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Why Would the UndieBomber Make a Martyrdom Video in Arabic?

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In his drone letter to Congress 11 days ago, Eric Holder quoted a recording Anwar al-Awlaki made — it was prominently reported across the US media in March 2010, not long after he was added to the drone kill list — calling on Americans to take up jihad.

In this role, al-Aulaqi repeatedly made clear his intent to attack U.S. persons and his hope that these attacks would take American lives. For example, in a message to Muslims living in the United States, he noted that he had come “to the conclusion that jihad against America is binding upon myself just as it is binding upon every other able Muslim.” But it was not al-Aulaqi’s words that led the United States to act against him: they only served to demonstrate his intentions and state of mind, that he “pray[ed] that Allah [would] destro[y] America and all its allies.” Rather, it was al-Aulaqi’s actions — and, in particular, his direct personal involvement in the continued planning and execution of terrorist attacks against the U.S. homeland — that made him a lawful target and led the United States to take action.

Though Holder doesn’t quote these bits, the same recording mentions Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab several times, boasting about how such attacks proved the futility of American security systems.

9/11, the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and then operations, such as that of our brother Omar al-Farouq which could have not cost more than a few thousand dollars, end up draining the US Treasury billions of dollars, in order to give Americans a false sense of security.

[snip]

Our brother Omar Farouq has succeeded in breaking through the security systems that have cost the US government alone over $40 billion since 9/11.

[snip]

And after the operation of our brother Omar Farouq, the initial comments coming from the administration were looking the same: another attempt at covering up the truth. But Al-Qaida cut off Obama from deceiving the world again; by issuing their statement claiming responsibility for the operation.

[snip]

The operation of our brother Omar Farouq was in retaliation to American cruise missiles and cluster bombs that killed women and children in Yemen.

When the recording was originally released, American news outlets noted they had not confirmed the authenticity of the recording. Whether it is or not, the Administration has formally presented this release — as anonymous reporting had in the past — as proof that Awlaki was trying to reach out to American Muslims in early 2010, and therefore proof he could be killed.

If the government maintains that Awlaki would propagandize Abdulmutallab’s attack in English, then why does it claim that Awlaki helped Abdulmutallab make his martyrdom video, which is in Arabic?

Here’s how they describe that claim in the narrative they submitted with Abdulmutallab’s sentencing.

Awlaki told defendant that he would create a martyrdom video that would be used after the defendant’s attack. Awlaki arranged for a professional film crew to film the video. Awlaki assisted defendant in writing his martyrdom statement, and it was filmed over a period of two to three days.

Why would al Qaeda’s best English language propagandist set out to make a video with a man schooled in English about an attack targeting America, but make it in Arabic?

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Classification Games Hiding the Afghan Defeat

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Amidst all the discussion of the Administration’s crack-down on leaks, two details have made it clear the Administration is using its own abuse of classification to hide reports of our impending defeat in Afghanistan.

Administration leaks to enforce and protect our pro-corruption policy

One of those comes from Sarah Chayes, the former Stanley McChrystal advisor. She was last seen on the pages of this blog complaining about CIA support for corruption in Afghanistan. In a new piece, she offers one of the most interesting takes on the Administration’s pursuit of leaks.

While her main point is that if reporters were as exposed as their sources to legal consequences for leaks, they might better judge the truly important leaks, she throws some fascinating details showing how broken the classification system is.

Far too much information is protected by unwarranted classification. It’s hard to take a system seriously that places so many gigabytes of material that are not critical to national security under the same umbrella as the few nuggets that are. I’ve seen a New Yorker article included among prep documents for a National Security Council meeting stamped SECRET//NOFORN (meaning that only cleared U.S. citizens were allowed to read it).

[snip]

In September 2010, a flurry of coverage in major U.S. newspapers reported a supposed government decision on how corruption in Afghanistan would be handled. Perusing the articles with growing wonder, I looked down at a memo on my desk. Not only were passages quoted from it classified, the document was also watermarked DRAFT. No decision had been made yet because debate on the draft had not even reached the level of Cabinet secretaries. It was a classic Washington case of offensive leaking. For months, I was convinced that the perpetrator was the late Richard Holbrooke, then special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. But I kept asking reporters. Finally I traced the leak to a senior White House official, whose career has progressed untroubled.

