Targeting al-Awlaki
There’s actually what I think is a big scoop in this weird David Ignatius column on debates over whether we can target Anwar al-Awlaki. The scoop? The Yemeni government approached the US in October asking for help targeting al-Awlaki.
Last October, the Yemeni government came to the CIA with a request: Could the agency collect intelligence that might help target the network of a U.S.-born al-Qaeda recruiter named Anwar al-Aulaqi?
Now, one aspect of the weirdness of this article is that Ignatius doesn’t state clearly what the Yemeni government wanted.
He later suggests the request was not to “collect intelligence” but rather to capture al-Awlaki. But even in the same breath, he admits that that presumed “capture” might also mean “kill.”
The CIA concluded that it could not assist the Yemenis in locating Aulaqi for a possible capture operation. The primary reason was that the agency lacked specific evidence that he threatened the lives of Americans — which is the threshold for any capture-or-kill operation against a U.S. citizen. The Yemenis also wanted U.S. Special Forces’ help on the ground in pursuing Aulaqi; that, too, was refused.
The rest of Ignatius’ column engages in some hindsight reflection about what a shame it is that CIA and/or JSOC couldn’t help collect intelligence or maybe capture an American citizen or maybe kill him in the process of capturing him back in October, before Nidal Hasan launched his attack at Fort Hood. And to Ignatius’ credit, he ultimately does come down on the side of having actual evidence against Americans before the government can kill them.
In retrospect, it seems clear that the available information should have triggered closer scrutiny of both Hasan and Aulaqi. We’ll never know whether such action could have deterred Hasan. As for Aulaqi, officials now say he is on the U.S. target list.
Finally, does it make sense to require NSC permission before a potentially lethal operation against a U.S. citizen such as Aulaqi? My answer would be yes. The higher threshold that was in place in 2009 was appropriate then and still is: Use of lethal force always needs careful controls — especially when it involves Americans.
But there are two things Ignatius doesn’t really deal with in this column.
First, we were already “collecting information” from al-Awlaki. We appear to have had legal FISA wiretap on him going back some years. So, particularly given that our government has sold both warranted and bulk wiretapping as the fail safe prevention for terrorism, we really need to know why it is that CIA even entertained an information collection-I mean capture-I mean kill operation against al-Awlaki when, presumably, our existing no-kill information collection hadn’t collected even enough information to indict him.