Predators

by Williams, Brian Glyn

  There was little the Predator could do because such drones were not armed at the time, and the CIA subsequently lost him. Those CIA operatives who saw the images of “the man in white” on their screen in America were frustrated. As one later put it, “If we had developed the ability to perform a Predator-style targeted killing before 2000, we might have been able to prevent 9/11.”11

  Around this time the Pentagon and the CIA began to seriously contemplate arming the Predator and transforming it from a “sensor” into a “shooter.” As one general involved in the development by DARPA put it, “If the drones were equipped with laser-guided targeting systems and weapons, then the whole cycle—from finding a target and analyzing it to attacking and destroying the target and analyzing the results—could be carried out by one aircraft.”12 The drones would now be part of the “kill chain,” not just unarmed spotters for armed aircraft or cruise missiles.

  The two men in charge of the operation to arm the Predator were Gen. John Jumper, the U.S. Air Force chief of staff from 2001 to 2005, and James Clark, the Pentagon’s chief of staff of intelligence.13 Both men understood that they had been given a difficult task. The Predator was a lightweight, flimsy reconnaissance aircraft, and many doubted it could carry heavy munitions on its gliderlike wings. According to the experts, the Predator could only carry a missile and launch rails that weighed less than 175 pounds. This excluded most munitions.

  After considerable searching, the Air Force hit upon an ideal lightweight weapon that fit this criteria—the AGM-114 Hellfire missile. The Hellfire is a hundred pound, antiarmor, air-to-surface missile. It had been designed to be fired primarily at tanks by attack helicopters. Before a Predator could use it, the Hellfire had to be reconfigured because it tended to penetrate nonarmored targets and explode in the ground beneath them. The U.S. Army solved the problem by fixing the Predator’s Hellfire missiles with metal sleeves that caused deadly shrapnel and fragmentation when they exploded.14

  The overly penetrative nature of the Hellfire was not the only worry the Air Force had about the missile. General Jumper feared that when it was fired, the powerful Hellfire would break off the Predator’s fragile wings. Everyone involved waited in anticipation for the test firing of the Predator’s first Hellfire missile on a test flight in Indian Springs, Nevada. There, on February 16, 2001, Predator number 3034 took off on a test flight and successfully fired its Hellfire missile at a tank. The RQ-1 Predator soon thereafter lost its R (reconnaissance) designation and was renamed the MQ-1 (the M for multimission). It was a revolutionary moment in the history of aerial warfare. The unmanned reconnaissance drone had become a killer.

  There was no doubt about who the remote-control killer’s first target would be. In a display of its future intentions, a Predator was subsequently used to fire a Hellfire missile at a mockup clay compound in Nevada built to resemble a typical house in Afghanistan.15 As the Washington Post put it, “The Bush administration now had in its hands what one participant called ‘the holy grail’ of a three-year quest by the U.S. government—a tool that could kill bin Laden within minutes of finding him.”16

  The $4.5 million Predator could fly 420 miles, then circle over a target for up to thirty hours, and feed real-time video through ten simultaneous streams to controllers in ten different locations. This, of course, made it ideal for finding bin Laden. The Predator also carried sensors that intercepted electronic signals and listened in on phone conversations. It was more than just a weapon; it was an eye and ear in the sky.

  Richard Clarke, who continued as the White House’s chief counterterrorism adviser under the new president, George Bush, advised the new national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to focus on Afghanistan, where bin Laden was hiding, and not on Iraq and Saddam Hussein. He also stressed the importance of using the newly armed Predator drone to track down bin Laden and assassinate him.17

  But CIA head George Tenet had serious qualms about the new killing technology and the ethics and legality behind its use. The consensus in the CIA was that “aircraft firing weapons was the province of the military.”18 According to one former intelligence officer, “There was also a lot of reluctance at Langley to get into a lethal program like this.”19

  The branch of the military that would be asked to fly the drones, the Air Force, was similarly disinclined to take charge of them. Steve Coll writes, “The Air Force was not interested in commanding such an awkward, unproven weapon. Air Force doctrine and experience argued for the use of fully tested bombers and cruise missiles, even when the targets were lone terrorists. The Air Force was not yet ready to begin flying or commanding remote control planes.”20