She makes it very clear what the second example of classification abuse is. While she links to this early September 2010 WaPo article describing a decision to ignore corruption in Afghanistan, in her own account of what happened, she points to mid-September as the period when it became clear top figures in the Administration had bought off on supporting corruption in exchange for “progress” towards wiping out the Taliban.

Effectively, Chayes is suggesting that a top White House figure effectively won the debate in support of ignoring corruption in Afghanistan by leaking a draft classified decision as a fait accompli. Given her suggestion that this person’s career has “progressed,” it’s a safe bet that it is one of the people — like current National Security Advisor Tom Donilan, current CIA Director John Brennan, or current Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes — who got promoted since this leak.

Chayes doesn’t provide much guidance about which New Yorker article was classified SECRET and used in a National Security Council meeting, but I’m betting it was this Dexter Filkins article that rehearses the same issues of corruption. As I’ve noted, while the NYT (where Filkins had recently departed) only hinted at how badly the collapse of the Kabul Bank implicated Hamid Karzai’s corrupt administration, Filkins provided extensive details. The Filkins article, like the earlier series of articles, arises out of the decision to capitulate to CIA bagman Muhammad Zia Salehi’s blackmail to avoid prosecution.

Salehi telephoned Karzai from his jail cell. “He told Karzai, ‘If I spend one night in jail, I’ll bring the whole thing down,’ ” the Western official recalled.

Out of fear Salehi would “bring the whole thing down,” it seems, the Obama Administration chose to abuse the classification system to ignore — while hiding the true extent of — the corruption of our Afghan partners.

Selective protection of CIA’s efforts to convince our allies to remain in Afghanistan

Meanwhile, one of the things the government convinced Bradley Manning trial judge Denise Lind to keep secret even after it had been inadvertently released once appears to relate to CIA’s efforts to shore up support for the Afghan War among our European allies.

Alexa O’Brien makes a compelling argument that one of the witnesses who will testify to the harm allegedly caused by Manning’s leaks in secret is Robert Roland. She further argues that Roland will testify about 2 CIA Red Cell Memos, one of which strategizes how to ward off political opposition to the Afghan War of the kind that got our coalition partners in the Netherlands ousted (the other, which I wrote about here, pertains to concerns that other countries will figure out we export terrorism). The analysis of the memo itself is rather unsophisticated; it argues if we emphasize the benefit for women of our continued presence in Afghanistan and the support one poll showed Afghans had for our presence, it’ll be enough to keep French and German voters in line.

But I guess it is rather embarrassing to have CIA’s reflections, however naive, on how to counter democratic opposition to war out there. And I suppose Roland’s identity might have been protected until whatever reviewer missed it in one of Manning’s defense filings.

At this point, however, both are public. Yet Roland’s identity and the CIA reports are being treated with far more sensitivity than far more damning State reports that will be discussed publicly.

Ah well. The report I want to see is the CIA plan to shore up support for the Afghan war as it becomes more and more clear the war serves only to prop up the crooks the CIA has been bribing for 12 years.

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When NYT Accused Jim Comey of Approving Torture

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[youtube]hxHjWYA50Ds[/youtube]

As you’ve likely heard already, NPR and others have reported that President Obama will nominate Jim Comey to lead the FBI.

I think Comey is a decent choice.

Much of the attention since this news broke has focused on Comey’s role in the hospital confrontation, where he threatened to resign unless the Bush Administration fixed the illegal wiretap program. That will clearly be a highlight of Comey’s confirmation discussion.

But just as much as Comey’s unsent resignation letter, I’m curious how these emails will play in his confirmation process.

They were similar Comey CYA, from the period in May 2005 when Dick Cheney was pushing Alberto Gonzales to reauthorize all the torture CIA had been doing since Jack Goldsmith had withdrawn the Bybee Two memo in 2004. While Comey did buy off on approving the waterboarding that had already been done (he unsuccessfully tried to limit it to one detainee whose treatment occurred after the Bybee Two memo was withdrawn), he also pushed hard — and failed — to get Alberto Gonzales to refuse to approve the techniques in combination, as they had reportedly always been used.

In the emails, he talks about when news of what was being approved broke (details of what freaked Comey out so much still haven’t become public), those pushing for torture would be gone. He regretted how much weaker Gonzales was than John Ashcroft, recalling that hospital bed scene.

