Our “Cooperation” with Yemen

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Since we killed Anwar al-Awlaki and especially since Abed Rabu Mansour Hadi has taken over as President of Yemen, anonymous counterterrorism officials have repeatedly boasted how good our counterterrorism cooperation with Yemen is.

But this interview between the editor of the Yemen Post, Hakim Almasmari, and TBIJ challenges that claim. First there’s the matter of prison escapes, a problem that has plagued Yemen since 9/11. 88 suspected AQAP members have escaped during Hadi’s rule.

Q: Do you anticipate any new stories to come out of these areas in the south now that al Qaeda has left?

HA: Because I believe that al-Qaeda wasn’t defeated and they evacuated, I do believe al-Qaeda will have many gains over the next couple of weeks. We will see gains from al-Qaeda over the next couple of weeks in return for their evacuation. Yesterday alone five senior members escaped a prison, a highly secured prison in Yemen. Two days ago, two suspected al-Qaeda militants escaped Aden prison. So it is going to get very dirty. Al-Qaeda needed to evacuate to give the government a good image, but in return they will be given their leaders or members released from prison. This will make al-Qaeda weaker today but stronger tomorrow.

Q: You think there was something underhand in these prison escapes?

HA: Yes, this is not just a random prison escape. Eighty-eight suspected al Qaeda militants have escaped prison over the last four months alone. It’s a strategy – President Hadi needs to be powerful, he needs the image of being a leader. And sometimes that could mean cooperating or coming to agreement with al Qaeda to evacuate, but in return have some of their members released and further dialogue continues under the table between the government and al Qaeda.

And the report that we’re not coordinating drone strikes with anyone in the Yemeni Defense Ministry suggests, at the least, we don’t trust them for operational security.

Q: How credible do you think reports are that Yemen Air Force jets are launching airstrikes rather than American drones?

HA: There is no way whatsoever that the Yemen Air Force is conducting all the air strikes. The Yemeni air force is weak and it is conducting some of the air strikes but they result in very little casualties. Eyewitnesses have confirmed that the missiles launched were US-made and US involvement was confirmed in many air strikes, especially in areas where the government has very little to no ground support.

It is worrying that the US drones strategy is increasing in Yemen and even more worrying that it is happening without any coordination with the Defense Ministry. We have talked to numerous Defense Ministry officials on this and they told us that only very very few ministry officials in Yemen know even details of the US drone strikes, which means that it happens in a very un-institutional manner. And the US is helping Yemen become more of a dictatorship rather than an institutional nation. By allowing the drone strikes and no one knowing about it, this way people cannot stand against it or approve it.

But then there’s the suggestion of a different kind of “cooperation:” the funding we give to Yemeni news outlets that make them hesitant to cover drone strikes in much detail.

Q: You often file more specific reports of drone strikes compared with your peers. For example reporting five strikes in a day when others report ‘many’. How are you able to be so specific?

HA: Generally Yemen media tries to avoid covering drone strikes, for one main reason. Those who avoid it are doing so because they do not want to cut the links between them and any US funds or support for certain media outlets or certain publications.

So between requesting Yemen keep a critical journalist imprisoned (about the only one who, it seems, doesn’t end up escaping Yemeni prisons) and leading other journalists to hesitate before covering drones, the US has done a fair amount to limit coverage.

But that doesn’t seem to result in a Yemeni government we trust to wage the war against AQAP.

Failed Overseers Prepare to Legislate Away Successful Oversight

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Before I talk about the Gang of Four’s proposed ideas to crack down on leaks, let’s review what a crop of oversight failures these folks are.

The only one of the Gang of Four who has stayed out of the media of late–Dutch Ruppersberger–has instead been helping Mike Rogers push reauthorization of the FISA Amendments Act through the House Intelligence Committee with no improvements and no dissents. In other words, Ruppersberger has delivered for his constituent–the NSA–in spite of the evidence the government is wiretapping those pesky little American citizens Ruppersberger should be serving.

