Dirty Wars (73 page)

In September 2010, as Obama's senior counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, visited Yemen, Saleh launched yet
another offensive against AQAP
, this time in the city of Hawta in Shabwah Province, sixty miles from the home of Anwar Awlaki. Led by CTU forces trained and armed by the United States, Yemeni commandos laid siege to the town, shelling
it with artillery and launching helicopter attacks. Although the extent of the US role remains classified, military officials confirmed US forces were involved in a limited capacity. As thousands of people fled their homes, Brennan was in Sana'a on September 20 for meetings with Saleh. The timing of the offensive was classic Saleh, enabling him to point to a concrete, ongoing operation against AQAP in his meetings with Brennan. As the two men met, the Friends of Yemen group was preparing to hold ministerial-level talks in New York on aid to the country. According to a statement released by the National Security Council, Brennan and Saleh “
discussed cooperation
against the continuing threat of al-Qa'ida, and Mr. Brennan conveyed the United States' condolences to the Yemeni people for the loss of Yemeni security officers and citizens killed in recent al-Qa'ida attacks.” Although Yemen's government publicly hailed its success in Hawta and Lawdar, the operations amounted to a failure, as the main al Qaeda targets of the raids in both places escaped and tribal rage increased against the government.

A MONTH AFTER MEETING WITH SALEH
, Brennan received a
late-night phone call
on October 28, 2010, from his friend Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. Saudi intelligence, the prince said, had uncovered a plot by AQAP to bring down US cargo planes. The bombs, he said, were already in place. Shortly after 10:30 p.m., Brennan warned President Obama of a “
potential terrorist threat
” to the US homeland. Saudi intelligence provided US and British intelligence with
tracking numbers
for packages they believed contained explosives. By the time Brennan heard of the plot, one of the planes carrying the alleged bomb had already left Sana'a. The package was transferred to a UPS plane and flown to Germany, where it was transferred again
before arriving at 2:13 a.m.
local time at East Midlands Airport in Leicestershire, one hundred miles north of London. British security forces recovered the package, which was addressed to a synagogue in Chicago.

The package contained an office-sized printer cartridge equipped with a circuit board. Instead of toner, the cartridge contained white powder. Initial tests performed in Britain, including with bomb-sniffing dogs and explosive detection equipment, indicated it was not a bomb. The package was kept in Britain
for further tests
and the plane was cleared to continue its journey to Philadelphia. The suspicious package, meanwhile, was flown by helicopter to the
Defense Science and Technology Laboratory
at Fort Halstead for analysis. It was later revealed that the powder contained 400 grams of PETN, the same material used in Abdulmutallab's underwear device and in the attempt on Prince bin Nayef's life. The package
was armed with an alarm clock on a Nokia mobile phone's circuit board. Scotland Yard subsequently said that had the bomb not been removed, “
activation could have occurred
over the eastern seaboard of the U.S.,” with detonation set to occur at 5:30 a.m. Eastern time. A senior British counterterrorism official told the
Guardian
newspaper that the device was “
one of the most sophisticated
we've seen. The naked eye won't pick it up, experienced bomb officers did not see it, x-ray screening is highly unlikely to catch it.” A second bomb was
discovered in Dubai
on board a FedEx plane. It contained 300 grams of PETN. Like the other package, it was addressed to a Jewish organization based in Chicago. Ironically, neither of the addresses was current. Investigators suspected that whoever sent the packages had obtained outdated information online.

The packages were sent to the Jewish organizations in Chicago but addressed to two infamous and
long-dead historical figures
. One was addressed care of Diego Deza, the brutal grand inquisitor who, for a period, led the Spanish Inquisition. The other was addressed to Reynald Krak, a French knight of the Second Crusade known for his mass murder of Muslims. Krak was eventually beheaded by Saladin, the Muslim warrior who defeated the Crusaders in the twelfth century.

On Friday, October 29, Americans watched as breaking news coverage showed US warplanes escorting a cargo plane to an
emergency landing
at JFK Airport. Images were broadcast of other
planes being swept
at Philadelphia and Newark Airports. And reports of more potentially dangerous packages spread. That night, President Obama said that the explosives had posed a “
credible terrorist threat
.” In the end, none of the bombs detonated and the speculation of explosives aboard other planes proved to be just that. Once the Yemen connection was clear, there was no debate within the administration: all eyes focused on AQAP.

