Paul’s comments were sharply criticized by Republicans senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain as alarmist and hypocritical considering his silence during Bush’s drone campaign. Referencing the mounting criticism of Obama’s drone campaign by Fox News and many Republicans, Graham said, “To my Republican colleagues, I don’t remember any of you coming down here suggesting that President Bush was going to kill anybody with a drone, do you? They had a drone program back then, all of a sudden this drone program has gotten every Republican so spun up. What are we up to here?” He added, “People are astonished that President Obama is doing many of the things that President Bush did. I’m not astonished. I congratulate him for having the good judgment to understand we’re at war. And to my party, I’m a bit disappointed that you no longer apparently think we’re at war.”88 For his part McCain said, “We’ve done, I think, a disservice to a lot of Americans by making them think that somehow they’re in danger from their government. They’re not. But we are in danger from a dedicated, longstanding, easily replaceable-leadership enemy that is hellbent on our destruction.”89
As the Paul filibuster demonstrated, no issue related to the drone campaign caused more consternation among Americans than the notion that drones could be used to kill Americans. Writing for the Huffington Post, columnist Anthony Gregory expressed the concerns of Paul and many other Americans in both parties over the precedent of an American president ordering the killing of an American without a trial:
It was actually something special when President Obama ordered the drone killing of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki. …
Obama’s summary execution of these Americans, conducted as a military operation through the CIA, would indeed seem to break with precedent and qualify as one of those watershed moments in America’s long retreat from the rule of law. While liberals criticized the Bush administration for warrant-less wiretapping and detentions without trial, one would think that the outright killing of an American citizen without due process would qualify as a greater offense.90
Journalist David Cole, writing for the New York Review of Books, expressed his concerns as well: “As American citizens we have a right to know when our own government believes it may execute us (and others) without a trial.”91
For his part, President Obama said that Awlaki had been “planning and directing efforts to murder innocent Americans.” His death demonstrated that terrorists “will find no safe haven anywhere in the world.”92 Most Americans seemed to agree with Obama. According to a subsequent poll, a full 69 percent of Americans who were asked if the strike on Awlaki was justified agreed that it was.93
To further gain legitimacy for the strikes, on March 5, 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder gave a talk on the issue at Northeastern University, saying that “the unfortunate reality is that our nation will likely continue to face terrorist threats that—at times—originate with our own citizens. We must take steps to stop them—in full accordance with the Constitution. In this hour of danger, we simply cannot afford to wait until deadly plans are carried out—and we will not.” He further said, “Given the nature of how terrorists act and where they tend to hide, it may not always be feasible to capture a United States citizen terrorist who presents an imminent threat of violent attack. In that case, our government has the clear authority to defend the United States with lethal force.”94
Holder continued, “Any decision to use lethal force against a United States citizen—even one intent on murdering Americans who has become an operational leader of Al Qaeda in a foreign land—is among the gravest that government leaders can face.” He then laid out a three-part formula for determining whether the targeted killing against a U.S. citizen is legally justified. He said the government must determine that the citizen in question poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States, capture is not possible, and the killing would be consistent with laws of war.95 The drone strikes against those posing an imminent threat would be limited to American terrorists abroad. In March 2013 Holder stated, “The government has no intention to carry out any drone strikes in the United States. It’s hard for me to imagine a situation in which that would occur.”96
As if to hammer home the point that the Obama administration would kill those Americans deemed to be terrorists operating with the enemy abroad, in the month following Awlaki’s death a CIA drone also killed Awlaki’s sixteen-year-old son, Abdul Rahman, and a seventeen-year-old Yemeni cousin in a blitz of drone strikes on al Qaeda vehicles and safe houses in Yemen.97 Abdul Rahman Awlaki’s grandfather furiously denied the charges that his grandson was a terrorist and said, “To kill a teenager is just unbelievable, really, and they claim that he is an al-Qaeda militant. It’s nonsense. They want to justify his killing, that’s all.”98 For their part, U.S. officials claimed they had “no idea” the son was traveling with a supposed Egyptian al Qaeda agent, and a senior Obama administration official added, “This was a military-aged male travelling with a high-value target.”99
Ironically enough, postings on several Yemeni al Qaeda websites after the son’s death claimed that Abdul Rahman Awlaki, who had been dubbed “Usayyid” (the Lion’s Cub) by al Qaeda after his father’s death, had sworn that he wanted to be martyred just as his father had been before him. One al Qaeda site said, “His sadness reached its peak after the American planes assassinated his father. … But when he said to the Emir [al Qaeda leader] of the city of Azzam, ‘I hope to attain martyrdom as my father attained it,’ it did not come to his mind that this will happen, and just one day after he said it.”100
OBAMA’S PERSONAL ROLE IN APPROVING A SECRET DRONE KILL LIST
On May 29, 2012, the New York Times published an extraordinary article by Jo Becker and Scott Shane titled “Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will,” which reported that the president was intimately involved in the moral and targeting decisions made in the drone strikes in Yemen and Somalia.101 The article depicted a president who realized after several close terrorist calls (including the failed bombing of a flight to Detroit in 2009 by the underwear bomber) that if even one terrorist attack succeeded, his presidency would be marked by it. According to Becker and Shane,
Nothing else in Mr. Obama’s first term has baffled liberal supporters and confounded conservative critics alike as his aggressive counterterrorism record. …
While he was adamant about narrowing the fight and improving relations with the Muslim world, he has followed the metastasizing enemy into new and dangerous lands. When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda—even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen [Awlaki], a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was “an easy one.” …
This secret “nominations” process [of names to add to the “kill list”] is an invention of the Obama administration, a grim debating society that vets the PowerPoint slides bearing the names, aliases and life stories of suspected members of Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen or its allies in Somalia’s Shabab militia. The video conferences are run by the Pentagon, which oversees strikes in those countries, and participants do not hesitate to call out a challenge, pressing for the evidence behind accusations of ties to Al Qaeda. … A parallel, more cloistered selection process at the C.I.A. focuses largely on Pakistan, where that agency conducts strikes.