I told him the people who were applying pressure now would not be there when the shit hit the fan. Rather they would simply say they had only asked for an opinion.

[snip]

It leaves me feeling sad for the Department and the AG.

[snip]

I just hope that when this all comes out, this institution doesn’t take the hit, but rather the hit is taken by those individuals who occupied positions at OLC and OAG and were too weak to stand up for the principles that undergird the rest of this great institution.

[snip]

People may think it strange to hear me say I miss John Ashcroft, but as intimidated as he could be by the WH, when it came to crunch-time, he stood up, even from an intensive care hospital bed. That backbone is gone.

Comey even tried to scare the torturers with warnings that the torture videos would one day become public — just six months before the torturers destroyed those videos.

There’s far more, which I laid out in this post and this post.

But what’s just as interesting as the actual content of the emails is the spin that NYT reporters Scott Shane and David Johnston gave it, presumably at the behest of the torturers who leaked it to them. They chose to ignore all the details about people like Cheney and Condi Rice pushing for more more more, immediately, and instead to focus on Comey’s assent to the memo effectively approving of the torture — including waterboarding — that had already been done.

Previously undisclosed Justice Department e-mail messages, interviews and newly declassified documents show that some of the lawyers, including James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general who argued repeatedly that the United States would regret using harsh methods, went along with a 2005 legal opinion asserting that the techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency were lawful.

That opinion, giving the green light for the C.I.A. to use all 13 methods in interrogating terrorism suspects, including waterboarding and up to 180 hours of sleep deprivation, “was ready to go out and I concurred,” Mr. Comey wrote to a colleague in an April 27, 2005, e-mail message obtained by The New York Times.

It’s true. Comey did buy off on that memo. He did buy off on a memo approving 7.5 days of sleep deprivation and waterboarding (though not, as Cheney was pushing so hard to do, together).

During John Brennan’s confirmation hearing, Saxby Chambliss made sure to get John Brennan’s much more complacent involvement in torture into the record. He made sure to get Brennan to admit to having submitted FISA warrant applications that relied on tortured information. Those efforts, I suspect, were designed to make it a lot harder for Brennan to separate the CIA from torture going forward.

The evidence in these emails is in some ways more damning, but in most ways far, far less, than what we know of Brennan’s role in torture.

But I expect the same people who leaked these emails to NYT’s remarkably obedient reporters will try the line again.

And why not? At least one of those credulous reporters is still parroting his sources’ spin.

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Today’s Pakistan Drone Strike Targeted Khost Blast Key Figure in CIA Revenge Killing

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Will the drone pilot get the $5 million reward?

Will the drone pilot get the $5 million reward?

The latest CIA drone strike in North Waziristan is described by Reuters as having killed the number two figure in the Pakistan Taliban group known as the TTP. This strike was a first on many fronts. It was the first since the election of a new government in Pakistan, with new Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif slated to take office next week, the first since President Barack Obama’s drone rules speech and the first strike in Pakistan since the Peshawar High Court ruled that US drone strikes in Pakistan are war crimes.

Despite public pronouncements by both the caretaker interim government and the incoming Prime Minister that they oppose CIA drone strikes, this strike is likely to produce less official backlash since the TTP has a long history of attacking both military and civilian targets inside Pakistan. But the CIA had their own reason to target this particular figure. From the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program, we have this description of Wali Ur Rehman (pdf):

Wali Ur Rehman, is second in command and chief military strategist of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). He commands TTP members in South Waziristan. He has participated in cross-border attacks in Afghanistan against U.S. and NATO personnel, and is wanted in connection with his involvement in the murder of seven American citizens on December 30, 2009, at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan.

Shortly after the devastating attack in Khost, the CIA vowed revenge:

The CIA yesterday vowed to avenge the deaths of seven of its agents who were killed in a suicide bombing on Wednesday in Afghanistan, as it emerged that the bomber may have been invited on to the base as a potential informant according to two former US officials.

“This attack will be avenged through successful, aggressive counterterrorism operations,” a US intelligence official said on condition of anonymity.

It would appear that the CIA has now exacted that revenge, subject, of course, to the usual caveats that key figures targeted in drone strikes often have a way of popping up later unharmed. Gosh, I wonder if that was Mr. Moral Rectitude himself who gave that anonymous quote about revenge to the Guardian back when he was an “intelligence official” inside the White House instead of his current job running the CIA.