In November, AQAP published a “special issue” of
Inspire
. The cover featured a foggy image of a UPS cargo plane with the simple headline: “$4,200.” That was the cost, according to AQAP, of the attempted bombings, which the group labeled “Operation Hemorrhage.” The magazine featured photos purporting to show the printer cartridge bombs before they were shipped and articles outlining the objectives and technical details of the bombs. AQAP also claimed that it had succeeded in taking down a UPS plane a few months earlier, on September 3. “
We have succeeded
in bringing down the UPS plane but because the enemy's media did not attribute the operation to us we have remained silent so we may repeat the operation,” the magazine stated. A UPS plane did indeed crash that day, killing two crew members. Investigators said the accident occurred after a fire broke out in the plane. US officials
dismissed suggestions
it was a terror
attack. “We would like to ask: Why didn't the enemy reveal the truth about what happened with the downed UPS plane?” AQAP's statement read. “Is it because the enemy could not discover why the plane was brought down? Or was it because the Obama administration wanted to conceal the truth so it doesn't expose the failure of his administration especially...during an election season?” AQAP labeled September 3, “The day a tree fell into a forest that no one heard.”

As for the attempted bombings in October, AQAP's “Head of Foreign Operations” wrote in
Inspire
that bringing down the planes would have been a bonus but that the “objective was not to cause maximum casualties but to cause
maximum losses to the American economy
. That is also the reason why we singled out the two U.S. air freight companies: FedEx and UPS for our dual operation.” Noting that the US and other governments would likely spend substantial amounts of money reviewing and changing airport screening procedures, he wrote, “You either spend billions of dollars to inspect each and every package in the world or you do nothing and we keep trying again.” He said they had selected addresses in Chicago because it was “Obama's city.” The magazine also featured a picture of a beat-up copy of a Dickens book. It was a title that Awlaki had read in prison. “We were very optimistic about the outcome of this operation,” the alleged head of foreign ops wrote. “That is why we dropped into one of the boxes a novel titled,
Great Expectations
.”

Four days after the cargo bombs were discovered, Yemen
indicted Awlaki in absentia
on charges unrelated to the bomb plot. The official charge was “incitement to kill foreigners and members of security services.” The judge ordered prosecutors to hunt down Awlaki and bring him to justice dead or alive. Regardless of the specific charges against Awlaki, it was clear that the indictment was coordinated with Washington and intended to give legitimacy to the continued targeting and potential assassination of Awlaki while placing responsibility once again on the Yemenis.

JUDGE JOHN BATES
, a 2001 appointee of President George W. Bush, heard oral arguments in
Al-Aulaqi v. Obama
, challenging the administration's placement of a US citizen on an assassination list. “
How is it that judicial approval is required
when the United States decides to target a U.S. citizen overseas for electronic surveillance, but that, according to defendants, judicial scrutiny is prohibited when the United States decides to target a U.S. citizen overseas for death?” the judge asked. The government's lawyers maintained that the matter of Anwar Awlaki was a state secret, was a national security policy determined by the president and did not belong
in the courts. Judge Bates called the lawsuit “a unique and extraordinary case” in which “vital considerations of national security and of military and foreign affairs (and hence potentially of state secrets) are at play.” Bates asked: Can a US citizen “use the U.S. judicial system to vindicate his constitutional rights while simultaneously evading U.S. law enforcement authorities, calling for ‘jihad against the West,' and engaging in operational planning for an organization that has already carried out numerous terrorist attacks against the United States? Can the Executive order the assassination of a U.S. citizen without first affording him any form of judicial process whatsoever, based on the mere assertion that he is a dangerous member of a terrorist organization?” Judge Bates concluded, “These and other legal and policy questions posed by this case are controversial and of great public interest.”

But Judge Bates dismissed the case on December 7, 2010, on procedural grounds, ruling that Anwar's father, Nasser, did not have standing to file suit on behalf of his son and that the case would not have survived a review of the “political questions” it raised regarding the president's authority to wage war. Judge Bates concluded that “the serious issues regarding the merits of the alleged authorization of the targeted killing of a U.S. citizen overseas must await another day.”