Then there’s Rogers himself, who has been blathering to the press about how these leaks are the most damaging in history. He supported such a claim, among other ways, by suggesting people (presumably AQAP) would assume for the first time we (or the Saudis or the Brits) have infiltrators in their network.

Some articles within this “parade” of leaks, Rogers said late last week, “included at least the speculation of human source networks that now — just out of good counterintelligence activities — they’ll believe is real, even if its not real. It causes huge problems.”

Which would assume Rogers is unaware that the last time a Saudi infiltrator tipped us off to a plot, that got exposed too (as did at least one more of their assets). And it would equally assume Rogers is unaware that Mustafa Alani and other “diplomatic sources” are out there claiming the Saudis have one agent or informant infiltrated into AQAP regions for every 850 Yemeni citizens.

In short, Rogers’ claim is not credible in the least.

Though Rogers seems most worried that the confirmation–or rather, reconfirmation–that the US and Israel are behind StuxNet might lead hackers to try similar tricks on us and/or that the code–which already escaped–might escape.

Rogers, who would not confirm any specific reports, said that mere speculation about a U.S. cyberattack against Iran has enabled bad actors. The attack would apparently be the first time the U.S. used cyberweapons in a sustained effort to damage another country’s infrastructure. Other nations, or even terrorists or hackers, might now believe they have justification for their own cyberattacks, Rogers said.

This could have devastating effects, Rogers warned. For instance, he said, a cyberattack could unintentionally spread beyond its intended target and get out of control because the Web is so interconnected. “It is very difficult to contain your attack,” he said. “It takes on a very high degree of sophistication to reach out and touch one thing…. That’s why this stuff is so concerning to me.”

Really, though, Rogers is blaming the wrong people. He should be blaming the geniuses who embraced such a tactic and–if it is true the Israelis loosed the beast intentionally–the Israelis most of all.

And while Rogers was not a Gang of Four member when things started going haywire, his colleague in witch hunts–Dianne Feinstein–was. As I’ve already noted, one of the problems with StuxNet is that those, like DiFi, who had an opportunity to caution the spooks either didn’t have enough information to do so–or had enough information but did not do their job.The problem, then, is not leaks; it’s inadequacy of oversight.

In short, Rogers and Ruppersberger and Chambliss ought to be complaining about DiFi, not collaborating with her in thwarting oversight.

Finally, Chambliss, the boss of the likely sources out there bragging about how unqualified they are to conduct intelligence oversight, even while boasting about the cool videogames they get to watch in SCIFs, appears to want to toot his horn rather the conduct oversight.

Which brings me back to the point of this post, before I got distracted talking about how badly the folks offering these “solutions” to leaks are at oversight.

Their solutions:

Discussions are ongoing over just how stringent new provisions should be as the Senate targets leakers in its upcoming Intelligence Authorization bill, according to a government source.

Read more →

The Incidental Anti-Drug Spying on a White SUV

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I hinted at this earlier, but it’s worth making explicit. In his reporting from Holloman Air Force Base, Mark Mazzetti revealed that the Air Force practices drone targeting on civilian traffic driving close to the base.

Holloman sits on almost 60,000 acres of desert badlands, near jagged hills that are frosted with snow for several months of the year — a perfect training ground for pilots who will fly Predators and Reapers over the similarly hostile terrain of Afghanistan. When I visited the base earlier this year with a small group of reporters, we were taken into a command post where a large flat-screen television was broadcasting a video feed from a drone flying overhead. It took a few seconds to figure out exactly what we were looking at. A white S.U.V. traveling along a highway adjacent to the base came into the cross hairs in the center of the screen and was tracked as it headed south along the desert road. When the S.U.V. drove out of the picture, the drone began following another car.

“Wait, you guys practice tracking enemies by using civilian cars?” a reporter asked. One Air Force officer responded that this was only a training mission, and then the group was quickly hustled out of the room.

What Mazzetti has described is a visual representation of the practice revealed in a new Air Force directive published by Secrecy News earlier this year–that the Air Force may collect imagery on US persons as part of training so long as it is “incidental.”