Update: I have been reminded on Twitter and elsewhere that in his speech last week, Obama said “America does not take strikes to punish individuals“. That seems to run in direct opposition to the vow from the CIA to avenge Khost and Ur Rheman’s accused role in that attack resulting in today’s attack.

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Torquemada Pursued Suspected Muslims, Not Journalists

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In an article flattering Eric Holder’s sense of remorse once he realized how inappropriate it was to claim a journalist engaging in flattery might be a co-conspirator in a leak, Daniel Klaidman quotes a Holder friend explaining that the Attorney General doesn’t see himself as some kind of Torqemada figure pursuing journalists.

But for Attorney General Eric Holder, the gravity of the situation didn’t fully sink in until Monday morning when he read the Post’s front-page story, sitting at his kitchen table. Quoting from the affidavit, the story detailed how agents had tracked Rosen’s movements in and out of the State Department, perused his private emails, and traced the timing of his calls to the State Department security adviser suspected of leaking to him. Then the story, quoting the stark, clinical language of the affidavit, described Rosen as “at the very least … an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator” in the crime. Holder knew that Justice would be besieged by the twin leak probes; but, according to aides, he was also beginning to feel a creeping sense of personal remorse.

[snip]

As attorney general, a position at the intersection of law, politics, and investigations, Holder has been at the center of partisan controversy almost since taking office. But sources close to the attorney general says he has been particularly stung by the leak controversy, in large part because his department’s—and his own—actions are at odds with his image of himself as a pragmatic lawyer with liberal instincts and a well-honed sense of balance—not unlike the president he serves. “Look, Eric sees himself fundamentally as a progressive, not some Torquemada out to silence the press,” says a friend who asked not to be identified. [my emphasis]

Granted, the Torquemada metaphor was Holder’s friend’s, not his own. And granted, Holder’s DOJ has worked to avoid the kind of Muslim-bashing people like Peter King have called for (though his DOJ has also slow-walked its investigation into NYPD’s profiling of Muslims and allowed FBI to engage in similar behavior).

But the reference to Torquemda highlighted how limited this remorse is — just to investigations involving journalists, not Muslims, for example — and how thin Holder’s apparent understanding of the problem remains.

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Will the Saudis Let JSOC Take Over Yemeni Targeting?

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There were three airstrikes in Yemen this week, with the last being a strike in al-Jawf, a province on the Saudi border, that local observers have variously described as a drone strike and a Saudi jet strike.

Keep ongoing confusion about airstrike attribution in mind as you read this Greg Miller article. It purportedly examines how easy it will be to cede CIA control over drones to DOD. But Miller focuses on Yemen, where, as he portrays it, the question of CIA control over drone strikes is inescapably tied to use of the Saudi base to launch them.

As Miller describes, after initially intending to keep JSOC in charge of strikes in Yemen, the Administration shifted to the CIA because of some serious fuck-ups, among them the al-Majala strike, which killed a Bedouin tribe, the May 2010 strike that took out the Deputy Governor of Shabwah province (probably on deliberately bad intelligence), and the May 2011 attempt that allowed Anwar al-Awlaki to escape.

The change was driven by a number of factors, including errant strikes that killed the wrong people, the use of munitions that left shrapnel with U.S. military markings scattered about target sites and worries that Yemen’s unstable leader might kick the Pentagon’s planes out.

But President Obama’s decision also came down to a determination that the CIA was simply better than the Defense Department at locating and killing al-Qaeda operatives with armed drones, according to current and former U.S. officials involved in the deliberations.

The first two of these fuck-ups almost certainly came from the intelligence sharing process. Yet one of Miller’s sources describes it as a problem with DOD’s kinetic skills, the actual targeting of drones.

“I never fully understood why they struggled so much,” the former official said, referring to the Pentagon’s problems. “Of all the pieces, the kinetic piece at the end was what they should have been good at.”

Given the chronology Miller’s story lays out, it was this last strike, the only one that represented an actual kinetic rather than intelligence failure, that led the Administration to decide to go to the Saudis.

Miller then lays out the thin kabuki the Saudis engaged in to claim this wasn’t a new expansion of US military presence on Saudi soil (as if building a 35,000 person infrastructure protection force, developed under the leadership of a US Major General, were not also one). And he describes the deal the Saudis struck: they’re in charge.