  According to Coll, “James Pavitt as the Director of Operations at CIA was also worried about the unintended consequences should the CIA suddenly move back into the business of running lethal operations against targeted individuals—assassination in the common usage.”21 For all its potential, neither the Air Force nor the CIA was inclined to embrace the new remote-control technology or its potential role as a terrorist killer on the eve of 9/11. Far from being trigger happy, Tenet wanted the government to have its “eyes wide open” to the ramifications of using the drones to assassinate terrorists.22 He was said to have been “appalled” at the question as to who should “pull the trigger” on bin Laden or other terrorists and did not seem to feel that he had the jurisdiction to do so.23 In his autobiography he asked, “How would the government explain it if Arab terrorists in Afghanistan suddenly started being blown up?”24

  The American government had previously been critical of the Israeli policy of assassinating its Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist enemies. Ironically, as recently as July 2001 the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, had stated, “The United States government is very clearly on record as against targeted assassinations. … They are extrajudicial killings, and we do not support that.”25

  Now the CIA was potentially being tasked to do the same thing as the Israelis, only it would be done via an unexplored new technological device whose ethics and morality were not fully understood. Capturing the CIA’s unease, Tenet stated, “This was new ground.” He asked, What would be the chain of command should the Predator be used, who would take the shots, and were America’s leaders comfortable with the CIA doing this killing outside the military’s normal command and control?26

  As a result of jurisdictional squabbles over who would pay for and fly the drones and moral qualms about their use, discussion on deploying the Predator to kill bin Laden was shelved in a September 4, 2001, meeting involving key government officials.27 Just days before 9/11, “terrorism was not at the top of the priority list of the new Bush administration.”28 With no real sense of urgency in the air, talk of what to do with the Predator was put off to a later date.

  4

  Operation Enduring Freedom

  The gloves are off. Lethal operations that were unthinkable pre–September 11 are now underway.

  —Senior White House official after the 9/11 attacks

  War is the mother of invention, and the unexpected destruction of 9/11 led to a global war that was to see tremendous developments in America’s killing technology. Although the Bush administration had been obsessed with Baathist Iraq since it had come to power in 2000, the death of almost three thousand people on 9/11 abruptly diverted the White House’s attention to Central Asia. The White House was now focused on the clear danger to American lives emanating from the previously ignored Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Clearly the president had to respond to the unprecedented destruction and move to defend his people. But how?

  For his part, bin Laden was confident that the United States would react to the 9/11 attacks as it had after the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa, that is, by launching punitive cruise missile strikes. But it was clear to the White House and Pentagon that something more drastic was necessary. Al Qaeda’s sanctuary in Afghanistan needed to be totally destroyed if America was to be made safe again. This meant convincing the Taliban host regime to ar
rest the hundreds, if not thousands, of Arab jihadists in their country.

  But the Taliban reacted to the stunning news from distant North America by panicking and denying their Arab guests’ guilt. When confronted with the news of the Taliban’s intransigence, the Bush administration had no recourse but to move against the country. Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, summed up America’s position as follows: “We told the Taliban in no uncertain terms that if this happened, it’s their ass. No difference between the Taliban and Al Qaeda now. They both go down.”1

  Infuriated by Mullah Omar’s decision to stand by al Qaeda, President Bush ordered his top general to “rain holy hell” on the Taliban.2 As for bin Laden, Cofer Black, the head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center who had been active in pushing for the arming of the Predator drone, was more blunt. Black ordered his Special Activities operatives to “capture Bin Laden, kill him, and bring me his head back in a box on dry ice.”3

  President Bush showed his newfound resolve to tackle al Qaeda, a group his administration had not been overly interested in prior to 9/11, with his vow to capture bin Laden “dead or alive.” National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice subsequently hinted at what was to come when she said, “We’re in a new kind of war, and we’ve made it very clear that this new kind of war will be fought on different battlefields.”4 Bush himself added, “Traditional concepts of deterrence will not work against a terrorist enemy whose avowed tactics are wanton destruction and the targeting of innocents.”5 A senior U.S. official further demonstrated how far the administration had come from criticizing Israel for targeted assassinations when he stated, “The gloves are off. Lethal operations that were unthinkable pre–September 11 are now underway.”6 And another U.S. official advocated using “all the weapons at our disposal” to target bin Laden and his followers.7 Thus the foundations were laid for a veritable revolution in counterterrorism (and ultimately counterinsurgency) even before the rubble from the World Trade Centers had begun to be cleared.

