Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield

56. Hellfire

WASHINGTON, DC, AND YEMEN, 2011—On September 6, 2011, General David Petraeus was sworn in as the director of the CIA. A decade after 9/11, the Agency had been transformed as a result of its behind-the-scenes turf war with JSOC. And for some veteran intelligence officials, Obama’s selection of Petraeus was an ominous symbol. “The CIA has become more militarized, and is working very closely with JSOC, to the extent that they’re even using CIA cover, which would have been unimaginable ten years ago,” former CIA case officer Phil Giraldi told me. “A considerable part of the CIA budget is now no longer spying. It’s supporting paramilitaries who work closely with JSOC to kill terrorists, and to run the drone program.” The CIA, he added, “is a killing machine now.”

A State Department liaison who worked extensively with JSOC described Petraeus’s vision for running the CIA as transforming the Agency into “a mini-Special Operations Command that purports to be an intelligence agency.” For all the praise Petraeus won for his counterinsurgency strategy and the “surge” in Iraq, the liaison told me, Petraeus’s most significant contribution was as a “political tool,” an enabler of those within the national security apparatus who wanted to see a continuation and expansion of covert global small wars. Pointing to the “mystique that surrounds JSOC” and Admiral William McRaven, the liaison said, “Petraeus was trying to implement that kind of command climate at the CIA.”

Colonel Patrick Lang told me that once Petraeus arrived at Langley, he “wanted to drag them in the covert action direction and to be a major player.”

FOR TWO YEARS, the US efforts to assassinate Anwar Awlaki were based on intelligence that he was hiding in his tribal areas around Shabwah and Abyan. But the interrogation sessions with Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame—the young Somali snatched by JSOC and held for months on board a US Navy vessel—had indicated that Awlaki had relocated to the northern Yemeni governate of Jawf, far from the scene of most of the strikes aimed at killing him. The United States had long assumed Awlaki was in Shabwah and had repeatedly conducted operations there in an effort to get him. Yemeni intelligence on the ground had corroborated the information that Warsame had given US interrogators when JSOC held him. By early September, US surveillance aircraft had pinpointed Awlaki’s location at a small house in Khashef, a village in Jawf about ninety miles northeast of Sana’a. Jawf, which borders Saudi Arabia, was rife with informants on the kingdom’s payroll.

Local villagers in Khashef began seeing drones hovering in the skies above. Washington’s drone war had kicked into full gear in Yemen, so the presence of the aircraft was not particularly out of the ordinary, but what the villagers did not know was that the White House’s counterterrorism teams were watching one specific house. Watching and waiting. Once they got a lock on Awlaki’s coordinates, the CIA quickly deployed several armed Predator drones from its new base in Saudi Arabia and took operational control of some JSOC drones launched from Djibouti, as well.

The plan to assassinate Awlaki was code-named Operation Troy. The very name implied that the United States had a mole who was leading its forces to Awlaki.

As the Americans surveilled the house where Anwar Awlaki was staying in Jawf, Abdulrahman Awlaki arrived in Ataq, Shabwah. He was picked up at the bus station by his relatives, who told him that they did not know where his father was. The boy decided to wait in the hope that his father would come to meet him. His grandmother called the family he was with in Shabwah, but Abdulrahman refused to speak to her. “I called the family house and they said, ‘He’s OK, he’s here,’ but I didn’t talk to him,” she recalled. “He tried to avoid talking to us, because he knows we will tell him to come back. And he wanted to see his father.” Abdulrahman traveled with some of his cousins to the town of Azzan, where he planned to await word from his father.

At the White House, President Obama was faced with a decision, not of morality or legality, but of timing. He had already sentenced Anwar Awlaki, a US citizen, to death without trial. A secret legal authorization had been prepared and internal administration critics sidelined or brought on board. All that remained to sort out was the day Awlaki would die. Obama, one of his advisers recalled, had “no qualms” about this kill. According to leaks from the Obama administration about the operation, US officials knew there were women and children in the house where Awlaki was staying. Although scores of US drone strikes had killed civilians in various countries around the globe, it was official policy to avoid such deaths if at all possible. When Obama was briefed on Awlaki’s location in Jawf and was told that children were in the home, he was explicit that he did not want any options ruled out. Awlaki was not to escape again. “Bring it to me and let me decide in the reality of the moment rather than in the abstract,” Obama told his advisers. “In this one instance,” an Obama confidant recalled, “the president considered relaxing some of his collateral requirements.”