9.6.1. Air Force units with weapon system video and tactical ISR capabilities may collect imagery during formal and continuation training missions as long as the collected imagery is not for the purpose of obtaining information about specific US persons or private property. Collected imagery may incidentally include US persons or private property without consent. Imagery may not be collected for the purpose of gathering any specific information about a US person or private entity, without consent, nor may stored imagery be retrievable by reference to US person identifiers.

9.6.2. Air Force Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) operations, exercise and training missions will not conduct nonconsensual surveillance on specifically identified US persons, unless expressly approved by the Secretary of Defense, consistent with US law and regulations. Civil law enforcement agencies, such as the US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the US Coast Guard, will control any such data collected. [my emphasis]

The Air Force restricts the distribution of information collected “incidentally” (as much–other parts of the Directive makes clear–because it wants to hide its intelligence capabilities as because of any squeamishness about privacy).

Distribution of Domestic Imagery. Distribution of domestic imagery to parties other than those identified in the approved PUM, DIR or MFR is prohibited, unless the recipient is reasonably perceived to have a specific, lawful governmental function requiring it IAW paragraph 11.4. Unless otherwise approved, domestic imagery must be withheld from all general access database systems (e.g., Intelink).

But that doesn’t seem to rule out sharing with the National Counterterrorism Center (which after all, may now access any database it deems to have a counterterrorism interest), which can then cross reference that intelligence with any other government database.

And the Air Force directive specifically permits the sharing of information regarding violations of US or local laws.

11.12.2.1. Violations of US federal law. Incidentally acquired information reasonably believed to indicate a violation of federal law shall be provided to appropriate federal law enforcement officials through AFOSI channels.

Note where Holloman (and the likely highway in question) is located: right on a highway headed north from Ciudad Juarez, presumably a drug trafficking route.

Effectively, these “training” activities mean we’re using military drones inside the US to “incidentally” collect intelligence for the drug war, among other things. I’ve long suggested the first use of a lethal drone strike in the US will claim to have targeted cartel trafficking. I just didn’t yet have confirmation they’re effectively already doing anti-drug surveillance inside the US with drones.

Manned Flights Kill Civilians Too

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NPR’s Kelly McEvers just released a story with some on-the-ground reporting on attacks in Yemen attributed to the US. She focuses closely on an attack on Jaar I’ve discussed before in the context of reports on Obama’s embrace of signature strikes in Yemen.

I noted, for example, that this strike happened as anonymous Administration sources seeded a bunch of stories about a Kill List, falsely suggesting that the Administration only killed people whose identities they knew.

There is absolutely no reason to believe, for example, that Obama–or even John Brennan–knew the identity of the up to 8 civilians who were killed by a drone in Jaar, Yemen, on May 15. All anyone knew about them, according to reporting, is that they ran out after an earlier drone strike to look at the impact site. Boom! They were never on any Kill List, but they are nonetheless just as dead as Quso is.

And they rolled out that campaign amid disputes about who was responsible for the attack–and whether it was carried out with drones or manned aircraft.

I find the competing stories being told interesting, particularly in light of questions about who leaked information on the latest Underwear Bomb “plot.” At first, a “government official” toldChina’s Xinhua news that the Yemeni military had executed the attacks.

Earlier in the day, a botched air strike carried out by Yemeni warplanes hit a residential building near a compound used by al- Qaida militants in the insurgents-controlled town of Jaar, killing at least eight civilians and injuring five others, a government official said.[my emphasis]

But later, “three Yemeni security officials” blamed the strikes on drones, not the Yemeni military.

Two suspected U.S. drone strikes killed seven al Qaeda militants and eight civilians in the southern part of Yemen on Tuesday, three Yemeni security officials said.

It was the latest of several U.S. strikes in Yemen, which is home to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, described by U.S. officials as the al Qaeda affiliate that poses the most serious threat to the United States.
At least seven civilians were injured in the Tuesday strikes, the officials said.

In other words, this attack seems like a royal fuckup that elicited some real spin on the part of the Administration to explain away.

Which is interesting, given that McEvers’ report–or at least the description of the sound of a plane, as distinct from a drone–seems to support the manned aircraft claims.

