Predator

by Richard Whittle

  Clarke was increasingly frustrated: Clarke, Against All Enemies, p. 231.

  a new, more comprehensive approach: 9/11 Commission Report, p. 202

  April 30 Deputies Committee session: Clarke, Against All Enemies, p. 231.

  “I do not believe”: 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 211 and 513n238.

  Cofer Black wanted: Coll, Ghost Wars, p. 544.

  The edifice Mattoon: Barton Gellman, “A Strategy’s Cautious Evolution; Before Sept. 11, the Bush Anti-Terror Effort Was Mostly Ambition,” Washington Post, January 20, 2002; Chitra Ragavan, Carol Hook, Danielle Burton, and Stephanie Salmon, “Clinton, Bush, and the Hunt for bin Laden,” U.S. News & World Report, September 29, 2006, accessed at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060929/29predator.htm.

  exterior walls stood: The measurements and other details of “Taco Bell” are taken from plans for the building provided to the author.

  terrorist threats against the United States: 9/11 Commission Report, p. 255.

  “system was blinking red”: Ibid., p. 254.

  lining the room’s walls: Author interviews with participants.

  Campbell found this comforting: Author interview with Lt. Gen. (Ret.) John Campbell.

  10: READY OR NOT

  “What if I could figure out”: Author interviews with Werner.

  All through June: 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 255–59.

  Richard Clarke convened: Clarke, Against All Enemies, p. 236.

  sent a memo to CIA Deputy Director: 9/11 Commission Report, p. 211.

  sent ten key members: The letters went to the chairmen and ranking minority members of the Senate and House Armed Services committees, the Senate and House Defense Appropriations subcommittees, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Copies in the author’s possession.

  meeting that same day: 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 211–12.

  CTC operations center was crowded: Greg Miller, “Warning on Focus of Spy Agencies,” Washington Post, March 21, 2013, p. 1.

  gave General Atomics a new contract: Department of the Air Force, 645th Material Squadron (AFMC), “Statement of Work for General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Incorporated, Predator HELLFIRE Integration Phase III Program,” Contract F33657-98-G-3110-0020-05, Predator Program, July 11, 2001, copy in the author’s possession.

  Pace told Tom Cassidy: Author interview with Frank Pace.

  NSC Deputies Committee had decided: 9/11 Commission Report, p. 212.

  That order: Executive Order 12333, United States intelligence activities, 46 FR 59941, 3 CFR, 1981 Comp., December 4, 1981, p. 200.

  also still skeptical: George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), p. 160.

  was even more opposed: Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, The Age of Sacred Terror: Radical Islam’s War Against America (New York: Random House, 2002), p. 344. Clarke, who was present at the September 4, 2001, meeting, cites The Age of Sacred Terror’s description in his own book on page 222.

  After a brief discussion: 9/11 Commission Report, p. 213.

  memo laid out: Coll, Ghost Wars, p. 573.

  led to heated discussion: Clarke, Against All Enemies.

  Tenet, who had been briefed: George Tenet, written statement to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, March 24, 2004, accessed at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4592866/ns/us_news-security/.

  He contended: Author interview with attendees at the September 4, 2001, meeting; Tenet, At the Center of the Storm, p. 160. Tenet writes that “the Predator still wasn’t ready” to fly “weaponized,” though “the Hellfire missile system was slowly edging toward being ready for deployment.” Tenet also writes, “There was a legitimate question about whether aircraft firing missiles at enemies of the United States should be the function of the military or the CIA. It was an important issue, or so it seemed at the time, and I was skeptical about whether a military weapon should be fired outside the military chain of command.”

  agreed that was a good idea: 9/11 Commission Report, p. 214.

  launch-and-recovery team: Woodward, Bush at War, p. 110.

  11: WILDFIRE

  When the attacks began: Author interviews with Gen. (Ret.) John P. Jumper, 2011 and 2014.

  Johns said he’d have to call: Author interviews with Col. (Ret.) William Grimes and Lt. Col. (Ret.) Kenneth Johns.

  set up the communications structure: Welch’s father, Gen. (Ret.) Larry D. Welch, was Air Force chief of staff from 1986 to 1990. In a September 8, 2004, oral history interview for the Institute for Defense Analysis, retired general Welch said of his son, Paul, “He was the leader of the technical team that put together the control communications and the control stuff to fly the Predator from Langley, Virginia. Many experts said it couldn’t be done because of the latency problem. But combat comm people don’t know ‘can’t’ and his colonel made certain that they had every opportunity to make it work and they did. So they can fly the Predator over Afghanistan and Iraq from the 5th floor of a building in Langley, Virginia.” General Welch was incorrect about the location of the Predator flight controls, which were in a stand-alone ground control station on the CIA campus, not on the “5th floor of a building.” Military Operations Research Society Oral History Interview with General Larry D. Welch, September 8, 2004, Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), Alexandria, Virginia, Jim Bexfield and Bob Sheldon, interviewers, published in Military Operations Research 9, no. 4 (2004).

  airfield in Uzbekistan: Woodward, Bush at War, p. 110.

  happy to let the two colonels: Author interview with Lt. Mike Kennedy, Arkansas State Police, December 17, 2013.

  took off again at 7:00 p.m.: Arrival and departure times of the C-17 are taken from contemporaneous notes kept by one member of the Predator team.