The Saudi government imposed conditions, including full authority over the facility and assurances that there would be no U.S. military personnel on site. The operation would be run by the CIA and Saudi intelligence, who for years had jointly operated a fusion center in Riyadh.

But it’s the excuses used to rule out JSOC drones that are most telling. JSOC couldn’t be involved, the kabuki claims, because it would involve a more tedious vetting process.

Feeding targeting intelligence to JSOC drones was not seen as a valid option, in part because doing so would require military approvals that could bog down a process requiring split-second decisions, officials said.

“The military’s culture is very uncomfortable with someone not in the chain of command handing them a target package and saying, ‘Hit this,’ ” said Jeremy Bash, who served as a senior aide to Panetta at the Pentagon and the CIA.

The first CIA flights began in August 2011. Six weeks later, Awlaki was killed in a CIA strike.

Voila! DOD no longer vets drone targeting and Awlaki dies within weeks!

Funny how that worked out.

Miller then lays out several of the advantages CIA purportedly has over DOD. In addition to the longevity of command at CIA’s counterterrorism center as compared to JSOC, he also cites CIA’s involvement in infiltrating terrorist organizations like al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Among them is its expertise at penetrating terrorist groups through networks of informants, and the expertise of officers and analysts who tend to stay in their assignments longer than their military counterparts.

Of course, CIA doesn’t do that by itself in Yemen. It does it with the Saudis and the Yemenis. And always has.

Indeed, the Saudis were involved in at least one of the fuck-ups given as reason to switch to the Saudi base. The Yemenis probably dealt us the bad intelligence that killed the Deputy Governor of Shabwah.

Now, I’m willing to entertain the possibility that moving to CIA targeting under Saudi control is mostly about bypassing Yemeni vetting, as I’ve suggested before. But it is also the case that some of our more recent drone strikes took out people, like that Deputy Governor, who had reportedly served as mediators between extremists and the government in the past, so it is not entirely clear that putting the Saudis in charge has resulted in better targeting.

But we are doing what the Saudis asked us to do 4 years ago, giving them drone intelligence, if not drone kills, they can use to target Saudi enemies in the north of Yemen.

It’s fairly clear that CIA will remain in charge of drone strikes in Pakistan at least through the official pull-out of US troops from Afghanistan. But whether or not the CIA — and with them, the Saudis — will retain control of Yemeni targeting is a far more interesting question going forward.

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What “Not Specifically Targeted” Means for Abdulrahman al-Awlaki

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A number of people are discussing the killing of Abdulraham al-Awlaki as if the government has claimed he was accidentally targeted.

That’s not what the government has officially said. In his letter declassifying American drone deaths the other day, Eric Holder said Abdulrahman, Samir Khan, and Jude Kenan Mohammad were “not specifically targeted.” Which is quite different from saying it was an accident.

Administration officials were quick to offer an explanation about one of these deaths, that of Mohammad: he died in a signature strike, officials said anonymously, but a former consultant also suggests he was on the kill list.

American officials said on Wednesday that Mr. Mohammad had been killed with about 12 other insurgents in what the C.I.A. calls a “signature strike,” an attack based on patterns of activity, such as men toting arms in an area controlled by extremist groups. Such strikes have prompted the sharpest divisions inside the Obama administration, with some officials questioning whether killing unidentified fighters is legally justified or worth the local backlash.

[snip]

While Mr. Mohammad was not directly targeted, he had come under increasing scrutiny by American counterterrorism officials, who said he was involved in recruiting militants for Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban, as well as making videos on YouTube to incite violence against the United States.

“He had risen to the top of the U.S. deck,” said Seth G. Jones, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation and former adviser to the military’s Special Operations Command. Mr. Jones said that while in Pakistan, Mr. Mohammad had made contact with five young Virginia men who disappeared from their homes around Thanksgiving in 2009 and turned up seeking to join militant groups. Instead they were arrested and remain in Pakistani custody.

But officials have been a lot more squirmy about Abdulrahman’s death.

At a pre-speech briefing yesterday, a senior Administration official was asked about Abdulrahman specifically. Between an unbelievable number of “ums,” he first tried to generalize about all three “not specifically targeted” individuals and then provided two possibilities: presence at “al Qaeda and associated facilities” or civilian accidents (neither of which incorporates the explanations provided the NYT for Mohammad’s death).