The nominations go to the White House, where by his own insistence and guided by Mr. Brennan [national security adviser], Mr. Obama must approve any name. He signs off on every strike in Yemen and Somalia and also on the more complex and risky strikes in Pakistan—about a third of the total. Aides say Mr. Obama has several reasons for becoming so immersed in lethal counterterrorism operations. A student of writings on war by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, he believes that he should take moral responsibility for such actions. And he knows that bad strikes can tarnish America’s image and derail diplomacy.
DRONES FOIL A MUMBAI-STYLE TERRORIST ATTACK IN EUROPE
The Mumbai attack was praised by jihadists and terrorists throughout Pakistan and seemed to serve as inspiration for similar slaughters in Europe, according to Ahmed Siddiqui. Siddiqui was a thirty-six-year-old German of Afghan decent who was arrested in June 2010 as he attempted to fly out of Kabul International Airport to Germany. He was subsequently interrogated by the United States and its Coalition allies at Bagram Air Base. Coalition forces had previously noticed that a group of eleven radicals tied to the Al Quds Mosque in Hamburg, Germany (the same mosque attended by 9/11 suicide team commander Muhammad Atta), had mysteriously left the country in 2009. They then reappeared in training camps in North Waziristan. There the German-Muslim jihadists were filmed training with weapons and making threats against the West.
Initially, the German authorities thought the group of eleven extremists had traveled to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to fight Coalition troops, but Siddiqui dropped a bombshell after his arrest. During interrogation he confessed to being a member of a terrorist team that was planning to attack civilian targets in Germany, France, and Britain. According to one U.S. official, “They were going to attack multiple centers in Europe over a few days. They were going to shoot the hell out of people, terrorize them.”102 Their aim was to punish these NATO countries for their role in the Afghan conflict, much as terrorists had punished the Spanish government for its role in Iraq with the 2004 Madrid bombings.
Bin Laden, Siddiqui claimed, had personally approved the plot.103 British Muslims of Pakistani descent who formed a group known as the Islamic Army of Great Britain would attack the British targets, and German Muslims who were members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan would carry out the attacks in Germany and France. A second German jihadist who was arrested and “other sources” verified Siddiqui’s claims.104
Word of the plot was leaked in September 2010, and the British, German, and French governments went on high alert. Travel advisories were issued to Americans warning them not to travel to those countries. The Eiffel Tower was closed twice because of bomb scares, and even the British royal family was put under special protection.
By this time the CIA had learned that the British terrorists in North Waziristan were being led by a Pakistani-British Muslim named Abdul Jabbar. Jabbar had been selected to lead the Islamic Army of Great Britain in carrying out massacres against “soft targets” in the UK.105 He and his brother had supposedly been chosen to lead the group in a Taliban meeting.106 But before he could carry out his plans, Jabbar and three others were killed in a drone strike on September 8, 2010.107 In fact, that September saw the highest number of drone strikes thus far as the CIA unleashed a barrage of twenty-two strikes trying to disrupt the plot by killing the British and German terrorists. On October 4, 2010, the drones finally caught up with the German terrorists, who were of Pakistani, Turkish, and Arab origin, and killed eight of them in the Mir Ali region of North Waziristan.108
Three months later two more Brits, this time English converts to Islam named Abu Bakr (aka Gerry Smith) and Mansoor Ahmed (known only as Stephen), were killed in a drone strike in the region.109 It later emerged that CIA spies had been tracking the various German and British terrorists for some time, waiting for the chance to kill them and foil their plot. At the time U.S. officials said that they were acting on “precise intelligence.”110 The robust and accurate nature of the CIA’s drone response to these terrorist threats speaks volumes to the level of their infiltration of the FATA and the agency’s ability to quickly target and kill suspected terrorists planning future attacks.
