Dirty Wars (59 page)

“They really spoiled our meeting,” bin Fareed recalled. But he was vindicated in the end. The men who had hijacked his rally were killed a few days later when the United States launched
another cruise missile attack
. Maybe the Americans had tracked them after they showed up at the rally, bin Fareed speculated. “They were killed,” he said. “All of them.”

IN YEMEN
, outrage about al Majalah was spreading, fueled largely by the assumption that it was a US bombing. The Yemeni parliament dispatched a delegation to do an
on-the-ground investigation
. When they arrived in the village, they “found that all the homes and their contents were burnt and all that was left were traces of furniture” along with “traces of blood of the victims and a number of holes in the ground left by the bombing...as well as a number of unexploded bombs.” Their investigation determined that the strike had killed forty-one members of two families, including fourteen women and twenty-one children. Some of the dead were sleeping when the missiles hit. The Saleh government insisted that fourteen al Qaeda operatives were killed, but the Yemeni parliamentary investigators said the government could only provide them with one name of an al Qaeda operative killed in the bombing—Kazemi, the “leader” known as Akron on
JSOC's list. Various Yemeni journalists and security analysts I interviewed
were puzzled
as to why Kazemi was being portrayed as an al Qaeda leader, pointing out that he was an aging veteran of the earlier wars in Afghanistan and was not a major figure within AQAP.

After the strike, a senior Yemeni official told the
New York Times
, “
The involvement of the United States
creates sympathy for Al Qaeda. The cooperation is necessary—but there is no doubt that it has an effect for the common man. He sympathizes with Al Qaeda.”

On December 21, ambassador Stephen Seche
sent a cable from Sana'a
back to Washington. Referencing the strikes, he said the Yemeni government “appears not overly concerned about unauthorized leaks regarding the U.S. role and negative media attention to civilian deaths.” Seche said that Deputy Prime Minister Rashad al Alimi told him that “any evidence of greater U.S. involvement such as fragments of U.S. munitions found at the sites—could be explained away as equipment purchased from the U.S.” But the United States and Yemen knew Saleh's forces did not have those bombs. In his cable, Ambassador Seche asserted that Yemen “must think seriously about its public posture and whether its strict adherence to assertions that the strikes were unilateral will undermine public support for legitimate and urgently needed CT operations, should evidence to the contrary surface.”

Indeed, months after the strike, Amnesty International published photographic evidence of the US bombs found at the scene. The
Pentagon would not respond
to the group's inquiries about the munitions. “A
military strike of this kind
against alleged militants without an attempt to detain them is at the very least unlawful,” said Philip Luther, deputy director of Amnesty International's Middle East-North Africa division. “The fact that so many of the victims were actually women and children indicates that the attack was in fact grossly irresponsible.” Amnesty noted that neither Yemen nor the United States had signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions, a treaty designed to ban the very weapons used in the strikes. Without publicly confirming the strike was a US operation, unnamed American officials “
cited strained resources
” in the decision to use the cruise missile, alleging that with “the C.I.A.'s armed drones tied up with the bombing campaign in Pakistan...cruise missiles were all that was available at the time.”

Yemeni officials told the US ambassador they had given the governor of Abyan
$100,000 to pay off the victims
and the families of the dead. Meanwhile, anonymous senior US counterterrorism officials defended the strikes. One told the
New York Times
they had been “
conducted very methodically
” and that reports of civilian deaths were “very much exaggerated.” But according to journalist Daniel Klaidman, Jeh Johnson, the
Pentagon lawyer who signed off on the strikes, reportedly said of his role in the al Majalah bombing, “
If I were Catholic
, I'd have to go to confession.” For his part, Saleh told the United States he wanted such operations to continue “
non-stop until we eradicate this disease
,” with Alimi adding that Yemen “‘must maintain the status quo' with regard to the official denial of U.S. involvement in order to ensure additional ‘positive operations' against AQAP,” according to a US cable sent four days after the strike. Yemen's foreign minister, Abu Bakr al Qirbi, asked the United States to “
stay quiet
” on its role in the strikes, saying it “should continue to refer inquiries to the Yemeni Government, highlight the [Yemeni government's] indigenous CT capabilities, and stress that al-Qaeda represents a threat not only to the West, but also to Yemen's security.” While US diplomats continued to develop the cover story with their Yemeni counterparts, more operations were being planned.