I don’t want to get into the details of each of those instances.  What I will say generally is that there are times when there are individuals who are present at al Qaeda and associated forces facilities, and in that regard they are subject to the lethal action that we take.  There are other instances when there are tragic cases of civilian casualties and people that the United States does not in any way intend to target — because, again, as in any war, there are tragic consequences that come with the decision to use force, including civilian casualties.

The first of those — presence at an al Qaeda “facility” — is closer to what the Administration has said about Abdulrahman’s death in the past, when they have claimed they were targeting Ibrahim al-Banna. Though AQAP reported that he was never at the site.

But here’s what a former Obama official told Jeremy Scahill about Abdulrahman’s killing.

A former senior official in the Obama administration told me that after Abdulrahman’s killing, the president was “surprised and upset and wanted an explanation.” The former official, who worked on the targeted killing program, said that according to intelligence and Special Operations officials, the target of the strike was al-Banna, the AQAP propagandist. “We had no idea the kid was there. We were told al-Banna was alone,” the former official told me. Once it became clear that the teenager had been killed, he added, military and intelligence officials asserted, “It was a mistake, a bad mistake.” However, John Brennan, at the time President Obama’s senior adviser on counterterrorism and homeland security, “suspected that the kid had been killed intentionally and ordered a review. I don’t know what happened with the review.”

In other words, it sounds like some in the Administration suspect that someone within the targeting chain of command may have invented the Ibrahim al-Banna presence as a way to get at Awlaki’s son. (Note, elsewhere Scahill suggested that the Awlaki family suspects a teacher may have been trying to recruit Abdulrahman to help hunt down his father, which might give those recruiters reason to want to silence him after they did kill Awlaki.)

In a piece on the drone program yesterday, Daniel Klaidman revealed that some people within the Administration were trying to keep mention of Abdulrahman and the two others out of Holder’s letter from the other day.

Officials tell The Daily Beast the original plan was to name only Anwar al-Awlaki, while referring to the other three anonymously. That changed when some officials at the Department of Justice argued that withholding the names would defeat the purpose of Obama’s much-touted call for more openness.

If Abdulrahman was killed deliberately, via some kind of deceit, I can understand why the Administration was reluctant to make its role in his death official. John Brennan’s report about it is presumably out there somewhere (though as a White House report, it would be harder to FOIA than a CIA IG Report).

Clearly, the Administration has made some effort to gain a greater understanding of how Abdulrahman was killed than the hemming and hawing official admitted to yesterday. Which suggests “not specifically targeted” might not even rule out “targeted in deceitful fashion.”

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We Have Always Been at War with Eastasia Adherents

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Back on September 18, 2001, here’s who we declared war against.

the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons,

On March 13, 2009, here’s how Obama expanded that AUMF to include “associated forces.”

The President has the authority to detain persons that the President determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, and persons who harbored those responsible for those attacks. The President also has the authority to detain persons who were part of, or substantially supported, Taliban or al-Qaida forces or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act, or has directly supported hostilities, in aid of such enemy armed forces. [my emphasis]

Here’s how, on Monday, the White House described the speech Obama will make tomorrow on counterterrorism.

On May 23, the President will give a speech at the National Defense University on the Administration’s counterterrorism policy. In his speech, the President will discuss our broad counter-terrorism policy, including our military, diplomatic, intelligence and legal efforts. He will review the state of the threats we face, particularly as al Qaeda core has weakened but new dangers have emerged; he will discuss the policy and legal framework under which we take action against terrorist threats, including the use of drones; he will review our detention policy and efforts to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay; and he will frame the future of our efforts against Al Qaeda, its affiliates and adherents. [my emphasis]

Now, in point of fact, this war against “adherents” is not new. Denis McDonough invoked it in a speech on March 6, 2011.

Preventing radicalization that leads to violence here in America is part of our larger strategy to decisively defeat al Qaeda. Overseas, because of the new focus and resources that the President has devoted to this fight, the al Qaeda leadership in the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan is hunkered down and it’s harder than ever for them to plot and launch attacks against our country. Because we’re helping other countries build their capacity to defend themselves, we’re making it harder for al Qaeda’s adherents to operate around the world.