Awlaki had evaded US drones and cruise missiles for at least two years. He rarely stayed in one place more than a night or two. This time was different. For some reason, he had stayed in the same house in Khashef much longer, all the while being monitored by the United States. Now the Americans had him cleanly in their sights. “They were living in this house, for at least two weeks. Small mud house,” Nasser was later told by local people. “I think they wanted to make some videotape. Samir Khan was with him.” On the morning of September 30, 2011, Awlaki and Khan finished their breakfast inside the house. US spy cameras and satellites broadcast images back to Washington and Virginia of the two men and a handful of their cohorts piling into vehicles and driving away from the house. They began heading toward the province of Marib. As the vehicles made their way over the dusty, unpaved roads, US drones, armed with Hellfire missiles, were dispatched to hunt them down. The drones were technically under the command of the CIA, though JSOC aircraft and ground forces were poised to jump in should the operation require their assistance. A team of commandos stood at the ready to board V-22 helicopters and take action. For extra measure, US Marine Harrier jets scrambled in a backup maneuver.

Six months earlier, Awlaki had narrowly missed death by US missiles. “This time eleven missiles missed its target but the next time, the first rocket may hit it,” he had said. As the cars sped down the road, Awlaki’s prophecy came true. Two of the Predator drones locked onto the car carrying Awlaki, while other aircraft hovered as backup. A Hellfire missile fired from a drone slammed into his car, transforming it into a ball of flames. A second missile hit moments later, ensuring that the men inside would never escape if they had managed to survive. “Just a few minutes after they left the house, they were going to a wadi, somewhere they can make this film, and they were targeted,” said Nasser. “The car was completely destroyed. And [Anwar’s] body was cut out of the car.” The Yemeni government sent out a text message to journalists. “The terrorist Anwar Awlaki has been killed along with some of his companions,” it read. It was 9:55 a.m. local time. When villagers in the area arrived at the scene of the missile strikes, they reported that the bodies inside had been burned beyond recognition. There were no survivors. Amid the rubble, they found a symbol more reliable than a fingerprint in Yemeni culture: a charred rhinoceros horn handle of a jambiya dagger. There was no doubt it belonged to Anwar Awlaki.

ON SEPTEMBER 30, during a visit to Fort Myer in Virginia, President Obama stepped up to a podium and addressed reporters. “Earlier this morning Anwar Awlaki, a leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, was killed in Yemen,” Obama declared. “The death of Awlaki is a major blow to al Qaeda’s most active operational affiliate.” The president then bestowed upon Awlaki a label that had never been attached to him before, despite all his reported associations with al Qaeda. “Awlaki was the leader of external operations for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. In that role, he took the lead in planning and directing efforts to murder innocent Americans,” Obama asserted. “The death of Awlaki marks another significant milestone in the broader effort to defeat al Qaeda and its affiliates,” adding that the United States “will be resolute in our commitment to destroy terrorist networks that aim to kill Americans, and to build a world in which people everywhere can live in greater peace, prosperity and security.” Obama made no mention of the fact that Awlaki was a US citizen.

Back in Yemen, the Awlaki family received word of the strike in Jawf. At first they doubted the official reports, as so many before had been false, but then they confirmed that this time they were accurate. As they mourned the death of their son Anwar, the Awlakis’ attention turned to their grandson, Abdulrahman. He had gone to Shabwah to find his father, and now his father was dead.

After Abdulrahman heard the news of Anwar’s death, he called home for the first time and spoke to his mother and his grandmother. “That’s enough, Abdulrahman. You have to come back,” his grandmother, Saleha, told him. “That’s it, you didn’t see your father.” Abdulrahman, she recalled, sounded devastated, yet still tried to comfort her. “Be patient. Be strong,” Abdulrahman told her. “Allah chose him.” The conversation was brief. Abdulrahman said he would return home soon but that he wanted to wait for the roads to clear. “At the time, the roads were not very safe. The revolution was at its maybe highest point,” Saleha added. There were police checkpoints and fighting on the route. Abdulrahman did not want to be detained or caught up in any violence. So the boy said he would remain with his cousins in Shabwah and return to Sana’a when things calmed down.