DRONES AND THE KILLING OF OSAMA BIN LADEN
Although drones did not kill bin Laden in May 2011, they did play a key role in his death. Bin Laden had last been seen fleeing from the caves of Tora Bora in Afghanistan into the neighboring FATA region during Operation Enduring Freedom in December 2001. From there his trail ran cold. Many assumed that the terrorist mastermind was hiding in the FATA region because the number two in al Qaeda, Ayman al Zawahiri (who was tracked in the region and almost killed by a drone in Damadola), was filmed walking with him sometime after 2001 in a mountainous setting; both were wearing Pashtun clothes and interacting with people who appeared to be Pashtuns.
But by 2008 the drone war had commenced in the FATA, and many Taliban and al Qaeda leaders had fled this sanctuary for safer grounds in Quetta and elsewhere. Bin Laden himself was too high value a target to move around a region that was filled with CIA spies. He was forced to flee the drones by moving to the neighboring North-West Frontier Province. There he was isolated from the war in Afghanistan in a massive, $1 million, concrete compound built in the Pakistani military-resort town of Abbottabad.
It proved all but impossible to find bin Laden in his hideout because he was so far from the FATA. To compound matters, the terrorist leader had learned to be cautious following the 2004 death of Taliban leader Nek Muhammad, who, as noted previously, was tracked by the CIA while speaking on a cell phone. Instead of phones, bin Laden relied on couriers to communicate. For years bin Laden, occasionally issuing a video statement mocking the Americans, remained hidden in his self-imposed prison on the top floor of his compound.
But the CIA and NSA were persistent and carefully monitored the cell phone communication among all known al Qaeda agents in Pakistan. In August 2010 an al Qaeda agent tripped up and called a mysterious courier who had not previously been tracked named Ahmed al Kuwaiti. After the phone call, the NSA was tasked with following Kuwaiti’s movements. Not realizing he was being traced, Kuwaiti drove to a large compound in Abbottabad that stood out because of its high walls. Curiosity aroused, the CIA began to monitor the mysterious mansion via high-flying spy satellites that used synthetic aperture radar and electro-optical cameras. The grainy pictures these satellites provided were not of sufficient resolution to tell who was living in the house. Although the satellites were good at filming static targets such as buildings, they could not film moving people; only drones could do that. Unfortunately, the Pakistanis did not allow the Americans’ slow-moving propeller-driven Predators and Reapers to operate outside the FATA.
Around this time the CIA brought in a top-secret stealth drone known as the RQ-170 Sentinel that was jet propelled, shaped like a mini B2 bomber, and built to avoid radar. It was not armed but had the ability to penetrate undetected deep into Pakistani airspace to Abbottabad, a sensitive military town located near the Pakistani capital.111 Soon after the mysterious compound was discovered, the drone was deployed to Abbottabad. According to the Washington Post, “Using unmanned planes designed to evade radar detection and operate at high altitudes, the agency conducted clandestine flights over the compound for months before the May 2 assault in an effort to capture high-resolution video that satellites could not provide. The aircraft allowed the CIA to glide undetected beyond the boundaries that Pakistan has long imposed on other U.S. drones, including the Predators and Reapers that routinely carry out strikes against militants near the border with Afghanistan.”112
Having reached a 60–80 percent certainty that bin Laden was in the Abbottabad compound, the Obama administration, the CIA, and JSOC needed to formulate a plan to get him.113 This was no easy task because the compound was a well-built concrete structure located both deep in the Islamabad Defense Intercept Zone and adjacent to a Pakistan military base. The slow-moving Reaper drones were only allow
ed to operate in “kill boxes” in the FATA and were not allowed to fly into Pakistan proper. Even if they had had a larger flight radius, their Paveway guided bombs were not strong enough to destroy bin Laden’s compound. In addition, if the slow-moving, propeller-driven drones tried to penetrate the Islamabad security zone, they would be noticed by Pakistani radar and shot down. For these reasons, Obama and Gen. Bill McRaven, the head of JSOC, decided to use a dangerous helicopter-borne ground raid on the compound on the night of May 1–2, 2011.
As the SEALs from the JSOC based in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, penetrated Pakistani airspace in stealth versions of the Black Hawk helicopter and two larger Chinooks, RQ-170 drones flew overhead, monitoring the compound. When the helicopters arrived below, the drones provided high-resolution night-vision imagery of the SEALs landing at the compound and attacking. This imagery was sent to President Obama and national security team members, who were watching the events in Pakistan unfold on screen in the White House Situation Room. The stealth drones also used their eavesdropping equipment to monitor electronic transmissions among the Pakistanis, who had not been notified of the incursion.
Despite the odds against it, the deep raid into Pakistan was successful, and the SEALs managed to kill bin Laden and return to Afghanistan with his body.114 Although the Pakistanis did launch fighter jets at the last minute to intercept the invaders, they were too late; the Americans had already retreated to Afghanistan in their stealth helicopters.
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