Most Terrorist Plots in the US Aren’t Invented by Al Qaeda — They’re Manufactured by the FBI

The following is an excerpt from The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism [3] by Trevor Aaronson (Ig Publishing, 2012).

Antonio Martinez was a punk. The twenty-two-year-old from Baltimore was chunky, with a wide nose and jet-black hair pulled back close to his scalp and tied into long braids that hung past his shoulders. He preferred to be called Muhammad Hussain, the name he gave himself following his conversion to Islam. But his mother still called him Tony, and she couldn’t understand her son’s burning desire to be the Maryland Mujahideen.

As a young man, Martinez had been angry and lost. He’d dropped out of Laurel High School, in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and spent his teens as a small-time thief in the Washington, D.C., suburbs. By the age of sixteen, he’d been charged with armed robbery. In February 2008, at the age of eighteen, he tried to steal a car. Catholic University doctoral student Daniel Tobin was looking out of the window of his apartment one day when he saw a man driving off in his car. Tobin gave chase, running between apartment buildings and finally catching up to the stolen vehicle. He opened the passenger-side door and got in. Martinez, in the driver’s seat, dashed out and ran away on foot. Jumping behind the wheel, Tobin followed the would-be car thief. “You may as well give up running,” he yelled at Martinez. Martinez was apprehended and charged with grand theft of a motor vehicle—he had stolen the vehicle using an extra set of car keys which had gone missing when someone had broken into Tobin’s apartment earlier. However, prosecutors dropped the charges against Martinez after Tobin failed to appear in court.

Despite the close call, Martinez’s petty crimes continued. One month after the car theft, he and a friend approached a cashier at a Safeway grocery store, acting as if they wanted to buy potato chips. When the cashier opened the register, Martinez and his friend grabbed as much money as they could and ran out of the store. The cashier and store manager chased after them, and later identified the pair to police. Martinez pleaded guilty to theft of one hundred dollars and received a ninety-day suspended sentence, plus six months of probation.

Searching for greater meaning in his life, Martinez was baptized and became a Christian when he was twenty-one years old, but he didn’t stick with the religion. “He said he tried the Christian thing. He just really didn’t understand it,” said Alisha Legrand, a former girlfriend. Martinez chose Islam instead. On his Facebook page, Martinez wrote that he was “just a yung brotha from the wrong side of the tracks who embraced Islam.” But for reasons that have never been clear to his family and friends, Martinez drifted toward a violent, extremist brand of Islam. When the FBI discovered him, Martinez was an angry extremist mouthing off on Facebook about violence, with misspelled posts such as, “The sword is cummin the reign of oppression is about 2 cease inshallah.” Based on the Facebook postings alone, an FBI agent gave an informant the “green light” to get to know Martinez and determine if he had a propensity for violence. In other words, to see if he was dangerous.

The government was setting the trap.

On the evening of December 2, 2010, Martinez was in another Muslim’s car as they drove through Baltimore. A hidden device recorded their conversation. His mother had called, and Martinez had just finished talking to her on his cell phone. He was aggravated. “She wants me to be like everybody else, being in school, working,” he told his friend. “For me, it’s different. I have this zeal for deen and she doesn’t understand that.” Martinez’s mother didn’t know that her son had just left a meeting with a purported Afghan-born terrorist who had agreed to provide him with a car bomb. But she wasn’t the only one in the dark that night. Martinez himself didn’t know his new terrorist friend was an undercover agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and that the man driving the car—a man he’d met only a few weeks earlier—was a paid informant for federal law enforcement.

Five days later, Martinez met again with the man he believed to be a terrorist. The informant was there, too. They were all, Martinez believed, brothers in arms and in Islam. In a parking lot near the Armed Forces Career Center on Baltimore National Pike, Martinez, the informant, and the undercover FBI agent piled into an SUV, where the undercover agent showed Martinez the device that would detonate the car bomb and how to use it. He then unveiled to the twenty-two-year-old the bomb in the back of the SUV and demonstrated what he’d need to do to activate it. “I’m ready, man,” Martinez said. “It ain’t like you seein’ it on the news. You gonna be there. You gonna hear the bomb go off. You gonna be, uh, shooting, gettin’ shot at. It’s gonna be real. … I’m excited, man.”

That night, Martinez, who had little experience behind the wheel of a car, needed to practice driving the SUV around the empty parking lot. Once he felt comfortable doing what most teenagers can do easily, Martinez and his associates devised a plan: Martinez would park the bomb-on-wheels in the parking lot outside the military recruiting center. One of his associates would then pick him up, and they’d drive together to a vantage point where Martinez could detonate the bomb and delight in the resulting chaos and carnage.

The next morning, the three men put their plan into action. Martinez hopped into the SUV and activated the bomb, as he’d been instructed, and then drove to the military recruiting station. He parked right in front. The informant, trailing in another car, picked up Martinez and drove him to the vantage point, just as planned. Everything was falling into place, and Martinez was about to launch his first attack in what he hoped would be for him a lifetime of jihad against the only nation he had ever known.

Looking out at the military recruiting station, Martinez lifted the detonation device and triggered the bomb. Smiling, he watched expectantly. Nothing happened. Suddenly, FBI agents rushed in and arrested the man they’d later identify in court records as “Antonio Martinez a/k/a Muhammad Hussain.” Federal prosecutors in Maryland charged Martinez with attempted murder of federal officers and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. He faced at least thirty-five years in prison if convicted at trial.

“This is not Tony,” a woman identifying herself as Martinez’s mother told a reporter after the arrest. “I think he was brainwashed with that Islam crap.” Joseph Balter, a federal public defender, told the court during a detention hearing that FBI agents had entrapped Martinez, whom he referred to by his chosen name. The terrorist plot was, Balter said, “the creation of the government—a creation which was implanted into Mr. Hussain’s mind.” He added: “There was nothing provided which showed that Mr. Hussain had any ability whatsoever to carry out any kind of plan.”

Despite Balter’s claims, a little more than a year after his indictment, Martinez chose not to challenge the government’s charges in court. On January 26, 2012, Martinez dropped his entrapment defense and pleaded guilty to attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction under a deal that will require him to serve twenty-five years in prison—more years than he’s been alive. Neither Martinez nor Balter would comment on the reasons they chose a plea agreement, though in a sentencing hearing, Balter told the judge he believed the entire case could have been avoided had the FBI counseled, rather than encouraged, Martinez.

The U.S. Department of Justice touted the conviction as another example of the government keeping citizens safe from terrorists. “We are catching dangerous suspects before they strike, and we are investigating them in a way that maximizes the liberty and security of law-abiding citizens,” U.S. attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein said in a statement announcing Martinez’s plea agreement. “That is what the American people expect of the Justice Department, and that is what we aim to deliver.”

Indeed, that is exactly what the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been delivering throughout the decade since the attacks of September 11, 2001. But whether it’s what the American people expect is questionable, because most Americans today have no idea that since 9/11, one single organization has been responsible for hatching and financing more terrorist plots in the United States than any other. That organization isn’t Al Qaeda, the terrorist network founded by Osama bin Laden and responsible for the spectacular 2001 attacks on New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. And it isn’t Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Al-Shabaab, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or any of the other more than forty U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations. No, the organization responsible for more terrorist plots over the last decade than any other is the FBI. Through elaborate and expensive sting operations involving informants and undercover agents posing as terrorists, the FBI has arrested and the Justice Department has prosecuted dozens of men government officials say posed direct—but by no means immediate or credible—threats to the United States.

Just as in the Martinez case, in terrorism sting after terrorism sting, FBI and DOJ officials have hosted high-profile press conferences to announce yet another foiled terrorist plot. But what isn’t publicized during these press conferences is the fact that government-described terrorists such as Antonio Martinez were able to carry forward with their potentially lethal plots only because FBI informants and agents provided them with all of the means—in most cases delivering weapons and equipment, in some cases even paying for rent and doling out a little spending money to keep targets on the hook. In cities around the country where terrorism sting operations have occurred—among them New York City, Albany, Chicago, Miami, Baltimore, Portland, Tampa, Houston, and Dallas—a central question exists: Is the FBI catching terrorists or creating them?

In the years since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the federal law enforcement profile of a terrorist has changed dramatically. The men responsible for downing the World Trade Center were disciplined and patient; they were also living and training in the United States with money from an Al Qaeda cell led by Kuwaiti-born Khalid Sheikh Mohammad. In the days and weeks following 9/11, federal officials anxiously awaited a second wave of attacks, which would be launched, they believed at the time, by several sleeper cells around the country. But the feared second wave never crashed ashore. Instead, the United States and allied nations invaded Afghanistan, Al Qaeda’s home base, and forced Osama bin Laden and his deputies into hiding. Bruised and hunted, Al Qaeda no longer had the capability to train terrorists and send them to the United States.

In response, Al Qaeda’s leaders moved to what FBI officials describe as a “franchise model.” If you can’t run Al Qaeda as a hierarchal, centrally organized outfit, the theory went, run it as a franchise. In other words, export ideas—not terrorists. Al Qaeda and its affiliated organizations went online, setting up websites and forums dedicated to instilling their beliefs in disenfranchised Muslims already living in Western nations. A slickly designed magazine, appropriately titled Inspire, quickly followed. Article headlines included “I Am Proud to Be a Traitor to America,”9 and “Why Did I Choose Al-Qaeda?” Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born, high-ranking Al Qaeda official who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen on September 30, 2011, became something of the terrorist organization’s Dear Abby. Have a question about Islam? Ask Anwar! Muslim men in nations throughout the Western world would email him questions, and al-Awlaki would reply dutifully, and in English, encouraging many of his electronic pen pals to violent action. Al-Awlaki also kept a blog and a Facebook page, and regularly posted recruitment videos to YouTube. He said in one video:

I specifically invite the youth to either fight in the West or join their brothers in the fronts of jihad: Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia.

I invite them to join us in our new front, Yemen, the base from which the great jihad of the Arabian Peninsula will begin, the base from which the greatest army of Islam will march forth.

Al Qaeda’s move to a franchise model met with some success. U.S. army major Nadal Hassan, for example, corresponded with al-Awlaki before he killed thirteen people and wounded twenty-nine others in the Fort Hood, Texas, shootings in 2009. Antonio Martinez and other American-born men, many of them recent converts to Islam, also sent al-Awlaki messages or watched Al Qaeda propaganda videos online before moving forward in alleged terrorist plots.

The FBI has a term for Martinez and other alleged terrorists like him: lone wolf. Officials at the Bureau now believe that the next terrorist attack will likely come from a lone wolf, and this belief is at the core of a federal law enforcement policy known variously as preemption, prevention, and disruption. FBI counterterrorism agents want to catch terrorists before they act, and to accomplish this, federal law enforcement officials have in the decade since 9/11 created the largest domestic spying network ever to exist in the United States. In fact, the FBI today has ten times as many informants as it did in the 1960s, when former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover made the Bureau infamous for inserting spies into organizations as varied as Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s and the Ku Klux Klan. Modern FBI informants aren’t burrowing into political groups, however; they are focused on terrorism, on identifying today the terrorist of tomorrow, and U.S. government officials acknowledge that while terrorist threats do exist from domestic organizations, such as white supremacist groups and the sovereign citizen movement, they believe the greatest threat comes from within U.S. Muslim communities due, in large part, to the aftereffects of the shock and awe Al Qaeda delivered on September 11, 2001.

The FBI’s vast army of spies, located in every community in the United States with enough Muslims to support a mosque, has one primary function: to identify the next lone wolf. According to the Bureau, a lone wolf is likely to be a single male age sixteen to thirty-five. Therefore, informants and their FBI handlers are on the lookout for young Muslims who espouse radical beliefs, are vocal about their disapproval of U.S. foreign policy, or have expressed sympathy for international terrorist groups. If they find anyone who meets the criteria, they move him to the next stage: the sting, in which an FBI informant, posing as a terrorist, offers to help facilitate a terrorist attack for the target.

On a cold February morning in 2011, I met with Peter Ahearn, a retired FBI special agent who directed the Western New York Joint Terrorism Task Force, in a coffee shop outside Washington, D.C., to talk about how the FBI runs its operations. Ahearn was among the Bureau’s vanguard as it transformed into a counterterrorism organization in the wake of 9/11. An average-built man with a small dimple on his chin and close-cropped brown hair receding in the front, Ahearn oversaw one of the earliest post-9/11 terrorism investigations, involving the so-called Lackawanna Six—a group of six Yemeni-American men living outside Buffalo, New York, who attended a training camp in Afghanistan and were convicted of providing material support to Al Qaeda. “If you’re doing a sting right, you’re offering the target multiple chances to back out,” Ahearn told me. “Real people don’t say, ‘Yeah, let’s go bomb that place.’ Real people call the cops.”

Indeed, while terrorism sting operations are a new practice for the Bureau, they are an evolution of an FBI tactic that has for decades captured the imaginations of Hollywood filmmakers. In 1982, as the illegal drug trade overwhelmed local police resources nationwide and contributed to an increase in violent crime, President Ronald Reagan’s first attorney general, William French Smith, gave the FBI jurisdiction over federal drug crimes, which previously had been the exclusive domain of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Eager to show up their DEA rivals, FBI agents began aggressively sending undercover agents into America’s cities. This was relatively new territory for the FBI, which, during Hoover’s thirty-seven-year stewardship, had mandated that agents wear a suit and tie at all times, federal law enforcement badge easily accessible from the coat pocket. But an increasingly powerful Mafia and the bloody drug war compelled the FBI to begin enforcing federal laws from the street level. In searching for drug crimes, FBI agents hunted sellers as well as buyers, and soon learned one of the best strategies was to become part of the action.

Most people have no doubt seen drug sting operations as portrayed in countless movies and television shows. At its most cliché, the scene is set in a Miami high-rise apartment, its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the cresting waves of the Atlantic Ocean. There’s a man seated at the dining table; he’s longhaired, with a scruffy face, and he has a briefcase next to him. But that’s not all. Hidden on the other side of the room is a camera making a grainy black-and-white recording of the entire scene. The apartment’s door swings open and two men saunter in, the camera recording their every move and word. Everyone sits down at the table. The two men hand over bundles of cash. The scruffy man then hands over the briefcase. The two guests of course expect to find cocaine inside. Instead, the briefcase is empty, and as soon as they open it to find the drugs missing, FBI agents rush in, guns drawn for the takedown. Federal law enforcement officials call this type of sting operation a “no-dope bust,” and it has been an effective tool for decades. It’s also the direct predecessor to today’s terrorism sting. Instead of empty briefcases, the FBI today uses inert bombs and disabled assault rifles, and now that counter-terrorism is the Bureau’s top priority, the investigation of major drug crimes has largely fallen back to the DEA. Just as no-dope busts resulted in the arrest and prosecution of those in the drug trade in the twentieth century, terrorism sting operations are resulting in the arrest and prosecution of would-be terrorists in this century.

While the assumptions behind drug stings and terrorism stings are similar, there is a fundamental flaw in the assumption underpinning the latter. In drug stings, federal law enforcement officials assume that any buyer caught in a sting would have been able to buy or sell drugs elsewhere had that buyer not fallen into the FBI trap. The numbers support this assumption. In 2010, the most recent year for which data is available, the DEA seized 29,179 kilograms, or 64,328 pounds, of cocaine in the United States. Likewise, in terrorism stings, federal law enforcement officials assume that any would-be terrorists caught in a sting would have been able to acquire the means elsewhere to carry out their violent plans had they not been ensnared by the FBI. The problem with this assumption is that no data exists to support it, and what data is available suggests would-be Islamic terrorists caught in FBI terrorism stings never could have obtained the capability to carry out their planned violent acts were it not for the FBI’s assistance.

In the ten years following 9/11, the FBI and the Justice Department indicted and convicted more than 150 people following sting operations involving alleged connections to international terrorism. Few of these defendants had any connection to terrorists, evidence showed, and those who did have connections, however tangential, never had the capacity to launch attacks on their own. In fact, of the more than 150 terrorism sting operation defendants, an FBI informant not only led one of every three terrorist plots, but also provided all the necessary weapons, money, and transportation.

The FBI’s logic to support the use of terrorism stings goes something like this: By catching a lone wolf before he strikes, federal law enforcement can take him off the streets before he meets a real terrorist who can provide him with weapons and munitions. However, to this day, no example exists of a lone wolf, by himself unable to launch an attack, becoming operational through meeting an actual terrorist in the United States. In addition, in the dozens of terrorism sting operations since 9/11, the would-be terrorists are usually uneducated, unsophisticated, and economically desperate—not the attributes of someone likely to plan and launch a sophisticated, violent attack without significant help.

Reprinted from The Terrorr Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism [3] — Copyright © 2012 by Trevor Aaronson. Reprinted with permission of Ig Publishing, Brooklyn, NY.

February 15, 2013 |

Find this story at 15 February 2013

Whistleblower John Kiriakou: For Embracing Torture, John Brennan a “Terrible Choice to Lead the CIA”

Days after he was sentenced to 30 months in prison, John Kiriakou — the first CIA official to be jailed for any reason relating to the torture program — denounces President Obama’s appointment of John Brennan to head the CIA. “I’ve known John Brennan since 1990,” Kiriakou says. “I worked directly for John Brennan twice. I think that he is a terrible choice to lead the CIA. I think that it’s time for the CIA to move beyond the ugliness of the post-September 11th regime, and we need someone who is going to respect the Constitution and to not be bogged down by a legacy of torture.”

Find this story at 30 January 2013

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to talk about John Brennan right now, President Obama’s nominee to become the next chief of the CIA. The news agency Reuters is reporting that Brennan had detailed information on the agency’s torture program while serving there under President George W. Bush. Official records apparently show Brennan received regular internal CIA updates about the progress of torture techniques, including waterboarding. It’s unclear if Brennan raised any objections at the time he was made aware. Brennan’s confirmation hearing will be February 7th. In 2006, he gave an interview with Frontline on PBS where he said it was right for the Bush administration to, quote, “take off the gloves” after the 9/11 attacks.

JOHN BRENNAN: The war, or the campaign against terrorism, is going to be a long one, and that the opposition, whether it be al-Qaeda or whether it be Iraq, doesn’t play by the Marquess of Queensbury rules, and therefore, you know, the U.S., in some areas, has to take off the gloves. And I think that’s entirely appropriate. I think we do have to take off the gloves in some areas, but within bounds, and at the right time, in the right way, and for the right reason, and with full understanding of what the consequences of that might be.

AMY GOODMAN: That was John Brennan in 2006. When President Obama was first elected in his first term, he wanted to—John Brennan to be his director of Central Intelligence. There was such an outcry in the human rights community that John Brennan pulled his name out. Now, four years later, President Obama has officially nominated John Brennan once again to head the CIA. Our guest, John Kiriakou, is about to go to jail, was sentenced to 30 months in prison, worked for the CIA, there while John Brennan was there. Can you respond to what John Brennan knew, when he knew it, and the fact that President Obama wants him to be head of the CIA?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Sure. Obviously I can’t read John Brennan’s mind, but I can tell you that at the time that the torture techniques were being implemented, John Brennan was President Bush’s director of the National Counterterrorist Center. He was also, a little earlier than that, the deputy executive director and then, I believe, executive director of the CIA. That’s the number three ranking position in the CIA. So, he would have had to have been intimately involved in—not necessarily in carrying out the torture techniques, but in the policy, the torture policy—either that or he had to be brain dead, because you can’t be in positions like that, director of the National Counterterrorist Center and executive director of the CIA, without knowing what the CIA’s torture policies are.

Now, I’m surprised, frankly, also, at the fact that there’s no outrage in the human rights community now that Mr. Brennan’s nomination has been made official. There was a great hue and cry in 2009 when he was initially floated for the position of CIA director. And I’m not sure why there’s a difference between four years ago and now. John Brennan certainly hasn’t changed.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: John Kiriakou, I want to read a comment made by the judge at your sentencing hearing. Judge Leonie Brinkema sentenced you to 30 months in prison last Friday, saying, quote, “This case is not a case about a whistleblower. It’s a case about a man who betrayed a very solemn trust, and that is a trust to keep the integrity of his agency intact and specifically to protect the identity of co-workers. … I think 30 months is, frankly, way too light, because the message has to be sent to every covert agent that when you leave the agency you can’t just start all of a sudden revealing the names of the people with whom you worked,” the judge said. John Kiriakou, can you comment on that statement?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Sure. When Judge Brinkema accepted the plea deal in October, she called 30 months fair and appropriate. I can only think that with a courtroom packed full of journalists last Friday, she decided to seize the moment and make a statement that would be carried in the papers. I don’t know what changed between October and January, other than the fact that she and the prosecution had had several ex parte communications. What that means is the prosecutors were able to meet with the judge, related to my case, without the defense, my attorneys, being present. So we have no idea what it was that the prosecution told the judge. We were not allowed to defend ourselves. Indeed, Judge Brinkema denied 75 motions that we made asking for declassification of information so that I could present a defense. In August of 2012, after our motions had been denied, my attorneys and I walked out of the courtroom, and my attorney said, “We have no defense. She won’t let us say anything. She won’t let us defend you.” And so, we were forced into plea negotiations. But again, I’m not sure why the judge changed her position between October and January; it was inexplicable to me.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain what that’s like in the courtroom, when they invoke national security, that the prosecutor can come forward and speak privately with the judge without your defense attorneys being there.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yeah, I had never heard of such a thing before. But in August, when we made our 75 motions, we thought that the judge would block off two days to hear the 75. In fact, there had been a conversation with the prosecution, and so she blocked off an hour to hear the 75 motions. So we knew we were in trouble. And then, at the very start of the hearing, the prosecutor got up and said that he was requesting a Rule 4 conversation. I didn’t know what this was. My attorneys objected and said, “If you don’t want the defendant to hear, at least allow us to hear so that we can represent his interests.” And the judge said, “No, this is a national security case. I’m allowed an ex parte communication with the prosecutors.” So the prosecutors went up to the bench. We could hear them whispering. They came back to their table, and the judge said, “All 75 motions are denied.” And that was the end of it. We got up, and we walked out of court. And my attorneys said, “We have to negotiate a plea.”

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Jesselyn—

JOHN KIRIAKOU: It was extremely disheartening.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Jesselyn Radack, I wanted to ask about the legal implications of this case and how it fits into the treatment of government whistleblowers under the Obama administration.

JESSELYN RADACK: Absolutely. To get to the point you just raised with John, I think the reason Judge Brinkema changed her opinion between October and last week is because the government submitted a secret statement that John was not allowed to see that played a large role in the sentencing hearing, but neither the public nor the defendant were allowed to see the statement, which is very Kafkaesque.

But in the grander scheme, the prosecution of John Kiriakou and the war on whistleblowers, using the heavy handed Espionage Act, by charging people who dare to tell the truth as being enemies of the state, sends a very chilling message. And Judge Brinkema herself acknowledged that a strong message had to be sent, that secrets must be kept. But apparently, that only applies to people who are trying to reveal government abuses and illegality, because all of the people in the White House and the CIA who revealed classified information and—of undercover identities to the makers of a Hollywood film, Zero Dark Thirty, have done so with impunity and with lavish praise. So—

AMY GOODMAN: Wait, can you say—can you say specifically what you’re talking about, Jesselyn Radack?

JESSELYN RADACK: Yes. Specifically, the White House and the CIA were very involved in the making of Zero Dark Thirty, which pretends to be some kind of neutral film that implies torture led to the capture of Osama bin Laden, which it absolutely did not. In that process, a high-level Defense Department official, Michael Vickers, revealed the identity of an undercover Special Operations Command officer, but was not held to account for that. And the CIA revealed numerous classified pieces of information, including sources and methods. So when—yeah?

AMY GOODMAN: Keep going.

JESSELYN RADACK: So when the United States talks about the sanctity of keeping secrets, and both the judge and multiple statements by United States officials discussed that, they are the biggest leakers of all. And they do so with impunity.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to talk about another whistleblower targeted by the Obama administration who has been former National Security Agency analyst. He’s Thomas Drake. He worked for the NSA for nearly seven years before blowing the whistle. Thomas Drake appeared on Democracy Now! last March.

THOMAS DRAKE: The critical thing that I discovered was not just the massive fraud, waste and abuse, but also the fact that NSA had chosen to ignore a 23-year legal regime, which had been established in 1978, called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, with a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and which, at NSA, during the time that I was not only at NSA but also in the military flying on RC-135s overseas during the latter part of the Cold War, it was a contract, the one thing you did not do. It was the prime directive of NSA. It was the—the—First Amendment at NSA, which is, you do not spy on Americans—

AMY GOODMAN: And what did you find?

THOMAS DRAKE: —without a warrant. I found, much to my horror, that they had tossed out that legal regime, that it was the excuse of 9/11, which I was told was: Exigent conditions now prevailed, we essentially can do anything. We opened up Pandora’s box. We’re going to turn the United States of America into the equivalent of a foreign nation for the purpose of a—of dragnet, blanket electronic surveillance.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s former National Security Agency analyst Thomas Drake. Jesselyn Radack, he is one of your clients. What happened to him?

JESSELYN RADACK: Yes, I represented both Tom Drake and John Kiriakou. The government dropped all 10 felony counts against Tom Drake, and he pled guilty to a minor misdemeanor, the equivalent of a parking ticket. I find it appalling that the two men who revealed the biggest scandals of the Bush administration—namely warrantless wiretapping and torture—are the only two who have been criminally prosecuted for it, and not the people who secretly surveiled the communications of Americans, and not the people who were involved in the torture program, all of whom have been conferred immunity by either the president or by acts of Congress.

AMY GOODMAN: John Kiriakou, you’re now—we are now—the president is President Obama. Did you see a change between President Obama and his predecessor, President Bush? And also, when you were talking about John Brennan, do you think he should head the CIA? What message do think that sends? And what has changed in the last four years, when he withdrew his name for consideration?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: In 2010, when my book came out, I was giving a speech in Los Angeles, and a woman asked me a question about the difference between President Obama and President Bush. And I’ll never forget the question, because it was just so crazy. She said, “Can you explain the CIA’s position on the jihadization of American foreign policy under President Obama?” And I laughed, and I said, “Ma’am, with all due respect, President Obama’s foreign policy is an extension of President Bush’s foreign policy. If there’s any difference at all, President Obama is killing more people overseas than President Bush ever did.” So, no, I don’t think there’s any difference at all between the Bush foreign policy and the Obama foreign policy, which I think really is a shame for us, because there was a wonderful opportunity to take a different path and to reclaim our position as a moral leader in the world. So I’m disappointed in that.

With regard to John Brennan, I’ve known John Brennan since 1990. I worked directly for John Brennan twice. I think that he is a terrible choice to lead the CIA. I think that it’s time for the CIA to move beyond the ugliness of the post-September 11th regime, and we need someone who is going to respect the Constitution and to not be bogged down by a legacy of torture. I think that President Obama’s appointment of John Brennan sends the wrong message to all Americans.

AMY GOODMAN: You worked with him, directly for him. Did Brennan receive regular internal CIA updates about the progress of torture techniques, including waterboarding, as Reuters is reporting?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I worked for him when he was a—an analytic manager. It was before he really hit the big time under George Tenet. But again, I think that it’s impossible for him to not have gotten these briefings, for him to not have been intimately involved in the policy, by virtue of his senior positions, some of the senior-most positions in the CIA. It’s just impossible that he didn’t know what was going on.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: John Kiriakou, you’ll shortly be going to prison. Do you know exactly when your prison sentence will begin? And how are you preparing for this? You’re the father of five children.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I’m the father of five. I don’t know exactly when this will be. It will be sometime in the next four to six weeks. I’ll have to report to a prison somewhere. I don’t know where. It’s, frankly, very hard to prepare. You have to do things like arrange a power of attorney, arrange child care. I mean, there are so many things to do, it’s just overwhelming. My wife, thank God, is very strong and very tough and very supportive. And we are treating this like temporary duty overseas. It was not unusual for me to go overseas for many months at a time, sometimes as long as two years at a time, two-and-a-half years. So we’re treating this like an overseas deployment. I can call my children virtually every day. If I’m close enough, they can come and visit me. And I’m just hoping for the best.

AMY GOODMAN: How old are your kids, John?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I have two sons from a first marriage who are 19 and 16, and then my wife and I have three children: an eight-year-old boy, a six-year-old girl and one-year-old boy.

AMY GOODMAN: And what do they understand?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Well, they know that I’ve been involved in a fight with the FBI for the last year. And I told them, “You know I’ve been fighting the FBI. And unfortunately, I lost. And so, because I lost, my punishment is I’m going to have to go away for a couple of years, and I’m going to try to teach bad guys how to get their high school diplomas. And when I’m all done with that, I’ll come home, and we’ll live as a family, and everything’s going to be OK again.”

NERMEEN SHAIKH: John Kiriakou, quickly, before we conclude, what advice would you give to whistleblowers now, given what’s happened in your case?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I made mistakes in my case. I would say, first, go through the chain of command, which I didn’t do, I should have done. I would say, if you get no satisfaction through your chain of command, go to the congressional oversight committees. But do not remain silent. If you see waste, fraud, abuse or illegality, shout it from the rooftops, whether it’s internally or to Congress.

AMY GOODMAN: John, we’re going to have to leave it there. Thank you so much for being with us. John Kiriakou spent 14 years at the CIA as an analyst and case officer. He’s going to jail for two-and-a-half years.

Ex-CIA Agent, Whistleblower John Kiriakou Sentenced to Prison While Torturers He Exposed Walk Free

Former CIA agent John Kiriakou speaks out just days after he was sentenced to 30 months in prison, becoming the first CIA official to face jail time for any reason relating to the U.S. torture program. Under a plea deal, Kiriakou admitted to a single count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by revealing the identity of a covert officer to a freelance reporter, who did not publish it. Supporters say Kiriakou is being unfairly targeted for having been the first CIA official to publicly confirm and detail the Bush administration’s use of waterboarding. Kiriakou joins us to discuss his story from Washington, D.C., along with his attorney, Jesselyn Radack, director of National Security & Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project. “This … was not a case about leaking; this was a case about torture. And I believe I’m going to prison because I blew the whistle on torture,” Kiriakou says. “My oath was to the Constitution. … And to me, torture is unconstitutional.” [inlcudes rush transcriptNERMEEN SHAIKH: A retired CIA agent who blew the whistle on the agency’s Bush-era torture program has been sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison. John Kiriakou becomes the first CIA official to be jailed for any reason relating to the torture program. Under a plea deal, Kiriakou admitted to a single count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by revealing the identity of a covert officer to a freelance reporter, who did not publish it. Under the plea deal, prosecutors dropped charges brought under the Espionage Act.

Find this story at 30 January 2013

In 2007, Kiriakou became the first CIA official to publicly confirm and detail the Bush administration’s use of waterboarding when he spoke to ABC’s Brian Ross.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: At the time, I felt that waterboarding was something that we needed to do. And as time has passed and as September 11th has—you know, has moved farther and farther back into history, I think I’ve changed my mind, and I think that waterboarding is probably something that we shouldn’t be in the business of doing.

BRIAN ROSS: Why do you say that now?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Because we’re Americans, and we’re better than that.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: John Kiriakou’s supporters say he has been unfairly targeted in the Obama administration’s crackdown on government whistleblowers. In a statement urging President Obama to commute Kiriakou’s sentence, a group of signatories including attorneys and former CIA officers said, quote, “[Kiriakou] is an anti-torture whistleblower who spoke out against torture because he believed it violated his oath to the Constitution. … Please, Mr. President, do not allow your legacy to be one where only the whistleblower goes to prison.”

Prosecutor Neil MacBride, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, defended the government’s handling of the case.

NEIL MacBRIDE: As the judge just said in court, today’s sentence should be a reminder to every individual who works for the government, who comes into the possession of closely held sensitive information regarding the national defense or the identity of a covert agent, that it is critical that that information remain secure and not spill out into the public domain or be shared with others who don’t have authorized access to it.

AMY GOODMAN: John Kiriakou joins us now from Washington, D.C. He spent 14 years at the CIA as an analyst and a case officer. In 2002, he led the team that found Abu Zubaydah, a high-ranking member of al-Qaeda. He’s father of five. In 2010, he published a memoir entitled The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror.

And we’re joined by one of John Kirakou’s attorneys, Jesselyn Radack. She’s the director of National Security & Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project, a former ethics adviser to the United States Department of Justice.

We reached out to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia, but they declined our request for an interview.

John Kiriakou, why are you going to jail? Explain the plea deal you made with the government.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Well, thanks, first of all, for having me and giving me the opportunity to explain.

I’m going to prison, ostensibly, for violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. I believe, and my supporters believe, that this, however, was not a case about leaking; this was a case about torture. And I believe I’m going to prison because I blew the whistle on torture. I’ve been a thorn in the CIA’s side since that interview in 2007, in which I said that waterboarding was torture and that it was official U.S. government policy. And I think, finally, the Justice Department caught up with me.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Jesselyn Radack, let me just bring you into the conversation to explain what the Intelligence Identities Protection Act is. Your client, John Kiriakou—it’s been invoked in his case for the first time in 27 years?

JESSELYN RADACK: That’s correct. In fact, there have only been two convictions under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which was enacted to prevent cases like Philip Agee, not things like John Kiriakou. It was to prevent the revealing of covert identities for profit or to aid the enemy. In this case, John confirmed the name of a torturer to a journalist, which makes Neil MacBride’s statement all the more hypocritical, because the biggest leaker of classified information, including sources and methods and undercover identities, has been the U.S. government.

AMY GOODMAN: John Kiriakou, explain what it is that you were trying to expose. Explain what you were involved with. Talk about Abu Zubaydah, your involvement in the finding of him, and then the course you took, where your conscience took you.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Sure. In 2002, I was the chief of counterterrorism operations for the CIA in Pakistan, and my job was to try to locate al-Qaeda fighters or al-Qaeda leaders and capture them, to turn them over to the Justice Department and have them face trial. That was the original—the original idea, not to have them sit in Cuba for the next decade.

But we caught Abu Zubaydah. He was shot three times by Pakistani police as he was trying to escape from his safe house. And I was the first person to have custody of him, to sit with him. We spoke to each other extensively, I mean, talked about everything from September 11th to poetry that he had been writing, to his family. And then he was moved on to a secret prison after that. Once I got back to headquarters, I heard that he had been subject to harsh techniques, then euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” and I was asked by one of the leaders in the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center if I wanted to be trained in the use of these techniques. I told him that I had a moral problem with them, and I did not want to be involved.