  Drawing on the presidential finding written for Bill Clinton in 1998, which allowed the CIA to assassinate bin Laden, the Bush administration concluded that executive orders banning assassination did not prevent the president from lawfully targeting terrorists for assassination. President Bush subsequently signed his own finding to that effect. At the time the Washington Post reported, “The CIA is reluctant to accept a broad grant of authority to hunt and kill U.S. enemies at its discretion, knowledgeable sources said. But the agency is willing and believes itself able to take the lives of terrorists designated by the president.”8

  On September 14, 2001, the Senate voted 98–0 and the House voted 420–1 to pass the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) as a joint resolution that “authorized the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.”9 Bush and later Obama would argue that this gave them the mandate to hunt al Qaeda terrorists wherever they were found. Critics would point out the AUMF gave the military, not the civilian CIA, the authorization to go after terrorists, but for the Bush White House, this was mere semantics.10 It was time to launch a full-scale preemptive campaign of deterrence that would translate to a hunt for terrorists who were plotting the deaths of more Americans.

  As the events were taking place in the fall of 2001, the U.S. secretary of state, Colin Powell, and his deputy, Richard Armitage, were engaged in a different mission that was to have equal ramifications for the upcoming war against the Taliban and al Qaeda. They were trying to convince the Pakistanis to turn on the Taliban proxies that they had nurtured since 1994 and join the United States in the newly declared global war on terror (GWOT) against them and al Qaeda. Talks on this delicate issue were facilitated by a visit to Washington, DC, by the head of the Pakistani ISI, Gen. Mahmoud Ahmed, on the fateful day September 11, 2001. He saw for himself the way the stupendous destruction and loss of lives on that day had transformed the American officials around him. He reported this transformation back to his leader, Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf. It was clear from Ahmed’s report that the slaughter of three thousand people in Manhattan, Virginia, and Pennsylvania had changed the Americans much as the attack on Pearl Harbor had in 1941. Ahmed detected a newfound determination to wage war against al Qaeda by all means possible.

  Although President Musharraf and the Pakistani leadership were distrustful of the Americans, who had previously sanctioned them for building nuclear weapons under the Pressler Amendment, they were given an offer they could not refuse. If they agreed to join the newly belligerent Americans, the United States would provide them with billions of dollars in aid known as Coalition Support Funds. Washington would also lift the previously imposed sanctions and help arm the Pakistanis. If they did not join the Americans, they would be declared a state sponsor of terrorism, and economic sanctions would be leveled against them.

  President Musharraf put his finger to the wind and sensed that it was blowing against the doomed Taliban regime and its terrorist allies. Armitage had told the Pakistanis, “You are either 100 percent with us or 100 percent against us—there is no grey area.”11 The world’s lone remaining superpower and its powerful North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies were clearly going to go to war against the mullahs in Afghanistan. Musharraf’s money was on the United Nations (UN)–sanctioned American-led NATO alliance. For this reason he chose to drastically alter his country’s foreign policy vis-à-vis its Taliban allies. Pakistan was now “with” the Americans and would become the United States’ most important strategic partner in the upcoming war in Afghanistan.

  Such a drastic redirection of foreign policy was not easy for Musharraf to carry out. After a heated meeting with his top generals and the firing of those who wanted to stand by their Taliban surrogates, Musharraf finally agreed to one of the Americans’ most important requests: the right of “blanket over-flight and landing.”12 Among the Pakistanis’ first actions in their new alliance with the distrusted Americans was to give the U.S. military the right to use several intermediate staging bases located in the province of Baluchistan, at Jacobabad, Pasni, Dalbandin, and Shamsi. Later, two of these air bases, at Jacobabad and Shamsi, would be shown to have been used by Predator drones. There were also rumors that U.S. drones were flying from a Pakistani base at Ghazi.