In Jaar, a town in southern Yemen, an entire block has been reduced to rubble by what residents say was a powerful airstrike on May 15.

[snip]

At this particular site, witnesses say the strikes rocked the town in the morning, just as many residents of Jaar were out buying breakfast. Residents say they heard a plane, and a house on the main street was flattened. One man inside died instantly. Read more →

Umar Patek: Indonesia’s 20 Year Sentence Versus One Errant Drone Strike

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Mark Mazzetti has a fascinating collection of details on drones. In addition to showing drone pilots training in New Mexico practicing by tracking (and therefore incidentally collecting intelligence on) US civilian cars and displaying a real callousness about their video game killing, Mazzetti describes this 2006 drone strike in the Philippines.

Over the years, details have trickled out about lethal drone operations in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen and elsewhere. But the drone war has been even more extensive. According to three current and former intelligence officials I spoke to, in 2006, a barrage of Hellfire missiles from a Predator hit a suspected militant camp in the jungles of the Philippines, in an attempt to kill the Indonesian terrorist Umar Patek. The strike, which was reported at the time as a “Philippine military operation,” missed Patek but killed others at the camp.

The detail is interesting not just because it reveals the scope of our drone war. It also provides an opportunity to compare two possible outcomes for Patek, who built the bombs used in the 2002 Bali bombings: death by drone strike in 2006, versus his conviction in an Indonesian court last year.

The outcome of the trial last month is a mixed bag. Because Patek apologized and argued successfully that he did not have as significant a role as the other conspirators (who have already been executed), he got just a 20 year sentence. But his conviction brings closure to the 2002 attacks (though it’s not clear whether Hambali will ever be charged); compare that with 9/11, where victims still have seen none of the plotters convicted.

So while counterterrorism officials might argue Patek got off easy (and I wouldn’t put it beyond the US to render him at the close of his sentence), some kind of justice has been served, which is more than the US can say.

Then there’s the possibility that Patek served an added purpose.

At the very least, Patek underwent interrogation in Pakistani custody for 7 months before his extradition to Indonesia. Presumably, he provided intelligence on matters unrelated to the Bali bombings.

But there’s a question that has, AFAIK, never been answered. Patek was arrested in January 2011 in Abbottabad, Pakistan. There have always been suspicions that the arrest of Patek in the city Osama bin Laden was hidden out in (Patek reportedly planned to meet OBL) helped to solidify the case that he was in fact the “Pacer” in the compound. Did Patek help the US get OBL?

We can’t really compare that to what might have happened had Patek died in 2006. How do you weigh the ongoing training Patek offered in the interim 5 years? How many innocents were killed in that strike in 2006?

But given how much intelligence the CIA appeared to be sustaining on Patek, it seems arrest rather than drone strike might bring additional tangible benefits.

Things Worth Fighting For

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Before you head out for barbecue and blowing fireworks up, take a moment to reflect on the things that were once worth fighting for. Here are a few that–given Anwar al-Awlaki’s death and the dismissal of Jose Padilla’s torture lawsuits since our last Independence Day–are particularly worth noting.

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

[snip]

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

Awlaki and Padilla surely wanted to harm this country. But that doesn’t excuse the harm done by those betraying the foundational principles of this great country.

Happy Independence Day! May we all continue to honor this country and its founding principles in the coming year.

The Real Blowback: Drone Instability

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In addition to saying something I’ve said for a while–that our poor education outcomes are a bigger threat to our country than al Qaeda–Stanley McChrystal also had this story to tell at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

“I hope we won’t be a country that uses [drones] to the exclusion of” trained personnel on the ground, he said. He noted the importance of U.S. forces living in foreign countries and learning the local languages. To hit home his point, he described a chilling account of the wrongful execution of a civilan farmer in Afghanistan by a U.S. drone strike. “We fired a missile and killed him and found out he was a farmer,” McChrystal said. After the assassination, McChystal replayed the event to Afghan President Hamid Karzai on a laptop who told McChystal the farmer was engaged in routine irrigation work just prior to the missile strike–an activity the U.S. military should’ve been familiar with. “You have to know these sorts of things,” McChrystal told the crowd. [my emphasis]

On Twitter I joked that assassinating farmers in arid countries who try to irrigate their fields is a plot to sell Monsanto seeds (the guy we killed with Fahd al-Quso was reportedly also a farmer tending his fields); that was, of course, just snark.