So, fast-forward to 2007. By then, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International had reported that al-Qaeda prisoners had been tortured, and ABC News called and said that they had information that I had tortured Abu Zubaydah. I said that was absolutely untrue. I was the only person who was kind to Abu Zubaydah, and I had never tortured anybody. So, they asked me to go on their show and defend myself. I did that. And in the course of the interview, I said that not only was the CIA torturing prisoners, but that it was official U.S. government policy. This was not the result of some rogue CIA officer just beating up a prisoner every once in a while; this was official policy that went all the way up to the president of the United States.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And so, what happened after that, in 2007, once you gave this interview? Can you explain what happened to you and to your family?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Sure. Within 24 hours, the CIA filed what’s called a crimes report against me with the Justice Department, saying that I had revealed classified information, which was the torture program, and asking for an investigation with an eye toward prosecuting me. The Justice Department decided at the time that I had not revealed classified information, that the information was already in the public domain. But immediately, within weeks, I was audited by the IRS. I’ve been audited by the IRS every single year since giving that interview in 2007.

But a more important bit of fallout from that interview was that every time I would write an op-ed, every time I would give a television interview or give a speech at a university, the CIA would file a crimes report against me, accusing me of leaking additional classified information. Each time, the Justice Department determined that I did not leak any classified information. In fact, I would get those op-eds and those speeches cleared by the CIA’s Publications Review Board in advance.

Then the CIA started harassing my wife, who at the time was a senior CIA officer, particularly over an op-ed I had written. They accused her of leaking classified information to me for the purpose of writing the op-ed. Well, I said I had gotten the information in the op-ed from two UPI reports and from a South American Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. And they would back off.

But this sort of became our life. We would be under FBI surveillance. She would be called into the CIA’s Office of Security. I would have trouble getting a security clearance when I went to Capitol Hill. It just became this pattern of harassment.

AMY GOODMAN: So, John, why didn’t you stop?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Because I think that—that torture is something that needs to be discussed. I said this in 2007. This is something that we should—about which we should be having a national debate. And frankly, I have a First Amendment right to free speech. And, you know, writing an op-ed is not against the law. Giving a speech about the Arab Spring or about torture is not against the law. And I felt that—that I didn’t want to be cowed. I didn’t want to be frightened into silence by the CIA.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, John Kiriakou, you said that in these instances that you’ve named, you were actually charged with espionage, is that right? Can you talk about the significance—

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yes.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: —of the Espionage Act?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yes, the government initially charged me with three counts of espionage. I’m—it sounds silly maybe, but I’m still personally offended by these espionage charges, which were dropped, of course. The espionage charge is used as a hammer by the administration to force people into silence. My espionage charge is related to a conversation that I had with a New York Times reporter. A New York Times reporter approached me and said that he was writing a story about a colleague of mine, and would I grant him an interview. I gave him the interview. I said this colleague was a great guy, the unsung hero of the Abu Zubaydah operation, terrific officer. And the reporter said, “Do you know how I can get in touch with him?” And I said, “No, I’ve been out of touch with him for a while, but I think I might have his business card.” So I gave the reporter the business card. Now, mind you, this is a CIA officer who had never, ever been undercover. His business card showed that he was involved as a CIA contractor, and it had his personal email on it and his cellphone number. I gave the reporter the business card and was charged with two counts of espionage. I later gave the same business card to another journalist who was doing an article and was charged with a third count of espionage.

AMY GOODMAN: What is it that you allege the CIA was doing for all of these years? Explain the torture program that you were trying to expose.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Sure. There were—there were something like 10 different techniques that were used in the CIA’s torture program. They went from the benign, you know, where an officer would grab a prisoner by the lapels and give him a shake, all the way up to the really rough things that we’ve heard about, like waterboarding or, what I think is worse, sleep deprivation or the cold cell, where they’ll put a prisoner naked in a cell chilled to 50 or 55 degrees, and then every hour or two throw ice water on him. I actually think those last two are worse than waterboarding.

But, again, these are techniques that we have condemned other countries for throughout history. The Japanese did this during the Second World War. The Belgians did it in Africa earlier in the century. The Chinese and the Vietnamese did it. This is—these are techniques that we have always said were crimes against humanity. And then it was the—it was though after September 11th everything changed, and we somehow had license to do the same things we had been condemning. I thought that was wrong. You know, Director Petraeus—former Director Petraeus made a statement in October when I agreed to take a plea to make these other charges go away, and he said that my conviction shows that we have to take our oaths seriously. Well, I took my oath seriously. My oath was to the Constitution. On my first day in the CIA, I put my right hand up, and I swore to uphold the Constitution. And to me, torture is unconstitutional, and it’s something that we should not be in the business of doing.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: John Kiriakou, I want to play for you comments President Obama made four years ago, shortly before he took office, about whether CIA officials involved in torture should be prosecuted. He appeared on the ABC News’ This Week.

PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA: I don’t believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand, I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards. And part of my job is to make sure that—for example, at the CIA, you’ve got extraordinarily talented people who are working very hard to keep Americans safe. I don’t want them to suddenly feel like they’ve got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders and lawyering.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: So no 9/11 Commission with independent subpoena power?

PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA: You know, we have not made final decisions, but my instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that, moving forward, we are doing the right thing.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was President Obama speaking four years ago to ABC. John Kiriakou, your response to what the presient said?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I supported the president’s response. I remember that interview, and I thought, “OK, he’s right. There are wonderful, talented, hard-working men and women at the CIA who need to be protected.” But at the same time, it’s one thing to look forward; it’s another thing to look forward just for the torturers. It’s just not fair. It’s not fair to the American people. If we’re going to—if we’re going to make prosecutions or initiate prosecutions, those prosecutions can’t just be against the people who blew the whistle on the torture or who opposed the torture. You know, we haven’t—we haven’t even investigated the torturers, as Jesselyn said. We haven’t initiated any actions against the people who conceived of the torture and implemented the policy, or against the man who destroyed evidence of the torture, or against the attorneys who used specious legal arguments to justify the torture. If we’re going to move forward, let’s move forward, but you can’t target one person or two people who blew the whistle.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: John Kiriakou, you’ve also spoken about witnessing new Foreign Service officers being confirmed, Foreign Service officers who were previously with the CIA and participated in acts of torture. Could you explain what happened and explain its significance?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yes. When I was a senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I was approached by a journalist who said that he had evidence that the CIA was misusing its cover agreement with the State Department to place people involved in the torture program under State Department cover so that their names could not be exposed in the press. And if those names were exposed in the press, the people giving the names would be subject to the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. So, again, this was a violation of the CIA-State Department cover agreement. I sent a letter under Senator John Kerry—then-Senator John Kerry’s signature, asking the CIA for clarification. I got a response about six weeks later that was classified top-secret, so I was not permitted to see the response. I did not have a top-secret clearance at the time. And a colleague of mine told me that the letter essentially said, in very strongly worded language, to mind my own business.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go to break. When we come back, we want to ask you about President Obama’s nominee to become the next head of the CIA, John Brennan, because as you talk about the administration, we’re talking actually about administrations, from the Bush administration to the Obama administration. Our guest is about to go to jail. His name is John Kiriakou. He’s about to serve two-and-a-half years in jail. This will be one of his last interviews before he goes to prison. We’re joined also by Jesselyn Radack, who is one of his attorneys. Stay with us.]

 

 

CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou given more than two years in prison

Judge says former intelligence officer who exposed aspects of use of torture should have been jailed for longer

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou leaves a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP

The former CIA officer John Kiriakou was sentenced Friday to more than two years in prison, by a federal judge who rejected arguments that he was acting as a whistleblower when he leaked a covert officer’s name to a reporter. A plea deal required the judge to impose a sentence of two and a half years. US district judge Leonie Brinkema said she would have given Kiriakou much more time if she could.

Kiriakou’s supporters describe him as a whistleblower who exposed aspects of the CIA’s use of torture against detained terrorists. Prosecutors said Kiriakou was merely seeking to increase his fame and public stature by trading on his insider knowledge. The 48-year-old Arlington resident pleaded guilty last year to violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. No one had been convicted under the law in 27 years.

Kiriakou was an intelligence officer with the CIA from 1990 until 2004. He served overseas and at headquarters in Langley. In 2002, Kiriakou played a key role in the agency’s capture of the al-Qaida terrorist Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan. Abu Zubaydah, who was waterboarded by government interrogators, revealed information that led to the arrest of “dirty bomb” plotter Jose Padilla and exposed Khalid Sheikh Mohamed as the mastermind of the 11 September 2001 terror attacks.

Accounts conflict, however, over whether the waterboarding was helpful in gleaning intelligence from Zubaydah, who was also interrogated conventionally.

Kiriakou, who did not participate in the waterboarding, expressed ambivalence in news media interviews about waterboarding, but ultimately declared it was torture. His 2007 interviews about the interrogations of Abu Zubaydah were among the first by a CIA insider confirming reports that several detainees, including Abu Zubaydah, had been waterboarded.

…

Associated Press in Alexandria, Virginia
guardian.co.uk, Friday 25 January 2013 16.00 GMT

Find this story at 25 January 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

John Kiriakou and the Real Story Behind Obama’s Latest Leak Crackdown

How a discovery in a Gitmo detainee’s cell led to charges against ex-CIA officer John Kiriakou.

On Monday, the Justice Department charged former CIA officer and author John Kiriakou [1] with repeatedly “disclosing classified information to journalists, including the name of a covert CIA officer and information revealing the role of another CIA employee in classified activities.” (Read the criminal complaint.)

Kiriakou began making the media rounds in late 2007, when he went on the record [2] about waterboarding techniques used in the War on Terror, particularly in connection to the torture of Abu Zubaydah in a secret prison in Thailand. (It was later revealed [3] that Kiriakou was not actually present for that interrogation, as he had previously implied.)

If you’ve been reading Mother Jones, a lot of the content in the criminal complaint against Kiriakou [4] will seem familiar. The main charges stem from a bizarre episode we reported on a [5] couple years ago: In 2008 or early 2009, attorneys for alleged 9/11 conspirators held at Guantanamo Bay obtained—and showed to their clients—photo lineups that included pictures of CIA officers and contractors. The source of the photos was John Sifton [5], a private investigator working for the American Civil Liberties Union’s John Adams Project, an outfit set up to provide civilian defense lawyers to the Gitmo defendants. In some cases, Sifton clandestinely photographed CIA officers who were thought to have been involved in the brutal interrogations of the 9/11 defendants.

The purpose of presenting the photo lineups to the detainees was to identify the alleged torturers in order to make the case that the detainees’ statements were coerced. As multiple sources told Mother Jones in 2010, the defense lawyers didn’t know which of the individuals in the photo lineups were believed to be CIA officers. The detainees, meanwhile, would have no way of knowing which of the people were CIA employees unless they recognized them from interrogations. The lineups were “double blind,” a fact confirmed in the criminal complaint.

But there was still the issue of how Sifton identified the people he thought were involved in the interrogations. That’s where Kiriakou comes in: He’s accused of providing the identities of several CIA officers to journalists, one of whom passed information on to a “defense investigator” whose activities match Sifton’s. (The complaint specifically mentions investigators “interviewing” the “defense investigator” and uses the phrase “learned from the defense investigator.”) Here’s the key paragraph of the criminal complaint:

No law or military commission order expressly prohibited defense counsel from providing their clients with the photographic spreads in question under these circumstances. However, the fact that a defense investigator had learned the classified information, including the information necessary to take and/or assemble these photographs, suggested that the information may have been either deliberately or inadvertently disclosed, without authorization, in a manner that ultimately resulted in the defense team’s possession of the classified information.

The CIA didn’t take long to find out about Sifton’s work. In the spring of 2009, some of the photos were discovered in the cell of Mustafa Ahmad al Hawsawi, an accused Al Qaeda financier and one of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s four co-defendants. The criminal complaint against Kiriakou also indicates that a defense filing in early 2009 contained classified information that the government hadn’t provided to the defense.

When the CIA found out about the photos, top intelligence officials were furious, believing the defense lawyers had potentially placed the lives of covert officers at risk. The CIA’s then-general counsel John Rizzo demanded an investigation [6]. He later described the incident [6] as “far more serious than Valerie Plame,” referring to the Bush-era leak of an operative’s covert status. Rizzo wasn’t alone in his concerns. “This is an agency that has reasons to be concerned as to whether or not somebody’s got their back,” another high-ranking former intelligence official told Mother Jones [7]. “It’s always operating out there on the edge, not unlawfully, but generally at the farthest reaches of executive prerogative.”

In response to the CIA’s complaints, the Justice Department launched a probe, but the agency and congressional Republicans were unhappy with the results of the first investigation, which looked likely to clear the Gitmo defense lawyers of wrongdoing. Then the Obama administration called in famed US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who handled the Plame investigation and prosecuted former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, to take over the probe.

Sifton and his lawyer did not respond to requests for comment.

The charges are just the latest crackdown by the Obama administration on alleged leakers. This is the sixth time during the Obama administration that prosecutors have filed charges pertaining to the unauthorized disclosure of classified national security information to media outlets. (In the previous four decades, the US government has pursued such cases on only three occasions [8].) Under the Espionage Act, the Obama administration has gone after media sources including Stephen Kim [9], an arms expert accused of passing along classified information to a Fox News reporter; NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake (who was profiled in an exhaustive New Yorker story by Jane Mayer [10]), and alleged Wikileaks source Bradley Manning [11], among others.

…

By Nick Baumann and Asawin Suebsaeng | Mon Jan. 23, 2012 2:23 PM PST

Find this story at 23 January 2013

Copyright ©2013 Mother Jones and the Foundation for National Progress. All Rights Reserved.

Ex-Officer Is First From C.I.A. to Face Prison for a Leak

WASHINGTON — Looking back, John C. Kiriakou admits he should have known better. But when the F.B.I. called him a year ago and invited him to stop by and “help us with a case,” he did not hesitate.

In his years as a C.I.A. operative, after all, Mr. Kiriakou had worked closely with F.B.I. agents overseas. Just months earlier, he had reported to the bureau a recruiting attempt by someone he believed to be an Asian spy.

“Anything for the F.B.I.,” Mr. Kiriakou replied.

Only an hour into what began as a relaxed chat with the two agents — the younger one who traded Pittsburgh Steelers talk with him and the senior investigator with the droopy eye — did he begin to realize just who was the target of their investigation.

Finally, the older agent leaned in close and said, by Mr. Kiriakou’s recollection, “In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that right now we’re executing a search warrant at your house and seizing your electronic devices.”

On Jan. 25, Mr. Kiriakou is scheduled to be sentenced to 30 months in prison as part of a plea deal in which he admitted violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by e-mailing the name of a covert C.I.A. officer to a freelance reporter, who did not publish it. The law was passed in 1982, aimed at radical publications that deliberately sought to out undercover agents, exposing their secret work and endangering their lives.

In more than six decades of fraught interaction between the agency and the news media, John Kiriakou is the first current or former C.I.A. officer to be convicted of disclosing classified information to a reporter.

Mr. Kiriakou, 48, earned numerous commendations in nearly 15 years at the C.I.A., some of which were spent undercover overseas chasing Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. He led the team in 2002 that found Abu Zubaydah, a terrorist logistics specialist for Al Qaeda, and other militants whose capture in Pakistan was hailed as a notable victory after the Sept. 11 attacks.

He got mixed reviews at the agency, which he left in 2004 for a consulting job. Some praised his skills, first as an analyst and then as an overseas operative; others considered him a loose cannon.

Mr. Kiriakou first stumbled into the public limelight by speaking out about waterboarding on television in 2007, quickly becoming a source for national security journalists, including this reporter, who turned up in Mr. Kiriakou’s indictment last year as Journalist B. When he gave the covert officer’s name to the freelancer, he said, he was simply trying to help a writer find a potential source and had no intention or expectation that the name would ever become public. In fact, it did not surface publicly until long after Mr. Kiriakou was charged.

He is remorseful, up to a point. “I should never have provided the name,” he said on Friday in the latest of a series of interviews. “I regret doing it, and I never will do it again.”

At the same time, he argues, with the backing of some former agency colleagues, that the case — one of an unprecedented string of six prosecutions under President Obama for leaking information to the news media — was unfair and ill-advised as public policy.

His supporters are an unlikely collection of old friends, former spies, left-leaning critics of the government and conservative Christian opponents of torture. Oliver Stone sent a message of encouragement, as did several professors at Liberty University, where Mr. Kiriakou has taught. They view the case as an outrage against a man who risked his life to defend the country.

Whatever his loquaciousness with journalists, they say, he neither intended to damage national security nor did so. Some see a particular injustice in the impending imprisonment of Mr. Kiriakou, who in his first 2007 appearance on ABC News defended the agency’s resort to desperate measures but also said that he had come to believe that waterboarding was torture and should no longer be used in American interrogations.

Bruce Riedel, a retired veteran C.I.A. officer who led an Afghan war review for Mr. Obama and turned down an offer to be considered for C.I.A. director in 2009, said Mr. Kiriakou, who worked for him in the 1990s, was “an exceptionally good intelligence officer” who did not deserve to go to prison.

“To me, the irony of this whole thing is, very simply, that he’s going to be the only C.I.A. officer to go to jail over torture,” even though he publicly denounced torture, Mr. Riedel said. “It’s deeply ironic under the Democratic president who ended torture.”

John A. Rizzo, a senior C.I.A. lawyer for three decades, said that he did not believe Mr. Kiriakou set out to harm national security or endanger anyone, but that his violation was serious.

“I think he wanted to be a big shot,” Mr. Rizzo said. “I don’t think he was evil. But it’s not a trivial thing to reveal a name.”

The leak prosecutions have been lauded on Capitol Hill as a long-overdue response to a rash of dangerous disclosures and have been defended by both Mr. Obama and his attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr. But their aides say neither man ordered the crackdown, and the cases appear to have resulted less from a conscious policy change than from the proliferation of e-mail, which makes it possible to trace the origin of some disclosures without pressuring journalists to identify confidential sources.

When Mr. Kiriakou pleaded guilty on Oct. 23 in federal court in Alexandria, Va., David H. Petraeus, then the C.I.A. director, issued a statement praising the prosecution as “an important victory for our agency, for our intelligence community, and for our country.”

“Oaths do matter,” he went on, “and there are indeed consequences for those who believe they are above the laws that protect our fellow officers and enable American intelligence agencies to operate with the requisite degree of secrecy.”

Less than three weeks later, e-mails tripped up Mr. Petraeus himself. He resigned after F.B.I. agents carrying out an unrelated investigation discovered, upon examining his private e-mail account, that he had had an extramarital affair.

Neil H. MacBride, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, hailed Mr. Kiriakou’s conviction in a statement: “The government has a vital interest in protecting the identities of those involved in covert operations. Leaks of highly sensitive, closely held and classified information compromise national security and can put individual lives in danger.”

The leak case is a devastating turn for Mr. Kiriakou, a father of five who considers himself a patriot, a proud Greek-American from Pennsylvania steel country whose grandfather, he recalls, “always talked as if F.D.R. personally admitted him to this country.” Discovering a passion for international affairs, he scrounged scholarships to go to George Washington University, where he was recruited by a professor, a former C.I.A. psychiatrist who spotted talent for the agency.

After he was charged last January, his wife, though accused of no wrongdoing, resigned under pressure from her C.I.A. job as a top Iran specialist. The family had to go on food stamps for several months before she got a new job outside the government. To make ends meet, they rented out their spacious house in Arlington, Va., and moved to a rented bungalow a third the size with their three young children (he has two older children from his first marriage).

Their financial woes were complicated by Mr. Kiriakou’s legal fees. He said he had paid his defense lawyers more than $100,000 and still owed them $500,000; the specter of additional, bankrupting legal fees, along with the risk of a far longer prison term that could separate him from his wife and children for a decade or more, prompted him to take the plea offer, he said.

Despite his distress about the charges and the havoc they have wrought for his family, he sometimes still speaks with reverence of the C.I.A. and its mission.

But the same qualities that worked well for him in his time as a risk-taking intelligence officer, trained to form a bond with potential recruits, may have been his undoing in his post-C.I.A. role as an intelligence expert sought out by reporters.

“Your job as a case officer is to recruit spies to steal secrets — plain and simple,” Mr. Kiriakou said. “You have to convince people you are their best friend. That wasn’t hard for me. I’d say half the people I recruited I could be lifelong friends with, even though some were communists, criminals and terrorists. I love people. I love getting to know them. I love hearing their stories and telling them stories.

“That’s all great if you’re a case officer,” he said. “It’s not so great, it turns out, if you’re a former case officer.”

Mixed Feelings

After Mr. Kiriakou first appeared on ABC, talking with Brian Ross in some detail about waterboarding, many Washington reporters sought him out. I was among them. He was the first C.I.A. officer to speak about the procedure, considered a notorious torture method since the Inquisition but declared legal by the Justice Department in secret opinions that were later withdrawn.

While he had spent hours with Abu Zubaydah after the capture, he had not been present when Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded, a fact he made clear to me and some other interviewers. But based on what he had heard and read at the agency, he told ABC and other news organizations that Abu Zubaydah had stopped resisting after just 30 or 35 seconds of the suffocating procedure and told interrogators all he knew.

That was grossly inaccurate — the prisoner was waterboarded some 83 times, it turned out. Mr. Kiriakou believes that he and other C.I.A. officers were deliberately misled by other agency officers who knew the truth.

Mr. Kiriakou, who has given The New York Times permission to describe previously confidential conversations, came across as friendly, courteous, disarmingly candid — and deeply ambivalent about what the C.I.A. called “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

He spoke about his career: starting as an analyst on the Middle East at headquarters in Virginia; later being stationed in Bahrain; making the unusual switch to the “operations” side of the C.I.A.; and serving stints as a counterterrorism officer under cover, first in Greece and later in Pakistan (he speaks fluent Greek and Arabic).

When terrorists blew up the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, killing 19 American servicemen, the blast blew out his apartment windows in Bahrain 16 miles away across the water. Twice overseas, he had close calls with terrorists who were trying to kill Western officials.

He said he had been offered the chance to be trained in the harsh interrogation methods but turned it down. Even though he had concluded that waterboarding was indeed torture, he felt that the C.I.A.’s critics, inflamed by the new revelation that videotapes of the interrogations had been destroyed, were being unduly harsh in judging actions taken in the hectic months after Sept. 11 when more attacks seemed imminent.

“I think the second-guessing of 2002 decisions is unfair,” he said in our first conversation. “2002 was a different world than 2007. What I think is fair is having a national debate over whether we should be waterboarding.”

His feelings about waterboarding were so mixed that some 2007 news reports cast him as a critic of C.I.A. torture, while others portrayed him as a defender of the agency. Some human rights activists even suspected — wrongly, as it turned out — that the intelligence agency was orchestrating his public comments.

Mr. Kiriakou seemed shellshocked, and perhaps a little intoxicated, by the flood of publicity his remarks on ABC had received and the dozens of interview requests coming his way. We met for lunch a couple of times in Washington and spoke by phone occasionally. He recounted his experiences in Pakistan — the C.I.A. later allowed him to include much of that material in his 2009 memoir, “The Reluctant Spy” — and readily answered questions about agency lore or senior officials with whom he had worked.

But he occasionally demurred when the subject was too sensitive. I could use information he gave me “on background” — that is, without mentioning him. But we would have to agree explicitly on anything I attributed to him by name, standard ground rules for such relationships.

In 2008, when I began working on an article about the interrogation of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, I asked him about an interrogator whose name I had heard: Deuce Martinez. He said that they had worked together to catch Abu Zubaydah, and that he would be a great source on Mr. Mohammed, the architect of the Sept. 11 attacks.

He was able to dig up the business card Mr. Martinez had given him with contact information at Mitchell Jessen and Associates, the C.I.A. contractor that helped devise the interrogation program and Mr. Martinez’s new employer.

Mr. Martinez, an analyst by training, was retired and had never served under cover; that is, he had never posed as a diplomat or a businessman while overseas. He had placed his home address, his personal e-mail address, his job as an intelligence officer and other personal details on a public Web site for the use of students at his alma mater. Abu Zubaydah had been captured six years earlier, Mr. Mohammed five years earlier; their stories were far from secret.

Mr. Martinez never agreed to talk to me. But a few e-mail exchanges with Mr. Kiriakou as I hunted for his former colleague would eventually turn up in Mr. Kiriakou’s indictment; he was charged with revealing to me that Mr. Martinez had participated in the operation to catch Abu Zubaydah, a fact that the government said was classified.

Tensions Over Secrecy

Nothing about my exchanges with Mr. Kiriakou was unusual for a reporter covering intelligence agencies, though he was certainly on the candid end of the spectrum of former C.I.A. officers. Current officials are almost always less willing to speak than retirees. And former rank-and-file officers are usually more reluctant to speak than their bosses, who are more confident in walking up to — or occasionally crossing over — the borders protecting classified information.

Why do officials talk about ostensibly secret programs? Sometimes the motive is self-aggrandizement, or to promote a personal or political agenda. But many officials talk because they feel Americans have a right to know, within limits, what the government is doing with their money and in their name.

There is wide agreement in the government that too much information is classified, and even senior officials are sometimes uncertain about what is secret.

In Senate testimony last July, for example, Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director from 2006 to 2009, admitted that he was perplexed by the “dilemma” over what he was or was not permitted to say, in this case about the targeted killing of Qaeda operatives using drones — officially classified but reported in the news media every day and occasionally discussed by Mr. Obama.

“So much of that is in the public domain that right now this witness, with my experience, I am unclear what of my personal knowledge of this activity I can or cannot discuss publicly,” Mr. Hayden said. “That’s how muddled this has become.”

The trade-offs and tensions over government secrets in a democracy are nothing new. In 1971, when the Nixon administration went to court to try to stop The New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers, a classified history of the Vietnam War, Max Frankel, then the Washington bureau chief for The Times, filed an affidavit on how officials and reporters exchange secrets.

“Without the use of ‘secrets’ that I shall attempt to explain in this affidavit, there could be no adequate diplomatic, military and political reporting of the kind our people take for granted, either abroad or in Washington, and there could be no mature system of communication between the government and the people,” Mr. Frankel wrote 42 years ago.

Before Mr. Obama took office, prosecutions for disclosing classified information to the news media had been rare. That was a comforting fact for national security reporters and their sources, but a lamentable one for intelligence officials who complained that leaks damaged intelligence operations, endangered American operatives and their informants and strained relations with allied spy services.

By most counts, there were only three cases until recently: against Daniel Ellsberg and a colleague for leaking the Pentagon Papers in 1971; against Samuel Loring Morison, a Navy intelligence analyst, for selling classified satellite photographs to Jane’s, the military publisher, in 1985; and against Lawrence Franklin, a Defense Department official, who was charged in 2005 with passing secrets to two officials of a pro-Israel lobbying group, who shared some of them with reporters.

Thus Mr. Obama has presided over twice as many such cases as all his predecessors combined, though at least two of the six prosecutions since 2009 resulted from investigations begun under President George W. Bush. An outcry over a series of revelations last year — about American cyberattacks on Iran, a double agent who infiltrated the Qaeda branch in Yemen and procedures for targeted killings — prompted Mr. Holder to begin new leak investigations that have not yet produced any charges.

The resulting chill on officials’ willingness to talk is deplored by journalists and advocates of open government; without leaks, they note, Americans might never have learned about the C.I.A.’s interrogation methods or the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping. But for supporters of greater secrecy, the chill is precisely the goal.

Revealing a Name

From court documents and interviews, it is possible to piece together how the case against Mr. Kiriakou took shape. When he first spoke on ABC in 2007, the C.I.A. sent the Justice Department a “crimes report” — a routine step to alert law enforcement officials to an apparent unauthorized disclosure of classified information. At least half a dozen more referrals went to Justice as he continued to grant interviews covering similar ground.

Shortly after he became a minor media star, Mr. Kiriakou lost his job in business intelligence at Deloitte, the global consulting firm he joined after leaving the C.I.A. He had also begun working with Hollywood filmmakers — visiting Afghanistan, for instance, before advising the producers of “The Kite Runner” that its young male actors should probably be relocated outside the country for their own safety. He was working with a veteran journalist, Michael Ruby, on his memoir and battling the agency’s Publications Review Board, as many C.I.A. authors have, over what he was permitted to write about and what was off limits.

Mr. Rizzo, then a top C.I.A. lawyer, said he recalled some colleagues being upset that Mr. Kiriakou had begun speaking so openly about the interrogation program. “It was fairly brazen — a former agency officer talking on camera,” Mr. Rizzo said. “He started being quoted all over the place. He was commenting on everything.”

Of course, Mr. Kiriakou had plenty of company. More and more C.I.A. retirees were writing books, speaking to reporters or appearing on television. Mr. Rizzo himself became the subject of a Justice Department referral after he spoke to a Newsweek reporter in 2011 about drone strikes, and his own memoir, “The Company’s Man,” is scheduled for publication next year.

Mr. Rizzo said he did not believe that Mr. Kiriakou’s media appearances spurred a serious criminal investigation. “There really wasn’t a campaign against him,” he said.

Then, in 2009, officials were alarmed to discover that defense lawyers for detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had obtained names and photographs of C.I.A. interrogators and other counterterrorism officers, including some who were still under cover. It turned out that the lawyers, working under the name of the John Adams Project, wanted to call the C.I.A. officers as witnesses in future military trials, perhaps to substantiate accounts of torture or harsh treatment.

But initial fears that Al Qaeda might somehow be able to stalk their previous captors drew widespread coverage. This time there was a crimes report, Mr. Rizzo said, that was taken very seriously, both at the C.I.A. and the Justice Department.

F.B.I. agents discovered that a human rights advocate hired by the John Adams Project, John Sifton, had compiled a dossier of photographs and names of the C.I.A. officers; that Mr. Sifton had exchanged e-mails with journalists, including Matthew A. Cole, a freelancer then working on a book about a C.I.A. rendition case in Italy that had gone awry; and that Mr. Cole had exchanged e-mails with Mr. Kiriakou. The F.B.I. used search warrants to obtain access to Mr. Kiriakou’s two personal e-mail accounts.

According to court documents, F.B.I. agents discovered that in August 2008, Mr. Cole — identified as Journalist A in the charging documents — had asked Mr. Kiriakou if he knew the name of a covert officer who had a supervisory role in the rendition program, which involved capturing terrorism suspects and delivering them to prisons in other countries.

Mr. Kiriakou at first said he did not recall the name, but followed up the next day with an e-mail passing on the name and adding, “It came to me last night,” the documents show. (Mr. Sifton, Mr. Cole and federal prosecutors all declined to comment.)

In recent interviews, Mr. Kiriakou said he believed that the covert officer, whom he had last seen in 2002, had retired; in fact, the officer was then working overseas. He had no idea that the name would be passed on to the Guantánamo defense lawyers and end up in a government file, as it did, he said.

When the F.B.I. agents invited Mr. Kiriakou to their Washington office a year ago “to help with a case,” he said, they repeatedly asked him whether he had knowingly disclosed the name of a covert officer. He replied that he had no recollection of having done so; he still insists that was the truth.

“If I’d known the guy was still under cover,” Mr. Kiriakou said, “I would never have mentioned him.”

The officer’s name did not become public in the four years after Mr. Kiriakou sent it to Mr. Cole. It appeared on a whistle-blowing Web site for the first time last October; the source was not clear.

Preparing for Prison

On a chilly recent afternoon, Mr. Kiriakou, in a Steelers jersey, drove his Honda S.U.V. to pick up his son Max, 8, and his daughter Kate, 6, from school, leaving the 14-month-old Charlie at home with a baby sitter.

He and his wife had struggled with how to explain to the children that he is going away, probably in mid-February. They settled on telling the children that “Daddy lost a big fight with the F.B.I.” and would have to live elsewhere for a while. Max cried at the news, Mr. Kiriakou said. He cried again after calculating that his birthday would fall on a weekday, so it would be impossible to make the trip to prison to share the celebration with his father.

The afternoon school pickup has become his routine since he has been out of work. A stint as an investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee ended before he was charged; two hedge funds that had him on retainer to provide advice on international security issues dropped him when the charges were filed.

Only Liberty University, the conservative Christian institution founded by Jerry Falwell Sr. in Lynchburg, Va., where Mr. Kiriakou was hired by former C.I.A. officers on the faculty to teach intelligence courses, actually increased the work it offered him when he got in trouble.

“They say torture is un-Christian,” Mr. Kiriakou said, who notes wryly that his fervent supporters now include both the Liberty Christians and an array of left-wing activists.

Last summer, Mr. Kiriakou was teaching a practical course on surveillance and countersurveillance to a group of Liberty students in Washington and had them trail him on foot on the eastern edge of Georgetown, he said. After several passes, the students excitedly told him that they had detected several cars that were also following him — his usual F.B.I. minders, he figured.

When Mr. Kiriakou pleaded guilty in October to sharing the covert officer’s name, the government dropped several other charges, including the disclosure to The Times and a claim that he had lied to the C.I.A.’s Publications Review Board, though those violations remain in an official statement of facts accompanying the plea.

…

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 5, 2013

A summary that appeared with an earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the former C.I.A. operative. He is John C. Kiriakou, not Kiriako.

January 5, 2013
By SCOTT SHANE

Find this story at 5 January 2013

© 2013 The New York Times Company

Zero Dark Thirty director given ‘roadmap’ behind U.S. stealth mission to kill Osama bin Laden

Kathryn Bigelow given classified information by high ranking official
She was also briefed by CIA and military officials and Navy Seals
Campaign group said the White House has acted improperly

The director of an Oscar-nominated film about the killing of Osama bin Laden was given classified information about the operation by United States intelligence chiefs.

Zero Dark Thirty director Kathryn Bigelow and her screenwriting partner Mark Boal were provided with a complete ‘roadmap’ of how the raid was planned during a 45 minute meeting with Michael Vickers – the country’s highest ranking civilian intelligence official.

The filmmakers also received briefings from top CIA and military intelligence officers and Navy Seals who carried out Operation Neptune Spear – attacking bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan in May 2011.

Secrecy: Zero Dark Thirty filmmakers Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal were given classified information

The transcript of the interview, which took place three months after the terrorist leader’s death, has this week been published by the National Security Archive (NSA) at George Washington University in Washington.