  Bush replied: “There’s No Rules,” CNN.com, http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/09/17/gen.bush.transcript.

  memorandum specifically empowered: Woodward, Bush at War, p. 101.

  would have to obtain: Ibid., p. 166.

  residence bin Laden had built: Coll, Ghost Wars, p. 493. A description of the compound can also be found in Jon Lee Anderson, The Lion’s Grave: Dispatches from Afghanistan (New York: Grove Press, 2002).

  Omar added a T-shaped bunker: “U.S. Special Forces Using Former Taliban Base,” Associated Press, February 1, 2007.

  The initial strikes: Benjamin S. Lambeth, “Air Power Against Terror: America’s Conduct of Operation Enduring Freedom,” prepared for the U.S. Central Command Air Forces, RAND National Defense Research Institute, Santa Monica, Calif., 2005, pp. 78–79.

  fighter-bombers were waiting: Contemporaneous notes taken by an officer in the Combined Air Operations Center on October 7, 2001, and shown to the author.

  best evidence available: The only detailed written account authored by a participant in the drama surrounding the attempt to kill Mullah Omar appears in Gen. (Ret.) Tommy Franks’s memoir, American Soldier, written with Malcolm McConnell (New York: HarperCollins, 2004). Blatant inaccuracies in Franks’s account, however, call into question the credibility of the rest. Franks describes, for example, talking directly to the pilot of the Predator, which pilot Scott Swanson and others present at the CIA on October 7, 2001, say never happened and was never contemplated. The chain of communication ran from Franks to an Army lieutenant colonel at the CIA who was his liaison, then to the Air Force operations director, then to the Air Force mission manager, and then to the pilot. Other participants dispute many other aspects of Franks’s account, which among other things misstates by five hours the time difference between Tampa and Kandahar. Through an assistant, Franks declined the author’s e-mailed request for an interview.

  Their view: Author interview with Gen. (Ret.) Victor E. “Gene” Renuart Jr., U.S. Central Command operations director as the Afghan war began.

  Franks would later write: None of several Air Force members of the Predator team on duty that night could recall Franks ordering the initial Hellfire sh
ot he describes in his book.

  Franks wrote in a memoir: Franks, American Soldier.

  12: CLEARED TO FIRE

  argued with the CIA: Franks reports nothing about this debate in his memoir, American Soldier.

  “As I watched”: Franks, American Soldier, p. 293.

  “We ought to have 50”: Woodward, Bush at War, p. 223.

  The first night of the war: Pentagon News Briefing, Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, October 9, 2001, transcript available at www.defense.gov.

  the only UAV in use: A Pentagon spokesman announced on November 2, 2001, that the RQ-4 Global Hawk—a high-altitude UAV that, like the Predator, began as an Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration but first flew in 1998—would deploy to Afghanistan. The only other UAVs available at the time were the RQ-2 Pioneer, used by the Marine Corps, and the RQ-5 Hunter and RQ-7 Shadow, used by the Army. All of those were small, offered little endurance, and had sparked no great interest in drones. The Hunter program, in fact, had been cancelled in 1996, but the Army still owned four systems of eight aircraft each. As neither the Marine Corps nor the Army deployed to Afghanistan in the early days of the war, none of these UAVs was in use there at the time Rumsfeld was describing. For more detail, see Office of the Secretary of Defense, “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Roadmap 2002–2007,” published and released December 2002.

  journalist Seymour Hersh revealed: Seymour Hersh, “Annals of National Security, King’s Ransom, How Vulnerable Are the Saudi Royals?” New Yorker, October 22, 2001, p. 35. Hersh’s description of the armed Predator’s use by the CIA in Afghanistan was a global scoop, though his description of the aircraft and his account of the Mullah Omar pursuit are incorrect in many details.

  quickly followed up: Tom Ricks, “U.S. Arms Unmanned Aircraft; ‘Revolution’ in Sky Above Afghanistan,” Washington Post, October 18, 2001, p. A1.

  One G: “One G” can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5YD3BZO7Ys.

  first U.S. troops into Afghanistan: Charles H. Briscoe, Richard L. Kiper, James A. Schroder, and Kalev I. Sepp, Weapon of Choice: U.S. Army Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan (Fort Leavenworth, Kans.: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2003), p. 96.

  13: NEVER MIND … WE’LL DO IT OURSELVES

  319-count indictment: Indictment S(9) 98 Cr. 1023 (LBS), U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, November 4, 1998.

  State Department offered: “Reward Offer: Osama Bin Laden and Mohammad Atef,” press statement by James P. Rubin, spokesman, U.S. Department of State, November 4, 1998.

  acquire biological and chemical weapons: Wright, Looming Tower, p. 343.