But consider what it is: an example of the way that our drone strikes terrorize the kinds of productive activities Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen need to reestablish some kind of stability.

Which brings me to this point from a guest poster at Tom Ricks’ blog: the targeting rules in Afghanistan (the farmer described by McChrystal notwithstanding) are far more strict than they are in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia because our troops are there.

Panelists noted that in Afghanistan, ISAF has been very effective at using drones as part of the larger military campaign. Strict rules govern the use of drones under ISAF command. Under no conditions, for example, are drones used to attack buildings, given the possibility that unidentified civilians may be inside. Such rigidity results not solely from a belief in abiding by the rules of war, but from a conviction that any civilian deaths threaten greater instability. In the hinterlands of Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, where ground troops are unable to help vet potential targets or engage with local populations to redress errors, drones have struck more fear and resentment in local populations than confidence, one panelist concluded. [my emphasis]

The implication is that our troops are there and therefore we have firsthand knowledge, and I’m sure that’s a big part of things (though I suspect one reason McChrystal recognizes the need to improve education is that our troops will only figure out things like local irrigation customs if they’ve got a more sophisticated education than most American high school grads). But I wonder, too, whether having troops stationed locally makes the value of stability more readily apparent to American planners.

It’s always the people on the ground–whether they’re Pakistani, Afghan, Yemeni, or American–who best recognize the value of stability.

With the importance of stability in mind, consider this post from Chris Swift, which purports to refute the “drone blowback fallacy.”

Read more →

Pakistani Drone Strikes! Now, with 10% More Enemies!

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A few weeks ago, I noted a Pew poll that showed the rest of the world doesn’t like our drone strikes (and that there’s a big gender gap between men and women over drone strikes). I noted that Pew was holding off their results from Pakistan.

Maybe that’s because the results are fairly troubling.

Since Obama became President (and since the drone campaign accelerated in Pakistan), the number of Pakistanis who regard us as an enemy has gone up 10%, 5% in just the last year, to 74%.

More dangerous still, Pakistanis don’t want our help fighting extremists, nor do they want to use the Pakistani army to fight extremists in their own country.

 

Additionally, over the last few years, Pakistanis have become less willing to work with the U.S. on efforts to combat extremist groups. While 50% still want the U.S. to provide financial and humanitarian aid to areas where extremists operate, this is down from 72% in 2009. Similarly, fewer Pakistanis now want intelligence and logistical support from the U.S. than they did three years ago. And only 17% back American drone strikes against leaders of extremist groups, even if they are conducted in conjunction with the Pakistani government.

Since 2009, the Pakistani public has also become less willing to use its own military to combat extremist groups. Three years ago, 53% favored using the army to fight extremists in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and neighboring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, but today just 32% hold this view.

If Pakistan were a nice stable country, we might be able to blow off these results and just keep droning on.

But the instability in the country and the widespread opposition to the US is a recipe for disaster.

Our Other Assassination Program: Mafia Hitmen Hidden from Congress

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As part of my not-yet exhausted obsession with the government’s effort to obscure its drone assassination program, I re-read these two posts describing the assassination squads Dick Cheney set up but kept hidden from Congress. When Leon Panetta learned about it–and learned Congress had not been briefed–it set off a big scandal where, for once, Congress actually got pissed. The big scandal, we ultimately learned, was that the assassination squads had been outsourced in 2004 to Blackwater. And while actual approval for the program appears to have come in a September 26, 2001 directive following up on the Gloves Come Off Memorandum of Notification that authorized hit squads, its legal justification and logic parallels the drone program.

The Bush administration took the position that killing members of Al Qaeda, a terrorist group that attacked the United States and has pledged to attack it again, was no different from killing enemy soldiers in battle, and that therefore the agency was not constrained by the assassination ban.