Classified: Intelligence chief Michale Vickers gave information to the filmmakers during an interview

It follows a freedom of information request by campaign group Judicial Watch. Its president Tom Fitton had said the White House acted improperly by giving ‘politically-connected filmmakers extraordinary and secret access to bin Laden raid information’

Following the raid, the White House and Pentagon held a series of contradictory briefings and the NSA argues that an authoritative account of the operation has never been published.

The group accused the Obama administration of sharing the ‘intimate details’ to help the filmmakers release a movie ‘perfectly timed to give a home-stretch boost’ last year’s re-election campaign.

The NSA said much of the operation in Abbottabad is still ‘shrouded in secrecy’, with many details of the raid having never been released.

Chris Farrell, of Judicial Watch, told The Independent: ‘Either you admit you gave special excess to your pet film directors, or you make the information available to everyone.’

A statement on the Judicial Watch website said that the film pushed the Obama narrative, and added: ‘Barack Obama comes off as a hero character.

‘We see him morally preening on a news program and hear him described as ’thoughtful and analytical.’

Oscar nominated: Navy SEALs prepare to breach a locked door in bin Laden’s compound in Dark Zero Thirty

Raid: Pakistani security officials stand guard as workers demolish the compound in Abbottabad

‘Boal and Bigelow seemed to have gone out of their way (short of producing a two-hour campaign commercial) to project the Obama administration as ‘gutsy’ for ordering the raid.’

Hunted: Bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in May 2011

An investigation into whether Mr Vickers broke any rules by briefing Ms Bigelow and Mr Boal has been launched by the Department of Defense.

Mr Boal and Ms Bigelow, who spent several years working on the film, have insisted that they went through the proper official channels in the intelligence community and did not have access to any classified information.

Zero Dark Thirty opened across the U.S. on January 11 and has been nominated for five Oscars including Best Picture, Best Actress for Jessica Chastain and Best Original Screenplay. It was nominated for four Golden Globes, with Chastain winning Best Actress.

Mr Boal and Ms Bigelow have both won Oscars fro the Hurt Locker. Ms Bigelow has defended her latest film’s torture scene, saying criticism of the practices might be better directed towards government policymakers.

After bin Laden – who was hunted by the US since the 9/11 terrorist attacks – was killed, the Obama administration said his body was buried at sea off the USS Carl Vinson in accordance with Islamic tradition.

The raid was completed shortly after 1am local time when he was shot once in the chest and once in the head by a Navy Seal who announced, ‘For God and country Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo’, because Geronimo was the code-name given to the al-Qaeda leader.

…

By Alex Gore

PUBLISHED: 17:53 GMT, 19 January 2013 | UPDATED: 09:00 GMT, 20 January 2013

Find this story at 19 January 2013

© Associated Newspapers Ltd

How did Bigelow access America’s secrets about torture and Bin Laden’s assassination for Zero Dark Thirty?

Oscar contender is triggering growing criticism from US senators that the movie supports ‘waterboarding’

It has received five Oscar nominations and created a buzz among movie fans around the world.

But Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, which recounts the operation that traced and killed Osama bin Laden, is at the centre of growing controversy over the unprecedented access to classified information granted to the director and her screenwriter colleague, while most of these details remain unavailable to the general pubic.

Documents collected, collated and published this week by the National Security Archive of George Washington University in Washington show that only a portion of information about Operation Neptune Spear, the codename for the CIA-led, decade-long hunt for Bin Laden, has so far been declassified.

In contrast, Ms Bigelow and her colleague Mark Boal received briefings from high-ranking CIA and military intelligence officers, Navy SEALs who took part in the operation and other officials. A CIA spokeswoman said at the time, the agency had decided to support the director because “it makes sense to get behind a winning horse. Mark and Kathryn’s movie is going to be the first and the biggest”.

The attacks of 9/11 on New York and Washington traumatised the US and led to various policy decisions whose ramifications are still being felt. The vow of then US President George Bush to capture the al-Qa’ida leader “dead or alive” led to the US and UK invasion of Afghanistan and a hunt for Bin Laden that concluded in May 2011 when US Special Forces raided a walled compound in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad where he had been hiding.

In the hours and days after the raid, White House and Pentagon officials briefed the media about aspects of the raid. Yet there were a number of contradictions contained within those briefings, and more than 18 months later many details remain unknown. Photographs of Bin Laden, for instance, supposedly taken after he was shot dead and when his body was buried at sea from aboard the USS Carl Vinson have not been made public, and the Obama administration has refused media requests under the Freedom of Information Act to release them.

Indeed, the National Security Archive said much of the operation was still “shrouded in secrecy”. It added: “The government’s recalcitrance over releasing information directly to the public about the 21 century’s most important intelligence search and military raid, and its decision instead to grant the film’s producers exclusive and unprecedented access to classified information about the operation, means that for the time being – for bad or good – Hollywood has become the public’s account of record for Operation Neptune Spear.”

Even before its release, Ms Bigelow’s film had already created controversy because of a scenes showing torture that the film suggests were essential to obtaining information that led the CIA to the garrison town of Abbottabad.

Such has been the furore that senior US senators Diane Feinstein and John McCain publicly complained the film was supporting the use of techniques such as “waterboarding”. Ms Bigelow has defended her film, recently telling the BBC: “It’s part of the story. To omit it would have been whitewashing history.”

Yet others say, the issue of the access given to the 61-year-old director is equally controversial. Chris Farrell, of Judicial Watch, a Washington-based non-profit organisation, said it had been involved in extensive litigation with the authorities to obtain withheld documents. He claimed the government was trying to have it both ways. “Either you admit you gave special access to your pet film director, or else you make the information available to everyone,” he said.

What has added to the perception that Ms Bigelow received special treatment are various moves by the authorities to halt other people releasing information about Operation Neptune Spear. The NSA said last November, seven US special forces soldiers involved in the Abbottabad operation were reprimanded for providing classified material to a video game manufacturer.

…

Andrew Buncombe
Friday, 18 January 2013

Find this story at 18 January 2013

© independent.co.uk

 

 

U.S. Weighs Base for Spy Drones in North Africa

WASHINGTON — The United States military is preparing to establish a drone base in northwest Africa so that it can increase surveillance missions on the local affiliate of Al Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups that American and other Western officials say pose a growing menace to the region.

For now, officials say they envision flying only unarmed surveillance drones from the base, though they have not ruled out conducting missile strikes at some point if the threat worsens.

The move is an indication of the priority Africa has become in American antiterrorism efforts. The United States military has a limited presence in Africa, with only one permanent base, in the country of Djibouti, more than 3,000 miles from Mali, where French and Malian troops are now battling Qaeda-backed fighters who control the northern part of Mali.

A new drone base in northwest Africa would join a constellation of small airstrips in recent years on the continent, including in Ethiopia, for surveillance missions flown by drones or turboprop planes designed to look like civilian aircraft.

If the base is approved, the most likely location for it would be in Niger, a largely desert nation on the eastern border of Mali. The American military’s Africa Command, or Africom, is also discussing options for the base with other countries in the region, including Burkina Faso, officials said.

The immediate impetus for a drone base in the region is to provide surveillance assistance to the French-led operation in Mali. “This is directly related to the Mali mission, but it could also give Africom a more enduring presence for I.S.R.,” one American military official said Sunday, referring to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

A handful of unarmed Predator drones would carry out surveillance missions in the region and fill a desperate need for more detailed information on a range of regional threats, including militants in Mali and the unabated flow of fighters and weapons from Libya. American military commanders and intelligence analysts complain that such information has been sorely lacking.

The Africa Command’s plan still needs approval from the Pentagon and eventually from the White House, as well as from officials in Niger. American military officials said that they were still working out some details, and that no final decision had been made. But in Niger on Monday, the two countries reached a status-of-forces agreement that clears the way for greater American military involvement in the country and provides legal protection to American troops there, including any who might deploy to a new drone base.

The plan could face resistance from some in the White House who are wary of committing any additional American forces to a fight against a poorly understood web of extremist groups in North Africa.

If approved, the base could ultimately have as many as 300 United States military and contractor personnel, but it would probably begin with far fewer people than that, military officials said.

Some Africa specialists expressed concern that setting up a drone base in Niger or in a neighboring country, even if only to fly surveillance missions, could alienate local people who may associate the distinctive aircraft with deadly attacks in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

Officials from Niger did not respond to e-mails over the weekend about the plan, but its president, Mahamadou Issoufou, has expressed a willingness to establish what he called in a recent interview “a long-term strategic relationship with the U.S.”

“What’s happening in northern Mali is a big concern for us because what’s happening in northern Mali can also happen to us,” Mr. Issoufou said in an interview at the presidential palace in Niamey, Niger’s capital, on Jan. 10, the day before French troops swept into Mali to blunt the militant advance.

Gen. Carter F. Ham, the head of the Africa Command, who visited Niger this month to discuss expanding the country’s security cooperation with the United States, declined to comment on the proposed drone base, saying in an e-mail that the subject was “too operational for me to confirm or deny.”

Discussions about the drone base come at a time when the French operation in Mali and a militant attack on a remote gas field in the Algerian desert that left at least 37 foreign hostages, including 3 Americans, dead have thrown a spotlight on Al Qaeda’s franchise in the region, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and forced Western governments and their allies in the region to accelerate efforts to combat it.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who is chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death and the turmoil of the Arab Spring, there was “an effort to establish a beachhead for terrorism, a joining together of terrorist organizations.”

According to current and former American government officials, as well as classified government cables made public by the group WikiLeaks, the surveillance missions flown by American turboprop planes in northern Mali have had only a limited effect.

Flown mainly from Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, the missions have faced stiff challenges as militant leaders have taken greater precautions in using electronic communications and have taken more care not to disclose delicate information that could be monitored, like their precise locations.

General Ham said in an interview on his visit to Niger that it had been difficult for American intelligence agencies to collect consistent, reliable intelligence about what was going on in northern Mali, as well as in other largely ungoverned parts of the sub-Saharan region.

“It’s tough to penetrate,” he said. “It’s tough to get access for platforms that can collect. It’s an extraordinarily tough environment for human intelligence, not just ours but the neighboring countries as well.”

…

January 28, 2013
By ERIC SCHMITT

Find this story at 28 January 2013

© 2013 The New York Times Company

The incredible U.S. military spy drone that’s so powerful it can see what type of phone you’re carrying from 17,500ft

The ARGUS-IS can view an area of 15 sq/miles in a single image
Its zoom capability can detect an object as small as 6in on the ground
Developed by BAE as part of a $18million DARPA project
System works by stringing together 368 digital camera chips

A sinister airborne surveillance camera gives the U.S. military the ability to track movements in an entire city like a real-time Google Street View.

The ARGUS-IS array can be mounted on unmanned drones to capture an area of 15 sq/miles in an incredible 1,800MP – that’s 225 times more sensitive than an iPhone camera.

From 17,500ft the remarkable surveillance system can capture objects as small as 6in on the ground and allows commanders to track movements across an entire battlefield in real time.

Scroll down for video

Beat that, Google: An image taken from 17,500ft by the U.S. military’s ARGUS-IS array, which can capture 1,800MP zoomable video feeds of an entire medium-sized city in real time

‘It is important for the public to know that some of these capabilities exist,’ said Yiannis Antoniades, the BAE engineer who designed the system, in a recent PBS broadcast.

The aerospace and weapons company developed the ARGUS-IS array as part of a $18.5million project funded by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa).

In Greek mythology, Argus Panoptes, guardian of the heifer-nymph Io and son of Arestor, was a primordial giant whose epithet, ‘Panoptes’, ‘all-seeing’, led to his being described with multiple, often one hundred, eyes.

Like the Titan of myth, the Pentagon’s ARGUS-IS (a backronym standing for Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance-Imaging System) works by stringing together an array of 368 digital camera imaging chips.

An airborne processor combines the video from these chips to create a single ultra-high definition mosaic video image which updates at up to 15 frames a second.

All-seeing: This graphic illustrates how the U.S. military’s ARGUS-IS array links together images streamed from hundreds of digital camera sensors to watch over a huge expanse of terrain in real time

What it looks like: The ARGUS-IS (a backronym standing for Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance-Imaging System) strings together an array of 368 digital camera imaging chips into a single unit

That tremendous level of detail makes it sensitive enough to not only track people moving around on the ground thousands of feet below, but even to see what they are doing or carrying.

The ARGUS array sends its live feed to the ground where it connects to a touch-screen command room interface.

Using this, operators can zoom in to any area within the camera’s field of view, with up to 65 zoom windows open at once.

Each video window is electronically steerable independent of the others, and can either provide continuous imagery of a fixed area on the ground or be designated to automatically keep a specified target in the window.

Sinister: The system tracks all moving objects in its field of view, highlighting them with coloured boxes, allowing operators to track movements across an area as and when they happen

The system automatically tracks any moving object it can see, including both vehicles and individuals on foot, highlighting them with coloured boxes so they can be easily identified.

It also records everything, storing an approximate million terabytes of data a day – the equivalent of 5,000 hours of high-definition video footage.

‘So you can go back and say I’d like to see what happened at this particular location three days, two hours [and] four minutes ago, and it will actually show you what happened as if you were watching it live,’ said Mr Antoniades.

iPad next? The feed from the ARGUS is transmitted to a touch-screen command and control interface

Windows: Operators can open a window to zoom in to any area within the camera’s field of view, with up to 65 open and running at once

Total surveillance: The view of Quantico, Virginia, highlighted in the PBS film

For the PBS programme reporting the technology, Mr Antoniades showed reporters a feed over the city of Quantico, Virginia, that was recorded in 2009.

…

By Damien Gayle

PUBLISHED: 14:56 GMT, 28 January 2013 | UPDATED: 19:56 GMT, 28 January 2013

Find this story at 28 January 2013

© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Bradley Manning denied chance to make whistleblower defence

Judge rules that Manning will not be allowed to present evidence about his motives for the leak – a key plank of his defence

Colonel Denise Lind ruled that general issues of motive were not relevant to the trial stage of the court martial. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP

Bradley Manning, the US soldier accused of being behind the largest leak of state secrets in America’s history, has been denied the chance to make a whistleblower defence in his upcoming court martial in which he faces possible life in military custody with no chance of parole.

The judge presiding over Manning’s prosecution by the US government for allegedly transmitting confidential material to WikiLeaks ruled in a pre-trial hearing that Manning will largely be barred from presenting evidence about his motives in leaking the documents and videos. In an earlier hearing, Manning’s lead defence lawyer, David Coombs, had argued that his motive was key to proving that he had no intention to harm US interests or to pass information to the enemy.

The judge, Colonel Denise Lind, ruled that general issues of motive were not relevant to the trial stage of the court martial, and must be held back until Manning either entered a plea or was found guilty, at which point it could be used in mitigation to lessen the sentence. The ruling is a blow to the defence as it will make it harder for the soldier’s legal team to argue he was acting as a whistleblower and not as someone who knowingly damaged US interests at a time of war.

“This is another effort to attack the whistleblower defence,” said Nathan Fuller, a spokesman for the Bradley Manning support network, after the hearing.

The judge also blocked the defence from presenting evidence designed to show that WikiLeaks caused little or no damage to US national security. Coombs has devoted considerable time and energy trying to extract from US government agencies their official assessments of the impact of WikiLeaks around the world, only to find that he is now prevented from using any of the information he has obtained.

The 25-year-old intelligence analyst faces 22 charges relating to the leaking of hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic cables, war logs from the Afghan and Iraq wars, and videos of US military actions. The most serious charge, “aiding the enemy”, which carries the life sentence, accuses him of arranging for state secrets to be published via WikiLeaks on the internet knowing that al-Qaida would have access to it.

…

Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 17 January 2013 18.22 GMT

Find this story at 17 January 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Did US spies hack French government computers using Facebook?

A sophisticated computer virus discovered at the center of the French government’s secure computer network was planted there by the United States, according to unnamed sources inside France’s intelligence community. Paris-based magazine L’Express, France’s version of Time magazine, says in its current issue that the alleged American cyberattack took place shortly before last April’s Presidential elections in France. It resulted in the infection of the entire computer system in the Palais de l’Élysée, which is the official residence of the President of France. The French magazine cites unnamed sources inside the French Network and Information Security Agency (ANSSI), which is responsible for cybersecurity throughout France. The sources claim that the snooping virus allowed its handlers to gain access to the computers of most senior French Presidential aides and advisers during the final weeks of the administration of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, including his Chief of Staff, Xavier Musca. The article claims that the virus used a source code nearly identical to that of Flame, a super-sophisticated version of Stuxnet, the virus unleashed a few years ago against the computer infrastructure of the Iranian nuclear energy program. Many cybersecurity analysts believe that the US and Israel were instrumental in designing both Stuxnet and Flame. IntelNews understands that the alleged virus was initially directed at employees of the Palais de l’Élysée through Facebook. The targets were allegedly befriended by fake Facebook profile accounts handled by the team that operated the virus. The targets were then sent phishing emails that contained links to phony copies of the login page for the Palais de l’Élysée intranet website. Though that bogus website the hackers acquired username and password data of several Palais de l’Élysée staffers, which they subsequently used to gain access to the Presidential Palace’s computer system. Assuming that the virus planted on the Palais de l’Élysée intranet was similar to Flame in method and scope, it can be inferred that its handlers were able to spy on conversations taking place at the Palais using the infected computers’ audiovisual peripherals, as well as log keystrokes and acquire screen shots at regular intervals. The collected data was then routed through a host of different servers on five continents before reaching the hackers.

…

November 22, 2012 by Joseph Fitsanakis 6 Comments

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |

Find this story at 22 November 2012

Cyberguerre: comment les Américains ont piraté l’Élysée

EXCLUSIF. En mai, l’équipe de Nicolas Sarkozy a été victime d’une opération d’espionnage informatique hypersophistiquée. Les sources de L’Express concordent : le coup vient de… l’ami américain. Révélations sur une attaque qui s’inscrit dans une bataille planétaire.

CYBERGUERRE – Les intrus qui se sont introduits dans les réseaux informatiques de l’Elysée en mai dernier ont subtilisé des notes secrètes et des plans stratégiques à partir des ordinateurs de proches conseillers de Nicolas Sarkozy.
DR

C’est l’un des hold-up les plus audacieux réalisés contre l’Etat français. En mai dernier, quelques jours avant le second tour de l’élection présidentielle, des pirates ont réussi à s’introduire dans les réseaux informatiques de l’Elysée. Révélée par le quotidien régional Le Télégramme, cette intrusion avait alors été soigneusement étouffée par le Château. Une omerta qui, jusqu’à présent, n’avait pas été brisée. Aucune information n’avait filtré sur la nature des agresseurs, ou même sur le préjudice subi. Pourtant, l’affaire est grave, d’autant qu’elle constituerait une cyberattaque sans précédent entre pays alliés.

L’Express peut révéler que les intrus ont non seulement réussi à pénétrer au coeur même du pouvoir politique français, mais qu’ils ont pu fouiller les ordinateurs des proches conseillers de Nicolas Sarkozy. Des notes secrètes ont été récupérées sur des disques durs, mais aussi des plans stratégiques. Du vrai travail de pro, digne du dernier James Bond, Skyfall. Et, comme souvent dans ce type d’attaque, une négligence humaine est à l’origine de la catastrophe.
L’ordinateur du secrétaire général de l’Elysée pillé

Tout a commencé sur Facebook. Les assaillants ont d’abord identifié, sur le réseau social, le profil de personnes travaillant au palais présidentiel. Se faisant passer pour des amis, ils les ont ensuite invitées, par un message électronique, à se connecter sur l’intranet du Château. Sauf que ce lien menait à une fausse page Web – une réplique de celle de l’Elysée. Les victimes n’y ont vu que du feu ; et lorsque est apparu, à l’écran, un message leur demandant leur identifiant et leur mot de passe, elles les ont donnés en toute bonne foi. Une technique bien connue des hackers, qui leur a permis de récupérer les clefs numériques pour s’inviter en toute quiétude dans le saint des saints.

Une fois à l’intérieur, les pirates ont installé un logiciel espion qui s’est propagé d’un ordinateur à l’autre. Très élaboré, ce “ver” n’a infecté que quelques machines. Et pas n’importe lesquelles : celles des conseillers les plus influents du gouvernement… et du secrétaire général, Xavier Musca. Nicolas Sarkozy y a, lui, échappé. Et pour cause, il ne possédait pas de PC. Malheureusement pour les assaillants, le code malveillant a laissé des empreintes. “Telles des marionnettes actionnées par des fils invisibles, les machines infectées communiquent avec leur maître pour prendre leurs ordres, décrypte un expert, Olivier Caleff, responsable sécurité du Cert-Devoteam, une société de sécurité informatique. Lorsque l’on essaie de remonter ces fils sur Internet, on arrive souvent sur des serveurs situés à l’étranger.”

C’est ce travail de fourmi qu’ont mené les enquêteurs français. Le degré de sophistication de l’attaque était tel que les suspects se limitaient, d’emblée, à une poignée de pays. Pour preuve, le cyberpompier de l’Etat, l’Agence nationale de la sécurité des systèmes d’information (Anssi), a mis plusieurs jours pour restaurer le réseau de l’Elysée. Difficile de trouver l’origine de l’offensive. Souvent, les assaillants brouillent les pistes en passant par des pays tiers. Autant de rebonds, sur des serveurs situés sur les cinq continents, qui rendent ce fil d’Ariane très compliqué à suivre, même pour les “cyberdétectives” de l’Etat mobilisés pour l’occasion. Mais, selon les informations recueillies par L’Express auprès de plusieurs sources, leurs conclusions, fondées sur un faisceau de présomptions, convergent vers le plus vieil allié de la France : les Etats-Unis.
Le virus porte la marque de son auteur

Le code malveillant utilisé affiche, en effet, les mêmes fonctionnalités qu’un ver informatique extrêmement puissant, baptisé Flame, identifié à la fin du mois de mai par une grande société russe d’antivirus, Kaspersky. “Très perfectionné, il peut collecter les fichiers présents sur une ma-chine, réaliser des captures d’écran et même activer le microphone d’un PC pour enregistrer les conversations, expli-que Vitaly Kamluk, spécialiste du sujet chez cet éditeur. Sa conception a demandé beaucoup d’argent et des moyens humains que seul un grand pays est en mesure de mobiliser.” Ou même deux : selon la presse anglo-saxonne, le ver aurait été créé par une équipe américano-israélienne, car il devait viser initialement des pays du Moyen-Orient (Iran, Egypte). Autre élément à charge : tel un peintre reconnaissable à son trait, un virus porte les marques du savoir-faire de son auteur. Janet Napolitano, secrétaire d’Etat à la Sécurité intérieure de l’administration Obama, n’a ni confirmé ni démenti nos informations.

Contactés à ce sujet, ni l’Anssi ni l’Elysée n’ont souhaité faire de commentaires. Reste une question. Pourquoi un allié de la France lancerait-il une telle opération ? “Vous pouvez être en très bons termes avec un “pays ami” et vouloir, en même temps, vous assurer de son soutien indéfectible, surtout dans une période de transition politique”, note un proche du dossier, sous le couvert de l’anonymat. Sans compter que l’Elysée joue un rôle clef dans la signature de grands contrats avec des pays étrangers, notamment au Moyen-Orient. “C’était encore plus vrai à l’époque de Nicolas Sarkozy”, rappelle Nicolas Arpagian, directeur scientifique du cycle sécurité numérique à l’Institut national des hautes études de la sécurité et de la justice.

Un instantané des cyberattaques en cours…

HoneyMap réalisé par Honeynet Project

Quitte à être espionné, sans doute vaut-il mieux l’être par un allié… “Nous avons de grands partenaires avec lesquels nous collaborons et entretenons des relations de confiance, et d’autres avec qui nous ne partageons pas les mêmes valeurs”, rappelle le contre-amiral Arnaud Coustillière, responsable du volet militaire de la cyberdéfense française. Il n’empêche, l’attitude de l’administration Obama suscite de nombreuses interrogations.
Vers des attaques “pires que le 11 Septembre” ?

Dans une version du livre blanc sur la défense, actuellement en cours de rédaction, des auteurs ont soulevé les ambiguïtés de Washington. “Face à la difficulté d’utiliser les voies de droit, [les Etats-Unis] ont recours de plus en plus à l’action clandestine, ce qui peut poser une question de contrôle démocratique.”

Ironie du sort, le Congrès américain vient, le 14 novembre, de publier un rapport accablant sur l'”acteur le plus menaçant du cyberespace”, à savoir… la Chine. Leon Panetta, secrétaire d’Etat à la Défense, a même déclaré récemment que, par leur puissance numérique, “certains pays” seraient, d’ores et déjà, capables de provoquer un “cyber-Pearl Harbor” : “Ce serait pire que le 11 Septembre ! Des assaillants pourraient faire dérailler un train de voyageurs ou un convoi de produits chimiques dangereux. Ou, encore, contaminer les systèmes d’eau des grandes villes ou éteindre une grande partie du réseau électrique.” Le tout en se cachant derrière des écrans d’ordinateurs situés à des milliers de kilomètres…
Dans le monde virtuel, tous les coups sont permis

Leon Panetta sait de quoi il parle. L’Oncle Sam a déjà utilisé ces moyens. C’était en 2010, lors de l’opération “Jeux olympiques”, lancée conjointement avec Israël contre l’Iran. Leur logiciel Stuxnet aurait endommagé un grand nombre des centrifugeuses utilisées par Téhéran pour enrichir de l’uranium. Spectaculaire, cette opération ne doit pas faire oublier que d’autres nations oeuvrent dans l’ombre. Dans le plus grand secret, de nombreux pays, démocratiques ou non, fourbissent leurs armes numériques. Des forces secrètes se constituent, des mercenaires vendent leurs services aux plus offrants. Sans foi ni loi. La Toile n’est pas un champ de bataille comme les autres. Oubliez les codes de l’honneur, les conventions internationales ou les alliances. Tous les coups sont permis. Et mieux vaut avoir les moyens de se battre. Dans le cyberespace, personne ne vous entendra crier.

Pour s’en convaincre, il suffit de se rendre au quartier général de l’Otan, à Bruxelles. Tou-tes les nuits, vers 1 heure, c’est le même rituel, explique l’un des responsables européens de la sécurité au sein de l’organisation. “Sur une carte, à l’écran, on voit des dizaines de lumières s’allumer en Chine, explique-t-il. Ce sont les hackers qui, le matin, lancent des attaques lorsqu’ils arrivent au boulot. Et, le soir, elles s’éteignent quand ils rentrent chez eux.” Même constat d’un proche de la NSA, l’agence de renseignement des Etats-Unis : “Parfois, nous enregistrons une baisse sensible des tentatives d’intrusion sur nos sites, témoigne-t-il. Invariablement, cela correspond à des jours fériés en Chine.” Mais l’image d’une “superagence” où des armées de pirates travailleraient en batterie pour ravir les secrets de l’Occident ne reflète pas la réalité. Selon ce même agent, “leur capacité offensive est beaucoup moins centralisée qu’on pourrait l’imaginer. De nombreuses régions ont mis en place leur propre dispositif, qui dépend du bureau politique local. Et il n’est pas rare que ces factions se combattent entre elles.”
Coût d’une attaque : quelques centaines de milliers d’euros

Un hacker, qui souhaite rester anonyme, pense, lui aussi, que l’on surestime un peu le “cyberpéril jaune”. “J’ai eu l’occasion de voir travailler les Chinois, ce ne sont pas les plus affûtés, dit-il. Leurs techniques sont assez rudimentaires par rapport à celles des Américains ou des Israéliens…”

REUTERS/Minoru Iwasaki/Pool

“Les questions de sécurité alimentaire, d’énergie et de cybersécurité deviennent plus aiguës”
Hu Jintao, secrétaire général du Parti communiste chinois, novembre 2012.

A chaque pays sa spécificité. En Russie, le dispositif d’attaque est opaque. De nombreux spécialistes occidentaux du renseignement soupçonnent l’existence d’une relation triangulaire entre l’Etat, la mafia et certaines sociétés de conseil informatique qui seraient le bras armé du Kremlin. “Avez-vous déjà vu, en Russie, un hacker avoir des problèmes avec la police ? questionne Garry Kasparov, ancien champion du monde d’échecs, aujourd’hui l’un des opposants au président Poutine. Non, parce que l’on sait qui se trouve aux manettes, dans l’ombre…”

Contrairement à ce que l’on pourrait croire, les Européens ne sont pas en reste. La France, c’est une surprise, dispose d’une force de frappe numérique. Mais on trouve aussi, sur l’échiquier mondial, des Etats moins avancés sur le plan technique, tels l’Iran et la Corée du Nord. Nul besoin, en effet, d’investir dans des infrastructures coûteuses. Il suffit d’un ordinateur, d’un accès à Internet et de quelques centaines de milliers d’euros pour monter une attaque. Car sur la Toile, comme dans la vraie guerre, on trouve toutes sortes d’armes sur le marché. Il suffit de frapper aux bonnes portes. Au lieu d’une kalachnikov, on repartira avec un logiciel malveillant (malware, dans le jargon) qui permettra de prendre le contrôle d’un système ennemi. La première motivation : “Faire du business !”

“C’est un enjeu de domination. En maîtrisant l’information, on contrôle tout”, résume Jonathan Brossard. Ce hacker français renommé intervient aujourd’hui dans des groupes internationaux.

Son job consiste à s’introduire dans les systèmes informatiques pour en révéler les failles – et trouver des parades. Pour lui, les risques d’un cyberconflit existent, mais ils masquent une autre motivation, bien plus puissante : “Faire du business ! Etre capable de griller un réseau électrique, c’est bien, mais le véritable enjeu, c’est surtout de gagner des parts de marché.” Connaître, dans le détail, la proposition d’un concurrent, lors d’un gros appel d’offres, donne un avantage décisif. Pour l’avoir négligé, certaines sociétés ont péri. Des pirates – chinois semble-t-il – ont pillé les secrets du géant canadien des télécoms Nortel pendant près de dix ans, au point de l’acculer à la faillite. De tels exemples abondent.

Et la France n’est, malheureusement, pas épargnée. Les grandes entreprises du CAC 40 compteraient même parmi les plus vulnérables d’Europe. Sur ce nouveau champ de bataille invisible, on ne compte pas les morts, mais les points de PIB perdus. Et, derrière, sans doute des emplois par milliers.
Batailles de virus

STUXNET
Découverte : juin 2010.
Cible : ce logiciel a détruit des milliers de centrifugeuses nucléaires, en Iran.
Origine supposée : opération “Jeux olympiques”, menée par les Etats-Unis et Israël.

DUQU
Découverte : septembre 2011.
Cible : lié à Stuxnet, ce ver informatique a servi à espionner le programme nucléaire iranien.
Origine supposée : Etats-Unis et Israël.

MAHDI
Découverte : février 2012.
Cible : capable d’enregistrer les frappes sur un clavier et les photos et textes d’un ordinateur, Mahdi a été retrouvé en Iran, en Afghanistan et en Israël.
Origine supposée : inconnue.

WIPER
Découverte : avril 2012.Cible : ce virus fait disparaître les données des disques durs des ordinateurs infectés. Il a touché des compagnies pétrolières iraniennes.
Origine supposée : inconnue.

FLAME
Découverte : mai 2012.
Cible : ce logiciel très sophistiqué aurait espionné depuis 2007 plusieurs pays, dont l’Iran, la Syrie, le Soudan, ou encore l’Arabie saoudite.
Origine supposée : opération des Etats-Unis et d’Israël.

GAUSS
Découverte : juin 2012.
Cible : capable d’espionner les transactions financières et messages électroniques, ce virus s’est répandu au Liban, en Israël et en Palestine.
Origine supposée : inconnue.

SHAMOON
Découverte : août 2012.
Cible : les ordinateurs des compagnies pétrolières saoudiennes Aramco et RasGas au Qatar ont été attaqués par ce virus.
Origine revendiquée : groupe de hackers appelé “Glaive tranchant de la justice”, peut-être d’origine iranienne.

La réaction de l’ambassade des Etats-Unis à Paris

Nous réfutons catégoriquement les allégations de sources non-identifiées, parues dans un article de l’Express, selon lesquelles le gouvernement des Etats-Unis d’Amérique aurait participé à une cyberattaque contre le gouvernement français. La France est l’un de nos meilleurs alliés. Notre coopération est remarquable dans les domaines du renseignement, du maintien de l’ordre et de la cyberdéfense. Elle n’a jamais été aussi bonne et demeure essentielle pour mener à bien notre lutte commune contre la menace extrémiste.
Mitchell Moss, porte-parole de l’ambassade des Etats-Unis à Paris

REUTERS/Larry Downing

“La cybermenace est l’un des plus sérieux défis auxquels nous soyons confrontés en tant que nation”
Barack Obama, président des Etats-Unis, mai 2009.

REUTERS/Neil Hall

“Nous consacrerons un budget de plus d’un demi-milliard de livres [626 millions d’euros] à la cybersécurité”
David Cameron, Premier ministre britannique, octobre 2010.

REUTERS/Thomas Peter

“Les attaques cybernétiques sont aussi dangereuses que la guerre conventionnelle”
Angela Merkel, chancelière allemande, avril 2011.

Par Charles Haquet et Emmanuel Paquette (L’Express) – publié le 20/11/2012 à 15:31

Find this story at 20 November 2012

© Groupe Express-Roularta

Canadian diplomats spied on Cuba for CIA in aftermath of missile crisis: envoy

In a little-known chapter of the Cold War, Canadian diplomats spied for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in Cuba in the aftermath of the 1962 missile crisis – and for years afterward.

A major part of that story is told in a forthcoming memoir by retired Canadian envoy John Graham. Mr. Graham was one of a series of Canadian diplomats recruited to spy for the CIA in Havana. The missions went on for at least seven years, during the 1960s.

“We didn’t have a military attaché in the Canadian embassy,” explained Mr. Graham, who worked under the cover of Political Officer. “And to send one at the time might have raised questions. So it was decided to make our purpose less visible.”

Mr. Graham said he worked as a spy for two years, between 1962 and 1964. His mandate was to visit Soviet bases, identify weapons and electronic equipment and monitor troop movements.

The espionage missions began after President John Kennedy asked Prime Minister Lester Pearson – at their May, 1963, summit in Hyannis Port, Mass. – whether Canada would abet American intelligence-gathering efforts in Cuba.

