Dirty Wars (93 page)

A State Department liaison who worked extensively with JSOC described Petraeus's vision for running the CIA as transforming the Agency into “
a mini-Special Operations Command
that purports to be an intelligence agency.” For all the praise Petraeus won for his counterinsurgency strategy and the “surge” in Iraq, the liaison told me, Petraeus's most significant contribution was as a “political tool,” an enabler of those within the national security apparatus who wanted to see a continuation and expansion of covert global small wars. Pointing to the “mystique that surrounds JSOC” and Admiral William McRaven, the liaison said, “Petraeus was trying to implement that kind of command climate at the CIA.”

Colonel Patrick Lang told me that once Petraeus arrived at Langley, he “wanted to drag them in the covert action direction and to
be a major player
.”

FOR TWO YEARS,
the US efforts to assassinate Anwar Awlaki were based on intelligence that he was hiding in his tribal areas around Shabwah and Abyan. But the
interrogation sessions with Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame
—the young Somali snatched by JSOC and held for months on board a US Navy vessel—had indicated that Awlaki had relocated to the northern
Yemeni governate of Jawf, far from the scene of most of the strikes aimed at killing him. The United States had long assumed Awlaki was in Shabwah and had repeatedly conducted operations there in an effort to get him. Yemeni intelligence on the ground had corroborated the information that Warsame had given US interrogators when JSOC held him. By early September, US surveillance aircraft had pinpointed Awlaki's location at a
small house in Khashef
, a village in Jawf about ninety miles northeast of Sana'a. Jawf, which borders Saudi Arabia, was rife with informants on the
kingdom's payroll
.

Local villagers in Khashef began
seeing drones hovering
in the skies above. Washington's drone war had kicked into full gear in Yemen, so the presence of the aircraft was not particularly out of the ordinary, but what the villagers did not know was that the White House's counterterrorism teams were watching one specific house. Watching and waiting. Once they got a lock on Awlaki's coordinates, the CIA quickly deployed several armed Predator drones from its new base in Saudi Arabia and
took operational control
of some JSOC drones launched from Djibouti, as well.

The plan to assassinate Awlaki was code-named
Operation Troy
. The very name implied that the United States had a mole who was leading its forces to Awlaki.

As the Americans surveilled the house where Anwar Awlaki was staying in Jawf, Abdulrahman Awlaki
arrived in Ataq
, Shabwah. He was picked up at the bus station by his relatives, who told him that they did not know where his father was. The boy decided to wait in the hope that his father would come to meet him. His grandmother called the family he was with in Shabwah, but Abdulrahman refused to speak to her. “
I called the family house
and they said, ‘He's OK, he's here,' but I didn't talk to him,” she recalled. “He tried to avoid talking to us, because he knows we will tell him to come back. And he wanted to see his father.” Abdulrahman traveled with some of his cousins to the town of Azzan, where he planned to await word from his father.

At the White House, President Obama was faced with a decision, not of morality or legality, but of timing. He had already sentenced Anwar Awlaki, a US citizen, to death without trial. A secret legal authorization had been prepared and internal administration critics sidelined or brought on board. All that remained to sort out was the day Awlaki would die. Obama, one of his advisers recalled, had “
no qualms
” about this kill. According to leaks from the Obama administration about the operation, US officials knew there were women and children in the house where Awlaki was staying. Although scores of US drone strikes had killed civilians in various countries around the globe, it was official policy to avoid such
deaths if at all possible. When Obama was briefed on Awlaki's location in Jawf and was told that children were in the home, he was explicit that he did not want any options ruled out. Awlaki was not to escape again. “
Bring it to me and let me decide
in the reality of the moment rather than in the abstract,” Obama told his advisers. “In this one instance,” an Obama confidant recalled, “the president considered relaxing some of his
collateral requirements
.”

Awlaki had evaded US drones and cruise missiles for at least two years. He rarely stayed in one place more than a night or two. This time was different. For some reason, he had
stayed in the same house
in Khashef much longer, all the while being monitored by the United States. Now the Americans had him cleanly in their sights. “They were living in this house, for at least two weeks. Small mud house,” Nasser was later told by local people. “I think they wanted to make some videotape. Samir Khan was with him.” On the morning of September 30, 2011, Awlaki and Khan
finished their breakfast
inside the house. US spy cameras and satellites broadcast images back to Washington and Virginia of the two men and a handful of their cohorts piling into vehicles and driving away from the house. They began heading toward the province of Marib. As the vehicles made their way over the dusty, unpaved roads, US drones, armed with Hellfire missiles, were dispatched to hunt them down. The drones were technically under the command of the CIA, though
JSOC aircraft and ground forces
were poised to jump in should the operation require their assistance. A team of commandos stood at the ready to board V-22 helicopters and take action. For extra measure, US Marine Harrier jets scrambled in a backup maneuver.

Six months earlier, Awlaki had narrowly missed death by US missiles. “This time
eleven missiles missed
its target but the next time, the first rocket may hit it,” he had said. As the cars sped down the road, Awlaki's prophecy came true. Two of the Predator drones locked onto the car carrying Awlaki, while other aircraft hovered as backup. A Hellfire missile fired from a drone slammed into his car, transforming it into a ball of flames. A second missile hit moments later, ensuring that the men inside would never escape if they had managed to survive. “Just a few minutes after they left the house, they were going to a
wadi,
somewhere they can make this film, and they were targeted,” said Nasser. “The car was completely destroyed. And [Anwar's] body was cut out of the car.” The Yemeni government sent out a text message to journalists. “The terrorist
Anwar Awlaki has been killed
along with some of his companions,” it read. It was
9:55 a.m. local time
. When villagers in the area arrived at the scene of the missile strikes, they reported that the bodies inside had been burned beyond recognition. There were no survivors. Amid the rubble, they found
a symbol more reliable than a fingerprint in Yemeni culture: a charred rhinoceros horn handle of a
jambiya
dagger
. There was no doubt it belonged to Anwar Awlaki.