Here at home, we’ve strengthened our defenses, with improvements to intelligence and aviation screening and enhanced security at our borders, ports and airports. As we’ve seen in recent attempted attacks, al Qaeda and its adherents are constantly trying to exploit any vulnerability in our open society. But it’s also clear that our dedicated intelligence, law enforcement and homeland security personnel have disrupted many more plots and saved many American lives.

[snip]

For all these reasons—our stronger defenses at home; our progress against al Qaeda overseas; the rejection of al Qaeda by so many Muslims around the world; and the powerful image of Muslims thriving in America—al Qaeda and its adherents have increasingly turned to another troubling tactic: attempting to recruit and radicalize people to terrorism here in the United States.

[snip]

But with al Qaeda and its adherents constantly evolving and refining their tactics, our understanding of the threat has to evolve as well.

Obama invoked adherents, sort of, shortly thereafter.

Bin Laden and his murderous vision won some adherents.

And John Brennan invoked adherents in speeches on June 29, 2011, September 16, 2011, April 30, 2012, and October 26, 2012.

So the Administration has been at war against al Qaeda adherents (and affiliates, another new category) for some time.

But if I’m not mistaken, tomorrow will mark the most detailed discussion in which the President describes this war that no one declared against adherents. And given that Congress has shown newfound interest in the scope of the AUMF that includes neither adherents nor associated forces, it will be interesting to see how the President describes this expanded war.

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Did Solitary Confinement Make UndieBomber 1.0 Incompetent to Represent Himself?

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But, in fact, the FBI do a great job as far as eliciting information after they’re Mirandizing them, and so they can get information as part of that type of negotiation with them, let them know they can in fact languish forever, or we can in fact have a dialogue about it intelligently.

— John Brennan, describing the way the FBI gets suspects to talk after Mirandizing them

Here’s something you may not know: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the first UndieBomber, is appealing his conviction and sentence.

He’s doing so on several grounds, including that his confession made during public safety questioning while on fentanyl should not have been admissible at trial. But the most interesting issue — and the one that takes up the bulk of his appeal — argues Abdulmutallab was not competent to represent himself. (His appeal, as well as the government response and his reply only recently got unsealed by the Circuit Court.)

As the appeal notes, back in August 2011, after he had been in custody almost 20 months, his standby counsel Anthony Chambers submitted a motion requesting a competency hearing, one the judge rejected.

His standby counsel filed a motion requesting a competency hearing, noting that Abdulmutallab suffered “mental lapses,” engaged in “bizarre behaviors,” and sometimes seemed interested in presenting a defense while at other times he seemed indifferent to his defense. Abdulmutallab also demonstrated indifference toward his defense in front of the district court. The district court denied the motion for a competency examination based largely on Abdulmutallab’s own equivocal and rambling profession of competency. The failure to hold the competency examination cannot be cured after the fact and requires a new trial so that a “concurrent determination” of competency can be made. Abdulmutallab’s guilty plea did not waive the competency issue because a person whose competence is in doubt cannot knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently waive a right or plead guilty.

The appeal cites consistent difficulties Abdulmutallab and attorneys tied to his case had with the Milan Correctional Facility, where he was being held in solitary confinement with communication restrictions. At almost every status hearing (save the one where he fired his court appointed lawyers), Abdulmutallab complained about the communication restrictions placed on him at Milan. (“Milan” is pronounced My-lin.)

At a status conference on April 13, 2010, his attorney’s reported that security restrictions at Federal Correctional Institute Milan (“Milan”) had severely limited their ability to meet with him to review discovery and other matters. He was held in solitary confinement under constant 24-hour manned observation.

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The Laughable Currently Operative AP Pushback Story

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It has taken several days for the government — apparently, almost exclusively DOJ — to try to spin its secret seizure of AP call records. The new version of the government’s ever-evolving story is that the reason the AP story was so damaging was because it prevented CIA from using the mole to locate Ibrahim al-Asiri, AQAP’s bomb-maker.

Here’s how the guy who headed DOJ’s Office of Legal Policy until last year explained this on Friday.

About a year ago, someone within the government who had access to highly classified information about an intelligence operation in Yemen involving a double agent saw fit to talk about it with the Associated Press. When senior government officials learned that the Associated Press had this story and intended to publish it, those officials realized that the agent’s cover had been blown. Anxious for his safety, the officials prevailed on the AP to delay publication so that first the agent’s family and then the agent himself could be extracted to safety. The AP then published its story, which focused on thwarting a plot to use a new and improved underwear bomb to blow up an airplane bound for the United States.