As a result of the crisis, which brought the superpowers to the brink of nuclear war, the Soviets had agreed to withdraw nuclear missiles from Cuban territory, in exchange for Washington’s pledge to remove its own missile batteries from Turkey and Italy.

To monitor Russian compliance, the United States needed to supplement data gleaned from almost daily U-2 reconnaissance flights. It had few assets on the ground. Its networks of Cuban agents had been progressively rolled up by Castro’s efficient counterintelligence service. And having severed diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1961, it had no embassy of its own through which to infiltrate American spies.

Soon after the summit meeting, Ottawa sent diplomat George Cowley to Havana.

Now deceased, Mr. Cowley, who had served in the Canadian embassy in Japan and sold encyclopedias in Africa, spent about two months in Havana in the late spring of 1963.

He was followed by Mr. Graham, seconded from his post as chargé d’affaires in the Dominican Republic.

His formal training, he told The Globe and Mail, was minimal – a few days at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. At the end of it, an agency officer offered him a farewell gift – a sophisticated camera with an assortment of telephoto lenses.

He declined the present, arguing that if he were ever caught with it, he’d surely be arrested.

“But how will we know what the Soviet military convoys are carrying?” a CIA officer asked him. “We need precision. Configuration is essential for recognition.”

“I’ll draw you pictures,” Mr. Graham said. “It was a bit like the character in Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana, but that’s what I did.”

In the Greene novel, an inept salesman, recruited to spy for Britain, sends illustrations of vacuum cleaner parts to his handler, calling them drawings of a military installation.

Mr. Graham’s sketches, however, were the real thing. To get them to Canada, he flew to Mexico City – the only regional air connection – and deposited the drawings at the Canadian embassy. From there, they were dispatched by diplomatic courier to Ottawa. Copies were subsequently sent to the CIA and, Mr. Graham later heard, to the Kennedy White House.

His written reports, sent by ciphered telegram to the Canadian embassy in Washington and then to Ottawa, contained details of electronic arrays in use at Soviet bases. “That information,” he said, “could tell an expert what weapons systems they had.”

Although Moscow had removed its nuclear arsenal by the time Mr. Graham arrived, it maintained a significant military presence. Russian soldiers typically dressed in civilian clothes, usually in plaid sport shirts, khaki pants and running shoes.

To fit in, Mr. Graham adopted the same ensemble – purchased at a Zellers store in Ottawa. Although many missions involved early morning surveillance of naval facilities, he was never followed. He was stopped only once by the police, roaming through a secure section of a communications building. He pretended to be a bumbling tourist and was let go.

On several occasions, Mr. Graham conducted joint reconnaissance with an agent of another Western country that he declines to identify. “He was brilliant and altogether remarkable. At parties, he composed Monty-Python-like lyrics to pet and lingerie commercials, accompanying himself on the piano.”

To relieve the stress of their missions, they would stop for seaside picnics on the way home. “Mr. X would pull out two crystal goblets and a Thermos of premixed martinis. I supplied the olives.”

Canadian officials, he said, went to extraordinary lengths to protect his identity as an agent. He stamped his sketches with the words, “For Canadian Eyes Only, Confidential.” But in Ottawa they were given an additional security designation – “Secret, Ottawa Only, Protect Source,” a classification he had never seen, before or since.

In 1964, Mr. Graham was promoted within the embassy and replaced in his espionage work by Alan McLaine.

In fact, he said, Canada’s role as CIA surrogate in Cuba continued for several years, even under the government of Pierre Trudeau, who had developed a personal friendship with Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

…

MICHAEL POSNER

OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail

Published Monday, Oct. 15 2012, 9:56 PM EDT

Last updated Tuesday, Oct. 16 2012, 5:02 AM EDT

Find this story at 15 October 2012

© Copyright 2013 The Globe and Mail Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Former U.S. Navy Officer Detained for Attempting to Spy for Russia

Hoffman, 39, is set to remain in custody until a detention hearing on Tuesday.

A former U.S. Navy officer has been detained for attempting to hand over secret information on tracking U.S. submarines to Russian intelligence.

CNN reported Thursday that submarine specialist Robert Patrick Hoffman II was detained Thursday morning in Virginia Beach, Virginia, while trying to pass classified information to CIA operatives posing as Russian agents.

…

07 December 2012
The Moscow Times

Find this story at 6 December 2012

© Copyright 2013. The Moscow Times. All rights reserved.

Former Navy Sailor Charged with Attempted Espionage

A former Navy sailor has been arrested and charged with attempting to pass classified information about U.S. submarines to Russian spies.

Robert Patrick Hoffman II was arrested by agents from the FBI and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) this morning at his home in Virginia Beach.

According to the indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Norfolk, Va., Hoffman served in the Navy for 22 years and achieved the rank of petty officer first class. Hoffman worked as a cryptological technician where he had access to classified information about codes and signals intelligence. Hoffman, who served as a submarine warfare specialist, retired from active duty on Nov. 1, 2011.

The indictment alleges that on Oct. 21, 2012 Hoffman attempted to pass information “relating to the national defense of the United States, including information classified as SECRET that revealed and pertained to methods to track U.S. submarines, including the technology and procedures required.”

Hoffman believed he was meeting with representatives from the Russian government but in actuality they were undercover FBI agents.

“The indictment does not allege that the Russian Federation committed any offense under U.S. laws in this case,” the Justice Department noted in the press release announcing the case.

…

Dec 6, 2012 4:43pm

Find this story at 6 December 2012

Copyright © 2013 ABC News

FBI: Retired sailor faces spy charges

A retired cryptologic technician allegedly attempted to deliver sub-tracking secrets to the Russians, but ended up caught in an FBI sting instead.

A federal grand jury charged retired Cryptologic Technician 1st Class (SS) Robert Patrick Hoffman II on Wednesday with attempted espionage, according to an FBI release. The former sailor earned a top secret security clearance while in the Navy, according to the release, and allegedly offered secret information to the Russians in October.

The “Russians” were actually part of an undercover FBI operation, according to the release. Hoffman, 39, was arrested Thursday morning “without incident” and is scheduled to be in federal court in Norfolk, Va., on Thursday afternoon.

…

He retired Oct. 31, 2011, about a year before his alleged espionage.

By Kevin Lilley – Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Dec 6, 2012 13:52:16 EST

Find this story at 6 December 2012

All content © 2013, Gannett Government Media Corporation

One Man, Three Lives The Munich Olympics and the CIA’s New Informant

Willi Voss started as a petty criminal in Germany’s industrial Ruhr Valley. Before long, though, he found himself helping the PLO, even playing a minor role in the 1972 Munich Olympics attack. He went on to become a valuable CIA informant, and has now written a book about his life in the shadows. By SPIEGEL Staff

In the summer of 1975, Willi Voss was left with few alternatives: prison, suicide or betrayal. He chose betrayal. After all, he had just been betrayed by the two men whom he had trusted, and whose struggle had forced him to lead a clandestine existence.

It was Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s closest advisers who had used him and jeopardized his life: Abu Daoud, the mastermind behind the terror attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, and Abu Iyad, head of the PLO intelligence service Razd.

Voss, a petty criminal from West Germany’s industrial Ruhr region, in cahoots with Palestinian leaders who were feared around the world? It took a number of coincidences and twists of fate in Voss’ life before he found himself in such a position, but here he was on a mission for the Palestinians — in a Mercedes-Benz, traveling from Beirut to Belgrade, together with his girlfriend Ellen, so it would all look like a vacation trip.

His job was to deliver the car, Iyad and Daoud had said. But they had neglected to mention that the Mercedes contained automatic weapons, a sniper rifle and explosives, which were hidden in a secret compartment and consisted of a number of packages, each weighing 20 kilos (44 pounds) — complete with fully assembled detonators made of mercury fulminate, a highly unstable substance. If Voss had gotten into an accident or hit a deep pothole, he, the car and his girlfriend would have been blown to pieces.

Voss only found out about his dangerous cargo when Romanian customs officials tore the vehicle apart. The only thing that saved the 31-year-old and his companion from ending up behind bars was the fact that the PLO maintained excellent ties with the Romanian regime. Romanian officials placed the two Germans in a car driven by a couple of pensioners from the Rhineland region, who were on their way back home to Germany after a vacation. Voss and his girlfriend hopped out in Belgrade. This was the end of the road for them — and, as Voss recalls today, the day when they had to make a fateful decision: prison, suicide or betrayal?

Becoming a Defector

Prison: In Germany there was a warrant for Voss’ arrest. A few years earlier, he had been taken into custody during a raid at the Munich home of a former SS officer who was in league with neo-Nazis. Investigators had secured weapons and explosives from the PLO along with plans for terror attacks and hostage-taking missions in Cologne and Vienna.

Suicide: Voss and his companion spent three days and nights in a tawdry hotel in Belgrade, where they continuously debated whether they should put an end to their lives. But they decided against this option as well.

That left only betrayal. Voss and his girlfriend went to the American embassy, demanded to speak to a diplomat and made the statements that would add yet another twist to his already eventful life: “I am an officer of Fatah. This is my wife. I’m in a position to make an interesting offer to your intelligence agency.”

Voss became a defector. He went from being an accomplice of Palestinian terrorists to a member of the US intelligence agency — from a handmaiden of terror to a CIA spy. As if his first life were not eventful enough, Voss opted for a second life: as a CIA spook with the codename “Ganymede,” named after the kidnapped lover of Zeus, the father of the gods in Greek mythology.

His career as an undercover agent took him from Milan and Madrid back to Beirut and the headquarters of the PLO intelligence service. “Ganymede” provided information and documents that helped thwart attacks in the Middle East and Europe. Duane Clarridge, the legendary and infamous founder of the CIA Counterterrorist Center, even gave him the mission of catching top terrorist Carlos, “The Jackal.”

Today, as he sits in a Berlin café and talks about his life, the gray-haired man clad in a black leather jacket appears at times bitingly ironic, at times shy and prone to depression — making it all the more difficult to reconcile him with the daredevil who lived through this lunacy.

‘Naked Fury’

Voss, who was called Pohl until he adopted the name of his first wife, often says: “That’s exactly how it was, but nobody believes it anyway” — as if he himself had trouble tying together all the loose ends of his life to create a coherent biography. He is 68 years old and wants to get one thing straight: He has never been a neo-Nazi, he insists. “I was a stray dog — one that had been kicked so often that it wanted to bite back, no matter how,” says Voss. “If I had met Andreas Baader at the time,” he contends, “I would have presumably ended up with the Red Army Faction.”

It’s a statement that only becomes plausible when one considers the other formative experiences of his life. He recounts that his childhood was marred by violence, sexual abuse and other humiliations. “As a child, I constantly faced situations in which I was completely powerless,” says Voss, “and that triggered a naked fury, utter shame and the feeling that I was the most worthless thing in the world.”

As a teenager, he sought to escape this world by joining a clique of young rowdies whose dares including stealing mopeds for joy rides. That got him a year in juvenile detention.

This could have led to a small, or even substantial, career as a criminal in the industrial Ruhr region. But in 1960, Voss met Udo Albrecht in prison, who later became a major figurehead in the German neo-Nazi scene. Albrecht fascinated his fellow prisoners with his dream of using mini submarines to smuggle in diamonds from the beaches of southwest Africa.

Yes, he actually believed this nonsense at the time, admits Voss. Politics didn’t come into the picture until later on, he says, when the two jailbirds met in another prison in 1968. This time Voss was doing time for breaking and entering. “Albrecht talked and acted then like an unabashed Nazi,” says Voss. But he says that this did nothing to diminish his friendship with the self-proclaimed leader of the “People’s Liberation Front of Germany.”

Hooking Up with the Palestinians

Voss’ connection with the PLO began when he helped smuggle his buddy Albrecht out of prison in a container. The neo-Nazi slipped away to Jordan, where he hooked up with the Palestinians. When Daoud, the architect of the Munich massacre, asked him if he knew a reliable man in Germany, Albrecht recommended his prison pal from the Ruhr region.

Voss made himself useful. In Dortmund he purchased a number of Mercedes sedans for Daoud — and he established contact to a passport forger in his circle of acquaintances. Today, Voss believes that he was even involved in the preparations for the Munich attack. For a number of weeks, he says, he drove the leader of Black September, a terrorist group with ties to the PLO, “all across Germany, where he met with Palestinians in various cities.”

The Palestinians used him to handle other jobs, as well: “I was to hold a press conference in Vienna, in which I would comment on a mission that I would only find out about once it was successfully completed,” as the PLO chief of intelligence Iyad had told him. When Voss saw the images on TV, he realized that the “mission” was the massacre at the 1972 Summer Olympics. Instead of securing the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, as the hostage-takers had demanded, it ended in a bloodbath: Nine Israeli hostages, five Palestinian terrorists and one German policeman died.

Six weeks later, Voss was arrested in Germany. He had machine guns and hand grenades that stemmed from the same source as the weapons used by the Palestinian hostage-takers in Munich. This marked the beginning of wild negotiations initiated by Voss’ lawyer Wilhelm Schöttler, who sent a letter with a “classified” offer to Federal Minister for Special Affairs Egon Bahr.

The offer was simple: Release Voss to allow for negotiations with Black September. The objective was to prevent further attacks on German soil. Today, it is known that high-ranking officials at the Foreign Ministry met with the lawyer, who was considered a right-wing radical, and discussed an ongoing series of demands until March 1974, when then-Interior Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher decided to end the negotiations.

Looking for Carlos
Six days later, a court in Munich handed Voss a relatively mild prison sentence of 26 months for contravening the War Weapons Control Act.

In December of 1974, his sentence was suspended despite the fact that he was still under investigation on suspicion of being a member of Black September. In Feb. 1975, he slipped out of Germany and headed back to Beirut, where he was soon serving the Palestinian cause again — right up until that big turning point in his life when he drove a car packed with weapons and explosives to the Romanian border in the summer of 1975.

Even today, one can sense the enormous respect that CIA veterans still have for their former German agent. “I’ve often wondered if he made it,” says Terrence Douglas, “although we are trained to keep our distance and to forget everything after the job is done and move on.”

Douglas, codename “Gordon,” was Voss’ commanding officer at the CIA. He has a very high opinion of his operative “Ganymede”: “Willi was a very cool guy. He was creative and a bit crazy — we spent a very, very intense time together.”

It takes a healthy dose of courage to secretly photograph documents at the PLO intelligence service headquarters. “Ganymede” foiled attacks in Sweden and Israel, identified terror cells in diverse countries and supplied information on collaborations between the neo-Nazi Albrecht and his accomplices with Arafat’s Fatah. And, as if all that were not enough, Voss lived next door to top terrorist Abu Nidal.

Surprisingly, though, the CIA agents stationed in Belgrade and Zagreb who Voss first met were not particularly thrilled with the young German. “They thought he was too boring,” says Douglas with a laugh. “But they had no clue. They didn’t know about the Black September list of people to be released with the hostage-taking at the Saudi Arabian embassy in Sudan in March 1973.”

Refusing to Tell the Truth

Members of the terror organization had also sought the release of a German during their operation in Sudan: Willi Voss. “That was his reference,” says Douglas. “That’s the reason why we were excited by him.”

The CIA made sure that Voss no longer had to fear being arrested in Germany. “It was clear to him that he couldn’t continue with his previous lifestyle,” says Douglas. “He wanted to survive and someday be able to settle again undisturbed in Germany,” he recalls. “After all, he had a wife, and she had a 10-year-old kid. It was a package deal, I took care of them.”

“As always in such situations, we informed the CIA office in Bonn, and they arranged everything with the BND or the BKA, depending on the situation,” says spymaster Clarridge, referring to Germany’s foreign intelligence agency and domestic criminal investigation agency respectively. Only a few weeks after the first meeting, the German arrest warrant had been rescinded.

Today, German authorities still refuse to tell the truth about these events. In the wake of revelations published in a June 2012 SPIEGEL article on the Munich massacre, Bavarian state parliamentarians Susanna Tausendfreund and Sepp Dürr of the Green Party demanded that the state government reveal “what documents from what Bavarian government agencies responsible at the time (exist) … on Willi Voss.”

In late August 2012, the Bavarian Interior Ministry responded — and it had a surprise. Ministry officials said that Voss had submitted a plea for clemency, which had received a positive response. “The content of this plea for clemency,” they noted, however, was “classified.” This is demonstrably false. Voss has never submitted a plea for clemency.

On the Terrace of an Athens Hotel

In any case, the deal certainly paid off for the Americans: Voss didn’t disappoint them, even at risk of life and limb. In the fall of 1975, the Christian Phalange militia in Lebanon held him captive because they thought he was what he pretended to be — a German member of Black September.

For weeks, Voss endured torture and mock executions without blowing his cover. For the CIA, this was a recommendation for an even riskier job. When Voss was released, he was told to hunt down Carlos, “The Jackal,” who, as a terror mercenary employed by Libyan revolutionary leader Moammar Gadhafi, had stormed OPEC headquarters in Vienna, and was committing murders for Palestinian terror groups.

Voss traveled to Athens. On the terrace of a hotel with a view of the Acropolis, not only Douglas, but also Clarridge — who had specially flown in from Washington — were waiting to meet the daring German operative. In his memoirs, Clarridge described the meeting as follows: “Just hours before I had left headquarters at Langley on this trip, a very senior clandestine service officer asked to see me alone in his office on the seventh floor. He could be excruciatingly elliptical when he desired — and this was such an occasion. Referring to my meeting with this agent in Athens, he hinted that if the agent could set up Carlos to be taken by a security service, it would be a boon for mankind and worth a bonus. I recall ten thousand dollars being mentioned. If Carlos were killed in the process, so be it. I acknowledged that I understood and left for Athens.”

Voss’ job was to find out where the Jackal was staying. But “Ganymede” lost his nerve this time. “Abu Daoud had told me that Carlos had a place in Damascus, not far from his own apartment,” Voss recalls today. “If something had happened to him, the people at the PLO intelligence service would have automatically suspected me. I found that too risky.”

‘CIA Beats Nazi’

In retrospect, his CIA contact Douglas was extremely happy about this decision. On December 6, 2012, after meeting with SPIEGEL, he sent an e-mail to his former agent: “I was delighted to hear that you are ageing gracefully — the alternative would have been unthinkable for me. … Let me say, I hold you in deep respect for your courage, quickness, wry humor, dedication and trustworthiness.” Douglas had written a book before he found out that Voss had survived his adventurous life. It’s a novel about a “plot in the Middle East” entitled: “Ganymede”.

Voss is also writing books; his third life. He specializes in crime thrillers and screenplays, having completed some 30 works since the late 1970s. But the author has never dared to tackle the most thrilling material of all — his complete life story.

Now, he’s telling the story for the first time. The German title of his book is “UnterGrund” (“Under Ground”) and, according to the preface, readers should not expect “a written confession seeking forgiveness.” Instead, he notes that “this is an account of events that, for security reasons, I thought I would have to keep secret forever.” Voss intends to save his honor and provide an explanation for his actions. In order to report on the 1972 Munich massacre, last spring SPIEGEL had applied for the release of classified files and written two articles mentioning Voss’ role in the attack. Afterwards, at least in the author’s eyes, his reputation was in tatters.

…

BY KARIN ASSMANN, FELIX BOHR, GUNTHER LATSCH and KLAUS WIEGREFE

01/02/2013 06:07 PM

Find this story at 2 January 2013

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2013

Revealed: German neo-Nazi who helped Palestinians was CIA agent

A German far-right militant, whose animosity against Jews led him to aid Palestinians kill Israeli athletes in the 1972 Munich massacre, says he was later recruited by the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Willi Pohl, also known as Willi Voss, 68, was arrested by German authorities a few weeks after Palestinian terrorist group Black September stormed the Olympic village in Munich and took hostage 11 Israeli athletes. All of them were eventually killed by their captors during a botched escape attempt at the nearby Fürstenfeldbruck airport. Voss, who was a known neo-Nazi activist at the time, was charged with possession of weapons and providing logistical support to the Black September militants. However, after his sentence was suspended, Voss managed to secretly emigrate to Beirut, Lebanon, where he was recruited as an agent of Jihaz el-Razd, the intelligence service of the Fatah, the main group in the Palestine Liberation Organization. But in 1975, while on a PLO mission in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, he decided to switch sides. He made the decision after discovering that the car he and his girlfriend were transporting on behalf of the PLO from Beirut to Belgrade contained weapons and highly unstable explosives. He says that the PLO had apparently failed to mention the existence of the hidden items when they asked him to transport the car to Europe. According to Voss’ new book, which has just been published in Germany under the title UnterGrund (Underground), the guns and explosives were discovered by customs officers in Romania (then Rumania); but because at that time the communist country was an ally of the PLO, Voss and his girlfriend were allowed to travel to Belgrade, minus the car and the weapons. Once in the Yugoslav capital, they made the decision to walk in the US embassy, identify themselves as agents of the Jihaz el-Razd and offer their services to Washington. In an interview with German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, published this week, Voss claims he was recruited by the CIA and given the operational codename GANYMEDE. The interview in Der Spiegel includes confirmation of Voss’ CIA role by his intelligence handler CIA officer Terrence Douglas. Douglas says he instructed Voss to return to the service of the PLO and Black September, which was a separate group, and provide the US with information about the activities of leading Palestinian militants from various factions, including Abu Daoud, Abu Nidal, and Abu Jihad, who led the Jihaz el-Razd.

…

January 4, 2013 by intelNews 5 Comments

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |

Find this story at 4 January 2013

Munich Olympics Massacre Officials Ignored Warnings of Terrorist Attack

Explicit warnings that a terrorist attack might take place at the 1972 Munich Olympics were ignored by German officials, according to previously classified documents seen by SPIEGEL. The new details also reveal efforts to cover up the extent of their failure to stop the brutal murders of Israeli athletes.

It is no secret that the German authorities’ handling of the massacre of Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics was characterized by bumbling and cover-ups. But new documents seen by SPIEGEL reveal that officials concealed even more — and more blatant — errors than previously thought. Indeed, there were even several warnings prior to the Games that an attack was imminent.

ANZEIGE

Previously classified documents from investigative officials, embassy dispatches, and cabinet protocols released to SPIEGEL by the Chancellery, Foreign Office and state and federal intelligence agencies have revealed the lengths to which officials went to hide their mistakes.

In the attack on Sept. 5, 1972, Palestinian terrorists killed 11 members of Israel’s Olympic delegation, along with one German police officer. Five of the eight terrorists from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) terrorist group called “Black September” were also killed during the botched rescue attempt by German police at the Fürstenfeldbruck military airport, where the hostages were being held in two helicopters.

‘No Self-Criticism’

Already on Sept. 7, just one day after the memorial ceremony for the victims took place in Munich’s Olympic Stadium, a Foreign Ministry official told a special sitting of the federal cabinet what would ultimately become the maxim for both Bavarian and West German officials. “Mutual incriminations must be avoided,” a protocol for the meeting reads. “Also, no self-criticism.”

Just how closely this advice was followed can be seen in documentation from both the federal government and the Bavarian state government, which falsely described the “precision” with which the terrorists carried out their attack. In reality, officials knew that the “Black September” members were actually so poorly prepared that they even had trouble finding hotel rooms in Munich before their attack.

On the day of the attack, the Palestinians were even known to have gone right past the Israelis’ apartments in the Olympic village, encountering athletes from Hong Kong on an upper level of the building instead. An “analytic evaluation” of the attack by the Munich criminal police later explicitly determined that the terrorists had “conducted no precise reconnaissance” ahead of time.

But none of these details were revealed to the public. The fact that Bavarian state prosecutors in Munich were pursuing an investigation against police president Manfred Schreiber and his chief of operation on suspicion of negligent manslaughter also wasn’t mentioned in the document.

Clear Warnings

Concrete warnings of a potential attack also went unmentioned, despite the fact that they were so clear that their dismissal remains difficult to comprehend. On Aug. 14, 1972, a German embassy officer in Beirut heard that “an incident would be staged by from the Palestinian side during the Olympic Games in Munich.” Four days later, the Foreign Office forwarded the warning to the state intelligence agency in Bavaria, along with the recommendation to “take all possible available security measures” against such an attack.

Security agencies didn’t even register warnings that appeared in the press. On Sept. 2, three days ahead of the deadly hostage-taking, the Italian publication Gente wrote that terrorists from Black September were planning a “sensational act during the Olympic Games.” Only later — two days after the bloodbath in Munich — was the warning put on record through a tip-off from the Hamburg criminal police.

…

Released: July 23, 2012 | 12:20 PM

Find this story at 23 July 2012

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2012

Election Spurred a Move to Codify U.S. Drone Policy

WASHINGTON — Facing the possibility that President Obama might not win a second term, his administration accelerated work in the weeks before the election to develop explicit rules for the targeted killing of terrorists by unmanned drones, so that a new president would inherit clear standards and procedures, according to two administration officials.

The matter may have lost some urgency after Nov. 6. But with more than 300 drone strikes and some 2,500 people killed by the Central Intelligence Agency and the military since Mr. Obama first took office, the administration is still pushing to make the rules formal and resolve internal uncertainty and disagreement about exactly when lethal action is justified.

Mr. Obama and his advisers are still debating whether remote-control killing should be a measure of last resort against imminent threats to the United States, or a more flexible tool, available to help allied governments attack their enemies or to prevent militants from controlling territory.

Though publicly the administration presents a united front on the use of drones, behind the scenes there is longstanding tension. The Defense Department and the C.I.A. continue to press for greater latitude to carry out strikes; Justice Department and State Department officials, and the president’s counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, have argued for restraint, officials involved in the discussions say.

More broadly, the administration’s legal reasoning has not persuaded many other countries that the strikes are acceptable under international law. For years before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the United States routinely condemned targeted killings of suspected terrorists by Israel, and most countries still object to such measures.

But since the first targeted killing by the United States in 2002, two administrations have taken the position that the United States is at war with Al Qaeda and its allies and can legally defend itself by striking its enemies wherever they are found.

Partly because United Nations officials know that the United States is setting a legal and ethical precedent for other countries developing armed drones, the U.N. plans to open a unit in Geneva early next year to investigate American drone strikes.

The attempt to write a formal rule book for targeted killing began last summer after news reports on the drone program, started under President George W. Bush and expanded by Mr. Obama, revealed some details of the president’s role in the shifting procedures for compiling “kill lists” and approving strikes. Though national security officials insist that the process is meticulous and lawful, the president and top aides believe it should be institutionalized, a course of action that seemed particularly urgent when it appeared that Mitt Romney might win the presidency.

“There was concern that the levers might no longer be in our hands,” said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity. With a continuing debate about the proper limits of drone strikes, Mr. Obama did not want to leave an “amorphous” program to his successor, the official said. The effort, which would have been rushed to completion by January had Mr. Romney won, will now be finished at a more leisurely pace, the official said.

Mr. Obama himself, in little-noticed remarks, has acknowledged that the legal governance of drone strikes is still a work in progress.

“One of the things we’ve got to do is put a legal architecture in place, and we need Congressional help in order to do that, to make sure that not only am I reined in but any president’s reined in terms of some of the decisions that we’re making,” Mr. Obama told Jon Stewart in an appearance on “The Daily Show” on Oct. 18.

In an interview with Mark Bowden for a new book on the killing of Osama bin Laden, “The Finish,” Mr. Obama said that “creating a legal structure, processes, with oversight checks on how we use unmanned weapons, is going to be a challenge for me and my successors for some time to come.”

The president expressed wariness of the powerful temptation drones pose to policy makers. “There’s a remoteness to it that makes it tempting to think that somehow we can, without any mess on our hands, solve vexing security problems,” he said.

Despite public remarks by Mr. Obama and his aides on the legal basis for targeted killing, the program remains officially classified. In court, fighting lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times seeking secret legal opinions on targeted killings, the government has refused even to acknowledge the existence of the drone program in Pakistan.

But by many accounts, there has been a significant shift in the nature of the targets. In the early years, most strikes were aimed at ranking leaders of Al Qaeda thought to be plotting to attack the United States. That is the purpose Mr. Obama has emphasized, saying in a CNN interview in September that drones were used to prevent “an operational plot against the United States” and counter “terrorist networks that target the United States.”

But for at least two years in Pakistan, partly because of the C.I.A.’s success in decimating Al Qaeda’s top ranks, most strikes have been directed at militants whose main battle is with the Pakistani authorities or who fight with the Taliban against American troops in Afghanistan.

In Yemen, some strikes apparently launched by the United States killed militants who were preparing to attack Yemeni military forces. Some of those killed were wearing suicide vests, according to Yemeni news reports.

“Unless they were about to get on a flight to New York to conduct an attack, they were not an imminent threat to the United States,” said Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who is a critic of the strikes. “We don’t say that we’re the counterinsurgency air force of Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, but we are.”

Then there is the matter of strikes against people whose identities are unknown. In an online video chat in January, Mr. Obama spoke of the strikes in Pakistan as “a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists.” But for several years, first in Pakistan and later in Yemen, in addition to “personality strikes” against named terrorists, the C.I.A. and the military have carried out “signature strikes” against groups of suspected, unknown militants.

Originally that term was used to suggest the specific “signature” of a known high-level terrorist, such as his vehicle parked at a meeting place. But the word evolved to mean the “signature” of militants in general — for instance, young men toting arms in an area controlled by extremist groups. Such strikes have prompted the greatest conflict inside the Obama administration, with some officials questioning whether killing unidentified fighters is legally justified or worth the local backlash.

Many people inside and outside the government have argued for far greater candor about all of the strikes, saying excessive secrecy has prevented public debate in Congress or a full explanation of their rationale. Experts say the strikes are deeply unpopular both in Pakistan and Yemen, in part because of allegations of large numbers of civilian casualties, which American officials say are exaggerated.

…

November 24, 2012
By SCOTT SHANE

Find this story at 24 November 2012

© 2013 The New York Times Company

Military Stats Reveal Epicenter of U.S. Drone War

Forget Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and all the other secret little warzones. The real center of the U.S. drone campaign is in plain sight — on the hot and open battlefield of Afghanistan.

The American military has launched 333 drone strikes this year in Afghanistan. That’s not only the highest total ever, according to U.S. Air Force statistics. It’s essentially the same number of robotic attacks in Pakistan since the CIA-led campaign there began nearly eight years ago. In the last 30 days, there have been three reported strikes in Yemen. In Afghanistan, that’s just an average day’s worth of remotely piloted attacks. And the increased strikes come as the rest of the war in Afghanistan is slowing down.

The secret drone campaigns have drawn the most scrutiny because of the legal, geopolitical, and ethical questions they raise. But it’s worth remembering that the rise of the flying robots is largely occurring in the open, on an acknowledged battlefield where the targets are largely unquestioned and the attending issues aren’t nearly as fraught.

“The difference between the Afghan operation and the ones operations in Pakistan and elsewhere come down to the fundamental differences between open military campaigns and covert campaigns run by the intelligence community. It shapes everything from the level of transparency to the command and control to the rules of engagements to the process and consequences if an air strike goes wrong,” e-mails Peter W. Singer, who runs the Brookings Institution’s 21st Century Defense Initiative. (Full disclosure: I have a non-resident fellowship there.) “This is why the military side has been far less controversial, and thus why many have pushed for it to play a greater role as the strikes slowly morphed from isolated, covert events into a regularized air war.”

The military has 61 Predator and Reaper “combat air patrols,” each with three or four robotic planes. The CIA’s inventory is believed to be just a fraction of that: 30 to 35 drones total, although there is thought to be some overlap between the military and intelligence agency fleets. The Washington Post reported last month that the CIA is looking for another 10 drones as the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) become more and more central to the agency’s worldwide counterterror campaign.

In Pakistan, those drones are flown with a wink and a nod, to avoid the perception of violating national sovereignty. In Yemen, the robots go after men just because they fit a profile of what the U.S. believes a terrorist to be. In both countries, people are considered legitimate targets if they happen to be male and young and in the wrong place at the wrong time. The White House keeps a “matrix” on who merits robotic death. Congress (outside of the intelligence committees) largely learns about the programs through the papers.

None of these statements is true about the drone war in Afghanistan, where strikes are ordered by a local commander, overseen by military lawyers, conducted with the (sometimes reluctant) blessing of the Kabul government, and used almost entirely to help troops under fire. The UAVs aren’t flown to dodge issues of sovereignty or to avoid traditional military assets. They’re used because they work better — staying in the sky longer than traditional aircraft and employing more advanced sensors to make sure the targets they hit are legit.

Figures on the air war in Afghanistan, supplied by the U.S. military.

The U.S. military is now launching more drone strikes — an average of 33 per month — than at any moment in the 11 years of the Afghan conflict. It’s a major escalation from just last year, when the monthly average was 24.5. And it’s happening while the rest of the American war effort is winding down: There are 34,000 fewer American troops than there were in early 2011; U.S. casualties are down 40 percent from 2010′s toll; militant attacks are off by about a quarter; civilian deaths have declined a bit from their awful peak.

Even the air war is shrinking. Overall surveillance sorties are down, from an average of 3,183 per month last year to 2,954 in 2012. (Drones flew 860 of those sorties in 2011, and now fly 761 per month today.) Missions in which U.S. aircraft fire their weapons have declined, too. That used to happen 450 times per month on average in 2011. This year, the monthly total dropped to 360.

…

By Noah Shachtman11.09.124:00 AM

Find this story at 11 September 2012

Wired.com © 2013 Condé Nast. All rights reserved.

The FBI’s secret file on Marilyn Monroe: Document that shows agency kept track of intimate details about actress

A classified file released by the FBI shows how the agency tracked Marilyn Monroe’s suspected ties to communism in 1956.

The agency documented an anonymous phone call to the New York Daily News that year warning that playwright Arthur Miller was a communist and Monroe had ‘drifted into the communist orbit’ after her marriage to him earlier that year.

The file is just one piece of the puzzle about what the FBI knew about the actress when she died in August 1962.

The Associated Press waging an ongoing campaign to have more of the FBI documents released by the agency, coinciding with the 50th anniversary Monroe’s death.

Being watched: Marilyn Monroe and her husband, playwright Arthur Miller were both suspected of communist activities by the FBI

The redacted document reveals that on July 11, 1956, the agency got a tip that an anonymous male caller phoned the Daily News to report that the actress’s company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, was ‘filled with communists’ and that money from the company was being used to finance communist activities.