IN NORTH CAROLINA, Sarah Khan woke up to the news from Yemen. “In the morning when I opened the computer, I saw that they had killed Anwar Awlaki,” she told me. There was no mention of her son, Samir, in the early reports. But then Sarah’s husband, Zafar, called her from his office and said he had seen some reports indicating that a “Samir Khan” had also been killed in the drone strikes. “I didn’t believe it,” Sarah told me. “Samir is a name that is pretty common in the Middle East—it could be any Samir. Doesn’t have to be my Samir. I was like, it’s not true. It cannot be Samir. It has to be somebody else. I didn’t want to believe in that.” As more reports trickled out, they began to accept the fact that their son was dead, killed by his own government. The Khans tried to contact the State Department for information, for answers. Why was Samir killed when the FBI had told his family that he had committed no crime? The grand jury that was convened to consider charges against him a year earlier, in August 2010, had produced no indictment. Why was he condemned to death without trial? Their inquiries were met with silence.

The Khans—who had done everything they could to stay away from the media spotlight when their son became a known figure in Inspire magazine—decided to take their questions public. After the strike in Yemen, they wrote an open letter to the US government in a local newspaper. “It has been stated in the media that Samir was not the target of the attack; however no US official has contacted us with any news about the recovery of our son’s remains, nor offered us any condolences. As a result, we feel appalled by the indifference shown to us by our government,” the letter read. “Being a law abiding citizen of the United States our late son Samir Khan never broke any law and was never implicated of any crime. The Fifth Amendment states that no citizen shall be ‘deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law,’ yet our government assassinated two of its citizens. Was this style of execution the only solution? Why couldn’t there have been a capture and trial? Where is the justice? As we mourn our son, we must ask these questions.”

Days later, Zafar Khan received a phone call from the US State Department. The official on the line expressed the US government’s “condolences” for Samir’s death. “They said that they were sorry and that Samir wasn’t the target,” Sarah Khan told me. “They said Sammy did not do anything wrong. They said he was not the target.” That only raised more questions for her. “If they knew that Samir was there, in that vehicle, then how could they do something like that?” she asked. Obama administration officials later told reporters that Khan was “collateral damage” in a strike aimed at Awlaki, but Representative Michael McCaul from Texas had another word for it. “Samir Khan was a bonus. It was a twofer,” McCaul said. “It’s a pretty good hit.”

As word of Awlaki’s death spread, politicians in the United States from both political parties hailed the assassination of one of their own citizens. “This is an extraordinary victory, a great moment for the United States,” gloated Republican congressman Peter King, the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee. Awlaki, he said, had become “more dangerous than bin Laden”—indeed, he was “the No. 1 terrorist in the world.” Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, celebrated Awlaki’s killing, saying in a joint statement with Republican senator Saxby Chambliss that he “posed a significant and imminent threat to the United States” and had “declared war on the United States and inspired and planned attacks against us. We commend the agencies and individuals who found him and eliminated this dangerous threat.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “Like Osama bin Laden and so many other terrorist leaders who have been killed or captured in recent years, [Awlaki] can no longer threaten America, our allies, or peace-loving people anywhere in the world. Today we are all safer.”

“I’m glad they did it,” said Republican senator John McCain. Former vice president Dick Cheney praised Obama for killing Awlaki, saying, “I do think this was a good strike. I think the president ought to have that kind of authority to order that kind of strike, even when it involves an American citizen.” CIA director Leon Panetta echoed those sentiments, declaring, “This individual was clearly a terrorist and yes, he was a citizen, but if you’re a terrorist, you’re a terrorist.”

Although Awlaki’s killing did not inspire the same spontaneous carnival-like street celebrations in the streets of Washington, DC, and New York City that marked bin Laden’s death, some tabloid newspapers staged their own victory parades on their pages. “Another al Qaeda Bites the Dust; Blasted to Hell; CIA Drone Kills US-Born Terrorist al-Awlaki,” declared the New York Post. “Remote-Control Really Hits the Splat,” proclaimed another headline in the paper. “One Less Terror Big. Al Qaeda Loses Leader in Attack; Their violent hatred for US dies when a missile strike killed off an American-born monster militant,” announced the New York Daily News.

The only voices of dissent that emanated from Washington in the immediate aftermath of Awlaki’s killing came from the fringes of the Democratic and Republican parties. “If the American people accept this blindly and casually, that we now have an accepted practice of the president assassinating people who he thinks are bad guys, I think it’s sad,” Texas Republican Ron Paul said on the campaign trail as he waged an unsuccessful insurgent campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. “Awlaki was born here, he’s an American citizen. He was never tried or charged for any crimes. To start assassinating American citizens without charges—we should think very seriously about this.” Democrat Dennis Kucinich, who tried to challenge the government’s assertion that it could kill US citizens without trial nearly two years before Awlaki’s death, said, “The Administration has a crossed a dangerous divide and set a dangerous precedent for how the United States handles terrorism cases. This dangerous legal precedent allows the government to target U.S. citizens abroad for being suspected of involvement in terrorism, in subversion of their most basic constitutional rights and due process of law. Their right to a trial is summarily and anonymously stripped from them.”