The role of the US government in the attacks in Yemen was only revealed through leaks. But it was clear who was calling the shots. Amid demands from the Yemeni parliament to explain the al Majalah massacre, Deputy Prime Minister Alimi started spinning an updated version of the story, saying, “Yemeni security forces carried out the operations using
intelligence aid from Saudi Arabia
and the United States of America in our fight against terrorism.” Although closer to the truth, that version of events was also false. “
It was cruise missile strikes
in combination with military units on the ground,” said Sebastian Gorka, an instructor at the US Special Operations Command's Joint Special Operations University, who had trained Yemeni forces. “It was a very distinct signal from the Obama administration that they are serious in assisting Yemen to remove these al Qaeda facilities from its soil. That was very much something executed by the United States, but with heavy support by the Yemeni government.”

According to senior US military and intelligence officials, during the ground raid that followed the December 17 Arhab strike near Sana'a, Yemeni Special Operations Forces working with the JSOC team discovered someone they claimed was a surviving al Qaeda would-be suicide bomber, who still had his vest on. He was
taken into custody and interrogated
, producing what the United States believed was actionable intelligence. A week after the deadly Abyan air strike and the ground raids near Sana'a, President Obama signed off on another hit, based in part on information provided by the prisoner taken in the Arhab raid. This time the target was an American citizen.

YEMEN, LATE
2009–
EARLY
2010—Nasser Awlaki had not heard from his son since May. On December 20, 2009, he received a call from President Saleh that caused his stomach to plummet. “
He called me at three o'clock
in the afternoon. He said, ‘Nasser, have you heard the news?' I said, ‘What news?' He said, ‘Four hours ago, your son was killed by an American airplane.' I said, ‘What American airplane? Where?'” Saleh told him the location, a mountainous area of Shabwah. Nasser hung up and started calling tribal leaders in the area, desperate for any information. There had been no air strikes reported. “I don't know why the president told me that,” Nasser later told me, adding that he believes the Americans had told Saleh they were going to hit Anwar on that day but that the operation had been called off for some reason. Regardless of the reason, it was now clear: “The Americans really wanted to kill Anwar.”

Four days after President Saleh called Nasser, on December 24,
US forces carried out an air strike
four hundred miles southeast of Sana'a in the Rafd mountain valley in Shabwah.
According to official accounts
, US and Yemeni intelligence indicated Awlaki was meeting with the two most important figures in the growing AQAP organization, Nasir al Wuhayshi, bin Laden's former secretary, and AQAP leader Said Ali al Shihri. Yemeni officials charged they were “planning an attack on
Yemeni and foreign oil targets
.”

The air strikes killed thirty people, and media outlets began reporting that Awlaki was dead, along with the two al Qaeda figures. Former intelligence officials and Yemen “experts” appeared on news programs characterizing the killings as “
a huge victory
for the struggle against al-Qaida in Yemen.” An unnamed senior administration official told the
Washington Post
that the Obama administration had no problems with targeting a US citizen who it believed had joined al Qaeda, saying, “It
doesn't really change anything
from the standpoint of whether we can target them” because “they are then part of the enemy.” The fact that the president had authorized an assassination strike against a US citizen went almost entirely unchallenged by Democrats and Republicans alike.

Although reports of the strikes being US operations made it onto major
media outlets, primarily through leaks from US officials intent on showing they were hitting al Qaeda, there was no official ownership of the attacks by the White House or Pentagon. “While the U.S. has
escaped the brunt of criticism
to date, continued leaks from Washington and international media coverage of American involvement could stir up anti-American resentment in Yemen,” declared a cable sent from the US Embassy in Sana'a back to Washington.