The caller said Miller’s marriage to Monroe during a Jewish ceremony less than a months earlier was a ‘coverup.’

Miller, the man said, ‘was still a member of the CP (communist party) and was their cultural front man.’

The FBI has long made portions of its documents about Monroe public, but most of them are heavily redacted.

Surveillance: This FBI file documented an anonymous call to the New York Daily News. It’s unknown how the agency found out about it

However, the FBI claims it has lost its files on the actress and cannot release them.

Finding out precisely when the records were moved – as the FBI says has happened – required the filing of yet another, still-pending Freedom of Information Act request.

The most recent version of the files is publicly available on the bureau’s website, The Vault, which periodically posts FBI records on celebrities, government officials, spies and criminals.

The AP appealed the FBI’s continued censorship of its Monroe files, noting the agency has not given ‘any legal or factual analysis of the foreseeable harm that might result from the release of the full records.’

Marilyn Monroe is seen here with Jean Pierre Piquet, manager of Continental Hilton Hotel. The FBI has released a new version of files it kept on Monroe that reveal the names of some of her acquaintances who had drawn concern from the FBI

The star’s death was ruled likely drug overdose, but questions still remain about the FBI’s role in her life

Monroe’s star power and fears she might be recruited by the Communist Party during the tenure of longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover led to reports being taken on her activities and relationships, including her marriage to playwright Arthur Miller.

Monroe’s file begins in 1955 and mostly focuses on her travels and associations, searching for signs of leftist views and possible ties to communism. The file continues up until the months before her death, and also includes several news stories and references to Norman Mailer’s biography of the actress, which focused on questions about whether Monroe was killed by the government.

…

By Daily Mail Reporter and Associated Press

PUBLISHED: 06:03 GMT, 28 December 2012 | UPDATED: 11:08 GMT, 28 December 2012

Find this story at 28 December 2012

© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Wegen Nähe zu Kommunisten unter Beobachtung FBI-Akten über Marilyn Monroe aufgetaucht

Erst 50 Jahre nach ihrem Tod gibt es unzensierte Einblicke darüber, wie sehr die US-Bundespolizei Marilyn Monroe († 36) im Visier hatte. Aufgetauchte FBI-Akten beweisen, dass sie damals wegen ihrer angeblichen Kontakte zu Kommunisten unter Beobachtung stand. Wider Erwarten bringen die Dokumente keine neuen Erkenntnisse über die Todesumstände des Filmstars.

Bereits im Sommer hatte die Nachrichtenagentur AP versucht, sich Einblick in die FBI-Akten über Marilyn Monroe zu verschaffen. Anlass war ihr 50. Todestag am 5. August 2012. Die Unterlagen über die Ermittlungen waren in den Monaten vor dem Tod des Filmstars verschwunden. Das FBI erklärte, die über Monroe angelegten Akten seien nicht mehr in ihrem Besitz. Ebenso wenig waren sie im Nationalarchiv der USA auffindbar. Erst jetzt gelang es, an die Akten zu kommen.

Ihre Akte beginnt 1955, in dem Jahr, als sie mit der berühmten U-Bahn-Szene aus „Das verflixte 7. Jahr“ für Wirbel sorgte. Das FBI beobachtete Marilyn Monroe mehrere Jahre lang. Grund: Ihre Verbindungen zu Sympathisanten der kommunistischen Ideologie. Die meisten Dokumente der Bundespolizei betreffen eine Reise von Monroe nach Mexiko im Jahr 1962.

Sie besuchte dort den Links-Aktivisten Frederick Vanderbilt Field († 94), der von seiner wohlhabenden Familie wegen seiner linken Ansichten enterbt wurde. Laut den Informanten des FBI’s seien die beiden geradezu ineinander vernarrt gewesen.

Das Treffen zwischen Vanderbilt Field und Monroe habe Sorge in ihrem engsten Umfeld ausgelöst. „Die Situation hat für Bestürzung bei Monroes Entourage gesorgt und ebenso unter der Gruppe von amerikanischen Kommunisten in Mexiko,“ heißt es in den Akten.

…

29.12.2012 – 13:15 Uhr

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© Copyright BILD digital 2011

The Other Bradley Manning: Jeremy Hammond Faces Life Term for WikiLeaks and Hacked Stratfor Emails

A federal judge has refused to recuse herself from the closely watched trial of jailed computer hacker Jeremy Hammond, an alleged member of the group “Anonymous” charged with hacking into the computers of the private intelligence firm Stratfor and turning over some five million emails to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. Hammond’s lawyers had asked Federal Judge Loretta Preska to recuse herself because her husband worked for a client of Stratfor, and himself had his email hacked. Hammond’s supporters say the Stratfor documents shed light on how the private intelligence firm monitors activists and spies for corporate clients. He has been held without bail or trial for more than nine months. We speak with Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, about Hammond’s case. [includes rush transcript]

Find this story at 27 December 2012

FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring

FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) pursuant to the PCJF’s Freedom of Information Act demands reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat even though the agency acknowledges in documents that organizers explicitly called for peaceful protest and did “not condone the use of violence” at occupy protests.

The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country.

“This production, which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI’s surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement,” stated Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF). “These documents show that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity. These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

“The documents are heavily redacted, and it is clear from the production that the FBI is withholding far more material. We are filing an appeal challenging this response and demanding full disclosure to the public of the records of this operation,” stated Heather Benno, staff attorney with the PCJF.
As early as August 19, 2011, the FBI in New York was meeting with the New York Stock Exchange to discuss the Occupy Wall Street protests that wouldn’t start for another month. By September, prior to the start of the OWS, the FBI was notifying businesses that they might be the focus of an OWS protest.
The FBI’s Indianapolis division released a “Potential Criminal Activity Alert” on September 15, 2011, even though they acknowledged that no specific protest date had been scheduled in Indiana. The documents show that the Indianapolis division of the FBI was coordinating with “All Indiana State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies,” as well as the “Indiana Intelligence Fusion Center,” the FBI “Directorate of Intelligence” and other national FBI coordinating mechanisms.
Documents show the spying abuses of the FBI’s “Campus Liaison Program” in which the FBI in Albany and the Syracuse Joint Terrorism Task Force disseminated information to “sixteen (16) different campus police officials,” and then “six (6) additional campus police officials.” Campus officials were in contact with the FBI for information on OWS. A representative of the State University of New York at Oswego contacted the FBI for information on the OWS protests and reported to the FBI on the SUNY-Oswego Occupy encampment made up of students and professors.
Documents released show coordination between the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and corporate America. They include a report by the Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC), described by the federal government as “a strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the private sector,” discussing the OWS protests at the West Coast ports to “raise awareness concerning this type of criminal activity.” The DSAC report shows the nature of secret collaboration between American intelligence agencies and their corporate clients – the document contains a “handling notice” that the information is “meant for use primarily within the corporate security community. Such messages shall not be released in either written or oral form to the media, the general public or other personnel…” (The DSAC document was also obtained by the Northern California ACLU which has sought local FBI surveillance files.)
Naval Criminal Investigative Services (NCIS) reported to the DSAC on the relationship between OWS and organized labor for the port actions. The NCIS describes itself as “an elite worldwide federal law enforcement organization” whose “mission is to investigate and defeat criminal, terrorist, and foreign intelligence threats to the United States Navy and Marine Corps ashore, afloat and in cyberspace.” The NCIS also assists with the transport of Guantanamo prisoners.
DSAC issued several tips to its corporate clients on “civil unrest” which it defines as ranging from “small, organized rallies to large-scale demonstrations and rioting.” It advised to dress conservatively, avoid political discussions and “avoid all large gatherings related to civil issues. Even seemingly peaceful rallies can spur violent activity or be met with resistance by security forces. Bystanders may be arrested or harmed by security forces using water cannons, tear gas or other measures to control crowds.”
The FBI in Anchorage reported from a Joint Terrorism Task Force meeting of November 3, 2011, about Occupy activities in Anchorage.
A port Facility Security Officer in Anchorage coordinated with the FBI to attend the meeting of protestors and gain intelligence on the planning of the port actions. He was advised to request the presence of an Anchorage Police Department official to also attend the event. The FBI Special Agent told the undercover private operative that he would notify the Joint Terrorism Task Force and that he would provide a point of contact at the Anchorage Police Department.
The Jacksonville, Florida FBI prepared a Domestic Terrorism briefing on the “spread of the Occupy Wall Street Movement” in October 2011. The intelligence meeting discussed Occupy venues identifying “Daytona, Gainesville and Ocala Resident Agency territories as portions …where some of the highest unemployment rates in Florida continue to exist.”
The Tampa, Florida FBI “Domestic Terrorism” liaison participated with the Tampa Police Department’s monthly intelligence meeting in which Occupy Lakeland, Occupy Polk County and Occupy St. Petersburg were discussed. They reported on an individual “leading the Occupy Tampa” and plans for travel to Gainesville for a protest planning meeting, as well as on Veterans for Peace plans to protest at MacDill Air Force Base.
The Federal Reserve in Richmond appears to have had personnel surveilling OWS planning. They were in contact with the FBI in Richmond to “pass on information regarding the movement known as occupy Wall Street.” There were repeated communications “to pass on updates of the events and decisions made during the small rallies and the following information received from the Capital Police Intelligence Unit through JTTF (Joint Terrorism Task Force).”
The Virginia FBI was collecting intelligence on the OWS movement for dissemination to the Virginia Fusion Center and other Intelligence divisions.
The Milwaukee division of the FBI was coordinating with the Ashwaubenon Public Safety division in Green Bay Wisconsin regarding Occupy.
The Memphis FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force met to discuss “domestic terrorism” threats, including, “Aryan Nations, Occupy Wall Street, and Anonymous.”
The Birmingham, AL division of the FBI sent communications to HAZMAT teams regarding the Occupy Wall Street movement.
The Jackson, Mississippi division of the FBI attended a meeting of the Bank Security Group in Biloxi, MS with multiple private banks and the Biloxi Police Department, in which they discussed an announced protest for “National Bad Bank Sit-In-Day” on December 7, 2011.
The Denver, CO FBI and its Bank Fraud Working Group met and were briefed on Occupy Wall Street in November 2011. Members of the Working Group include private financial institutions and local area law enforcement.
Jackson, MS Joint Terrorism Task Force issued a “Counterterrorism Preparedness” alert. This heavily redacted document includes the description, “To document…the Occupy Wall Street Movement.”

You can read the FBI – OWS documents below where we have uploaded them in searchable format for public viewing.

The PCJF filed Freedom of Information Act demands with multiple federal law enforcement agencies in the fall of 2011 as the Occupy crackdown began. The FBI initially attempted to limit its search to only one limited record keeping index. Recognizing this as a common tactic used by the FBI to conduct an inadequate search, the PCJF pressed forward demanding searches be performed of the FBI headquarters as well as FBI field offices nationwide.

The PCJF will continue to push for public disclosure of the government’s spy files and will release documents as they are obtained.

December 22, 2012

Find this story at 22 December 2012

Find the documents at 22 December 2012

The FBI vs. Occupy: Secret Docs Reveal “Counterterrorism” Monitoring of OWS from Its Earliest Days

Once-secret documents reveal the FBI monitored Occupy Wall Street from its earliest days and treated the nonviolent movement as a potential terrorist threat. Internal government records show Occupy was treated as a potential threat when organizing first began in August of 2011. Counterterrorism agents were used to track Occupy activities, despite the internal acknowledgment that the movement opposed violent tactics. The monitoring expanded across the country as Occupy grew into a national movement, with FBI agents sharing information with businesses, local police agencies and universities. We’re joined by Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, which obtained the FBI documents through the Freedom of Information Act. “We can see, decade after decade, with each social justice movement, that the FBI conducts itself in the same role over and over again, which is to act really as the secret police of the establishment against the people,” Verheyden-Hilliard says. [includes rush transcript]

Thursday, December 27, 2012 Full Show

Find this story at 27 December 2012

Yemen: reported US covert action 2012

The Data
The events detailed have been reported by US and Yemeni government, military and intelligence officials, and by credible media, academic and other sources. Strikes include ground operations, naval attacks and airstrikes – by drone, cruise missile and conventional aircraft.

Many of the US attacks have been confirmed by senior American or Yemeni officials. However some events are only speculatively attributed to the US, or are indicative of US involvement. For example precision night-time strikes on moving vehicles, whilst often attributed to the Yemen Air Force, are more likely to be the work of US forces. We therefore class all Yemen strikes as either confirmed or possible.

As Yemen came under severe pressure during the Arab Spring and militants seized control of cities and towns in the south, the US significantly stepped up its attacks, most notablysept with drone strikes. Since mid 2011 US counter terrorism operations in Yemen have been conducted by both the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency. Attacks are aimed at al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and more recently, Ansar al-Sharia.

The Bureau will continue to add to its knowledge base, and welcomes input and corrections from interested parties.

Click here for our 2001-2011 Yemen data.

January

YEM040
January 31 2012
♦ 10-14 reported killed
At least ten militants were killed in a drone strike in southern Yemen. Local residents said a drone struck two vehicles east of Lawdar. An al Qaeda eulogy to militant Mouwhahhad al-Maaribi’s life described how he was killed in the strike, along with nine others. It stated that four missiles were fired at the cars, killing Maarabi, along with Ibrahim Al-Najdi, Abed Al Farraj Al-Shamri and Saleh Al-Akili. In addition, missiles were reportedly fired at a school in which militants were hiding. Abdul Munim al-Fathani, wanted by the US for alleged links to the attacks on the USS Cole in 2000, was reportedly among the dead. One report noted

Nasir al Wuhayshi, the emir or leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, ‘broke down in tears …on the road between ‘Azzan in Shabwa and Mudiyah in Abyan province, upon seeing the body of the leader Abdul Mun’im Salim Amqidah al Fatahani.

Wuhayshi’s brother was reportedly killed by a US drone strike a month earlier, on December 22. (YEM040) Talhah al Yemeni and Abdulmalik al-Dahyani, AQAP leaders, were also killed. The LA Times reported that the attacks were carried out by JSOC. Yemeni journalist Nasser Arrabyee reported on his blog that other fatalities included: Abu Ali Al Shabwani, Ahmed Noyran, Muthana Mawala Al Maramy, and Abu Al Khatab Al Marabi. Tareq Al Dhahab, AQAP leader in Rada, survived according to a local resident. A source close to AQAP allegedly told Xinhua by phone that militants Khadri Em-Soudah and Ahmed Mu’eran Abu Ali, an al Qaeda leader in Shabwah governorate, also died.

Three men were later executed by Ansar al Sharia on February 12 in connection with this attack.

Type of action: Air assault, drone strike
Location: Lawdar/Modya, Abyan province
References: Reuters, CNN, Long War Journal, Xinhua, Nasser Arrabyee, Associated Press, BBC, LA Times, CBS, Critical Threats, MEMRI

YEM041
Late January 2012
General Mohammed al-Sumali, commander of Yemen’s 25th Mechanized Brigade, told journalist Jeremy Scahill that ‘the US carried out a series of airstrikes in late January and… at least two other strikes around Zinjibar that targeted al Qaeda leaders.’

Type of action: Air assault, air strikes
Locations: Abyan/ Zinjibar
Reference: The Nation

February

February 12 2012
♦ 3 killed
Three men were initially reported as being ‘beheaded at dawn’ by Yemeni militant group Ansar al Sharia for allegedly giving information to the US to allow it to conduct drone strikes in the area. Although residents of the towns of Jaar and Azzan told Reuters that two Saudis and one Yemeni were executed, a spokesman for Ansar al Sharia later said ‘none of those executed were Saudi citizens, but all three had been working for the intelligence services of the kingdom, a close ally of the United States‘.

In August 2012, video emerged indicating that one of the men – Saleh Ahmed Saleh Al-Jamely – was crucified by Ansar al Sharia. The group indicated that he had been killed in connection with the drone strike on January 31. MEMRI reported that

The other two men, Hassan Naji Hassan Al-Naqeeb – accused of recruiting, delivering chips, and paying spies; and Ramzi Muhammad Qaid Al-Ariqi – accused of spying for the Saudi intelligence by taking photographs of several buildings, were executed in public, but not crucified.

Locations: Jaar, Shebwa
References: The Nation, Reuters, Al Jazeera, The Examiner, MEMRI

February 26 2012
Following mass protests Ali Abduallah Saleh stepped down as President of Yemen. The US government stated that it would work together with Yemen’s new government to ’kill or capture about two dozen of al Qaeda’s most dangerous operatives, who are focused on attacking America and its interests‘. Saleh’s vice-president Abed Rabu Mansour Hadi was inaugurated as President on February 25. In his televised speech, Hadi swore to keep up Yemen’s fight against al Qaeda-linked militants. President Obama’s chief counter terrorism adviser John Brennan visited Yemen on February 18-19. He told a press briefing: ’Everything we do in the counter-terrorism realm, we do in full partnership with our Yemeni counterparts… Our assistance takes many forms: training, advice, different types of equipment.’ On Yemen’s new president, Brennan said that Hadi ‘is committed as well to destroying al Qaeda, and I consider him a good and strong counter-terrorism partner‘.

References: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, US Embassy Yemen, Wall Street Journal

March

March 2 2012
An armoured vehicle carrying a ‘US security team’ came under fire in southern Yemen. While the Pentagon reported that noone was injured in the attack, there were competing claims that either a CIA or FBI official had been killed. Yemeni militant group Ansar al Sharia sent journalists a text reading: ‘The mujihadeen killed a CIA officer on Thursday while he was in Aden province, after tracking him and determining he was cooperating with the Sanaa government.’ Two days later AQAP issued its own statement on an Islamist website, claiming that they had killed:

an American who worked as a high-ranking officer in American intelligence, and that was after monitoring his movements for a long period of time. And targeting him comes after an increase in the American movements in Yemen in the shadow of the new political conditions, and also for bringing in large numbers of American soldiers to Aden city.’

Type of action: Militant ground attack
Location: Aden
References: Reuters, Global Post, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Jihadology

March 6 2012
CNN reported that amid escalating violence by Islamic extremists following the Yemeni election; ‘US trainers are helping the Yemeni government in its effort to retake al-Kowd’. On March 4, a military base near al-Kowd, Abyan, was attacked by Ansar al Sharia militants, claiming the lives of around 90 Yemeni government soldiers.

Location: al-Kowd, Abyan
References: CNN, Jeremy Scahill

YEM042
March 9 2012
♦ 23 – 34 reported killed
♦ ‘Many’ civilians reported killed (2 named)
♦ Up to 55 reported injured
A late evening airstrike on Bayda by US drones struck a gathering of alleged militants. As many as 34 ‘AQAP militants died including ‘four senior leaders‘ – one named as Hadaar al-Homaiqani, a local AQAP leader. Bayda’s governor claimed that ‘two Pakistanis, two Saudi nationals, and one Syrian and one Iraqi‘ were among the dead. A source in the city told Reuters that ‘Flames and smoke could be seen rising from the area,’ while a military official reported that ‘the attack targeted a gathering of al Qaeda elements and a number of them were killed.’ An AQAP spokesman told Xinhua:

More than two US drones are still striking several posts of al-Qaida in three villages outside al-Bayda’s central city.

On April 1 a US official confirmed the attack,with the Los Angeles Times reporting: ‘American missiles soon rained down. The al-Qaida commander was killed, along with 22 other suspected militants, most of them believed to be young recruits receiving military training, U.S. officials said’.

In May 2012 the Washington Post reported that ‘many civilians’ had died in the attack, according to interviews with victims’ relatives and human rights activists. Two brothers of local businessman Salim al-Barakani – one a teacher, the other a cellphone repairman, were among the civilians killed. Al-Barakani told the paper that after the attack:

Villagers were too afraid to go to the area. Al-Qaeda militants took advantage and offered to bury the villagers’ relatives. “That made people even more grateful and appreciative of al-Qaeda,” said Barakani, the businessman. “Afterwards, al-Qaeda told the people, ‘We will take revenge on your behalf.’ ”

Type of action: Air strike, drones and possible aircraft
Location: Bayda
References: Reuters, Bikyamasr, Reuters, Xinhua, AGI, Reuters, Guardian, BBC, Associated Press, Long War Journal, CNN, Daily Times (Pakistan), Yemen Times, UPI, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post

Yemen protest Feb 2011 Washington DC (Colin David Anderson/ Flickr)

YEM043
March 10 2012
♦ 24 reported killed
Air strikes in Jaar and Zinjibar killed up to 24 alleged militants. Although initially reported as the work of the Yemen Air Force, a senior Yemen government official told CNN that the attacks were the work of the US, part of a three-day offensive.

Type of action: Air strike, possible US aircraft or drones
Location: Jaar and Zinjibar
References: Long War Journal, CNN, Yemen Times, UPI

YEM044
March 11 2012
♦ 3 reported killed
An air attack on a militant-occupied factory where arms were allegedly stored killed three near Jaar. Ansar al Sharia said that US drones carried out the early evening strike, with up to five drones reportedly taking part. A senior Yemeni official confirmed the US involvement to CNN: ‘The United States did not inform us on the attacks. We only knew about this after the US attacked.’ However local residents reported that ‘planes’ bombarded the town. AFP also reported that two missiles were fired ‘from the sea‘.

Type of action: Air strike, possible US drones, aircraft and/or missiles
Location: Jebel Khanfar near Jaar
References: Reuters, CNN, AFP, Radio Free Europe, Yemen Times, UPI, Long War Journal, Washington Post

Click here for our 2001-2011 Yemen data

YEM045
March 13 2012
♦ 4-5 reported killed
The ferocious air campaign against al Qaeda and its allies continued with a drone or air strike on a moving vehicle which killed up to five alleged militants. According to the Yemen Post ’a high-ranking security official confirmed that Nasser al-Thafry [aka Zafari], AQAP leader in Al-Byatha was found dead‘ though he may have been killed in linked clashes with Yemen’s security forces. CNN reported that the strike appeared to be the work of the US, which appears highly likely given its precision nature. Six air raids by the Yemen Air Force were also reported in nearby Jaar, as militant group Ansar al Sharia carried out a suicide bombing in revenge, it said, for recent US drone strikes.

Type of action: Air strike, possible US drone or aircraft
Location: Bayda province
References: Yemen Post, Africasia, BBC, Al Arabiya, AFP, Long War Journal, CNN

YEM046
March 18 2012
♦ 14-18 reported killed
Missiles ‘fired from the sea’ onto al Qaeda positions in north-eastern Zinjibar, Abyan province, killed at least 16 suspected militants, TV network al Arabiyah reported. Reiterating this news, the Yemen Times also reported that heavy shelling had targeted fields and badly damaged crops. ‘We are not sure whether Yemeni aircraft or US unmanned drones are responsible for the airstrikes,’ one farmer told the Yemen Times. Reuters called the strike a ‘naval bombardment‘, and the Long War Journal surmised that; ‘If missiles were indeed fired from the sea (and we have no confirmation of this, only the word of an anonymous Yemeni official), then they were most likely fired by US Navy warships. The Yemeni Navy does not possess the capacity to conduct such strikes; its missile boats and corvettes fire only anti-ship missiles. Xinhua reported a local Yemen official as confirming it was a joint US Naval – Yemen Air Force offensive, but placed the naval bombardment at nearby Jaar.

Type of action: Air and naval bombardment, possibly US warships
Location: Zinjibar, Abyan Province
Reference: Al-Arabiya, Reuters, Yemen Times, Voice of Russia, Long War Journal, Sky News, Xinhua, Xinhua

YEM047
March 18 2012
♦ 8 reported killed
♦ 1 civilian reported wounded
Also on Sunday March 18, what was reported as a government warplane bombed Islamist militants in the southern city of Jaar, ‘causing people to flee their homes‘. While al Arabiya stated that there were no immediate reports of casualties, the Associated Press later stated that eight militants were killed in the strike. Residents said a civilian was wounded when an airstrike hit a post office used as a hospital in Jaar. A witness told Xinhua that, along with militant hideouts, some residential buildings in the city were also damaged in the heavy shelling. ‘The strikes demolished more than four houses located in the center of Jaar city. Many people fled their houses for fear of repeated air raids,’ the witness said. This has been reported as an airstrike by the Yemeni government, and there is no suggestion that US planes were involved. However there are reports that a considerable number of Yemeni Air Force personnel were on strike until March 19. This casts doubt on the government’s capacity to launch an aerial bombardment.

Type of action: Air strike, possibly by Yemeni government
Location: Jaar
Reference: Al Arabiya, Reuters, Associated Press, Xinhua

YEM048
March 22 2012
♦ 29-30 reported killed
♦ 24+ reported wounded
According to local Yemen officials, three areas in Zinjibar were struck by US drone strikes, killing at least 30 al Qaeda fighters. The website Arab Monitor stated that ‘dozens’ were wounded in the attacks, which targeted alleged al Qaeda bases. Witnesses also said that a ‘warplane also fired a missile at three vehicles of the al-Qaida group in downtown Zinjibar carrying foreign fighters‘. Associated Press stated that 29 militants had been killed in a ‘rocket and artillery barrage, spread out over a 24-hour period‘ which ended on the night of Thursday March 22. Naval vessels also allegedly took part in the extended bombardment, which some sources claimed were the work of the US Navy. The Pentagon later said that; ‘No American warships from the service’s Fifth Fleet or elsewhere in the region were involved in those operations.’

Type of action: Air strike, US drones, with linked naval bombardment, possibly US
Location: Zinjibar, Abyan Province
References: Xinhua, Arab Monitor, Associated Press, DefCon Hill

YEM049
March 30 2012
♦ 5 killed
♦ 6-9 injured including 5 civilians
♦ 1 civilian killed
Four alleged Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) militants died (possibly local leaders) and three were ‘critically injured’ after a US drone struck their vehicles, according to Yemen military and security officials. The attack, in Azan, Shabwa province, came as the men left Friday prayers according to Associated Press. However, a civilian, Mohamed Saleh Al-Suna was also killed and six others injured in the strike, officials and eyewitnesses told Reuters. The six civilians were in a car travelling in the opposite direction. Five of the civilian injured were identified by the Yemen Times as Saleh Ali Ba Zyad, Saleh Abdulfatha Hamid, Abdullah Mohamed Hamid, Hamza Khaled Ba Zayad, and Ali Hassan. In a linked second drone attack nearby a house was also struck, injuring four people. A US official confirmed both this strike and a CIA attack in Pakistan on the same day.

Ansar al Sharia later attacked a gas pipeline in the area, texting journalists to say:

The mujahideen blew up the pipeline … in retaliation for the strike for which Crusader America and its obedient slave in Sanaa are responsible.’

The Yemen strikes came on the same day that AQAP was reported to have appointed new leaders in southern Yemen to replace those lost in recent US drone strikes.

Type of action: Air strike, US drone strikes
Location: Azan, Shabwa Province
References: Associated Press, Monsters & Critics, Reuters, Reuters, Daily Telegraph, Al Jazeera, Xinhua, PTI, CNN, The National, Yemen Times, Yemen Fox

Old Sanaa city at dusk in 2012 (Photo Juadluz83/ Flickr)

April

YEM050
April 1-3 2012
♦ Up to 38 killed
Multiple airstrikes killed as many as 38 ‘suspected al Qaeda militants’ in Lahj and Abyan over a 48-hour period, according to CNN. A number of officials confirmed US involvement, with one local official telling the agency that ‘The U.S. is involved in a number of the latest attacks, but that does not mean our air force is not in control of the raids occurring.’ He said that the United States ‘has taken part in three of the airstrikes, but said Yemen’s air force is leading the operation. He did not detail the type of support provided,’ according to CNN.

Type of action: Air strike, US drone strikes
Location: Lahjh and Abyan
References: CNN

Click here for our 2001-2011 Yemen data

YEM051
April 7 2012
♦ 0-8 killed
News agencies reported a night time US drone strike on a moving vehicle in Shabwa province. The Yemen Air Force lacks the technical ability to carry out such a strike. The Wall Street Journal reported that the target was AQAP number three, Qasim al-Raimi. It reported that ‘After nightfall Saturday, Mr Raimi and three followers started driving on a road out of Shebwa toward Marib, residents said. Around 10 pm, a missile struck the road near their car, but missed the vehicle, according to two local security officials.’ However according to an unnamed tribal chief, the strike ‘killed eight Al-Qaeda suspects’, who he identified as ‘five Yemenis and three Arab foreigners.’Al-Qaeda militants were aboard a vehicle on their way from Shabwa to (nearby) Marib province when a US drone fired a missile at their vehicle, killing them all. The chief also reported that drones were seen ‘flying over several areas in Shabwa, especially those which are Al-Qaeda strongholds — Rawdah, Huta, and Azzan’. The attack was the eighth confirmed drone strike of 2012. The Egyptian al Qaeda operative Abu Musab al Masri was reported dead by the Long War Journal, killed in an April drone strike on Shabwa province. Long War Journal cited a vague date reported by the Madad News Agency in surmising YEM051 or YEM055 as the possible strikes responsible.

Type of action: Air strike, US drone strike
Location: Shabwa Province
References: AFP, Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Xinhua, Yemen Post, Long War Journal

YEM052
April 9 2012
♦ 16 killed
The Yemen Defence Ministry reported that ‘Yemeni-U.S. joint air raids bombed al-Qaida hideouts in the southern province of Abyan, killing at least 16 militants’, according to Xinhua.Other agencies did not specify US involvement.

Type of action: Air strike with Yemen, possible US drone strike
Location: Abyan Province
References: Xinhua, Reuters, Associated Press, Long War Journal, Yemen Post

YEM053
April 11 2012
♦ 10-14 killed
♦ 10 injured
A targeted evening strike on an ‘al Qaeda convoy’ reportedly killed up to 14 alleged militants near Loder, Abyan Province. AP reported that the vehicle had been stolen from a government barracks days earlier. A local government official told Xinhua that the attack was the work of a US drone, and that ‘there are foreign nationals among the killed.’ The Yemen Defence Ministry later said that Saudi, Pakistani and Somali nationals had been killed, but did not specify any US involvement. As many as 72 alleged militants died in Yemen military operations around Loder that day, with a senior government official saying:

The battle of Loder is considered a decisive one for the army against the terrorist groups and a prelude to the cleansing of all towns seized by militants in the province of Abyan.

Two senior militants were reported killed in the fighting – Imad al-Manshaby and Ahmed Mohammed Taher – though it was not clear if they had died in the vehicle attack. As many as three other airstrikes may also have taken place around the town.

Type of action: Air strike, probable US drone
Location: Loder village, Abyan
Reference: Xinhua, Bickyamasr, Associated Press, Gulf Times (AFP), Reuters, AFP, Yemen Post, Bikyamasr

YEM054
April 14 2012
♦ 3 killed
An evening airstrike on a vehicle killed at least three Ansar al-Sharia members, among them reportedly Mohammed al-Sabri, a ‘leading militant’. Yemen’s airforce reportedly lacks the ability to launch precision strikes on moving vehicles. Associated Press cited two Yemen military officials as saying that US drones had carried out the attack in Bayda province, with a security official telling AFP the same. Eyewitness Abdel-Salam al-Ansi told the agency that he heard a strong explosion and had rushed outside: ‘The car had been turned into a ball of fire.’ A Yemen Defence Ministry statement referred only to an ‘airstrike’ and reported that three ‘local al-Qaeda leaders’ had died. Ansar al-Sharia also later said that three of its fighters had died in a US drone strike.

Type of action: Airstrike, US drone strike
Location: al Zahir district, Bayda province
References: Associated Press, Lebanon Daily Star, Reuters, Xinhua, AFP, Yemen Post, Al Arabiya

YEM055
April 16 2012
♦ 5-7 killed
Up to five drone strikes killed at least five militants in the southeastern Shabwa province. CNN reported militant hideouts, checkpoints, training facilities and weapons warehouses were targeted in the strikes. The Yemen defence ministry initially claimed the attacks were carried out by Yemeni warplanes. Two security officials and one defence ministry official later told CNN US drones targeted the militants. This was echoed by a security official cited by AFP who reported a local official claiming a US drone targeted five militants late on Monday. A local security official told Xinhua leading foreign fighters were killed in the strikes. An intelligence officer told Xinhua the foreigners were a Syrian and an Algerian. Two defence officials told CNN the US has conducted at least 11 attacks on Yemeni soil in the preceding week. Long War Journal reported Egyptian al Qaeda militant Abu Musab al Masri killed in an April drone strike on Shabwa. Citing a vague date reported by the Madad News Agency, Long War Journal surmised either YEM051 or YEM055 as the responsible strikes.

Type of action: Airstrike, possible US drone
Location: Azzan district, Shabwa province
References: CNN, AFP, Xinhua, Long War Journal

YEM056
April 18 2012
♦ 6-10 killed
An air strike near the southern village of Loder has killed at least six militants according to a Defence Ministry statement. Reuters could not independently confirm who launched the strike and AFP said the government did not say if the air force or US drones were responsible. Xinhua reported the attack destroyed a number of armoured vehicles captured by the militants. Local residents told Xinhua that two further air strikes targeting militant positions on Jabal Khanfer, a hill over looking the city of Jaar in Abyan province. At least four militants were killed in this second action according to the Yemen Post.

Type of action: Air strike, possible US drone
Location: Loder village and Jaar city, Abyan province
References: AFP, Reuters, Xinhua, Yemen Post

April 19 2012
The Washington Post triggered significant debate on the future direction of US drone strikes in Yemen, revealing extensive details of US targeting policy in Yemen. It reported that the CIA was seeking the right to launch so-called ‘signature strikes’ in Yemen – attacks on alleged militants the Agency did not know the identity of. According to a senior Administration official, present CIA tactics ‘still [have] a very firm emphasis on being surgical and targeting only those who have a direct interest in attacking the United States.’ In contrast, the Pentagon’s JSOC ‘has broader authority than the CIA to pursue militants in Yemen and is not seeking permission to use signature strikes, US officials said.’ Since most of the recent US strikes were against low-ranking or unknown militants, this indicated that most current attacks were by JSOC rather than the CIA. Officials also expressed concern that the US risked being perceived as ‘taking sides in a civil war’. [see also April 26]

Location: Washington DC
Reference: Washington Post, The Atlantic, CNN, Gregory Johnsen, New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek

YEM057
April 21 2012
♦ 12 – 17 killed
♦ 5 injured
As many as 17 alleged militants were killed in a series of of strikes in the south of the country. The Defence Ministry said 17 alleged militants had been killed in a raid near Loder. But an unnamed local government official told Xinhua two Yemeni Air Force jets killed 12 militants in the strike. Kuwaiti agency KUNA reported the strike targeted a house where a group of militants were meeting, citing a defence ministry announcement. The Yemen Post reported this strike killed at least 11 and destroyed captured military vehicles and that a separate strike killed two more militants in Abyan province. AFP said it was unclear whether the strike was carried out by the Yemen Air Force or US drones.