Constitutional lawyer and syndicated columnist Glenn Greenwald was among the few US commentators to look askance at the celebrations of Awlaki’s killing, writing, “After several unsuccessful efforts to assassinate its own citizen, the U.S. succeeded today.” He correctly predicted that few Americans would raise questions or express outrage at the killing. “What’s most amazing is that its citizens will not merely refrain from objecting, but will stand and cheer the U.S. government’s new power to assassinate their fellow citizens, far from any battlefield, literally without a shred of due process from the U.S. government.”

In an interview the day Awlaki’s death was announced, Greenwald said, “Remember that there was great controversy that George Bush asserted the power simply to detain American citizens without due process or simply to eavesdrop on their conversation without warrant. Here you have something much more severe. Not eavesdropping on American citizens, not detaining them without due process, but killing them without due process. And yet many Democrats and progressives, because it’s President Obama doing it, have no problem with it and are even in favor of it.” Greenwald added: “To say that the President has the right to kill citizens without due process is really to take the Constitution and to tear it into as many little pieces as you can and then burn it and step on it.”

For some former senior members of the Bush administration, the killing of a US citizen by a Democratic president seemed to take the acceptable bounds of US conduct in the war on terror beyond their own lax standards. “Right now, there isn’t a government on the planet that agrees with our legal rationale for these operations, except for Afghanistan and maybe Israel,” said former Bush CIA director Michael Hayden. “We needed a court order to eavesdrop on” Awlaki, he noted, “but we didn’t need a court order to kill him. Isn’t that something?”

Even as the legal issues surrounding Awlaki’s killing received little attention in the US media and barely registered a blip on the radar of the general public in the United States, a few journalists and some lawmakers on Capitol Hill began seeking information about the process of authorizing the assassination of US citizens. Only a select few in Washington knew anything specific. “There’s a process that goes through the National Security Council, and then after that it goes to the president, and then the president then indicates that these individuals are on this list, and as a result of that process we followed it’s legal,” said Charles Albert “Dutch” Ruppersberger III, a Maryland Democrat who was the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee at the time. “It’s legitimate, and we’re taking out someone who has attempted to attack us on numerous occasions, and he was on that list. It was pursuant to a process.”

While the White House and some leading national security lawmakers assured journalists and the public that the process was lawful, the administration refused to make public its evidence. Some lawmakers—whose security clearances and committee assignments authorized them to review the kill process—alleged that they were not being sufficiently briefed by the White House. “It’s important for the American people to know when the president can kill an American citizen, and when they can’t,” Senator Ron Wyden told me. Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, had served on the Senate Intelligence Committee since 2001 and often found himself at odds with the Bush administration over secrecy and transparency issues. Now, under a Democratic president, he was waging the same battles—and new ones. He said that he repeatedly asked the administration for its legal rationale for the government killing its own citizens without trial, calling his attempts to extract this information “an enormous struggle.” The American people, Wyden said, deserve “to know clearly when a president thinks an American citizen can be killed, and their life taken. These are substantial questions where I just don’t think there’s been a lot of detail, and the American people deserve more.” In the case of Awlaki, the target had not been indicted in any US court and faced no known charges. How would he have surrendered? To whom would he even surrender? “Those questions are clearly sort of hanging in suspended animation, without answers,” Wyden told me.

Giraldi, the former CIA officer, labeled Awlaki’s killing an “assassination.” He had reviewed the publicly available information about Awlaki and what the administration had alleged Awlaki had done. “None of those things, to me, amounted to a death sentence. And they’re saying, ‘Well, we have other stuff, but it’s secret,’” Giraldi told me at the time. “And that’s of course the thing that’s always trotted out, and if there’s a challenge in the courts, you come up against the State Secrets Privilege, so that the challenge goes away. So we’re having a situation where people are being killed, you don’t know what the evidence is, and you have no way to redress the situation.”

Nasser Awlaki believed that the US and Yemeni security forces could have arrested Anwar, but that they did not want to see him stand trial and be able to present a defense. It is also possible that the United States did not want to give Awlaki a platform to spread his message more widely. “I think that they wanted to kill him, without due process, because they thought he was a legitimate military target,” Nasser told me. “How is it that Umar Farouk, who tried to blow up the airplane, or Nidal Hasan, who actually killed those soldiers, how are they now having, let us say, a fair trial? My son did not get that fair trial.”