What went completely without mention in the initial coverage was the fact that thwarting this plot was not the objective of the ongoing undercover operation. Its true objective was to gain enough intelligence to locate and neutralize the master bomb builder, Ibrahim Hassan al-Ashiri, who works with an Al-Qaeda affiliate, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Penetrating AQAP is incredibly difficult. This double agent provided a rare opportunity to gain critical, life-saving information. Whoever disclosed the information obtained by the AP had not only put the agent’s life and his family’s life in danger. He also killed a golden opportunity to save untold more lives that now remain at risk due to al-Ashiri remaining at large.

Here’s how three former high-ranking DOJ officials explained it in an op-ed today.

The United States and its allies were trying to locate a master bomb builder affiliated with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a group that was extremely difficult to penetrate. After considerable effort and danger, an agent was inserted inside the group. Although that agent succeeded in foiling one serious bombing plot against the United States, he was rendered ineffective once his existence was disclosed.

And here’s how Walter Pincus reported it today.

Whoever provided the initial leak to the Associated Press in April 2012 not only broke the law but caused the abrupt end to a secret, joint U.S./Saudi/British operation in Yemen that offered valuable intelligence against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

One goal was to get AQAP’s operational head, Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso. That happened one day before the AP story appeared.

A second goal was to find and possibly kill AQAP bombmaker Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, whose first underwear device almost killed Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, Saudi Arabia’s anti-terrorism chief.

[snip]

Hitting targets in the United States is one of AQAP’s goals. In association with Saudi intelligence, the CIA inserted a Saudi who convinced AQAP that he wanted to be a suicide bomber. Eventually he was outfitted with Asiri’s newest device, which he was to use on a U.S. aircraft. After the device was delivered to U.S. officials, someone or several people leaked the information to the AP. [my emphasis]

Now, Pincus’ story is generally balanced. Unlike the other two, he admits that Fahd al-Quso got killed while the AP held their story and that, in killing Quso, the government accomplished at least one objective of the mole’s mission and did so thanks to AP’s willingness to cede to government requests about this story. He also admits that before the AP ever came to the government with the story, the mole’s UndieBomb had already been delivered to the US.

That chronology is important. And it is one backed by the government’s official timeline (not to mention the CNN report that said the mole had turned over the bomb around April 20 and the report that Robert Mueller traveled to Yemen for an unscheduled 45 minute meeting on April 24). The day after the AP story, Jay Carney said that Obama had been informed about the plot in “early April.”

Q Do you expect that he’ll address at all — I know we got statements yesterday, but the Yemeni al Qaeda plot, do you think he will address that at all in his remarks today?

MR. CARNEY: I don’t expect him to address that issue in his remarks. I mean, I will say that he’s certainly pleased with the success of our intelligence and counterterrorism officials in foiling the attempt by al Qaeda to use this explosive device. It is indicative of the kind of work that our intelligence and counterterrorism services are performing regularly to counter the threat posed by al Qaeda in general, and AQAP in particular.

So he was regularly — as you know, he was made aware of this development in early April and he was regularly briefed on it by John Brennan. [my emphasis]

The NSC’s official statement on that day also said Obama had been informed of the plot in April.

So the government rolled up the plot in April — almost certainly by April 24 — and then the AP came to the CIA and White House with their story about a foiled plot on May 2.

It’s that timing that undermines the claim that the government still hoped to use the mole to get at Ibrahim al-Asiri. Because to maintain that claim, you’d have to explain how an AQAP operative who had been entrusted with the latest version of Ibrahim al-Asiri’s UndieBomb sometime in early April, had left (at least as far as Sanaa), had not apparently succeeded in his mission (which was, after all, meant to be a suicide bombing), could return to AQAP without the UndieBomb and infiltrate even further than he had the first time.

“Oh, hi, AQAP gatekeeper” — their story must imagine the mole saying as he returned to AQAP — “I’ve both failed in my mission and somehow lost the bomb you gave me, but based on that would you be willing to let me spend some quality time with even higher-ranking AQAP operatives?”

The government must believe AQAP has far worse counterintelligence than Asiri’s longevity would seem to suggest. Alternately, they’re just inventing stories right now to justify their seizure.

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