ON SEPTEMBER
30, during a visit to Fort Myer in Virginia, President Obama stepped up to a podium and addressed reporters. “
Earlier this morning
Anwar Awlaki, a leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, was killed in Yemen,” Obama declared. “The death of Awlaki is a major blow to al Qaeda's most active operational affiliate.” The president then bestowed upon Awlaki a label that had never been attached to him before, despite all his reported associations with al Qaeda. “Awlaki was the leader of external operations for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. In that role, he took the lead in planning and directing efforts to murder innocent Americans,” Obama asserted. “The death of Awlaki marks another significant milestone in the broader effort to defeat al Qaeda and its affiliates,” adding that the United States “will be resolute in our commitment to destroy terrorist networks that aim to kill Americans, and to build a world in which people everywhere can live in greater peace, prosperity and security.” Obama made no mention of the fact that Awlaki was a US citizen.

Back in Yemen, the Awlaki family received word of the strike in Jawf. At first they
doubted the official reports
, as so many before had been false, but then they confirmed that this time they were accurate. As they mourned the death of their son Anwar, the Awlakis' attention turned to their grandson, Abdulrahman. He had gone to Shabwah to find his father, and now his father was dead.

After Abdulrahman heard the news of Anwar's death, he called home for the first time and spoke to his mother and his grandmother. “That's enough, Abdulrahman. You have to come back,” his grandmother, Saleha, told him. “That's it, you didn't see your father.” Abdulrahman, she recalled, sounded devastated, yet still tried to comfort her. “Be patient. Be strong,” Abdulrahman told her. “Allah chose him.” The conversation was brief. Abdulrahman said he would return home soon but that he wanted to wait for the roads to clear. “At the time, the roads were not very safe. The revolution was at its maybe highest point,” Saleha added. There were police checkpoints and fighting on the route. Abdulrahman did not want to be detained or caught up in any violence. So the boy said he would remain with his cousins in Shabwah and return to Sana'a when things calmed down.

IN NORTH CAROLINA,
Sarah Khan woke up to the news from Yemen. “In the morning
when I opened the computer
, I saw that they had killed Anwar Awlaki,” she told me. There was no mention of her son, Samir, in the early reports. But then Sarah's husband, Zafar, called her from his office and said he had seen some reports indicating that a “Samir Khan” had also been killed in the drone strikes. “I didn't believe it,” Sarah told me. “Samir is a name that is pretty common in the Middle East—it could be any Samir. Doesn't have to be my Samir. I was like, it's not true. It cannot be Samir. It has to be somebody else. I didn't want to believe in that.” As more reports trickled out, they began to accept the fact that their son was dead, killed by his own government. The Khans tried to contact the State Department for information, for answers. Why was Samir killed when the
FBI had told his family
that he had committed no crime? The grand jury that was convened to consider charges against him a year earlier, in August 2010, had produced no indictment. Why was he condemned to death without trial? Their inquiries were met with silence.

The Khans—who had done everything they could to stay away from the media spotlight when their son became a known figure in
Inspire
magazine—decided to take their questions public. After the strike in Yemen, they wrote an open letter to the US government in a local newspaper. “
It has been stated in the media
that Samir was not the target of the attack; however no US official has contacted us with any news about the recovery of our son's remains, nor offered us any condolences. As a result, we feel appalled by the indifference shown to us by our government,” the letter read. “Being a law abiding citizen of the United States our late son Samir Khan never broke any law and was never implicated of any crime. The Fifth Amendment states that no citizen shall be ‘deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law,' yet our government assassinated two of its citizens. Was this style of execution the only solution? Why couldn't there have been a capture and trial? Where is the justice? As we mourn our son, we must ask these questions.”

Days later, Zafar Khan received a phone call from the US State Department. The official on the line expressed the US government's “condolences” for Samir's death. “They said that they were sorry and that Samir wasn't the target,” Sarah Khan told me. “They said Sammy did not do anything wrong. They said he was not the target.” That only raised more questions for her. “If they knew that Samir was there, in that vehicle, then how could they do something like that?” she asked. Obama administration officials later told reporters that Khan was “
collateral damage
” in a strike aimed at Awlaki, but Representative Michael McCaul from Texas had another word for it. “Samir Khan was a bonus.
It was a twofer
,” McCaul said. “It's a pretty good hit.”

As word of Awlaki's death spread, politicians in the United States from both political parties hailed the assassination of one of their own citizens. “
This is an extraordinary victory
, a great moment for the United States,” gloated Republican congressman Peter King, the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee. Awlaki, he said, had become “more dangerous than bin Laden”—indeed, he was “the No. 1 terrorist in the world.” Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, celebrated Awlaki's killing, saying in a joint statement with Republican senator Saxby Chambliss that he “posed a
significant and imminent threat
to the United States” and had “declared war on the United States and inspired and planned attacks against us. We commend the agencies and individuals who found him and eliminated this dangerous threat.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “
Like Osama bin Laden
and so many other terrorist leaders who have been killed or captured in recent years, [Awlaki] can no longer threaten America, our allies, or peace-loving people anywhere in the world. Today we are all safer.”

“
I'm glad they did it
,” said Republican senator John McCain. Former vice president Dick Cheney praised Obama for killing Awlaki, saying, “
I do think this was a good strike
. I think the president ought to have that kind of authority to order that kind of strike, even when it involves an American citizen.” CIA director Leon Panetta echoed those sentiments, declaring, “
This individual was clearly a terrorist
and yes, he was a citizen, but if you're a terrorist, you're a terrorist.”