Awlaki's lawyers were disappointed but not surprised by the ruling. The CCR and ACLU had spent eight years fighting the Bush administration on the very same issues, though they asserted that this case was more far-reaching in its implications. “
If the court's ruling is correct
, the government has unreviewable authority to carry out the targeted killing of any American, anywhere, whom the president deems to be a threat to the nation,” said the ACLU's Jameel Jaffer after the ruling was announced. “It would be difficult to conceive of a proposition more inconsistent with the Constitution or more dangerous to American liberty.” In a way, the Awlaki case was a microcosm of President Obama's evolving approach to counterterrorism, which was remarkably similar to that of his predecessor: the president can write his own rules.

SOMALIA
, 2010—While the legal battle played out over whether the United States could assassinate one of its own citizens, the White House's counterterrorism team was not just concerned with Awlaki or AQAP in Yemen. It was also confronting an increasingly broad-based threat in Somalia, thanks to a newly emboldened and unified Islamist movement there. The militant group al Shabab had signed an “
agreement for unification
” with Hassan Turki's Ras Kamboni militia, with the explicit aim of “establishing an Islamic state that will implement Shariah law.” But it was the last point of their agreement that mattered most in US counterterrorism circles. “In order to restore the damaged dignity of Muslims, their political power, economic strength and military might, all Muslims in the region should be united and end the hostility among them created by colonial powers,” the statement declared. “To prevent invasion by the international crusaders and the attacks they have carried out against our Muslim people, the Jihad in the Horn of Africa must be combined with the international Jihad led by the Al-Qaeda network and its Amir Sheikh Osama bin-Laden.”

Al Shabab, in justifying its alliance with al Qaeda, conflated its embrace of the terror group with resistance against foreign aggression. The opportunity to paint itself that way was a gift that Osama bin Laden could only have dreamed of in the 1990s. And Washington's missteps and miscalculations had helped to deliver it. “The
United States has launched air strikes
to target high-level members of al-Shabab it believes have links to Al Qaeda. But experts say these air strikes have only increased popular support for al-Shabab. In fact, they argue that two of the only actions that could galvanize al-Shabab and increase its support within Somalia are additional air strikes by the United States, or a return of Ethiopian troops,” a report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee concluded in early 2010. “Al Qaeda is now a more sophisticated and dangerous organization in Africa,” the report asserted, noting that al Qaeda's “foothold in Somalia has probably been facilitated by the involvement of Western powers and their allies.”

Although al Shabab's jihad had, to that point, been confined to the borders
of Somalia, the group would soon mark its formal declaration of unity with al Qaeda by hitting its enemies on their own territory.

SOMETHING HAPPENED
to the Somali militia leader Ahmed Madobe during his two years in Ethiopian custody after JSOC nearly killed him in 2007. After
reaching an agreement
in 2009 with the Ethiopian and Somali governments that he would renounce al Shabab and actively fight them, Madobe was back in his region of Somalia.
As he tells it
, he had planned to go back to Jubba and try to figure out the best deal he could make. If it was with the Somali government, so be it. If it wasn't, well, once a guerrilla, always a guerrilla.

But when he returned to his region, Madobe discovered that it was no longer his. Madobe's mentor, Hassan Turki, had merged Ras Kamboni with al Shabab and pledged allegiance to al Qaeda. Madobe was given a choice by his former comrades: with us or against us. Madobe says he tried to negotiate a power-sharing agreement for the region, but al Shabab rejected it. So Madobe chose the only real option available to him. At least that is how he prefers to tell it. “The view I had about Ethiopia greatly changed, as did the one I had about international policy on Somalia,” he told me. In early 2010,
Madobe announced
his forces were at war with al Shabab and supporting Somalia's government; and it was clear that he had forged a new relationship with the Ethiopians, who had long funded various Somali warlords and political figures. “We were fighting against the Ethiopians and the Americans and considered them enemies,” he asserted. “But these guys from al Shabab are worse than them because they spoiled the image of Islam and our peoples' values. So now, the differences between me, the Ethiopians and the US are small in contrast with the differences I have with al Shabab.”