  Atef publicly took credit: Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know (New York: Free Press, 2006), p. 255.

  Atef personally searched them: Khaled Dawoud, “Mohammed Atef: Egyptian Militant Who Rose to the Top of the al-Qaida Hierarchy,” Guardian, November 18, 2001.

  “I have seen those reports”: Department of Defense news transcript, “Secretary Rumsfeld Media Availability at Great Lakes, Ill., Friday, November 16, 2001—12:29 p.m. EST.”

  Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem said: Department of Defense news transcript, “Enduring Freedom Operational Update—Rear Adm. Stufflebeem, Joint Staff, November 16, 2001—12:00 PM EDT.”

  told the Associated Press: Associated Press, “Taliban Confirms Death of Osama bin Laden’s Military Chief in U.S. Strike,” November 17, 2001.

  CNN reported: “Reports Suggest Al Qaeda Military Chief Killed,” CNN.com/World, November 17, 2001, posted 5:52 AM EST (1052 GMT), at http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/central/11/17/ret.atef.reports.

  known “bad guy frequencies”: Intelligence experts and retired Air Force generals said describing this method of using the Predator’s radio to eavesdrop in 2001 reveals no classified or sensitive information. As an Associated Press dispatch reported in early 2013, an Al Qaeda “tip sheet” for avoiding drone strikes, found by an AP reporter in Timbuktu, Mali, included a recommendation to “maintain complete silence of all wireless contacts.”

  the “Kabul-ki Dance”: Senior Airman Benjamin Sutton, “‘Kabulki Dance’ Aircraft Makes History, Becomes Permanent Historic Display,” Air Force Print News Today, August 10, 2011.

  Allouni said that while fleeing: Gene Mater, “BBC’s Kabul News Bureau Damaged by Bomb During Live Broadcast,” freedomforum.org, posted November 14, 2001, at http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp?documentID=15355.

  the New York Times revealed: Judith Miller and Eric Schmitt, “Ugly Duckling Turns Out to Be Formidable in the Air,” New York Times, November 23, 2001.

  drew a large X through: Woodward, Bush at War, p. 316.

  armed Predators would be designated: Dr. James M. George, “Predator Comes to Air Combat Command (1994–2005),” Office of ACC History, Headquarters, Air Combat Command, Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, August 2006, pp. 80–81.

  issued a report declaring: Christopher J. Castelli, “Predator UAV Given Poor Review by Pentagon Testers,” InsideDefense.com, October 30, 2001. The tests were conducted by the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center and Air Combat Command with unarmed versions of the Predator, judging them against standards set in an official Operational Requirements Document. The testers said the Predator was “unable to provide reliable, effective communications through the aircraft, as required, or meet the target location accuracy requirement under operational conditions.”

  EPILOGUE

  “What do you mean”: Nate Self, Two Wars: One Hero’s Fight on Two Fronts—Abroad and Within (Carol Stream, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, 2008), p. 194.

  Self had picked up: Ibid.

  The first missile launched: Self thought that the first Hellfire shot was simply a miss. Predator pilot Big said years later that he and Will were asked by Brown to fire a demonstration shot, as Sean Naylor reported in Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda (New York: Penguin, 2005). Boyle said the Predator crew put the missile where Self asked but that Self was mistaken about where the Al Qaeda fighters were. Other written accounts also disagree on why the first Hellfire shot was wasted.

  “Rocks, dirt and branches flew”: Naylor, Not a Good Day to Die, p. 357.

  An April 2001 Defense Department study: “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Roadmap, 2000–2025,” Office of the Secretary of Defense.

  more than two million flight hours: “RPAs Reach 2 Million Hours,” Air Force News Service, October 23, 2013.

  changed the character of America’s spy agency: The effect of the Predator and the war with Al Qaeda and its allies on the CIA after 9/11 is closely examined in Mazzetti, The Way of the Knife.

  Killed, along with five others: Al-Harethi’s death is still often described, incorrectly, as the first drone strike.

  estimated that the CIA conducted: “Drone Wars, Pakistan: Analysis,” New America Foundation, http://natsec.newamerica.net/drones/pakistan/analysis.

  agreed to many if not all: Mazzetti, The Way of the Knife, pp. 86–87 and 108–9.

  said to have aided and abetted: Peter Finn, “Awlaki Directed Christmas ‘Underwear Bomber’ Plot, Justice Department Memo Says,” Washington Post, February 10, 2012.

  Critics questioned: Charlie Savage, “Relatives Sue Officials over U.S. Citizens Killed by Drone Strikes in Yemen,” New York Times, July 19, 2012.

  Obama finally addressed the issue: The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, May 23, 2013, news release, “Remarks by the President at the National Defense University.”

  “Presidential Policy Guidance”: The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, May 23, 2013, “Fact Sheet: U.S. Policy Standards and Procedures for the Use of Force in Counterterrorism Operations Outside the United States and Areas of Active Hostilities.”

  Guay told his younger brother: Author interview with Scott Guay, March 31, 2014.

  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

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