American militants are placed on a kill or capture list by a panel of senior US officials, writes MARK HOSENBALLin Washington
AMERICAN MILITANTS like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior US government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to US sources.
There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.
The panel was behind the decision to add Awlaki, a US-born militant preacher with alleged al-Qaeda connections, to the target list. He was killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen late last month.
The role of the president in ordering or ratifying a decision to target a US citizen is fuzzy. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to discuss anything about the process.
Current and former US officials said that to the best of their knowledge, Awlaki, who the White House said was a key figure in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Qaeda’s Yemen-based affiliate, had been the only American put on a US government list targeting people for capture or death due to their alleged involvement with militants.
The White House is portraying the killing of Awlaki as a demonstration of President Barack Obama’s toughness toward militants who threaten the United States. But the process that led to his killing has been criticised by both left and right.
In an ironic turn, Obama, who ran for president denouncing predecessor George W Bush’s expansive use of executive power in his “war on terrorism”, is being attacked in some quarters for using similar tactics.
Liberals have criticised the attack on an American citizen as extra-judicial murder, while conservatives complain that the president has refused to release a Justice Department legal opinion that reportedly justified killing Awlaki. They accuse Obama of hypocrisy, noting that his administration insisted on publishing Bush-era memos justifying the use of interrogation techniques many equate with torture, but refused to make public its rationale for killing a US citizen without due process.
Some details about how the administration went about targeting Awlaki emerged on Tuesday when the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, representative Dutch Ruppersberger, was asked by reporters about the killing.
The process involves “going through the National Security Council, then it eventually goes to the president, but the National Security Council does the investigation, they have lawyers, they review, they look at the situation, you have input from the military, and also, we make sure that we follow international law,” Ruppersberger said.
Other officials said the role of the president in the process was murkier than Ruppersberger described.
They said targeting recommendations are drawn up by a committee of mid-level National Security Council and agency officials. Their recommendations are then sent to the panel of NSC “principals”, meaning Cabinet secretaries and intelligence unit chiefs, for approval. The panel of principals could have different memberships when considering different operational issues, they said.
They confirmed that lawyers, including those in the justice department, were consulted before Awlaki’s name was added to the target list.
Two principal legal theories were advanced, an official said: first, that the actions were permitted by Congress when it authorised the use of US military forces against militants in the wake of the 9/11 attacks; and they are permitted under international law if a country is defending itself.
Several officials said that when Awlaki became the first American put on the target list, Obama was not required personally to approve the targeting of a US person. But one official said the president would be notified of the principals’ decision. If he objected, the decision would be nullified, the official said.
A former official said one of the reasons for making senior officials principally responsible for nominating Americans for the target list was to “protect” the president.
US officials confirmed that a second American, Samir Khan, was killed in the drone attack that killed Awlaki. Khan had served as editor of Inspire, a glossy English-language magazine used by AQAP as a propaganda and recruitment vehicle.
But rather than being specifically targeted by drone operators, Khan was in the wrong place at the wrong time, officials said. Ruppersberger appeared to confirm that, saying Khan’s death was “collateral”, meaning he was not an intentional target of the drone strike.
When the name of a foreign, rather than American, militant is added to US targeting lists, the decision is made within the US intelligence community and normally does not require approval by high-level NSC officials.
Officials said Awlaki, whose fierce sermons were widely circulated on English-language militant websites, was targeted because Washington accumulated information that his role in AQAP had gone “from inspirational to operational”.
“Let me underscore, Awlaki is no mere messenger but someone integrally involved in lethal terrorist activities,” Daniel Benjamin, top counterterrorism official at the State Department, warned last spring.
The Obama administration has not made public an accounting of the classified evidence that Awlaki was operationally involved in planning terrorist attacks. But officials acknowledged that some of the intelligence purporting to show Awlaki’s hands-on role in plotting attacks was patchy.
For instance, one plot in which authorities have said Awlaki was implicated involved Nigerian-born Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound US airliner on Christmas Day 2009 with a bomb hidden in his underpants.
There is no doubt Abdulmutallab was an admirer or follower of Awlaki, since he admitted that to US investigators.
But at the time that the White House was considering putting Awlaki on the target list, intelligence connecting him specifically to Abdulmutallab and his alleged bomb plot was partial. Officials said at the time that the United States had voice intercepts involving a phone known to have been used by Awlaki and someone who they believed, but were not positive, was Abdulmutallab.
Awlaki was also implicated in a case in which a British Airways employee was imprisoned for plotting to blow up a US-bound plane. E-mails retrieved by authorities from the employee’s computer showed what an investigator described as “operational contact” between Britain and Yemen.
Authorities believe the contacts were mainly between the UK-based suspect and his brother. But there was a strong suspicion Awlaki was at the brother’s side when the messages were dispatched.
US officials contrast intelligence suggesting Awlaki’s involvement in specific plots with the activities of Adam Gadahn, an American citizen who became a principal English-language propagandist for the core al-Qaeda network formerly led by Osama bin Laden.
While Gadahn appeared in angry videos calling for attacks on the United States, officials said he had not been specifically targeted for capture or killing by US forces because he was regarded as a loudmouth not directly involved in plotting attacks. – (Reuters)