  It can be surmised that the Air Force and CIA flew drones into these bases in time for the October 2001 attack on the Taliban of Afghanistan, that is, the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom. Only by understanding this important American-led operation and the course of the war on the Taliban and al Qaeda can one understand the CIA’s subsequent drone air campaign against the Taliban in the FATA. Events in this little-studied operation led to the development of a terrorist-insurgent sanctuary in Pakistan’s autonomous tribal agencies that continues unabated to this day. The existence of these safe havens in the Pakistani tribal zones led to the commencement of the CIA’s post-2004 drone war in Pakistan.

  Operation Enduring Freedom began on October 7, 2001, with an airborne campaign. Having achieved air supremacy in just a few days the United States and its Coalition allies then began to bomb Taliban positions throughout Afghanistan.13

  At this time a legendary anti-Taliban Pashtun mujahideen leader named Abdul Haq sneaked into Afghanistan to try leading a rebellion against the Taliban in the Pashtun south. Unfortunately, his small group of followers was ambushed by the Taliban and took heavy losses. As the Taliban closed in on him, Abdul Haq desperately radioed U.S. Central Command for help. The Americans responded by sending an armed Predator drone to attack the Taliban. But before the slow-moving drone could reach Haq, the Taliban overwhelmed him and captured him and his followers. The Predator arrived subsequently and fired on a Taliban convoy at the scene of the capture, but it was too late to save the doomed leader.14 Haq was tortured and then hung by the Taliban.

  America’s air war was not going well on other fronts either. As the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marines b
ombed the country, the Taliban simply dug in and appeared to be prepared to ride out the U.S.-led Coalition’s deadly air strikes. But the Coalition had plans to move on the ground as well. The U.S. Army’s Fifth Special Forces Group planned on using the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance as a proxy ground force. These Uzbek, Tajik, and Hazara opposition fighters, who had been pushed into small mountain sanctuaries in the northeast and central Hindu Kush Mountains, were all too happy to join the Special Forces in fighting their Pashtun-Taliban blood enemies.

  Because the overlord of the Northern Alliance opposition, Massoud the Lion of Panjsher, had been killed by al Qaeda suicide bombers on September 9, 2001, the larger-than-life Uzbek leader Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum took the lead in fighting the Taliban. In November 2001 the horse-riding Uzbeks joined with a U.S. Special Forces A-Team known as Tiger O2 and Air Force combat controllers in launching an offensive from their mountain enclave high in the Hindu Kush.15 Using a combination of medieval-style cavalry charges and precision-guided joint direct attack munition (JDAM) air strikes, the Uzbeks and Americans broke out of the mountains and seized the holy shrine town of Mazar i Sharif from the Taliban on November 9, 2001.16

  Dostum’s bold seizure of Afghanistan’s holiest spot struck panic into the heart of the Taliban. Their whole house of cards began to collapse from defections. By November 12 Kabul had fallen to the Northern Alliance, and the northern half of the country was soon thereafter liberated from the Pashtun-Taliban southerners. In Kabul crowds came out to kill stranded Arabs, shave off their own beards, and tentatively begin to discard their burqas.

  At this time Osama bin Laden and several hundred of his Arab followers made their way eastward to a base he had built in the Spin Ghar Mountains, which run along the Afghan-Pakistani border south of the Afghan border city of Jalalabad. There, at a place called Tora Bora (Black Dust), he planned to make a heroic stand. This was America’s chance to send in U.S. special forces, including the 101st Airborne, Army Rangers, Delta Forces, and the Marines’ Special Operations Command, to kill or capture the man who was the raison d’etre for the invasion of Afghanistan. Unfortunately, U.S. Central Command head Gen. Tommy Franks decided to rely on bombs and newly deputized Pashai and Pashtun tribesmen to flush out bin Laden. The Afghan tribesmen were taking money from both sides. They were subsequently bribed by bin Laden to allow him and his weary men to flee across the mountains to the nearby border of Pakistan.17