But former intelligence officials said that employing private contractors to help hunt Qaeda operatives would pose significant legal and diplomatic risks, and they might not be protected in the same way government employees are.

[snip]

Officials said that the C.I.A. program was devised partly as an alternative to missile strikes using drone aircraft, which have accidentally killed civilians and cannot be used in urban areas where some terrorists hide.

Yet with most top Qaeda operatives believed to be hiding in the remote mountains of Pakistan, the drones have remained the C.I.A.’s weapon of choice. Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration has embraced the drone campaign because it presents a less risky option than sending paramilitary teams into Pakistan.

Today, we learn that the guy who took the assassination program private, then CIA CTC Operations Director Ricky Prados, was a mob hitman whose murderous ways continued after he joined the Agency.

More startling, the Miami murders allegedly continued after Prado joined the CIA. One target included a cocaine distributor in Colorado who was killed by a car bomb. Investigators believed he was killed over concerns he would talk to the police.

Years later, in 1996, Prado was a senior manager inside the CIA’s Bin Laden Issue Station, before the Al-Qaida mastermind was a well-known name. Read more →

Why Is DOJ Deliberately Hiding Information Responsive to ACLU’s Anwar al-Awlaki FOIA?

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As part of its strategy to not respond to the Anwar al-Awlaki FOIAs, the government seems to have decided to bury the NYT and ACLU under declarations. It submitted declarations and exhibits from 3 departments in DOJ, CIA, DOD, and DIA. Each attempts to appear helpful while (usually) blathering on at length but in no detail about why the President’s authority to kill an American citizen must remain hidden.

That said, the declarations can be distinguished by how convincing (or not) are their claims to have searched for relevant documents. In particular, DOJ Office of Information Policy was patently unresponsive, probably to hide the intelligence DOJ has on Anwar al-Awlaki (and possibly Samir Khan).

DOJ OLC presented by far the most convincing evidence of a real search. As described by Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Bies, the department conducted searches for the following terms: target! kill!, drones, assassinat!, extrajudicial killing, UAV, unmanned, awlaki, aulaqi, lethal force, lethal operation.

DOD primarily searched legal officers. While Lieutenant General Robert Neller didn’t provide a full list of search terms used, he claimed the search “included relevant key words,” including “Citizen,” “AG Speech,” “al-Awlaki,” and “Samir Khan.” While Neller says DOD used “multiple spellings” of al-Awlaki, it’s not clear whether they only searched hyphenated names. And there are some terms clearly missing–such as anything to do with targeted killing. And “citizen”? Really?!?!?

CIA, meanwhile, had this to say about their search:

In light of these recent speeches and the official disclosures contained therein, the CIA decided to conduct a reasonable search for records responsive to the ACLU’s request. Based on that search, it has determined that it can now publicly acknowledge that it possesses records responsive to the ACLU’s FOIA request.

The DOJ response provides this nonsensical excuse for why CIA can’t reveal how it searched for relevant documents.

Although the CIA acknowledges its possession of some records responsive to the FOIA 6 requests, information concerning the depth and breadth of that interest, including the number of documents, is classified. See infra Point II; Bennett Decl. ¶¶ 27-28. We therefore do not describe the CIA’s search on the public record; it is described in the Classified Declaration of John Bennett.

Given the CIA’s well-documented history of not searching where they know the most interesting documents are, I think it safe to assume the search was completely negligent. But I find it mighty interesting they didn’t even tell us what their search consisted of–the better to avoid contempt proceedings in the future, I guess.

Nevertheless, I think the least defensible search comes from Deputy Chief of the Initial Request Staff at Office of Information Policy Joseph Hibbard. OIP conducted the search in offices of top DOJ officials like the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, and so on. Their search terms were: “targeted killings,” “kill lists,” “lethal operation,” “lethal force,” “al-Aulaqi” and “target,” “al-Awlaki” and “target,” “Samir Khan” and “target,” and “Abdulrahman” and “target.” Read more →