Dirty Wars (70 page)

In advance of his public speech, the CIA and military gave Koh access to their intel on Awlaki. Koh settled in for a long day of reading in a Secured
Classified Intelligence Facility. According to Klaidman, whose book was based almost entirely on leaks from administration officials, Koh

had
set his own legal standard
to justify the targeted killing of a US citizen: evil, with iron-clad intelligence to prove it. It was not exactly a technical, legal standard but it was a threshold he was comfortable with. Now he was reading about multiple plots to kill Americans and Europeans, all of which Awlaki had been deeply involved in at an operational level. There were plans to poison Western water and food supplies with botulinum toxin, as well as attack Americans with ricin and cyanide. Awlaki's ingenuity at coming up with newer, deadlier plots was chilling. Koh was shaken when he left the room. Awlaki was not just evil, he was satanic.

When Koh delivered his speech, on May 25, 2010, he declared, “
US targeting practices
, including lethal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, comply with all applicable law, including the laws of war.” Koh's audience for the address was the annual convention of the American Society of International Law. He gave a full-throated defense of the administration's targeted killing police, saying:

Some have argued that the use of lethal force against specific individuals fails to provide adequate process and thus constitutes
unlawful extrajudicial killing
. But a state that is engaged in an armed conflict or in legitimate self-defense is not required to provide targets with legal process before the state may use lethal force.... Some have argued that our targeting practices violate
domestic law
, in particular, the long-standing
domestic ban on assassinations
. But under domestic law, the use of lawful weapons systems—consistent with the applicable laws of war—for precision targeting of specific high-level belligerent leaders when acting in self-defense or during an armed conflict is not unlawful, and hence does not constitute “assassination.”

Nasser Awlaki's lawyers did not take the position that Anwar Awlaki was an innocent man. Rather, they reasoned, if he was what the US government alleged he was—a terrorist and an operational member of al Qaeda—evidence should be presented that would hold up in a court of law. If what the administration was leaking to journalists about Awlaki's deep involvement in terror plots, including chemical attacks against the United States, was true, then why not indict Awlaki and demand his extradition from Yemen to face trial? “If someone poses a threat, if there's evidence against him, fine, charge him and give him due process,” said Kebriaei, one of Awlaki's lawyers. “The president and the Defense Department or CIA, cannot
just, on their own, determine in secret that these people are threats and we can not only detain them, but we can kill them.”

The administration continued to leak intelligence it claimed proved Awlaki was an operational member of al Qaeda, and media coverage began referring to Awlaki as a leader or
the
leader of AQAP. When Awlaki's lawyers tried to challenge in court the government's claims that he was a leader of AQAP and was operational, the US government lawyers shut it down. The government's “attorney did walk into court and open with: ‘The context of this case is that we're talking about a leader of AQAP and everything else is a state secret. We can't talk about the evidence, but you should know,'” Kebriaei recalled. “It can be maddening to hear the government make allegations that are completely unsupported by any real facts that we've seen and not have any access to that information, to be in this position of seeing that reporting [in the press] and not being able to respond. The Bush administration claimed a global detention authority in the context of this war on terror, and what the Obama administration is doing is actually extending that and claiming a global killing authority,” including the right to kill American citizens.

ANWAR AWLAKI
, meanwhile, was spending his days and nights on the run. He knew the Americans were actively trying to kill him. He would see drones and occasionally see missiles strike nearby. Awlaki had certainly become increasingly radical in his views of the United States, but from his perspective, it was America that had changed, not him. Not that long before, Awlaki had advocated voting for George W. Bush and praised America's freedoms. He spoke with passion when he condemned al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks, and talked of Muslims peacefully coexisting with the United States. But between the global crackdown that followed 9/11 and the US government's campaign to hunt him down, something in Awlaki shifted, and he was no longer torn between allegiance to the country of his birth and his religion. “
To the Muslims in America
I have this to say: how can your conscience allow you to live in peaceful co-existence with the nation that is responsible for the tyranny and crimes committed against your own brothers and sisters? How can you have your loyalty to a government that is leading the war against Islam and Muslims?” Awlaki asked in one of his audio messages posted online. “Imperial hubris is leading America to its fate: a war of attrition, a continuous hemorrhage that would end with the fall and splintering of the United States of America.”

Johari Abdul Malik, who succeeded Awlaki as imam of Dar al Hijrah
mosque in Virginia, was dumbfounded. He remembered Awlaki as a moderate and as a Muslim leader who bridged two worlds deftly. “
To go from that individual
to the person that is projecting these words from Yemen is a shock,” he said. “I don't think we read him wrong. I think something happened to him.”

YEMEN
, 2009–2010—Early on in his stay in Yemen, Samir Khan lost his mobile phone. Such things happen to tourists and students the world over. But the stakes were higher for Khan. His phone was his only way of communicating with the people he had come to Yemen to find: the mujahedeen. Khan had the mobile number of a man he had been told could put him in touch with AQAP, and the two men had been texting and making plans to meet when Khan's phone went missing. The young Pakistani American panicked. “
He was heartbroken
, as this was the only means of communication between him and the mujahideen,” recalled his friend Abu Yazeed, a self-professed jihadist. “Despite that, he never thought about turning back.” Khan went to mosques hoping to find someone who could reconnect him. One night he was performing Ishaa, the evening prayer, when he felt a tap on his shoulder. “Are you Samir?” the man asked him. Khan nodded. “I am the brother to whom you have been texting,” the man told him. Soon thereafter, Khan was packing his bags, leaving behind Sana'a and any pretense that he was there to teach English or study Arabic at one of its universities. He was on his way to study jihad with mujahedeen, who would embrace him as one of their muhajireen, or emigrants.