Type of action: Air strike, possible US drone
Location: Loder, Abyan province
References: Xinhua, Yemen Post, AFP, KUNA

YEM058
April 22 2012
♦ 4 killed
At least four militants were killed when a drone strike destroyed two of three cars driving through the desert area of Sanda in central Marib province. Two senior security officials told CNN that US drones conducted the strike. The Yemen Air Force lacks the technical ability to carry out such a precise strike and has suffered serious problems of morale and discipline this year. The Yemen Post reported the recently ousted President’s son Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh, commander of the Republican Guard, had ordered a battalion of infantry to storm the Air Force base in the capital Sana’a on the same day as this attack. The Yemeni Embassy in Washington announced 34-year-old senior AQAP militant Mohammed Saeed Al-Umada (aka Ghareeb al-Taizi) was killed in the strike. This was confirmed by AQAP. Al-Umada died along with two of his aides the embassy said. In October AQAP released the names of two more militants who died in the attack, Hassah Hussein Dalel and Basher al Najidi. In 2005 al-Umada was convicted of supporting the 2002 bombing of French oil tanker Limburg which killed one crew member and injured a dozen more. In February 2006 he escaped from his Sanaa jail along with 22 other militants who would go on to become the core of AQAP. Among the escapees were Qasim al-Raimi (aka al-Raymi) and Nasser al-Wuhayshi. Al-Raimi was AQAP’s military commander and had survived strikes in 2009 (YEM003), 2010 (YEM006) and 2012 (YEM051). Al-Wuhayshi was regional leader of al-Qaeda who was thought to be meeting Anwar al-Awlaki when the first attempt was made to assassinate the American born radical cleric (YEM004). In 2008 a Yemeni court sentenced al-Umada in absentia to at least 10 years in prison for targeting the country’s energy infrastructure. The Washington embassy said al-Umada was fourth on Yemen’s most-wanted list. A senior Yemen Defence Ministry official told CNN:

This is a success for the war on terror. Al-Umda has been on the run for years and his absence will help in limiting the terror network’s operation in Yemen.

Al-Umada is alleged to have received training from Osama Bin Laden at the al-Farouq camp. The embassy said he commanded several AQAP military operations and provided the organisation with financial and logistical support.

Type of action: Airstrike, US drone strike
Location: Sanda, Marib province
References: AP, Xinhua, Bloomberg, AFP, KUNA, Reuters, CNN, Reuters, CNN, Xinhua, KUNA, Critical Threats, AP, WLSAM, CNN, Al Wefaq News (Arabic)

YEM059
April 23 2012
♦ 3 killed
♦ 2 injured
A possible drone strike hit vehicles in Shabwa province leaving three dead and two injured. Local Mohammed Bindighar told AP he had seen drones circling overhead almost daily for the last five months. The strike came as the Yemen Defence Ministry announced at least 23 alleged al-Qaeda militants have been killed as the Yemen Army battles with insurgents for control of the south and east of the country.

Type of action: Possible US drone
Location: Nasab, Shabwa province
References: AP, AFP, Reuters, Bikyamasr

YEM060
April 23 2012
♦ 0 – 4 killed
Fighting around the southern town of Loder killed up to 15 alleged militants with as many as four killed in an airstrike. The Yemen Army bombarded the town overnight as they continued their efforts to reclaim ground in Abyan. Local sources told AFP a Yemeni fighter plane hit a vehicle, killing four. But the Yemen Air Force lacks the technical ability to carry out precision strikes on moving vehicles. It has suffered considerable problems with morale and discipline in 2012. A tribal leader told Reuters he feared this assault on Loder may have jeopardised negotiations for the release of a Saudi Arabian diplomat kidnapped outside his Aden residence on March 28.

Type of action: Airstrike, possible US drone
Location: Loder, Abyan province
References: AP, AFP, Xinhua, Reuters, Bikyamasr

April 26 2012
A week after reports that the CIA was seeking authorisation to launch signature strikes, the White House gave the tactic the green light. Because the CIA would reportedly only target high-value terrorists, and not foot soldiers fighting an insurgency, the new targeting policy was called ‘signature lite’ by one US defence official. Others reported that the tactic had been renamed Terrorist Attack Disruption Strikes, or TADS. A previous request in 2011 for an expanded strike programme had been rebuffed.

Yemeni government sources told AP that President Hadi had given permission for the CIA ‘to increase the pace of their strikes’ but had drawn the line at signature strikes. Although fearful of civilian and non-militant tribesmen being killed inadvertently, the Yemeni government was said to be keen to increase counter-terrorism aid from the US. This included drone strikes as well as more military trainers and advisors. But US officials expressed concern that America may be dragged into another regional conflict. A senior US defence official told the WSJ:

We have to be careful about what they want help with. Do they [the Yemenis] want help taking out terrorist targets, or do they want help with their civil war?

There was some suggestion of a schism in Washington’s counter terrorism community. The WSJ reported that some military and intelligence officials privately complained that the White House policy in Yemen was too cautious.

References: Wall Street Journal, AP, New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Newsweek, New York Times

YEM061
April 26 2012
♦ 3 killed
At least three alleged militants were killed in a possible drone strike in the southern city of Mudiyah. Reuters reported the strike targeted the alleged militants in a vehicle. Residents said they saw two drones after hearing an explosion. A second drone strike hit Mudiyah the same day according to local sources. There were no reported casualties. Critical Threats reported that Yemeni warplanes targeted sites in Shaqwa, on the Abyan coast.

Type of action: Possible US drone
Location: Mudiyah, Shaqwa, Abyan province
References: Reuters, Critical Threats

YEM062
April 29 2012
♦ 3 killed
Three alleged militants were killed driving through the northern province of al-Jawf. A tribal source told AFP the car was completely destroyed and all its occupants killed. The source said the three were al-Qaeda militants traveling to give condolences to families of militants killed in fighting in Abyan. AP reported Yemeni officials ‘had no details on the source of the attack or the identity of the three.’ But to hit a moving vehicle requires technical abilities that is reportedly beyond the Yemen Air Force. This strike comes on the same day 73 Yemeni soldiers were released from captivity in Jaar. The men were captured on March 4 when Ansar al-Sharia overran an army camp near Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province.

Type of action: Possible US drone
Location: al-Jawf
References: AP, AFP

YEM063
April 30 2012
♦ 4 killed
Four alleged militants were killed in an airstrike near the town of Loder. The strike hit a vehicle according to a local government official. The Yemen Air Force reportedly does not have the capabilities to carry out a precision strike on a vehicle. The strike came as government forces battled ‘dozens of militants’ who had attacked an army barracks on the outskirts of Loder. Up to 21 militants, soldiers and tribesmen died in the battle. But because access to the area was restricted Reuters said they could not independently verify the casualty figures. The same day Ansar al Sharia announced they had seized 20 tanks from the Yemen Army in Abyan.

Type of action: Air strike, possible US drone
Location: Loder, Abyan province
References: Reuters, Xinhua, AFP

YEM064
April 30 2012
♦ 3 killed
A strike hit a vehicle near Zinjibar killing three alleged al Qaeda militants. A Yemeni presidential aide told CNN the Yemen government had approved a series of US drone strikes on militant positions in the south of the country. Since mid-April there had been at least two US drone strikes a day, the aide continued.

On June 20 a jihadist website reported that Muhammad Fazi al Harasheh, aka Abu Hammam al Zarqawi, had died in a drone strike on a vehicle. Zarqawi was the nephew of former Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed by the US in 2006. Initial reports suggested he had been killed by a landmine. Although the precise date of his death is unknown, this April 30 strike appears to most closely match the description. The Long War Journal reported a militant statement as saying ‘They were unable to kill him in the battles, so they sent spies to guide them to him. “A drone came to bomb the car in which he and one of the brother were riding, and so his pure soul went to its maker.’

Type of action: Air strike, possible US drone
Location: Zinjibar, Abyan province
References: AP, CNN, Long War Journal

Click here for our 2001-2011 Yemen data

May

YEM065
May 2 2012
♦ 10 – 15 killed
Three Yemeni security officials told CNN a US drone attacked a militant training camp outside the southern town of Jaar, killing up to 15. The strike was one of a series targeting Jaar, Zinjibar and Loder planned for the proceeding weeks the officials said. An anonymous Yemeni presidential aide told CNN the US had been launching at least two strikes a day since mid April. The aide continued:

This is part of the strategy to uproot al Qaeda from areas they control…The Yemeni government is giving the green light for the attacks and targets chosen carefully.

The strike resembled previous US drone strikes according to AP but added the US would not comment on it. Local residents told Xinhua the Yemen Air Force launched two air strikes on the training camp.

Type of action: Airstrike, possible US drone
Location: Jaar, Abyan province
References: AP, Xinhua, CNN, CNN

YEM066
May 6 2012
♦ 2-4 killed
♦ 1 civilian reported killed
An Al Qaeda bomber wanted for his role in the deadly 2000 bombing of the USS Cole was killed in a CIA drone strike on a vehicle in the remote mountain valley of Wadi Rafad. Fahd al-Quso, who admitted to being part responsible for the death of 17 US sailors, died in the attack in Shabwa province. Also initially reported killed was al-Quso’s nephew Fahed Salem al-Akdam, described as a ‘senior AQAP leader.’ However the Washington Post later identified the man as 19-year old farm worker Nasser Salim, who was no relation to Quso. His uncle told the paper:

He was torn to pieces. He was not part of al-Qaeda. But by America’s standards, just because he knew Fahd al-Quso, he deserved to die with him.

Both Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the Yemen government confirmed al-Quso’s death, with Ansar al-Sharia telling Reuters that ‘Al Qaeda affirms the martyrdom of the Fahd al-Qasaa in an American attack this afternoon in Rafad.’ The New York Times cautioned that US officials still wanted ‘a few days‘ to confirm Quso’s death, which had been reported before. The strike led to retaliatory attacks against Yemen soldiers killing at least 32, according to al Arabiya and the BBC. Confirming the US role in the attack, an official told agencies:

Fahd al-Quso was a senior terrorist operative of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula who was deeply involved in ongoing terrorist plotting against Yemeni and U.S. interests at the time of his death. He was also involved in numerous attacks over many years that murdered Americans as well as Yemeni men, women and children.

Following the strike details emerged of al-Quso’s link to an AQAP attempt to blow up an airliner. Information gleaned from a Saudi Arabian spy in AQAP who foiled the group’s plot reportedly enabled the CIA to target al-Quso. British intelligence services MI5 and MI6 were allegedly involved and British authorities said to be ‘deeply distressed‘ that details of the apparently joint US-UK-Saudi Arabia operation had been leaked. Reuters reported President Obama’s counter terrorism adviser John Brennan inadvertently let slip the presence of the spy within AQAP, an admission that ended the operation prematurely.

Type of action: Airstrike, confirmed US drone
Location: Wadi Rafad, Shabwa province
References: BBC, Associated Press, Antiwar.com, IANS, Press Association, Reuters, New York Times, CNN, Al Arabiya, AFP, Al Jazeera, KUNA, MSNBC, Yemen Observer, ABC News, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, BBC, Reuters, Washington Post, FBI Wanted poster

May 8th 2010
The Pentagon announced that it was sending ‘military trainers’ to Yemen, previously withdrawn during the Arab Spring uprising. A Pentagon spokesman said that ‘We have begun to reintroduce small numbers of trainers into Yemen.’ A second US official told AP that ‘the arriving troops are special operations forces, who work under more secretive arrangements than conventional U.S. troops and whose expertise includes training indigenous forces.’ The agency also reported that the US now has ‘a substantial naval presence near Yemen’, with around 2,000 US Marines deployed nearby.

Location: Yemen
References: Associated Press, AntiWar.com

Yemen’s Counter Terrorism unit in 2010 – key target for US training (Flickr/Ammar Abd Rabbo)

YEM067
May 10 2012
♦ 5-12 killed
A series of strikes in the small hours killed up to 8 in Abyan province. There were confused reports of the death toll, targets and source of the attacks. CNN reported that a drone targeted a convoy of vehicles carrying senior leaders of Ansar al Sharia, killing eight, adding that the strike preceded three airstrikes on Jaar by the Yemen Air Force. But a source told AFP ‘three explosions rocked the town at midnight’ when a drone struck a residence in Jaar, killing eight alleged militants meeting inside. Residents told al Arabiya 12 militants were killed by a US drone as they met outside Jaar and the Yemen Observer reported 10 killed in a number of strikes by a US drone and the Yemen Air Force. AP reported the strike ‘completely leveled’ a house where alleged militants were meeting, but said only five died. One of the dead was later reported as a senior AQAP member responsible for armaments called Jallad or al-Galadi. According to AFP the strike was precise and destructive:

‘Eight militants were killed and their bodies were left in pieces,’ the source told AFP as witnesses said parts of the two story building were completely destroyed. No other houses were affected in what appeared to be surgical strikes based on precise information.

However Jaar residents told Reuters the strike hit outside the town and appeared to come from the sea while Xinhua reported a Yemen Navy bombardment hit AQAP positions in Jaar, killing nine. A government official told Xinhua the attack struck several compounds and two local al Qaeda leaders were believed to be among the dead. Local sources told the Yemen Observer one was known as Abu Huthaifa Al Sanani.

Type of action: Airstrike, possible naval bombardment, possible US drone
Location: Jaar, Abyan province
References: CNN, AFP, Reuters. Associated Press, Xinhua, Critical Threats, AFP, Associated Press, Al Arabiya, Yemen Observer, Al Jazeera

YEM068
May 10 2012
♦ 2-4 reported killed
AP reported two more alleged militants killed in a second strike on Shaqra, northeast of the provincial capital Zinjibar. The Yemen Observer reported AQAP claims that a drone killed four men in the strike. Al Qaeda confirmed the organisation’s second-in-command for Abyan province Kheldoon Al Sayed died in the strike. But AQAP denied senior member Qasim al Raimi also perished. Al Raimi survived two strikes in April 2012, YEM051 and YEM055. Al Jazeera reported that only two died in the strike, reporting an anonymous Yemeni official as saying that ‘one of those killed was al-Qaeda’s second-in-command for Lawder, a town further north that was controlled by the group last year until its residents drove the fighters out.’

In Washington the same day, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta discussed US military and intelligence operations in Yemen:

We will go after al-Qaida wherever they are and wherever they try to hide. And one of the places that they clearly are located is Yemen. We’ve obviously – the United States, both military and intelligence communities, have gone after al-Qaida, and we continue to go after al-Qaida… We have operations there. The Yemenis have actually been very cooperative in the operations that we have conducted there. And we will continue to work with them to go after the enemies that threaten the United States.

Type of action: Airstrike, possible naval bombardment, possible US drone
Location: Shaqra near Zinjibar, Abyan province
References: CNN, AFP, Reuters, Associated Press, Xinhua, Critical Threats, AFP, Associated Press, Al Arabiya, Yemen Observer, Al Jazeera, Bikya Masr, US Department of Defense

YEM069
May 12 2012
♦ 6-7 reported killed
A reported US drone strike took place in al-Hosoon, near the city of Marib. A tribal chief told Reuters that ‘a drone fired two rockets at two vehicles, killing five Al-Qaeda members.’ Reuters later revised its report to say that seven died in the attack. The Yemen Ministry of Information later said that six had died, named as Mohsen Abdul-Rahman Al-Youssefi, Saleh Mohammed Jaber Shabwani, Abu Mutib Al-Yamani, Abu Laith Al-Hadrami and two unidentified Saudis. In October AQAP released a list of militants killed in the strike, adding Abu Mohammed al Shihiri and Abu Abdullah al Sanaani to the four names released by the Ministry of Information. The attack – and two others that day – were likely linked to a Yemen military offensive attempting to recapture territory in the south. Reuters reported:

Yemeni air force planes dropped leaflets on Saturday urging civilians to leave areas held by militants targeted by the army offensive, prompting a mass exodus from parts of Abyan.

AFP also reported a Yemeni military official as saying that US forces were providing ‘logistical support’ for the offensive.

Type of action: Possible US drone strike
Location: Al-Hosoon village, near Marib
References: Reuters, Associated Press, Reuters, Xinhua, BBC, CNN, ABC News, Al Arabiya, The National, Al Jazeera, Yemen Post, Yemen Ministry of Information (via Abyan Press, in Arabic), Al Wefaq Press (Arabic)

YEM070
May 12 2012
♦ 10 reported killed
Agencies reported a second strike of the day, also on a convoy of vehicles: ‘One drone fired rockets at a convoy of three pick-up trucks travelling on a desert road in Hareeb area of Shabwa province. Seven militants were killed and all the three vehicles were destroyed,’ the agency said, saying that ‘the Al Qaeda militants were reportedly planning to attend a meeting in the area.’ CNN reported that only one of the vehicles was destroyed, with the other two escaping. Security officials told the news organisation that ‘the dead included three al Qaeda leaders.’

Yemen’s Ministry of Information later named those killed as Ali Hassan Ali Gharib Al -Shabwani from the Shabwan family; Hassan Saud Hassan Bin Mouaily, from the Obayda clan; Hamid Nasir Al-Aqraa, from the Jadaan clan; Mohsen Saeed Kharassan, from the Jadaan clan; Ahmed Saleh Mohammed Al-Faqeer, from the Murad clan; Abdullah Ali Muhammad Miqan aka Al-Quti, from the Obeida clan; and Mohammed Saleh Bakeer Al-Faqeer, from the Murad clan (all from Marib province). Two men from Shabwa province were reported killed, Aref Issa Chabwi and Mubarak, Saleh Al-Nasser Al-Nassi, along with ‘terrorist’ Abu Obeida Al-Masri, an Egyptian.

Type of action: Possible US drone strike
Location: Between Marib and Shabwa
References: Xinhua, BBC, CNN, Al Arabiya, The National, Al Jazeera, Yemen Ministry of Information (via Abyan Press, in Arabic), Al Wefaq Press (Arabic)

YEM071
May 12 2012
♦ 6-10 killed
A possible third drone strike of the day killed between 6 and 10 alleged al Qaeda militants at a ‘hideout‘, according to a local Yemeni official.

Type of action: Possible US drone strike
Location: Al-Aeen, near Aden, Shabwa Province
References: Reuters, Associated Press, Reuters, Xinhua, Reuters, ABC News, Al Arabiya

YEM072
May 14 2012
♦ 10 killed
As the Yemen government continued its offensive against insurgents and militants in the south of the country a series of airstrikes targeted alleged militants in Abyan. Government jets reportedly hit alleged al Qaeda positions in Shaqra, near the city of Zinjibar, killing ten. A militant leader called al-Muhajir was later named among the dead although it remains unclear if he perished in YEM072 or YEM073.

Type of action: Airstrike, possible US
Location: Shaqra, Abyan province
References: Associated Press, Associated Press, AFP, International Business Times, Critical Threats, Yemen Post

YEM073
May 14 2012
♦ 6 killed
In a separate strike, missiles were fired at a moving vehicle near the town of Loder. The vehicle was destroyed and six were killed in a strike reportedly carried by Yemeni aircraft. But the Yemeni armed forces have suffered considerable morale and disciplinary problems since a popular uprising unseated the president. Furthermore the Yemen Air Force reportedly lacks the ability to launch precision strikes on moving vehicles which casts doubt on whether the airstrikes were carried out by Yemen or US forces.

Type of action: Possible US drone strike
Location: Loder, Abyan province
References: Associated Press, Associated Press, AFP, International Business Times, Critical Threats, Yemen Post

YEM074
May 14 2012
♦ 2 injured, both children
In a third strike of the day two children were reported wounded in Jaar. AP reported a Yemeni warplane missed its target and accidentally fired on civilians.

Type of action: Airstrike, possible US
Location: Jaar, Abyan province
References: Associated Press, Associated Press

YEM075
May 15 2012
♦ 14-16 killed
♦ 12-26 civilians reported killed
♦ 20-21 civilians reported injured
A double airstrike in Jaar reportedly killed at least a dozen civilians and injured as many as 21, as well as killing 2-3 alleged ‘Al Qaeda militants.’ The BBC reported that the civilians ‘were hit as they were trying to dig out the bodies of those killed in the initial attack.’ Initial reports claimed that the attack was the work of the Yemen Air Force, with Xinhua describing ‘a botched air strike carried out by Yemeni warplanes’ on a residential building near a militant compound. However, shortly afterwards CNN reported that the attack had been carried out by US drones, killing eight civilians and injuring a further seven, along with three ‘senior al Qaeda leaders.’

Middle East Online also reported that the strike was the work of US drones, stating that eight civilian bodies had been pulled from the wreckage of a house, and that a further four of 25 civilians injured had later died. Two alleged militants were also killed, it said. In a slightly different version of events, Reuters said that a strike had hit cars and a house, killing ten militants, with a follow-up attack killing six civilians. On May 18 USA Today reported an eyewitness to the attack, Samir al Mushari, as saying that 26 civilians died in the two possible drone strikes. A witness told NPR in June 2012 that the first strike killed one man in the house and the second strike killed at least 12 people instantly. ‘”They were cut…in pieces,” he says. A wall where the second strike hit is still covered in blood.’ The residents who spoke to NPR claimed the strike was carried out by a US strike fighter that was grey and ‘looked like an eagle,’ not a drone or Yemen Air Force jet. Abdullah was badly burnt in the second strike. He told NPR the man who died in the first strike was just an ordinary citizen.

Amnesty International said a pregnant woman died in the strike. Aged in her thirties, Mariam Abdo Said was a passer-by hit by flying shrapnel. In a December 2012 report, the NGO said a pair of strikes destroyed a house in Jaar, killing its civilian owner Nuweir al Arshani, and killed 13 more civilians including Abdo Said. A witness said ‘at around 8am or 8.30am, an aircraft flying low over Jaar roared towards al Hurur…and bombed Nuweir’s home.’ Passers-by gathered at the scene and the aircraft ‘returned and bombed and fired into the crowd.’

Amnesty also published the names of 12 men killed in the follow-up attack:

Majed Ahmed Abdullah Awad – aged 26
Salem Mohsen Haidar al Jalladi – aged around 35
Adeeb Ahmed Ghanem al Doba’i
Mohammed Abdullah Saleh Hussein
Munir bin al Haji bin al Assi,
Ahmed Abdullah Ahmed al Shahari
Salem Abdullah Ahmed Abkar
Hussien Mubarak Ahmed
Abd al Rahman Motahhar
Hafez Abdullah Mubarak
Mohsen Ali Salem
Amir al Azzani

Hassan Ahmed Abdullah spoke to al Akbar about his brother who died in the strike. He said:

About 15 minutes later [after the initial strike], another plane suddenly struck the same building killing 15 people, including my brother. He was wounded by shrapnel in his chest, liver, and neck. He also had burns on 50 percent of his body.’

The ICRC later reported that it was ‘extremely concerned‘ at possible airstrikes on civilian locations and urged all warring parties to protect civilian life. The civilian death toll was the highest attributed to US action in Yemen since an attack on a former police station in Mudiya killed up to 30 civilians on July 14 2011. In a possible worrying development, there were reports that drones had returned to the attack after crowds had gathered at the scene of the initial strike in Jaar. If confirmed, this would mark the first known case in which US drones had attacked rescuers in Yemen. In an investigation with the Sunday Times earlier this year the Bureau exposed a similar practice in Pakistan, identifying a dozen US strikes on rescuers that had killed more than 50 civilians.

Type of action: Air strikes, possible US drone strikes
Location: Jaar, Abyan province
References: Xinhua, CNN, Middle East Online, AFP, Reuters, Al Arabiya, Associated Press, The National, Reuters, Yemen Post, New York Times, BBC, ICRC, USA Today, National Public Radio, Al Akbar, Amnesty International

May 15 2012
Associated Press reported that almost 60 US troops were just 65 kilometres from the front lines, at al-Annad airbase, from where they were were ‘coordinating assaults and airstrikes and providing information to Yemeni forces.’ A Yemen official said that ‘They brought their mobile houses and buildings for a long stay,’ with another saying that the US personnel were overseeing strikes by U.S. drone aircraft.

US and Yemeni officials told the LA Times that at least 20 US special forces soldiers based in Yemen were involved in the concerted Yemeni offensive trying to retake lost ground in the south. The paper said the troops were using ‘satellite imagery, drone video, eavesdropping systems and other technical means’ to target militants. The US contingent is expected to grow according to a senior military official. A source with knowledge of the intelligence operations told the paper teams of CIA officers and US contractors had been operating in Yemen for some time, hunting militants and generating intelligence networks for drone strikes. The White House insisted ‘the US military role in Yemen is limited’ and Natonal Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said:

We have not, and will not, get involved in a broader counterinsurgency effort. That would not serve our long-term interests and runs counter to the desires of the Yemeni government and its people.

Militants launched an attack on the al-Annad airbase on May 13, killing one Yemeni soldier. The reports appeared to contradict Pentagon claims on May 8 that US military advisers were being sent back to Yemen for ‘routine’ training purposes. In a separate development, a blogger identified the presence of eight US F15-E Strike Eagles at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti. Yemen’s own air force is not capable of precision strikes, with speculation that US or Saudi aircraft may instead have been carrying out attributed attacks.

Type of action: Assault co-ordination
Location: al-Annad airbase, Lahj Province
Reference: Associated Press, The National, Voice of America, The Aviationist, Wired, Los Angeles Times

YEM076
May 16 2012
♦ 16 killed
♦ 5-14 injured
At least 16 alleged militants were killed in a strike which wounded up to 14 more. AFP reported two strikes targeted a farm near Moudia, outside Loder. Officials said AQAP commander Samir al Fathani (aka Samir Salem al-Moqayda) was killed. Al Fathani’s brother Abdul Munim al Fathani was involved in the bombing of the USS Cole reported AP. He was killed in a drone strike in January 2012 (YEM040). A local military official told Xinhua a Yemen Air Force fighter jet targeted two AQAP squads in the strike. The attack came amid a concerted offensive by the Yemen armed forces in Abyan province. As many as 20,000 soldiers were reportedly involved in the push with assistance from US special forces. Witnesses told AFP the US Navy was also involved in the attacks although the naval bombardment was not confirmed by official sources.

Type of action: Air strikes, possible US drone, possible US Navy
Location: Moudia, Abyan province
References: Associated Press, Albawaba, AFP, Reuters, Xinhua, Xinhua, BBC, Middle East Online

YEM077
Mid-May 2012
♦ 6 killed
♦ 0-1 civilian killed
Two strikes hit Jaar in mid-May. One hit a house local people said was being rented by Ansar al Sharia militants. Neighbour Adnan Ahmed Saleh told NPR ‘I got back inside, closed the door, and then the first rocket hit’. The house next door to his was destroyed. The next day AQAP-linked militants ‘cleaned up the mess’ and ‘paid compensation for the house. The second strike targeted AQAP leader Nadir Shedadi. It his home but only killed Shedadi’s cousin Wael al Dhai, a civilian according to residents.

Type of action: Airstrikes, possible US
Location: Jaar, Abyan
References: National Public Radio, National Public Radio

YEM078
May 17 2012
♦ 2-3 killed
♦ 0-2 injured
Three alleged militants were killed in a possible US drone strike in the eastern province of Hadhramout. Reuters reported a car apparently carrying explosives was destroyed when the overnight strike targeted a convoy. The strike came at 00.45 and was audible from 15 km distance reported the Yemen Times. Local residents said the three were all members of a militant cell. AP reported two men in another car in the convoy were wounded in the strike. A local security official told Xinhua a US drone fired two missiles on a moving pick-up truck as it passed through the Shibam area, killing two alleged militants. The defence ministry said two of the dead were local AQAP leaders, calling them Zeid bin Taleb and Mutii Bilalafi. They were both on the Yemeni government’s most wanted list for terrorist attacks in the country the official told Xinhua. A security source told the Yemen Times the convoy consisted of two cars, the second of which was damaged in the attack. The source told the paper one of the dead was a ‘prominent leader of Al-Qaida’ called Mohammed al Raimi. Al Raimi (aka al-Raymi) survived two strikes in April 2012, YEM051 and YEM055, and was credited with being AQAP third in command. Eye witnesses told Yemen Times four survivors from the second car were driven from the scene of the strike 25 minutes after the event in a Toyota Hilux.

The strike appears to be the first to have been reported in real time on Twitter. A Yemeni lawyer and activist reported drone sightings on the social media network before the attack and said two vehicles were destroyed. The strike came as Yemeni officials announced they have ‘cleansed Loder [of al Qaeda],’ as part of a heavy military offensive in the south of the country. A local official told AFP the Yemen Air Force had launched several airstrikes that night on the southern cities of Shaqra and Arqoub but with no reported casualties.

Type of action: Possible US drone strikes
Location: Shibam, Hadhramout province
References: Reuters, AFP, Xinhua, AFP, AP, AGI, BBC, Hadramout Today (Arabic), Mukalla Star (Arabic), Seyoun Press (Arabic), BBC, Yemen Times, The Bureau

YEM079
May 17 2012
♦ 5-8 killed
♦ 0-2 civilians reported killed
As many as eight people were killed in an afternoon strike in the town of Shaqra. Security officials told CNN eight militants traveling in a convoy were killed in a drone strike which was followed by a series of airstrikes by the Yemen Air Force. Reuters reported three militants and two civilians were killed in a Yemeni airstrike according to local residents and officials. But AP reported six militants were killed when a strike hit a vehicle in the town. AFP said six militants were killed in a strike on a checkpoint in Shaqra. An unknown number of people were killed when a strike hit alleged militants in a car fleeing Loder, Reuters added. This strike came as Yemen government forces celebrated driving insurgents out of the land around Loder, the scene of fierce battles between militants and forces loyal to the government.

Type of action: Airstrike, possible US
Location: Shaqra, Abyan province
References: Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Associated Press, CNN

Anti-drone protestors take to the streets in Chicago, May 2012 (World Can’t Wait/ Flickr)

YEM080
May 18 2012
♦ 3 killed
♦ 6 reported wounded
Associated Press reported a single Yemeni warplane struck a checkpoint in Shaqra in Abyan province. Three alleged militants were killed and six wounded the agency said.

Type of action: Airstrike, possible US
Location: Shaqra, Abyan province
References: Associated Press

YEM081
May 19 2012
♦ 3-5 killed
As fighting between government and insurgent forces continued in the south of Yemen a local official told Reuters three alleged militants were killed in an air strike in the vicinity of Jaar. Military officials told Associated Press that Yemeni warplanes had ‘pounded targets some 5 km (3 miles) outside Jaar’ without giving any casualty figures. Local residents told AFP Yemen Air Force jets launched four strikes on Jaar’s western entrance and the Yemen Post reported five militants were killed in ‘several airstrikes’ carried out by Yemen Air Force jets.

Type of action: Airstrike, possible US
Location: Jaar, Abyan province
References: Reuters, Al Arabiya, Oman Tribune, Associated Press, AFP, Yemen Post

YEM082
May 19 2012
♦ 2 killed
A second air strike of the day destroyed a vehicle in the southern province of Bayda. The attack killed the two occupants provincial governor Mohammed al Ameri told the defense ministry website. The dead were alleged militants from Somalia and Yemen. Sources told AFP and Associated Press the strike was carried out by a US drone. The Yemen Air Force is not capable of carrying out such a precise strike, targeting a moving vehicle.

Type of action: Airstrike, possible US drone
Location: Bayda province
References: Reuters, Al Arabiya, Oman Tribune, Associated Press, AFP

YEM083
May 20 2012
♦ 0-9 killed
A factory to the north of Jaar was targeted in an airstrike as fighting in the city continued. Up to nine casualties were reported by Reuters, citing local residents who said a vehicle carrying the bodies of alleged insurgents was seen speeding from the factory. The strike came as an American trainer was seriously wounded. The US team of military instructors were attacked while training the Yemeni coastguard in Hudaida on the Red Sea coast. Ansar al Sharia claimed responsibility for the attack.

Type of action: Airstrike, possible US
Location: Jaar, Abyan province
References: Reuters, CNN

May 21-22 2012
A suicide bomber later named as Haitham Hamid Hussein Mufarih caused carnage in Sanaa during a military parade rehearsal metres from the Presidential Palace. The attack killed over 100 soldiers and wounded at least 300 more. Ansar al Sharia claimed responsibility for the attack, telling Xinhua: ‘The sophisticated operation was designed to target Defense Minister Mohammed Nasser Ahmed and the US advisers who operate the war against our families in Abyan province in southern Yemen. This is only the beginning of Jihad,’ the group vowed.’ The Defense Minister was unhurt in the blast. A security official told AFP that two men were arrested shortly afterwards wearing belts ‘each packed with 13 kilograms’ of explosives. The Yemen Observer later reported their names as Mohammed Nahshal and Jihad Saeed Al Austa. One Yemeni investigator told Reuters that preliminary findings suggested the bomber, who was dressed in army uniform, was a rogue soldier recruited by militants who had evaded security checks. Ahmed Sobhi, a soldier who witnessed the explosion, described the carnage to the Associated Press:

There are piles of torn body parts, limbs and heads. This is unbelievable. I am still shaking. The place turned into hell. I thought this only happens in movies.

The parade went ahead the following day. President Abdullah Mansur Hadi attended but was flanked by heavy security. ‘The war on terrorism will continue until it is uprooted and annihilated completely, regardless of the sacrifices,’ he said in an address. President Obama told a press conference at the NATO summit in Chicago: ‘We are going to continue to work with the Yemeni government to try to identify AQAP leadership and operations and try to thwart them.’ He added that ‘there’s no doubt that in a country that is still poor, that is still unstable, it is attracting a lot of folks that previously might have been in FATA [in Pakistan] before we started putting pressure on them there.’ Following the attack President Hadi fired a number of top security officials. General Ammar Saleh was sacked as director of the National Security Bureau, with head of central security Abdul Malik al Tayyeb also dismissed.