Nasser watched the news reports that his son had been killed. He managed to reach a tribal figure who was in contact with Anwar. “I got information that day that my son was not there, and he was not killed,” he recalled. When a reporter for the
Washington Post
called Nasser to get a comment from him on Anwar's death, Nasser told him Anwar was alive. Meanwhile, CBS News interviewed a source in Yemen who said that not only was Awlaki still alive, but the attacks were “
far from his house
and he had nothing to do with those killed.” Whether they were ever there or not, Wuhayshi and Shihri were not killed in the attack, either.

“They decided to kill [Anwar] at the end of 2009,” Nasser told me. “Is it legal for the United States to kill an American citizen, without a legal process, without due process? I want any decent American lawyer to tell me that it is right for the United States government to kill an American citizen, on the basis that he said something against the United States, or against American soldiers. I don't understand 100 percent the American Constitution, but I don't believe that the American Constitution, American law, will allow the killing of an American citizen because he said something against the United States.”

While the American government was hunting for Anwar Awlaki from the skies, Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye managed to track him down for an exclusive interview, which was broadcast around the globe and translated into multiple languages. In the United States, it was reported by major US television networks and printed in newspapers. Far from coming off as sympathetic,
Shaye's interview was tough
and seemed aimed at actually getting answers. Among the questions he asked Awlaki: How can you agree with what Nidal Hasan did as he betrayed his American nation? Why did you bless the acts of Nidal Hasan? Do you have any connection with the incident directly? Shaye also confronted Awlaki with inconsistencies from his previous interviews.

Under Shaye's questioning, Awlaki went into great depth articulating his defense of Nidal Hasan's massacre at Fort Hood, and he told Shaye he wanted to “clarify” his position on Hasan's shooting spree. “I did not recruit Nidal Hasan, but America did with its crimes and injustice, and this is what America does not want to admit. America does not want to admit
that what Nidal carried out, and what thousands of Muslims besides Nidal are doing in fighting against America, is because of its oppressive policies against the Islamic world,” Awlaki told the journalist. “Nidal Hasan, before he became an American, is a Muslim, and he is also from Palestine and he sees what the Jews are doing through oppressing his people under American cover and support. Yes, I may have a role in the intellectual direction of Nidal, but the matter does not exceed that, as I don't try to disconnect myself with what Nidal has done because of disagreement with it, but it would be an honor to me if I had a bigger role in it.”

Awlaki provided his e-mail correspondence with Hasan to Shaye so the journalist could reach his own conclusions about its contents. “I gave it to you to publish it because the American administration has prohibited publishing it,” Awlaki told him. “Why do they not want it out? What is the reason? Do they want to cover their security failure? Or, do they not want to confess that Nidal Hasan was a man of principle and that he did what he did as a service to Islam? Do they [want] to show it as a sudden, individual act with no relation to the actions of the criminal American Army?” Awlaki pointed out that the US government had been intercepting his e-mails with Hasan, including the first one, sent a year before the Fort Hood shootings, in which Hasan “asked whether killing American soldiers and officers is lawful or not.” Awlaki said the e-mails revealed the failure of US intelligence agencies. “I wonder where were the American security forces that one day claimed they can read the numbers of any license plate, anywhere in the world, from space.”

Shaye had caused trouble for the United States and the Yemeni government when he reported on the US role in the al Majalah bombing and other strikes. Now he was in contact with Anwar Awlaki, giving the preacher another opportunity to get his message out. Shaye was a serious journalist, chasing down important stories inside his own country. If anything, Shaye's interviews provided the US intelligence community, politicians and the pro-assassination pundits with ammunition to support their campaign to kill Awlaki. Nonetheless, the United States perceived Shaye as a threat—and one that had to be dealt with.