitutional law professor in a different lifetime, but as president he had developed an alternative legal structure for dealing with Awlaki. President Obama’s executive branch had served as prosecutor, judge and jury. As the ultimate authority, he had rendered his verdict. Now his handpicked forces would perform the execution.

Three days after Obama announced to the world that JSOC had killed Osama bin Laden, the president’s counterterrorism team presented him with an urgent intelligence update on Yemen. The CIA and JSOC believed they had pinpointed Awlaki’s location in the south of Yemen and said they had to seize this moment to take him out. Emboldened by the bin Laden raid, Obama’s generals had been agitating for the president to authorize a blitzkrieg of sorts to deliver a “knockout blow” to al Qaeda in a variety of countries. In Yemen, JSOC was talking about “running the table” and taking the fight to the enemy.

President Obama had ordered John Brennan to update him at every Terror Tuesday meeting on all available intelligence on Awlaki. Now the president was presented with a concrete opportunity to finish him off. According to Daniel Klaidman’s account, Warsame had provided crucial intelligence on Awlaki. The Navy SEALs who captured Warsame had also taken possession of his laptop, thumb drives and other data storage devices. “The hardware was filled with emails and other evidence tying him directly to Awlaki. Warsame had met with the cleric only two days before, completing a major weapons deal,” according to Klaidman. “Warsame’s exposure to Awlaki and other high-ranking members of AQAP gave him access to critical ‘patterns of life’ intelligence, which he divulged to US officials when they interrogated him. He told them how Awlaki traveled, including the kinds of vehicles he used and the configuration of his convoys. He provided information about Awlaki’s modes of communications as well as the elaborate security measures he and his entourage took.”

Along with signals intercepts by JSOC and the CIA and “vital details of Awlaki’s whereabouts” from Yemeni intelligence, the White House now had what it believed was its best shot to date at killing Awlaki. US military aircraft were at the ready. Obama gave the green light. JSOC would run the operation. A Special Ops Dragon Spear aircraft mounted with short-range Griffin missiles blasted through Yemeni airspace, backed by Marine Harrier jets and Predator drones, and headed toward Shabwah. A Global Hawk surveillance aircraft would hover above to relay a live feed back to the mission planners.

The American cleric, well aware that the United States was trying to kill him, had taken precautions to limit the number of people with whom he communicated. He changed locations frequently and switched vehicles often. On the evening of May 5, Awlaki and some friends were driving through Jahwa, in rural southern Shabwah, when their pickup truck was rocked by a massive explosion nearby, shattering its windows. Awlaki saw a flash of light and believed a rocket had been fired at the car. “Speed up!” Awlaki yelled at the driver. He looked around the truck and took stock of the situation. No one was hurt. The back of the truck was filled with canisters of gasoline, yet the vehicle had not exploded. Alhamdulillah, Awlaki thought. “Praise God.” He called for backup.

While Awlaki and his colleagues scrambled to get away from what they thought was an ambush, JSOC planners watched via satellite as his car emerged from the dust clouds the Griffin had caused. They’d missed. There had been a malfunction of the targeting pod, and the guidance system was unable to keep a lock on Awlaki’s vehicle. It would now be up to the Harriers and the drone. Strike two. A massive fireball lit up the sky. Just as the celebrations were to begin, the mission’s planners watched in shock as the truck emerged once again. Its back bumper had been hit, but the truck was on the run. The Harriers were running low on fuel and had to abandon the mission. The third strike had to come from the drone. Awlaki peered out the window, looking for the perpetrators of the ambush. It was then he saw it: a drone hovering in the sky. As smoke and dust engulfed the area, Awlaki told the driver not to head toward any populated areas. They pulled into a small valley with some trees.

Two brothers, Abdullah and Musa’d Mubarak al Daghari, known in the AQAP community as the al Harad brothers, had seen the strike from a distance and were speeding to Awlaki’s rescue. As the drone hovered overhead, the US war planners could not see what was happening below. A former JSOC planner, who read the US after-action reports on the failed mission, told me that the mission only had satellites that provided “top down imagery.” With such satellites, he said, “You can’t see shit. You’re looking down at ants moving. All they saw were vehicles and the people in the vehicles were smart.” Dust, gravel, smoke and flames had shielded the High Value Target. The Harad brothers quickly marshaled Awlaki and his driver into their Suzuki Vitara SUV and they took Awlaki’s vehicle. They gave Awlaki directions to a cliff where he could go to take shelter, if he could make it past the American missiles. Awlaki hastily said goodbye and sped off in the Suzuki. The Harad brothers then headed in the opposite direction, driving in the truck the Americans had tried to blow up moments earlier.

As two vehicles took off in opposite directions, the American war planners had to decide which one to follow. They stuck with Awlaki’s truck. Awlaki looked up and saw the drones still hovering. He managed to make it to the cliff in the mountains. From there, he watched as another round of missiles shot out of the sky and blew up the truck, killing the Harad brothers.

As JSOC celebrated what it thought was a successful hit, Awlaki performed the evening prayers and reflected on the situation. Tonight has “increased my certainty that no human being will die until they complete their livelihood and [reach their] appointed time,” he thought. He fell asleep in the mountains, awakened later by colleagues who took him to safety at the home of his old friend Shaykh Nadari.

Nadari was asleep when the strikes happened, but he awoke to the sound of the explosions and had felt the ground shake. “When the time of dawn approached and as the light began to spread, it brought about with it Sheikh Anwar,” Nadari later recalled. “He entered upon us with a cheerful smile so we all knew that he was the one targeted.” The men embraced and Awlaki debriefed him on the strikes. He estimated that ten or eleven missiles had been fired during the attacks. Nadari asked him what it was like to be bombed by the Americans. “I found it much easier than we think of it. Something of fear befalls you, but the Almighty Allah sends down tranquility,” Awlaki told his friend. “This time eleven missiles missed [their] target but the next time, the first rocket may hit it.” Awlaki stayed with Nadari for a few days and then moved on. It was the last time the men would see each other.

“We were hoping it was him,” said a US official after the strike. As news spread of the attack, anonymous US officials confirmed that the strike had been aimed at Awlaki. And for a moment, they thought they had accomplished the mission. The US drone operators “did not know that vehicles were exchanged and resulted in the wrong people dying and [that] Awlaki [was] still alive,” according to a Yemeni security official.

Awlaki may have escaped, but the United States now had a serious bead on him. “The U.S. government has been targeting al-Awlaki now for some time, [and the] pace of that operation has been increasing,” said Fran Townsend, the former senior Bush administration official. “You’ve got to believe they had an operational plan to attack the entire leadership [of al Qaeda], that the drone attack against al-Awlaki, if they had the opportunity, was going to be timed to the operation against bin Laden so that they were going to send a very distinct message that the entire leadership of al Qaeda, wherever they could be found, would be under attack.”

Nasser Awlaki could not reach his son, but he had heard from intermediaries that Anwar was alive. He knew that, having failed yet again in its mission to find and kill him, the United States would be more determined than ever to finish the job. He watched the international news reports on the bin Laden raid and listened as commentators, pundits and senior US officials compared his son to the al Qaeda leader and even suggested that Awlaki would now succeed him as its leader. “They’ve killed bin Laden and now they’re after my son,” he said.