Type of action: Suicide bombing
Location: Sanaa
References: Sky (Australia), Reuters, Al Jazeera, Associated Press, Al Jazeera, CNN, BBC, New York Times (via Boston Globe), UPI, Zeenews, Channel 4 News, Xinhua, AFP, BNO News, AFP, Yemen Observer

YEM084
May 27 2012
♦ 7+ killed
In a series of strikes on the south of Yemen at least seven alleged militants were killed when a factory in Jaar was bombed reported Reuters. The factory targeted was to to the west of the city and was allegedly a base used by Ansar al Sharia.

Type of action: Airstrike, possible US
Location: Jaar, Abyan province
References: Reuters

YEM085
May 27 2012
♦ 10 killed
In a second strike of the day a house allegedly used as a meeting place by AQAP militants was ‘pounded‘ by warplanes reported Xinhua. Ten alleged AQAP fighters were killed including two local leaders according to a tribal chief.

Type of action: Airstrike, possible US
Location: Jaar, Abyan province
References: Xinhua

YEM086
May 27 2012
♦ 6 killed
The third strike of the day on Jaar destroyed a pick-up truck. The attack killed the six occupants, all AQAP militants reported Xinhua. The Yemen Air Force reportedly lacks the ability to launch precision strikes on moving vehicles which casts doubt on whether the airstrikes were carried out by Yemen or US forces.

Type of action: Airstrike, possible US drone
Location: Jaar, Abyan province
References: Xinhua

YEM087
May 28 2012
♦ 3-5 killed
♦ 4 reported wounded
♦ 0-2 civilians killed
Up to five alleged militants were killed and four wounded in a possible drone strike in the centre of the country. Anwar al Awlaki‘s brothers-in-law Qaed and Nabil al Dahab were targeted but survived. A government official told Xinhua they were hit ‘while travelling from the area of Manasih to al Himmah near the town of Radda in al Bayda.’ According to the Associated Press the al Dahabs’ sister was al Awlaki’s wife. Qaed al Dahab is reportedly AQAP’s Bayda provincial leader. Xinhua reported Qaed and his brother Nabil inherited command of the AQAP branch in the province after Yemeni intelligence officers killed its leader, their brother, Sheikh Tariq al Dahab in February. A tribal source told AFP that ‘Dahab survived but five of his guards were killed.’ The Yemen Defence Ministry told Reuters ‘several militants’ were killed in the strike but the agency quoted an SMS message from militant group Ansar al Sharia saying the strike resulted in ‘the deaths of two bystanders and one [militant] brother.’ A local official told Reuters a militant commander and his brother were the targets of the strike, but both survived.

The Washington Post later quoted US intelligence officials as questioning whether the men represented an ‘imminent threat‘ to US interests:

“It’s still an open question,” a U.S. counterterrorism official said. The siblings were related by marriage to Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaeda operative killed in September, but they have not been connectedto a major plot. Their focus has been “more local,” the official said. But “look at their associations and what that portends.”

Type of action: US drone strike
Location: Manaseh, Bayda province
References: Associated Press, AFP, Reuters, The Guardian, Yemen Post, Xinhua, Al Jazeera, Washington Post

YEM088
May 28 2012
♦ 5 killed
In the second strike of the day five alleged militants were killed in the eastern province of Hadhramout, including local commander Saleh Abdul Khaleq Ali Jaber. Local media later named others killed as Hussein Rabi, Malik Bakotain and Muhammad Al Saqqaf. A fifth badly burnt body was not identified. Media reported that the strike targeted a vehicle carrying the men to the provincial capital al Mukalla from Azan, a town in the Ansar al Sharia-controlled province of Shabwa. Local sources told the Yemen Post the attack was launched by a US drone. But others contradicted this, telling the newspaper the missiles were fired from a ship off the Yemeni coast. The Associated Press also reported conflicting accounts, with security officials saying the attack was an airstrike and military officials calling it a naval operation. AFP reported that the attack was carried out by the Yemen Air Force although the air force reportedly lacks the technical ability to carry out a precision strike on a moving vehicle.

Type of action: Possible airstrike, US drone strike or naval strike
Location: Al Mukalla, Hadhramout province
References: Yemen Post, Reuters, Associated Press, Sacramento Bee, AFP, Xinhua, AFP, Al Jazeera, Mukalla Star (Arabic)

One of two Coastguard vessels delivered to Yemen by US in March 2012 (US Coastguard/ Flickr)

June

YEM089
June 1 2012
♦ 11-12 killed
Local officials and residents told agencies that a US drone had killed 11 -12 men they suspected of being Islamic militants, who were meeting at a house (or ‘communications compound’) in al Mahfad. Residents told Xinhua: ‘For the first time, several foreigners were killed by the air strike that targeted an al-Qaida complex in Mahfad.‘ Three of the dead were Somali. it was claimed, with the drone allegedly firing three missiles onto the compound.

Type of action: Possible drone strike
Location: al-Mahfad, Abyan province
References: Reuters, Xinhua

June 3 2012
The Washington Post reported what had long been suspected: that US conventional aircraft were involved in airstrikes in Yemen alongside drones. National security correspondent Greg Miller reported:

The airstrikes in Yemen this year have been split fairly evenly between operations carried out by CIA Predators and those conducted by JSOC using Reapers and other drones as well as conventional aircraft, U.S. officials said.

The report also said that High Value Targets were no longer the US’s sole objective in Yemen. ‘Officials said the campaign is now also aimed at wiping out a layer of lower-ranking operatives through strikes that can be justified because of threats they pose to the mix of U.S. Embassy workers, military trainers, intelligence operatives and contractors scattered across Yemen.’

On the same day it was reported that a number of air strikes had ‘struck Al-Qaeda hideouts inside Jaar, destroying many buildings.’

Location: Yemen
Reference: Washington Post, Yemen Times

YEM090
June 7 2012
♦ 2 killed
♦ 7 reportedly wounded
Two al Qaeda comanders were killed ‘while they were inspecting a checkpoint‘ a local security official told Xinhua. Seven other alleged AQAP militants were reportedly wounded in the attack which the official attributed to the Yemen Air Force. Suspicions that US conventional aircraft were involved in airstrikes in Yemen were confirmed by US officials on June 3. Although the Yemeni armed forces operate strike fighters the force has been described as ‘barely functional’ and having insufficient equipment to defend its own airspace.

Type of action: Airstrike, possible US
Location: Mudiyah town, Abyan province
References: Xinhua, Washington Post

YEM091
June 7 2012
♦ 3 reported killed
An ‘al Qaeda vehicle’ was targeted in a strike near Jaar which residents said was carrying militants and heavy weapons. Xinhua reported witnesses saying some al Qaida militants were believed to have been killed or injured in the attack. Associated Press reported three alleged militants died in the strike. AP attributed the attack to ‘warplanes’ but the Yemen Air Force does not have the capacity to carry out precision strikes on a moving vehicle. US drones are operating in the country and a Washington Post of June 3 confirmed US conventional jets were also flying strike missions in Yemen.

Type of action: Airstrike, possible US drone
Location: Jaar, Abyan province
References: Xinhua, Associated Press, Washington Post

YEM092
June 7 2012
♦ 5 killed
♦ 3 wounded
Five alleged al Qaeda fighters were killed in an airstrike on the eastern outskirts of Jaar. AFP reported three more were injured in the strike attributed to the Yemen Air Force by a local official. Reuters reported the strike hit a weapons cache as the ICRC said Abyan was on the verge of an ‘acute humanitarian crisis.’ This strike came amid a continuing Yemeni offensive in Abyan province against AQAP and Ansar al Sharia. Reuters reported the use of helicopters in the fighting, a departure from Yemeni tactics from the protracted conflict with Huthi secessionists. In battles with the Huthis in the north of the country the Yemen military was unwilling to use helicopters for anything other than transport for fear of losses to small arms fire.

Type of action: Airstrike, possible US
Location: Jaar, Abyan province
References: AFP, Reuters, AFP, Reuters, Rand Corporation

YEM093
June 11 2012
♦ 3 killed
Three alleged senior militants were killed in an airstrike on their vehicle. They were killed ‘while they were moving to oversee the fighting with army troops on the outskirts of Jaar.’ The strike was attributed to Yemeni ‘warplanes’ but the Yemen Air Force has been described as ‘barely functional‘. It lacks the technical capacity or equipment to carry out precision strikes on moving vehicles.

Type of action: Possible drone strike
Location: Jaar, Abyan province
References: Xinhua

YEM094
June 11 2012
♦ 16 killed
As the Yemen military and allied militias continued their offensive on Jaar an airstrike killed 16 alleged militants. Attributed to the Yemen Air Force, it had been confirmed that US strike fighters had been carrying out raids on Yemen. And the Yemen Air Force had been declared incapable of defending its own airspace and ‘barely functional‘ casting doubt on the source of the strike.

Type of action: Airstrikes, possible US
Location: Jaar, Abyan province
References: Associated Press, Washington Post, Reuters

YEM095
June 13 2012
♦ 10-18 killed
♦ ‘Dozens’ reportedly wounded
US drones hit southeastern Yemen, killing as many as 27 alleged militants. In a statement the defense ministry said as many as 30 alleged militants were killed and ‘dozens’ wounded in up to three airstrikes. But a local official subsequently downgraded this estimate. It was not clear if the strikes were by US drones or the Yemen Air Force jets. An alleged militant position, a car, an insurgent weapons cache and a convoy were all said to have been targeted. Reporting was muddled because of intense battles that had taken place in the area. Ansar al Sharia said five strikes by US drones had targeted Azzan province that day. They said the attack had hit a civilians house and a mosque but with no casualties

The previous day Yemeni security forces and local militia had retaken the towns of Jaar and Zinjibar after a year of militant occupation. AQAP and Ansar al Sharia forces had retreated from the towns to Shabwa and ‘several hundred al Qaeda militants are believed to have fled to Azzan.’ US drones had reportedly been active in the region before the strike. Security officials told CNN at least 14 drone strikes had hit targets in Abyan and Shabwa provinces in the preceding two days. One of these strikes reportedly targeted Ansar al Sharia commander Jalal Beleidi’s convoy. The offensive to oust insurgents from Abyan was launched in mid-May with intelligence and operational support from US Special Forces. The campaign, ‘orchestrated by US military advisers and bankrolled by neighboring Saudi Arabia’, had ‘routed’ the insurgents. Yemeni forces had fought alongside local militia, groups of armed civilians who were funded by the Saudis.

Type of action: Airstrikes, possible US drone
Location: Azzan, Shabwa province
References: CNN, AFP, Associated Press, Xinhua, BBC, AFP, al Jazeera, Reuters, Yemen Post

YEM096
June 13 2012
♦ 9 killed
A US drone struck a house and car in Azzan, killing nine alleged militants in the early morning. Coming on a day when Azzan was targeted by multiple airstrikes, a local official said a drone targeted the house with the nine alleged AQAP members within. A medical official confirmed the toll Military officials said a car parked near the house was destroyed in the strike which al Qaeda claimed was carried out by a drone.

Type of action: US drone strike
Location: Azzan, Shabwa province
References: CNN, AFP, Associated Press, BBC, AFP, al Jazeera, Reuters, Yemen Post

YEM097
June 14 2012
♦ Unknown
The Yemen Times reported a US drone strike hit Azzan in Shabwa province, described as AQAP’s ‘last stronghold’ in the province. The reporter Ali Saeed subsequently told the Bureau via email that the strike came on Thursday evening. Casualty figures were unknown he added, because ‘the army has not yet entered the area’ his military source in Shabwa told him.

Type of action: Airstrike, possible US drone
Location: Azzan, Shabwa province
References: Yemen Times

YEM098
June 15 2012
♦ 5 killed
♦ 2 injured
Chinese news agency Xinhua reported an ‘airstrike’ in Shabwa province which killed five alleged militants, including ‘two senior al Qaeda commanders.’ The attack reportedly took place in a ‘mountainous region’ though few other details were given. A local security official told the news agency: ‘We have seen five corpses on a pick-up truck, all of them burned. The injured were taken to an al-Qaida-run hospital in Azzan town in Shabwa. Two groups of al-Qaida militants were hit from the air. Smokes could be seen rising after the air attack.’ The Yemen Times reported the Yemen Air Force carried out several raids on Azzan town on Friday although the paper made no mention of casualties.

Type of action: Airstrike
Location: Shabwa province
References: Xinhua, Yemen Times

YEM099
June 15 2012
♦ 7 civilians reported killed, six of them children
♦ 0-1 injured
A house in Shaqra was hit in a strike that killed six children and one woman. It was ‘not clear whether the Yemeni air force launched the strike, or whether it came from a US military or CIA drone.’ NPR told the Bureau the strike came after Friday prayers. Ali al Armoudi survived the strike and told NPR his four-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter ‘died in his arms on the way to the hospital.’

Type of action: Airstrike, possible US drone
Location: Shaqra, Abyan province
References: National Public Radio, National Public Radio

June 15 2012
In what was viewed by some as a significant move towards greater transparency, the United States officially acknowledged for the first time its military combat operations in Yemen and Somalia. In Yemen strikes are carried out both by the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command, and by the CIA. The partial declassification only refers to JSOC’s attacks. A letter from President Obama to Congress – a six monthly obligation under the War Powers Resolution passed in 1973 – stated:

The U.S. military has also been working closely with the Yemeni government to operationally dismantle and ultimately eliminate the terrorist threat posed by al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the most active and dangerous affiliate of al-Qa’ida today. Our joint efforts have resulted in direct action against a limited number of AQAP operatives and senior leaders in that country who posed a terrorist threat to the United States and our interests.

There were similar references to operations in Yemen. Previously any such details were reported only in a confidential annex to the reports. The Wall Street Journal noted that much of the impetus for partial disclosure came from General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His spokesman told the paper: ‘When U.S. military forces are involved in combat anywhere in the world, and information about those operations does not compromise national or operational security, Gen. Dempsey believes the American public should be kept appropriately informed.’ But the paper also noted that ‘officials said details about specific strikes in Yemen and Somalia would continue to be kept secret.’

The unexpected move by Obama came three days after 26 members of the US Congress wrote to Obama urging him to be transparent on covert drone strikes.They wrote:

The implications of the use of drones for our national security are profound. They are faceless ambassadors that cause civilian deaths, and are frequently the only direct contact with Americans that the targeted communities have. They can generate powerful and enduring anti-American sentiment.

The American Civil Liberties Union, while welcoming the partial declassification of military strikes in Yemen and Somalia, called for further disclosure: ‘The public is entitled to more information about the legal standards that apply, the process by which they add names to the kill list, and the facts they rely on in order to justify targeted killings.’ And Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists told the New York Times: ‘While any voluntary disclosure is welcome, this is not much of a breakthrough. The age of secret wars is over. They were never a secret to those on the receiving end.’

Location: Washington DC
References: The White House, The Pentagon, Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, National Public Radio, AntiWar.com, Bloomberg, New York Times, Letter from US Congressmen, Al Jazeera, CNN

President Obama breaks official silence on Yemen strikes (Official White House/ Pete Souza)

June 18 2012
The ‘mastermind‘ of the Yemeni army’s counter-offensive against AQAP and Ansar al Sharia strongholds in the south of the country was killed by a suicide bomber in the southern city of Aden. Major General Salem Ali Qatan, head of Yemen’s southern command, was killed in his car as he traveled in convoy through the port. The bomber reportedly threw himself onto the General’s car. Up to three of Qatan’s bodyguards were killed in the blast that wounded five bystanders. The Major General’s death came as the Yemeni government announced a series of successes in the counter-offensive. The Yemeni army retook a succession of towns and cities held by AQAP and Ansar al Sharia for up to a year.

Location: Aden
References: Daily Telegraph, Yemen Post, Associated Press, Xinhua, Reuters, McClatchy, New York Times, AFP, Yemen Post

YEM100
June 19 2012
♦ 3 killed
Militant Salah al-Jawhari was killed with two others when his vehicle was destroyed in the south of al-Baida province. Although Yemen’s state news agency claimed that the attack was the work of the Yemen Air Force, Reuters reported local residents as ‘saying a drone had fired missiles at al-Jawhari’s vehicle – indicating it was a U.S. attack.’ Other reports suggested the attack was the work of Yemen’s security services. Al-Jawhari was reportedly a bomb-maker, linked to the May 21 suicide bombing which killed more than 100 soldiers.

On the same day US CENTCOM commander General James Mattis, visiting Sanaa, was reported by the US Embassy to have discussed ‘ways that the United States can cooperate with the Yemeni military to fight the mutual threat of al-Qaida.’

Type of action: Airstrike, possible US drone
Location: Al-Yafea district, al-Baida province
References: Reuters, Associated Press, US Embassy Sanaa, KUNA, AFP, Yemen Times, Yemen Fox

YEM101
June 20 2012
♦ 1 killed
♦ 1 civilian killed
An airstrike by an unknown party in northern Abyan killed Hussein Saleh, a worker with the International Committee of the Red Cross. According to an ICRC spokesman ‘it was an air strike. We have no additional details whatsoever.’ An ICRC spokeswoman told the Bureau by email that Saleh ‘was out side an ICRC vehicle when shrapnel hit him. He died from the shrapnel injuries. The strike did not hit the ICRC vehicle directly.’ Three other ICRC staff with Saleh were unhurt in the strike the spokeswoman added. Another ICRC member told the BBC that it was not clear whether the attack was the work of a US drone or the Yemen Air Force. However a local official told Reuters the strike was the work of Yemeni aircraft. The Yemen military reportedly carried out two other strikes that day. The 35-year old father, whose wife was expecting their fifth child, died while assessing humanitarian needs in the area alongside three colleagues, it was initially reported. Later it was claimed the team was attempting to secure the release of a kidnapped French colleague. He was ‘in charge of networking for all [Red Cross] teams in the south’, according to an ICRC film released six months after his death. Eric Marclay, head of the ICRC delegation in Yemen, said of Mr Saleh:

We are devastated by the tragic loss of our friend and colleague Hussein. He was a very motivated and devoted staff member. He played a tremendously crucial role within his team, helping hundreds of thousands of people in the south, and lost his life while performing humanitarian work.

Type of action: Airstrike, possible US drone
Location: Mahfadh village, Abyan
References: Reuters, BBC, ICRC, Reuters. al Jazeera, CNN, Reuters, Associated Press, ICRC

I Know Where I’m Going from Intercross.

YEM102
June 20 2012
♦ 5-30 killed
♦ 6+ injured
As many as 30 alleged militants were reported killed in a series of airstrikes in southern Yemen. AP reported Yemen military officials as saying that ‘at least six air raids targeted moving vehicles and al-Qaida positions in Mahfad, the last stronghold of al-Qaida in Abyan province.’ While some agencies put the fatality numbers as low as 5, others stated that as many as 30 people died in the attacks. CNN reported a security official as saying the strikes were part of a mopping up operation after the recent offensive.

Hundreds of militants escaped unharmed when government forces retook Zinjibar and Jaar towns. The current operation is to hunt those terrorists down, and today a big number of them were killed.

The mayor of Mahfed Yaslam al-Anburi told reporters that the majority of militants died in two areas: ‘Here were 30 deaths in al-Qaeda ranks for sure. Yemeni aircraft carried out a series of raids against concentrations of al-Qaeda fighters, mainly in the Wadi Dhiman and Dayda valleys, killing 30 and wounding many others.’ In what appears to have been another strike, Al Jazeera reported that ‘a tribal chief said three suspected fighters were killed and four wounded in an air raid targeting a group of al-Qaeda fighters in a desert region between Abyan and Shabwa provinces.’

Type of action: Airstrike, possible US drone
Location: Mahfed, Abyan
References: BBC, Reuters, Associated Press, Al Jazeera, CNN, Associated Press

YEM103
June 25 2012
♦ 3 killed
♦ ‘Some’ reported injured
A US drone has killed three alleged AQAP members, including one senior commander. The identities of those killed were not reported but a security official said a drone fired two missiles on a convoy which destroyed their pick-up truck. Military officials said the vehicles had been pursued by US drones, causing fear among local residents. The vehicle was targeted on a desert road on the edge of the strategically important city of Aden. The convoy was hit as it traveled away from Abyan province. A US intelligence official confirmed American involvement but would not say if it a CIA or military drone carried out the strikes.

The Yemen military had driven AQAP and Ansar al Sharia from their positions in Abyan in the previous week. This was reportedly the first drone strike on a target in the outskirts of of the port. The strike came a day after ten unnamed alleged AQAP members escaped from ‘a heavily guarded’ prison in the Mansoura district of Aden.

Type of action: US drone strike
Location: Aden
References: Xinhua, Xinhua, Yemen Post, UPI, Yemen Fox, Long War Journal

July

YEM104
July 3 2012
♦ 2-5 killed
♦ 2 reported injured
Up to five alleged militants were killed in an evening drone attack. The Defence Ministry said two of the dead were senior AQAP figures named Hussein Rubay and Fahad al-Harithy. It was not clear if one or two drones took part in the strike, and if one or two cars were hit. Witnesses said while four bodies were pulled from the wreckage of the first vehicle. But said ‘the flames were so intense in the second vehicle that no one could approach to check for any casualties.’

The strike came as the Defence Ministry announced it had detained a group of 14 militants from three separate terrorist cells somewhere in the country. The group was made up of ‘four Egyptians, two Jordanians, a Somali, a Tunisian and a man from Dagestan in Russia’s North Caucasus.’

Type of action: US drone strike
Location: Bayhan, Shabwah province
References: Associated Press, Reuters, AFP, Xinhua, Yemen Post, AFP, Yemen Post

YEM105
July 4 2012
♦ 3-13 killed
♦ 7 reported injured
Airstrikes have targeted the only town in Abyan province ‘where jihadists still have a strong presence.’ As many as four airstrikes hit ‘suspected places and hideouts to where [sic] Al-Qaeda members sought shelter.’ The death toll varied with a military official saying three militants died while a local official said 13 were killed. A Pakistani and two other foreign fighters were said to be among the dead. The Defence Ministry told reporters Yemeni strike fighters carried out the attacks. But the Yemen Air Force has been described as ‘barely functional‘ and incapable of even defending Yemen’s airspace. US officials have confirmed American strike jets are flying missions over Yemen from nearby Djibouti.

Type of action: Airstrike, possible US
Location: Mahfad, Abyan province
References: AFP, Associated Press, Xinhua, Yemen Post, Washington Post

YEM106
July 23 2012
♦ 5 killed
♦ Unknown injured
A night time precision airstrike killed at least five in a number of reported ‘air strikes’ in southern Abyan province’s al-Mahfad. The area is said to be the last geographic stronghold of AQAP and Ansar al-Sharia, and AP reported Yemeni media as saying that ‘the militants were consolidating their positions in al-Mahfad, quoting witnesses who said they saw military hardware headed to the area in in trucks.’ Although the attacks were attributed to the Yemen Air Force it is known not to have the technical capability to carry out such strikes. US aircraft and armed drones may therefore have been responsible.

Type of action: Airstrike, possible US
Location: Mahfad, Abyan province
References: Associated Press, Wired

YEM107
July 28 2012
♦ Unknown killed
The Yemen Air Force reportedly bombed two al Qaeda compounds in Abyan province. According to a local resident one of the compounds was a disused militant training site. A security official said:

It was not immediately clear if any of the al-Qaida militants or some of their local leaders were killed in the air strikes. The bombing was in response to Wednesday’s al-Qaida attack on pro-government checkpoints.

The attacks were attributed to the Yemeni jets but the Air Force lacks the technical capability of the to carry out precision strikes. US aircraft and armed drones may therefore have been responsible.

Type of action: Airstrike, possible US
Location: Mahfad, Abyan province
References: Xinhua

August

YEM108
August 4 2012
♦ 3-5 killed
♦ 2 injured
Up to five were killed and two more injured while traveling through east Yemen. A possible US drone targeted the men in an evening strike. ‘A drone fired two missiles at an all-terrain vehicle…killing its five occupants,’ according to a local official. The bodies ‘were found completely burnt with the completely destroyed car’. According to local residents the men were ‘leading members’ of al Qaeda. Security forces sealed off the scene of the strike. In the week following the strike AQAP released the name of one of the dead, Abu al Bara’a al Saya’ari, described as a driver.

The drone strike came after an alleged AQAP suicide bomber killed and injured more than 90 people in Jaar. The bomber attacked a funeral service held at the house of Abdul Latif al-Sayed, leader of the local militia that fought alongside government troops. Al Sayed reportedly defected from al Qaeda before the militants were driven out of Jaar. He survived the blast but two of his brothers were killed.

Type of action: US drone strike
Location: Al Qotn, Hadhramaut province
References: AFP, BBC, AFP, International Business Times, Gulf News, The Hindu, Deutsche Welle, Bloomberg, Associated Press, Al Jazeera, Xinhua, Reuters, Al Arabiya, 9News, Yemen Observer, Saba, Long War Journal

YEM109
August 6 2012
♦ 7 killed
Suspected US drones targeted two vehicles, killing seven in an evening strike. Among the dead was alleged local AQAP leader and bomb-maker Abdullah Awad al Masri (aka Abu Osama al Marebi). While his nationality is not known, his surname, al Masri, was said to indicate he was Egyptian. The state news agency said the other six casualties were all militants. They were named as Abu Ja’afar al Iraqi, a Bahraini, Abu al-Bara’a al Sharori, a Saudi, Abu Musa’ab al Nasri and Abu Hafsah al Mesri, Egyptians, Abu Hafsah al Tounisi, a Tunisian, and Ebrahim al Sakhi, Yemeni.

Some reports said one of vehicles destroyed was a motorcycle ridden by al Masri with one other. An anonymous source said: ‘Four explosions rocked the area, which was overflown by two drones in the evening.’ Residents said they ‘recognised the sound of the drone, which they said had flown over the area for hours before firing the missile.’ On August 15 a jihadist website reported that a Tunisian named as Muhammad bin Muhammad (possibly Abu Hafsah al Tounisi) had died in the attack.

Type of action: US drone strike
Location: Rada’a city, al Bayda province
References: Xinhua, Reuters, AFP, Associated Press, AFP, Saba, Long War Journal, Nasser Arrabyee, Yemen Post, Xinhua, Yemen Times, Yemen Observer, Long War Journal

YEM110
August 7 2012
♦ 2-3 killed
♦ 2 injured
Up to three people were killed and two injured in an evening air strike. Yemeni officials said drones targeted the men which, if confirmed, would be the second US strike on the area in four days. The three men were traveling in ‘a small pick-up truck’ which ‘was completely destroyed at the scene’ according to a security official. The Defense Ministry reportedly described the attack as an ‘air raid’ that killed ‘two militants in a vehicle loaded with large quantities of explosive devices’.

Type of action: Possible US drone strike
Location: Al Qotn, Hadhramaut province
References: Associated Press, Xinhua, Long War Journal, Reuters, Yemen Times

August 8 2012
US chief counter terrorism adviser John Brennan discussed Yemen in an extended speech at the Council on Foreign Relations. In a short section dealing with counter-terrorism operations Brennan stated:

So long as AQAP seeks to implement its murderous agenda, we will be a close partner with Yemen in meeting this common threat. And just as our approach to Yemen is multidimensional, our counterterrorism approach involves many different tools — diplomatic, intelligence, military, homeland security, law enforcement and justice. With our Yemeni and international partners, we have put unprecedented pressure on AQAP. Recruits seeking to travel to Yemen have been disruptive — disrupted. Operatives deployed from Yemen have been detained. Plots have been thwarted. And key AQAP leaders who have targeted U.S. and Yemeni interest have met their demise, including Anwar al-Awlaki, AQAP’s chief of external operations.

Of course, the tension has often focused on one counterterrorism tool in particular, targeted strikes, sometimes using remotely-piloted aircraft, often referred to publicly as drones. In June the Obama administration declassified the fact that in Yemen, our joint efforts have resulted in direct action against AQAP operatives and senior leaders. This spring, I addressed the subject of targeted strikes at length and why such strikes are legal, ethical, wise and highly effective.

Today I’d simply say that all our CT efforts in Yemen are conducted in concert with the Yemeni government. When direct action is taken, every effort is made to avoid any civilian casualty. And contrary to conventional wisdom, we see little evidence that these actions are generating widespread anti-American sentiment or recruits for AQAP. In fact, we see the opposite, our Yemeni partners are more eager to work with us. Yemenese citizens who have been freed from the hellish grip of AQAP are more eager, not less, to work with the Yemeni government. In short, targeted strikes against the most senior and most dangerous AQAP terrorists are not the problem, they are part of the solution.

Location: Washington DC
References: Council on Foreign Relations (transcript), C-Span, Voice of America, Los Angeles Times, Wired, AntiWar, Firedoglake (blog), Yemen Peace Project, Washington Post, AFP, Foreign Policy

YEM111
August 28 2012
♦ 2-3 killed
After twenty days without a reported strike, a suspected drone killed at least two people in vehicle driving from Hadramout to Mareb province. A second car reportedly escaped unscathed. A security source said one of the killed was a Saudi militant named Salim Mubarak Al-Saiary. A provincial security official said ‘a wanted Saudi national who joined al Qaida group in Yemen one year ago‘ was killed in the strike, adding: ‘The U.S. air raid was coordinated with the Yemeni intelligence agency.’ A source in the Supreme Security Committee told the state news agency that Yemeni security and military forces destroyed a car carrying weapons and explosives, killing two. While Yemeni security officials told Reuters it was a drone strike, the defence ministry called it an air strike. However the Yemen Air Force lacks the technical capability to carry out precision strikes.

Type of action: US drone strike
Location: Qahb al-Hisan, Hadramout province
References: Associated Press, Yemen Post, Xinhua, AFP, Reuters, Alsahwah.net, SABA, Al Akhbar, dpa/Trend.az, Reuters, AFP

YEM112
August 29 2012
♦ 6-7 killed
♦ 2 civilians reported killed
As many as seven people were initially reported killed as they travelled through the village of al Qatn. Witnesses said a US drone fired three missiles at car with at least one hitting the target. Local residents pulled ‘charred bodies‘ from the wreckage that were ‘badly mangled by the airstrike‘. There was ‘a huge explosion’ that rocked the area, one local resident said, adding that military aircraft remained hovering ‘over several al-Qaida-held sites in Hadramout’s suburbs.’ The defense ministry said three militants were killed in the strike.

Two civilians were also reported killed in the strike according to Haykal Bafana, the Yemeni lawyer and activist who reported YEM078 in real time on Twitter. The car was targeted between houses, he reported on the social media network. A policeman, Walid Abdullah bin Ali Jaber, and a ‘mosque caretaker/imam‘, Salem Ahmed bin Ali Jaber (pictured right), were killed in their house in Khashamir village. The imam was reported to have delivered anti- al Qaeda sermons in the past. Blogger Nasser Arrabyee later claimed that militants had been visiting the Salafist cleric to threaten him when the strike took place:

The cleric is called Salem Ahmed Ali Jaber, teacher and mosque speaker, in Al Kutn. Jaber is Salafi who studied in the main Salafi center of Saada. And he was always speaking against Al Qaeda. In his recent sermons he said Al Qaeda is against Islam. According to local sources Al Qaeda sent on Wednesday four operatives to the cleric Jaber to blame him and while the five people were in the meeting a US drone came and killed them all.

Residents claimed that up to eight drones were flying over locations across the province that night. Demonstrators took to the streets locally to protest the deaths of civilians, local papers reported. Two days later hundreds more protested. According to Xinhua ‘four prominent tribal leaders also joined the demonstration, shouting “No for killing innocent people” and “End alliance with the U.S government,” witnesses added.’

Type of action: US drone strike
Location: Al Qatn district, Hadramout province
References: Reuters, The News Tribe, Xinhua, Associated Press, AFP, Twitter, Twitter, Yemen Post, Nasser Arrabyee (blog), Mukalla Star (Arabic), Bloomberg, Demmon (Arabic), Yemen Observer, PakObserver, Xinhua

YEM113
August 31 2012
♦ 8 killed
Eight people were killed as they drove through Hadramout province, reportedly local commanders of the Yemen-based al Qaeda offshoot. One report said the men were traveling in an armoured car between Qatan and Khashgha when they were struck at 7.30am. Six bodies were taken to Seiyun hospital while two extremely burnt corpses were left at the scene. The defense ministry said the men were all heavily armed, with a local official speculating that they were on their way to carry out an attack. Local and military officials reported that a US drone carried out the strike (defense ministry officials initially claimed the attack was a Yemen airstrike.)

The Yemen defense ministry subsequently announced that Khaled Musalem Batis (aka Bates or Batees) died in the strike. Batis had been captured previously by security forces but escaped prison during the 2011 uprising. He was described as a top al-Qaida militant wanted for allegedly masterminding a 2002 al Qaeda attack on a French oil tanker MV Limburg. A Bulgarian sailor died in that attack. The day before the drone strike Guantanamo detainee Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed Haza al-Darbi (37) was charged with plotting the Limburg bombing.

Type of action: US drone strike
Location: Hawra, Hadramout province
References: Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Xinhua, Bloomberg, Yemen Post, Gulf News, Associated Press, Nasser Arrabyee (blog), Reuters, PakObserver, Yemen Post, Daily Telegraph, KUNA, Associated Press, The News Tribe

September

YEM114
September 2 2012
♦ 12 killed
♦ 12 civilians reported killed, including 3 children
♦ 4-8 reported injured
US drones or jets killed 12 civilians in a botched attack on an alleged senior militant. The fourth airstrike in six days, the casualties including women and three children according to local sheikh Ahmed Ali. Other locals said a 10-year-old girl and her 40-year-old mother were killed. ‘The bodies were charred like coal. I could not recognize the faces,’ said Ahmed al Sabooli the dead girl’s 22-year-old brother. The airstrike was initially said to have targeted a car carrying alleged militant Abdulraouf al Dahab at 4pm local time. Abdulraouf’s half-brothers Qayid and Nabil al Dhahab survived a US drone strike in May this year (YEM088). They reportedly became local al Qaeda leaders in Radaa after Yemeni intelligence services killed their brother Sheikh Tariq al Dahab in February.

A provincial police official, tribal officials and local residents said that a minibus was hit by mistake, killing civilians. At first military officials said Yemen Air Force jets killed civilians returning to their village based on faulty intelligence. However the Yemen Air Force lacks the technical capability to carry out a precision strike on a moving target, and the Yemen Post reported that the attack was the work of US drones. Eyewitnesses also reported that a drone carried out the strike. In December 2012 US officials acknowledged responsibility for the attack. They told the Washington Post a ‘Defense Department aircraft, either a drone or a fixed-wing warplane’ carried out the strike. Witnesses told the paper they saw three aircraft over the strike, two of them Yemeni.