Khan felt he had been in the car “
for what seemed like years
,” heading over the rough roads that one must cross to get from Sana'a to southern Yemen. The driver dispatched to take Khan to a mujahedeen camp had a nashid, a hymn, playing on repeat. It was called “Sir Ya Bin Laden.” Khan had heard the homage to bin Laden before, but now that he was on his way to meet the warriors from AQAP, it had taken on a new significance. “Something had struck me at that moment. The nashid repeated lines pertaining to fighting the tyrants of the world for the purpose of giving victory to the Islamic nation. But it also reminded the listener that Shaykh Usama bin Ladin is the leader of this global fight,” Khan recalled in an essay he wrote several months later. “I looked out the window at the tall mud houses below the beautiful sky and closed my eyes as the wind blew through my hair. I took a deep breath to let it all out.” He thought, “I am
an individual convinced that Islam's claim to power in the modern world is not going to be as easy as walking down a red carpet or driving through a green light. I am acutely aware that body parts have to be torn apart, skulls have to be crushed and blood has to be spilled in order for this to be a reality. Anyone who says otherwise is an individual who is not prepared to make sacrifices that heroes and champions make.”

As they got closer to the camp, Khan gazed out the window at the rural landscape. “As my eyes passed over the mysterious twirls of the sand dunes, I was reminded of the enigma of jihad in the contemporary world. It's just absolutely enthralling to know that guerrillas can fight off global superpowers with the bare minimum resulting in great enemy losses, drainage of the enemy's economy and a rising popular support for the mujahidin.”

Back in North Carolina, FBI agents showed up at Khan's house. “
They came to know
that Samir had left for Yemen,” recalled his mother, Sarah Khan. “And they were asking how he went there and things like that, and if we have any contact with him. They were questioning us about [Samir] going to Yemen.” The agents asked the Khans “whom he's been in contact with over there and stuff like that. We had been seeing different situations that had been appearing in the news, online and the papers about how the FBI has been keeping a tab on Muslims, so, we thought it was just one of those things.” Sarah Khan had watched the news about the US cruise missile strikes in Yemen and the “underwear bomb” plot. As a parent with a son they believed was studying in Yemen, she told me, “of course it was very scary. It was a very scary moment for us.” But, she reasoned, “Samir was at the university, so we didn't think that he was in any danger.” But Samir was not at the university anymore. He was heading straight into the heart of an expanding US war against AQAP.

People don't just show up at an al Qaeda camp in Yemen and be greeted with open arms. There is a vetting process. But Khan was already a known quantity through his blogs and web magazine, and AQAP's leadership welcomed the prospect of an American jihadi among their ranks. Khan went through training in rural Yemen and was eager to see battle. “Samir's love for Martyrdom in Allah's sake was extraordinary,” his friend recalled. Khan once sent him a text message that read: “Martyrdom is why we came here, my brother. We won't leave until we get what we came for.” AQAP would eventually publish photos of Khan wielding weapons and practicing hand-to-hand combat, but the mujahedeen believed that Khan's greatest possible contribution to their cause lay in his role as a propagandist. When he eventually made it to an AQAP base, the Yemeni and Saudi jihadists he met listened to his stories of FBI surveillance and harassment by the US
government. They reviewed his writings and previous work on his online magazines.

“I realized that he traveled [a] very long distance under very difficult circumstances, not to mention the fact that he was being wanted and hunted by the CIA,” recalled Abu Yazeed. “His weapons to defend Islam were very simple; a laptop and a camera. However, he was loaded with ammunition. That ammunition was the creed of jihad in Allah's path.” Khan's new friends found his broad, toothy smile infectious and would often ask him to laugh “in English.” They “considered him a motivation and an inspiration for them since he crossed the ocean to support Islam's cause.”

Although Khan was enthusiastic about getting weapons training, the leadership of AQAP assigned him to its media division. They wanted his help in creating an English-language publication that could spread their message to the Muslim diaspora. It was to be a glossy, well-produced magazine called
Inspire
. Khan had
studied Internet technology
during his stint in community college back in North Carolina and had already created several of his own websites, as well as an online magazine much like the one envisioned by AQAP. “After some time passed in the company of the mujahidin, I quickly acknowledged that success does not rely upon the job you undertake from nine to five, nor does it rely upon the wealth that you have accumulated, nor does it rely upon how far you have taken your studies in college. All of these things are respectable, but by being with the mujahidin, it helped open my eyes that our reason in life has nothing to do with any of these things,” Khan remembered. “The only thing in the entire world that matters to me, more than ever before, is the condition of my heart when I die.”

As Khan settled into life with AQAP, his main role would become “
connecting and facilitating disparate groups
of individuals online,” said Aaron Zelin, a scholar who has studied and written about AQAP extensively. “He was [such] an important connective tissue and node that without him it is likely recruitment would have been more difficult, especially after Awlaki's site went down. He also understood how to connect with youth in the West without having pretension and as being a co-equal to show, ‘Look, I'm an average guy, not even a religious scholar and I made it to the fields of jihad to fight the apostates and Zionist-Crusaders: so can you.'”

As the first issue of
Inspire
went into production, Khan did graphic design and editing, as well as some translation. He adopted more than one nom de guerre, among them al Qaqa al Amiriki and Abu Shidah, the Father of Harshness. “He—as I understood—wanted to choose the toughest of nicknames in order to terrorize the enemies of Islam,” Abu Yazeed recalled. Khan poured himself into work on
Inspire
and studied the Arabic
language with a passion. When colleagues tried to practice their English with him, Khan would respond in Arabic. “I cannot remember a time that we met except that he asked me something related to Arabic vocabulary,” his friend remembered. “Every time I met him, I would realize an improvement in his Arabic. Over the time he stayed, he progressed a lot in the Arabic language to the point that you couldn't easily tell if he was an English speaking brother.”