Witnesses also told Human Rights Watch researcher Letta Tayler that drones and jets were over the area on the day of the strike. Their testimony and the shrapnel they recovered from the site pointed to US involvement but could not determine if the drones or strike fighters launched the attack. Recounting the aftermath of the strike, a local sheikh Nawaf Massoud Awadh told Tayler: ‘About four people were without heads. Many lost their hands and legs…These were our relatives and friends.’ The dead were named by Al Masdar as

Abdullah Muhammad Ali AlQadari (25 years)
Mabrook Mouqbal Al Qadari (13 years)
Nasser Salah (60 years)
Raselah Ali (55 years, Nasser Salah’s wife)
Daolah Nasser (10 years, Nasser Salah’s daughter)
Abdullah Ahmed AbedRabbo Robich (28 years)
Saddam Hussein Mohamed Massad (28 years)
Ismail Mabkhout Mohamed (30 years)
AbedalGhani Mohammed Mabkhout (12 years)
Masoud Ali Ahmed Mouqbal (45 years)
Jamal Mohammed Abad (30 years)

The injured were listed as the driver Nasser Mabkhout, Mohammed Abdo Jarallah and Sultan Ahmed Mohammed Sarhan (27). The victims’ families, joined in protests by hundreds of others, ‘vowed to retaliate‘. As CNN reported:

Families of the victims closed main roads and vowed to retaliate. Hundreds of angry armed gunmen joined them and gave the government a 48-hour deadline to explain the killings, which took place on Sunday. Eyewitnesses said that families attempted to carry the victims’ corpses to the capital, Sanaa, to lay them in front of the residence of newly elected President Abdurabu Hadi, but were sent back by local security forces. “You want us to stay quiet while our wives and brothers are being killed for no reason. This attack is the real terrorism,” said Mansoor al-Maweri, who was near the scene of the strike.

Yemen’s government later established a commission of inquiry into the deaths, the worst civilian tally since May. However three months after the strike complained that ‘the government is trying to kill the case’ and that ‘the government wants to protect its relations with the US.’ Xinhua reported that a number of MPs ‘summoned Interior Minister Mohammed Qahtan to an emergency meeting to clarify over the civilian casualties of the U.S. drone strike’ and that Minister of Human Rights Houria Mash’hour ‘condemned the “U.S. meddling” in Yemeni internal affairs, saying that most casualties of the U.S. drones were civilians and calling for an immediate end to the U.S. interference and drone strikes.’ US chief counter terrorism adviser John Brennan also spoke with President Hadi on September 4, though it is not known if the Radaa strike was discussed.

Type of action: US Airstrike, possible US drone or aircraft
Location: Radaa, al Bayda province
References: Reuters, KUNA, AFP, al Jazeera, Xinhua, Associated Press, Yemen Post, Bloomberg, Voice of Russia/RIA, CNN, Mareb Press (Arabic), AFP , Yemen Post, Saba, Saba, Xinhua, al-Sahwa, Al Masdar (Arabic), CNN, Washington Post, Foreign Policy, McClatchy

YEM115
September 5 2012
♦ 5-6 killed
♦ 3 injured
♦ 0-1 civilians reported killed
Up to six people were killed and three injured when a US drone reportedly fired eight missiles a house in Hadrhamout. As many as four of the dead were reportedly civilians, three foreigners and one Yemeni. The strike came at dawn the day after Yemen’s government announced a commission of inquiry into the civilian deaths from a US drone strike (YEM114). An anonymous US intelligence official confirmed a US drone carried out the strike. A Yemeni security official said ‘none of those killed were on the government’s list of most-wanted terrorists.’ The anonymous official told CNN:

Those killed were mostly new al Qaeda members who were seeking to recruit more fighters from within the province. Only one of those killed had been with the network for more than three years.

Initial reports said that two middle-ranking or senior members of the local branch of al-Qaida were also among the dead, and a Yemeni military official said a ‘senior al-Qaida member‘ named as Murad Ben Salem was killed in the strike. However, an anonymous source told the Bureau that Murad, while he may have had militant links, was a worker in a nearby sesame oil press. The source also reported that two foreign al Qaeda members were killed, an Iraqi and a Syrian. Other reports said a second Saudi and an Iraqi were among the dead. Witnesses said eight men escaped the building. ‘Weapons found in the house after the attack are enough to conduct more than a dozen terrorist operations,’ according to a senior security official. Reuters was the sole agency later to report that AQAP number two Said al Shehri died in the attack. All others reported that the strike took place on September 10.

Type of action: US drone strike
Location: Al Ain village, Hadramout province
References: Reuters, AFP, Associated Press, Reuters, Xinhua, DPA, Mareb Press (Arabic), Bloomberg, CNN, Al-Akhbar, AntiWar.com, Nasser Arrabyee (blog), Long War Journal

Protests took place in three Yemen cities to demand an end to US drone strikes on September 7

YEM115a
September 8 2012
♦ 4 killed
The Yemen Observer was the sole source to report that US drones killed four people including the brother of an al-Qaeda leader the US had attempted to kill days earlier. Abdulraoof Ahmad Nasser al-Thahab was supposedly driving his car in the Qaifa area of Radaa when a drone attacked him.

“Information right now indicates that Abdulraoof along with three other al-Qaeda members were killed while they were outside Radaa’,” said the officer on anonymity condition. The officer said the attack that took place in Almanasih area of Qaifah, al-Qaeda main stronghold.

Type of attack: Possible airstrike/ drone strike
Location: Qaifa near Radaa
References: Yemen Observer

YEM116
September 10 2012
♦ 6-15 killed
♦ 3 injured
Seven people including AQAP’s second-in-command Said al Shehri (aka al Shihri) were reportedly killed in a strike on a car and house in Hadrhamout, eastern Yemen, according to US and Yemeni officials. Al Shehri had previously survived a drone strike in September 2011 (YEM030). He ‘was prisoner number 327 at Guantanamo Bay, captured as he tried to cross the border into Pakistan from Afghanistan late in 2001.’ In 2007 he was released, returning to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, where he was put through a rehabilitation program. However within months he reportedly absconded, becoming a founding members of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. He was suspected of involvement in a 2008 car bomb attack on the US embassy in Sanaa. Sixteen died, including the six attackers. A diplomat told the FT al Shehri was ‘the senior leadership figure in AQAP who was involved in external attack planning.’ Katherine Zimmerman said al Shehri’s death would have a medium-term impact on AQAP but it ‘still has room to maneuver in Yemen’ and ‘its operational network is largely intact.’

The Press Association initially reported Yemeni military officials as saying that ‘a local forensics team had identified al-Shehri’s body with the help of US forensics experts on the ground.’ The agency added:

Yemeni military officials said they had believed the United States was behind the operation because its own army does not the capacity to carry out precise aerial attacks and because Yemeni intelligence-gathering capabilities on al-Shehri’s movements were limited.

However an anonymous Yemeni official subsequently told Asharq al Awsat: ‘Saeed Ali al Shehri was not killed in the raid that targeted a number of Al-Qaeda’s fighters in Dadramawt a few weeks ago.’ The source told the London-based paper DNA tests had shown a corpse was not that of al Shehri. He said authorities ‘were confused because of a wound on the leg of the deceased that matched a wound that al Shehri has that requires him to use a walking stick.’ The paper reported that DNA samples were taken from ’15 bodies of al Qaeda members who were killed in the air raid and who are still yet to be identified.’ But it was subsequently claimed that DNA tests had not yet been carried out. An ‘American-German’ team was said to have been coming to Yemen to carry out the tests. Sources in Abyan also told the Yemen Observer al Shehri was still alive, 10 days after the strike. One said al Shehri was not at the scene of the strike. A second said ‘I am one hundred percent sure he [al Shehri] is alive. So close sources from al Shehri have also affirmed he is still alive.’ The following month, a recording purporting to be al Shehri emerged, in which he claimed the false rumours of his death were ‘to cover up the killing of innocent Muslim civilians’.

Type of action: Possible US drone strike
Location: Al Ain village, Hadramout province
References: Reuters, Associated Press, BBC, NBC News, Nasser Arrabyee (blog), Associated Press, CNN, Voice of America, IBT, Daily Telegraph, Press Association, Fox News, Xinhua, AFP, New York Times, New York Times, Reuters, Financial Times, American Enterprise Institute, AP (video), Asharq Al-Awsat, Yemen Post, Yemen Observer, Yemen Post, Associated Press

September 11 2012
A car bomb tore through the Yemeni defense minister’s convoy, killing 12. Seven bodyguards and five bystanders died but the minister Major General Mohammed Nasser Ahmed survived. The blast wounded 15 people on a main road between the cabinet office and state radio station. Reporting from the scene of the blast, journalist Iona Craig tweeted: ‘Body parts blasted into trees. Really grim scenes.’ But 11 hours later she posted on the social network: ‘Amazed to see Yemen’s Defence Minister out and about tonight in Sana’a after his close call earlier today.’ This was reportedly the fourth attempt on the defense minister’s life since the new government formed in December 2011. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. The New York Times reported journalists on social media were speculating the attack was AQAP’s revenge for the death of their leader, Said al Shehri, the previous day (YEM116). State television reported Ali al Ansi, the head of the National Security Agency, was fired after the attack.

Location: Sanaa
References: New York Times, Reuters, New York Times, Twitter, Twitter

YEM117
September 20 2012
♦ 2-4 killed
♦ 3 injured
An airstrike killed at least two people in Abyan province. A local official told Xinhua: ‘Fighter jets of the Yemeni air forces pounded a gathering of the al-Qaida militants on the eastern outskirts of Mahfad town in Abyan.’ The men killed in the strike were said to have been ‘al-Qaida insurgents believed to be behind a series of deadly attacks in Abyan.‘ The Air Force lacks the technical capability of the to carry out precision strikes. US aircraft and armed drones may therefore have been responsible. A Yemeni news website reported the strike was carried out by a US drone. If true this would be the first drone strike since the US embassy in Sanaa was attacked during protests at a YouTube video widely condemed as offensive to Muslims. The strike came two days after the Yemen government announced a new counter terror strategy in al Mahfad to target militants who fled Zinjibar and Jaar after the US-backed Yemeni offensive earlier in the year.

Type of action: Airstrike, possible US drone strike
Location: Al Mahfad, Abyan province
References: Xinhua, Aden al Ghad (Arabic), Al Sahwah, Guardian

September 20 2012
Victims of the botched Rada’a strike of September 2 (YEM115) were buried in Dhamar, 100km south of Sanaa. Eleven civilians were killed, including three children, when missiles from a suspected US drone hit their minibus. It was reported that the intended target had been Abdulraouf al Dahab, a local militant leader.

Location: Dhamar, Dhamar province
References:Reuters, Xinhua

October

YEM118
October 4 2012
♦ 3-6 killed
♦ 2-4 injured
A suspected drone strike targeted suspected al Qaeda or Ansar al Sharia militants in the mountainous desert region of al-Saeed in Shabwa province in the late morning, killing at least three and injuring several others. Local media reported five missiles being fired in a multiple strike. Abu Addarda’a, an Egyptian militant, was among at least three who died in the attack, local sources reported. Akhbar al-Youm (Arabic) named the others killed as Sa’ad Atef al Awaliqi (aka Saad bin Atek), leader of al Qaida Azzan Emirate in Shabwa; Mosa’ad al Habishi (aka Hajir al Barasi), a field commander; a ‘Saudi militant’ and two unidentified alleged militants from Hadramout province. Al Awlaki and al Habishi were members of the Awlaqi tribe, tribal leader Abdulmajid al Awlaqi told AFP. Abu al Zubair (aka Adel al Abab), described as fourth-in-command of AQAP, was also killed, according to a report in Quds al Arabi a fortnight after the strike. A local tribal chief told AFP that al Abab had jumped out of his car and run away when he saw a drone ‘but he was hit in the head by a shrapnel.’ He added:

We buried Abab and an Egyptian comrade in a cemetery in Saeed, while other dead (militants) were taken to their villages

AP and AFP reported that the strike targeted two vehicles of alleged militants, killing all passengers in one of the vehicles. But a local official speaking to ANI/Xinhua added that missiles hit ’al-Qaida-held [sic] sites successfully’ in addition to vehicles, and quoted locals saying the strike targeted a gathering of al Qaeda in the region. The militants had weapons and explosives in the vehicle, an anonymous security official said, adding that two militants had been injured and one had escaped. A separate security official told the agency: ‘U. S. drones were behind Thursday’s air bombing’, while witnesses reported seeing two warplanes over the area and military helicopters pursuing vehicles, as well as hearing rocket fire. Local media showed photographs of a car alleged to have been destroyed in the attack.

On the same day the US State Department re-classified Ansar al-Sharia as an alias of al Qaeda. According to a statement,

AAS – which is based in Yemen and is a separate entity from Ansar al-Shari’a in Libya – was established to attract potential followers to shari’a rule in areas under the control of AQAP. However, AAS is simply AQAP’s effort to rebrand itself, with the aim of manipulating people to join AQAP’s terrorist cause. AAS has publicly stated that the particular brand of shari’a they hope to implement is the same as that espoused by the Afghan Taliban and the Islamic State of Iraq, a militant umbrella group and designated Foreign Terrorist Organization that includes al-Qa’ida in Iraq.

Type of action: Air strike, possible drone strike
Location: Al-Saeed, Shabwa
References: AP, AFP, ANI/Xinhua, Aden Tomorrow (Arabic), Barakish (Arabic), 9 News, Reuters, Alahale (Arabic), Wall Street Journal, US State Department statement, CNN, Yemen Post, Akhbar al-Youm (Arabic), Yemen Ministry of Defence, Al Quds (Arabic), AFP, Xinhua, Long War Journal, Long War Journal, AFP

YEM119
October 18 2012
♦ 7-9 killed
♦ Several injured
In a dawn attack, a series of missiles were fired at a targets on the outskirts of Jaar, apparently targeting al Qaeda militants on the verge of launching a suicide attack on military targets. Two of those killed were wearing explosive belts, security sources told Reuters; anonymous officials confirmed to AP that the strikes ‘followed tips from locals of an imminent al-Qaida attack on the town’. Reuters reported three separate strikes targeted a farmhouse, although ANI/Xinhua claimed the strikes hit two separate gatherings of alleged al Qaeda militants and AP quoted locals saying they had seen two cars ablaze. An unnamed official and residents claimed the missiles were fired by a US drone, although eyewitnesses told ANI/Xinhua they had seen military planes flying overhead at the time of the attack. The Yemeni Ministry of Defence claimed the attack was carried out by the Yemeni 119th Infantry Brigade, although it is common for the Yemeni government to claim responsibility for attacks carried out by the US on its turf.

Residents told Reuters they had found ‘six charred bodies and the scattered remains of three others’, while AP and others reported ’at least seven’ killed. Several sources named Nader al-Shaddadi, who was said to be a senior al Qaeda militant, as being killed; Barakish and Aden al Ghad both named Morsel Mohsen Hassan and Kamal Ali Abker as being killed. Barakish also named Adan Ahmed Ali al Sha’ar and Awadh Hamman, adding that four further bodies had not been identified. Aden al Ghad named Abdullah Hussein Yousif Somali, Arfan al Shaher and Mohammed al Shaher. Reuters later said that five of the alleged militants killed were local teenagers. After the attack, there were reports that ’hundreds of Jaar’s residents, both men and women, gathered in front of the headquarters of the resistance committees in Jaar and fired in the air to celebrate Shadadi’s death. One resident told AFP that Shadadi, a Jaar resident himself, “had brought great harm to our city and he is responsible for all the devastation and the war” in the area.’

Type of action: Air strike, possible drone strike
Location: Jaar
References: Associated Press, AFP, AFP, ANI/Xinhua, Reuters, Barakish (Arabic), Aden al Ghad (Arabic), 26 September (Arabic) Al Jazeera, BNO News, Yemen Post, New York Times, Long War Journal, Saba, Reuters

YEM120
October 21 2012
♦ 4 killed
An evening strike on a car killed ‘at least four’ alleged al Qaeda members in Maarib province, several miles outside Maarib city, sources reported. Local al Qaeda commander Sanad Ouraidan al Aqili (aka Sanad Abdulla al Aqili) was reported to be among the dead. ‘Aqili’s three companions, whose bodies were blown to pieces, have not been identified yet,’ a local policeman told AFP. ‘A warplane targeted a car in the Wadi Abida area that was suspicious [suspected] of carrying Al-Qaeda militants,’ a local source said, although other tribal sources and Yemeni officials claimed the missiles were fired by a US drone. The Yemen Air Force does not have the technical capacity to carry out precision strikes, or operate at night. Al Aqili’s brother was killed three months before fighting in Abyan province, according to a local sheikh. He told the Yemen Observer that villagers had said al Qaeda used a car to remove the bodies.

Type of action: Air strike, possible drone strike
Location: Maarib
References: Associated Press, AFP, Reuters, Yemen Post, Long War Journal, Xinhua, AFP, Voice of America, Yemen Observer

October 26 2012
The US military confirmed for the first time that armed drones fly out of Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, ‘the busiest Predator drone base outside of Afghan war zone’. In a detailed investigation the Washington Post also revealed about 300 JSOC personnel coordinate counterterrorism operations in Yemen from the 500-acre base. This mission is codenamed Copper Dune. The paper also confirmed that a squadrone of F-15E Strike Eagles ‘fly combat sorties over Yemen’ from Lemonnier. Sixteen drones and four fighter jets take-off or land from the base every day. The aircraft can be over Yemen ‘in minutes’. The investigation also confirmed US Air Force drones from Djibouti were used with CIA drones flown from a secret base in the Arabian Peninsula in the strike that killed Anwar al Awlaki (YEM029).

Location: Djibouti
Reference: Washington Post

YEM121
October 28 2012
♦ 3-4 killed
♦ At least 1 wounded
At least three people were killed in a suspected drone strike in northern Yemen. Local al Qaeda commander Omar Saleh al-Tais (aka Attais) was initially reported killed. But Saada governor Sheikh Faris Manna and an interior ministry official said he was wounded in the strike. Two of the dead were said to be Saudis who officials said they were helping finance al Qaeda activities. The third man was Yemeni according to the Yemeni Ministry of Defence. A Yemeni security official said the drones struck at 10am and a local official said two houses were hit in the attack although other reports said just one was targeted. The strike hit a week after the last recorded attack, on the final day of the Muslim festival of Eid al Adha. A tribal source told AFP it ‘was the first by a US drone in the northern Saada province.’ It was the first airstrike in Saada recorded by the Bureau since January 2010 (YEM006). The state news agency reported militants had been trying to turn Wadi al Abu Jabara into ‘a passageway between Mareb and Jawf in the north and Shabwa and Abyan in the south.’ Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi strongly denounced the strike, calling US operations a ‘vicious campaign against the Yemeni people’.

Type of action: Possible drone strike
Location: Wadi al Abu Jabara, Saada
References: AFP, Reuters, Associated Press, Xinhua, 26 September (Arabic), Xinhua, Long War Journal, SABA, BNO, Yemen Post

November 6 2012
US aid to Yemen grew for the third year in a row, reports Foreign Policy. Also for the third time in as many years, 2012 saw AQAP ‘set a new high in the number of fighters in its ranks. Current estimates range from 1,000 to a few thousand.’ After a decade of ‘on-again, off-again aid to Yemen’ AQAP is stronger than in September 2001.

Location: Washington
Reference: Foreign Policy

November

YEM122
November 7 2012
♦ 2-3 killed
♦ 2-3 reported injured, including 1 child
As many as three people were killed in a suspected US drone strike. Their vehicle was destroyed less than 24 hours after President Obama was reelected for a second term. The men were driving through Beit al Ahan, nine miles outside Sanaa and the birthplace of ousted former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The strike hit the car within site of Saleh’s large compound, reported freelance journalist Adam Baron. Alleged al Qaeda militant Adnan al Qathi (aka al Qadi) and his bodyguards Rabiee Lahib and Radwan al Hashidi were killed. A boy reportedly related to al Qathi was among the wounded. Al Qathi reportedly got out of his vehicle to make a phone call shortly before the strike hit.

Al Qathi was reportedly arrested and sentenced to four years for his involvement in a September 2008 attack on the US embassy in Sanaa. Tribesmen and army officials reportedly obtained his release. However Yemen analyst Gregory Johnsen said of his alleged involvement in the attack:

That is an interesting allegation since the entire cell in that attack came from a single mosque in the Red Sea port city of Hudaydah.

The Los Angeles Times described al Qathi as ‘a mercurial man of many guises, including radical militant, peace mediator, preacher of violence and army general.’ Local media reported al Qathi was a colonel in the powerful 1st Armored Division and related to its commander General Ali Mohsen al Ahmar. In December 2012 President Hadi reshuffled the military chain of command and General al Ahmar, who switched allegiance from President Saleh to the opposition during the 2011 popular uprising, was stripped of command of the 1st Armoured Division.

Al Qathi was a well known figure in Beit al Ahan and his sympathy for AQAP’s cause was no secret – his home ‘sticks out because of a mural on one side that shows al Qaida’s signature black flag’ – but his family disputed reports that he was a militant. They claimed that had they known Qathi was a drone target they would have made him cooperate with the authorities. His brother Himyar al Qathi said: ‘We could have made sure he turned himself in…If Adnan was guilty of any crime, then arrest him, put him on trial.’ Residents said al Qathi could have been captured easily and analyst Abdulghani al Iryani said: ‘It is nearly inconceivable to imagine that he could not have been taken into custody alive.’ A former US intelligence official said al Qathi’s 2008 arrest and release would not have been enough to put his name on an assassination list. And significant questions were raised over the threat al Qathi posed. Yemeni officials said President Hadi had approved the strike on al Qathi after deciding attempting to arrest him in Beit al Ahan would have led to more deaths. The officials told the LA Times they were ‘unaware of any intelligence linking Qadhi to an active plot.’

Sanaa-based analyst Abdulrazzak al Jamal told Xinhua a relative of al Qathi had confirmed to him the three men were killed. He said the strike was carried out by US drones and that drones were seen over the area for three days. A Yemeni security official called the strike a ‘Yemeni-U.S. joint airstrike operation’. But an official at al Daylami air base in Sanaa confirmed the strike took place but said ‘the raid was not carried out by any Yemeni warplane.’ Local tribal leaders told Associated Press the strike was carried out by the Yemen Air Force. But the Yemen Air Force does not have the capacity to launch precision strikes at night. Although the US would not confirm a drone targeted al Qathi, Yemeni officials and local villages said a US airstrike killed him. US drones and F-15E Strike Eagles are known to be flying armed sorties over Yemen from a base in Djibouti. A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on this strike.

Type of Action: Possible US drone strike
Location: Beit al Ahan village, Sanaa province
Reference: Xinhua, AFP, Associated Press, Twitter, Huffington Post, Big Think blog, Marib (Arabic), News Yemen (Arabic), BBC, Washington Post, Yemen Post, Twitter, McClatchy Newspapers, Big Think blog, Los Angeles Times, Critical Threats,Los Angeles Times

November 28 2012
A Saudi Arabian diplomat was assassinated on the streets of Sanaa. Assistant military attache Khaled al Emizi was gunned down with his Yemeni bodyguard Jalal Mubarak Shaiban. An armed group dressed in Yemen security forces uniforms carried out the killing. No group claimed responsibility and although AQAP were suspected they denied carrying out the killing.

Location: Sanaa
References: Global Times, AFP, IBT, BBC, Washington Post, Associated Press, Yemen Times, Reuters, CNN, Al Ahram

December

YEM123
December 24 2012
♦ 2-3 killed
♦ 3 reported wounded
At least two men were killed when a suspected US drone destroyed their vehicle in the southern Bayda province; local press reported the strike took place at around 5pm. It was the first strike in Yemen for 47 days. There was confused reporting of the identity of the casualties. One casualties was described as either a Jordanian or Syrian militant. More was known of a second casualty, a Yemeni. While AFP named him as Abdullah Hussein al Waeli from Marib province, a wanted man ‘after he escaped from prison two years ago’. Associated Press and Reuters named him as Abdel-Raouf Naseeb, a ‘mid-level al Qaeda Yemeni operative’. A Naseeb family member confirmed his death, according to both agencies. Reuters said Naseeb had fled to Bayda from neighbouring Lawdar province earlier in 2012, during a military offensive. And Associated Press and Reuters said he had previously survived the first US drone strike outside Afghanistan. On November 3 2002 (YEM001) a CIA Predator drone killed six men, among them Qa’id Salim Sinan al Harithi – alleged mastermind of the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole – and US citizen Abu Ahmad al Hijazi.

Type of Action: Possible US drone strike
Location: Manaseh, Bayda province
Reference: AFP, Associated Press, Reuters, Reuters, Gulf News, Long War Journal, Yemen Post, Xinhua, Xinhua

YEM124
December 24 2012
♦ 3-5 killed
Up to five more alleged militants were killed in the second suspected US drone strike of the day. The unmanned aircraft reportedly fired three missiles on the men riding motorcycles and armed with pistols according to one source. The strike hit east of the provincial capital Mukalla, described by an anonymous local official as: ’An area that is widely believed to be the main operating base of al-Qaida members in Hadramout’. It was the first strike on the eastern Hadramout province recorded by the Bureau for 15 weeks (YEM113). Gulf News quoted an unnamed senior security official saying: ‘Four of the people died at the scene and the fifth suffered heavy injuries and died later on in hospital. We do not know whether they are members of Al Qaida or not. Shiher residents suspect that there are outsiders.’ Two of those killed were later named on the Ansar al-Mujahideen site as Abdullah Bawazir and Nabil al Kaldi.

Type of Action: Possible US drone strike
Location: Shehr, Hadramout
Reference: AFP, Reuters, Gulf News, Long War Journal, Xinhua, Long War Journal, Yemen Post

by The Bureau | Published in Bureau Stories, Covert Drone War, Covert War on Terror – the Data, Drones data carousel

Find this story at 25 December 2012

Latest US strikes: Pakistan December 21 & Yemen December 24

Pakistan

Ob303 – December 21 2012
♦ 3-4 reported killed
♦ ‘Several’ injured
At least three alleged militants were reported killed in an attack on a house in the Mir Ali area, after a pause of 12 days. One source noted that unidentified ‘foreigners’ may have been among the dead. On the same day, a US drone reportedly crashed in South Waziristan.

Location: Hassokhel near Mir Ali, North Waziristan
Reference: Express Tribune, Dawn, The Nation (Pakistan), News Pakistan, Geo TV

Related article: Obama terror drones: CIA tactics in Pakistan include targeting rescuers and funerals

Yemen

YEM123
December 24 2012
♦ 2-3 killed
♦ 3 reported wounded
At least two men were killed when a suspected US drone destroyed their vehicle in the southern Bayda province; local press reported the strike took place at around 5pm. It was the first strike in Yemen for 47 days. Little was known of one casualty – he was simply described as a Jordanian. There was confusion over the identity of another. AFP named him as Abdullah Hussein al Waeli from Marib province, a wanted man ‘after he escaped from prison two years ago’. Associated Press and Reuters named him as Abdel-Raouf Naseeb, a ‘mid-level al Qaeda Yemeni operative’. A Naseeb family member confirmed his death, according to both agencies. Reuters said Naseeb had fled to Bayda from neighbouring Lawdar province earlier in 2012, during a military offensive. And Associated Press and Reuters said he had previously survived the first US drone strike outside Afghanistan. On November 3 2002 (YEM001) a CIA Predator drone killed six men, among them Qa’id Salim Sinan al Harithi – alleged mastermind of the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole – and US citizen Abu Ahmad al Hijazi.

Type of Action: Possible US drone strike
Location: Manaseh, Bayda province
Reference: AFP, Associated Press, Reuters, Reuters, Gulf News, Long War Journal, Yemen Post

YEM124
December 24 2012
♦ 3-5 killed
Up to five more alleged militants were killed in the second suspected US drone strike of the day. The unmanned aircraft reportedly fired three missiles on the men riding motorcycles and armed with pistols according to one source. The strike hit east of the provincial capital Mukalla. It was the first strike on the eastern Hadramout province recorded by the Bureau for 15 weeks (YEM113). Gulf News quoted an unnamed senior security official saying: ‘Four of the people died at the scene and the fifth suffered heavy injuries and died later on in hospital. We do not know whether they are members of Al Qaida or not. Shiher residents suspect that there are outsiders.’

Type of Action: Possible US drone strike
Location: Shehr, Hadramout
Reference: AFP, Reuters, Gulf News, Long War Journal

By The Bureau | Published in Bureau Stories, Drones carousel

Find this story at 25 December 2012

When U.S. drones kill civilians, Yemen’s government tries to conceal it

Dhamar, Yemen — A rickety Toyota truck packed with 14 people rumbled down a desert road from the town of Radda, which al-Qaeda militants once controlled. Suddenly a missile hurtled from the sky and flipped the vehicle over.

Chaos. Flames. Corpses. Then, a second missile struck.

Within seconds, 11 of the passengers were dead, including a woman and her 7-year-old daughter. A 12-year-old boy also perished that day, and another man later died from his wounds.

The Yemeni government initially said that those killed were al-Qaeda militants and that its Soviet-era jets had carried out the Sept. 2 attack. But tribal leaders and Yemeni officials would later say that it was an American assault and that all the victims were civilians who lived in a village near Radda, in central Yemen. U.S. officials last week acknowledged for the first time that it was an American strike.

“Their bodies were burning,” recalled Sultan Ahmed Mohammed, 27, who was riding on the hood of the truck and flew headfirst into a sandy expanse. “How could this happen? None of us were al-Qaeda.”

More than three months later, the incident offers a window into the Yemeni government’s efforts to conceal Washington’s mistakes and the unintended consequences of civilian deaths in American air assaults. In this case, the deaths have bolstered the popularity of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the terrorist network’s Yemen affiliate, which has tried to stage attacks on U.S. soil several times.

Furious tribesmen tried to take the bodies to the gates of the presidential residence, forcing the government into the rare position of withdrawing its assertion that militants had been killed. The apparent target, Yemeni officials and tribal leaders said, was a senior regional al-Qaeda leader, Abdelrauf al-
Dahab, who was thought to be in a car traveling on the same road.

U.S. airstrikes have killed numerous civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other parts of the world, and those governments have spoken against the attacks. But in Yemen, the weak government has often tried to hide civilian casualties from the public, fearing repercussions in a nation where hostility toward U.S. policies is widespread. It continues to insist in local media reports that its own aging jets attacked the truck.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration has kept silent publicly, neither confirming nor denying any involvement, a standard practice with most U.S. airstrikes in its clandestine counterterrorism fight in this strategic Middle Eastern country.

In response to questions, U.S. officials in Washington, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said it was a Defense Department aircraft, either a drone or a fixed-wing warplane, that fired on the truck. The Pentagon declined to comment on the incident, as did senior U.S. officials in Yemen and senior counterterrorism officials in Washington.

Since the attack, militants in the tribal areas surrounding Radda have gained more recruits and supporters in their war against the Yemeni government and its key backer, the United States. The two survivors and relatives of six victims, interviewed separately and speaking to a Western journalist about the incident for the first time, expressed willingness to support or even fight alongside AQAP, as the al-Qaeda group is known.

“Our entire village is angry at the government and the Americans,” Mohammed said. “If the Americans are responsible, I would have no choice but to sympathize with al-Qaeda because al-Qaeda is fighting America.”

Public outrage is also growing as calls for accountability, transparency and compensation go unanswered amid allegations by human rights activists and lawmakers that the government is trying to cover up the attack to protect its relationship with Washington. Even senior Yemeni officials said they fear that the backlash could undermine their authority.

“If we are ignored and neglected, I would try to take my revenge. I would even hijack an army pickup, drive it back to my village and hold the soldiers in it hostages,” said Nasser Mabkhoot Mohammed al-Sabooly, the truck’s driver, 45, who suffered burns and bruises. “I would fight along al-Qaeda’s side against whoever was behind this attack.”

One airstrike among dozens

After Osama bin Laden’s death last year, Yemen emerged as a key battlefield in the Obama administration’s war on Islamist militancy. AQAP members are among those on a clandestine “kill list” created by the administration to hunt down terrorism suspects. It is a lethal campaign, mostly fueled by unmanned drones, but it also includes fixed-wing aircraft and cruise missiles fired from the sea.

This year, there have been at least 38 U.S. airstrikes in Yemen, according to the Long War Journal, a nonprofit Web site that tracks American drone attacks. That is significantly more than in any year since 2009, when President Obama is thought to have ordered the first drone strike.

The Radda attack was one of the deadliest since a U.S. cruise missile strike in December 2009 killed dozens of civilians, including women and children, in the mountainous region of al-
Majala in southern Yemen. After that attack, many tribesmen in that area became radicalized and joined AQAP.

“The people are against the indiscriminate use of the drones,” said Yemeni Foreign Minister Abubaker al-Qirbi. “They want better management of drones. And, more important, they want to have some transparency as far as what’s going on — from everybody.”

The concern over civilian casualties has grown louder since the spring, when the White House broadened its definition of militants who can be targeted in Yemen to include those who may not be well-known.

“We don’t attack in populated areas,” said an Obama administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of discussing the U.S. airstrikes here. “We don’t go after people in dwellings where we don’t know who everyone is. We work very hard to minimize the collateral damage.

“Having said all that, like any programs managed and operated by human beings, mistakes happen. We are not perfect.”

The rise in U.S. attacks came as AQAP and other extremists seized large swaths of southern Yemen last year, taking advantage of the political chaos of the country’s populist Arab Spring revolution. Before that, AQAP orchestrated failed attempts to send parcel bombs on cargo planes to Chicago in 2010 and to bomb a Detroit-bound U.S. airliner the previous year.

In January, AQAP-linked militants briefly seized Radda, placing them only 100 miles south of the capital, Sanaa. But they left after the government, agreeing to their demands, released several extremists from prison. By the summer, the radicals had also been pushed from towns in southern Yemen after a U.S.-backed military offensive initiated by President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who took office early this year after the country’s autocratic leader, Ali Abdullah Saleh, stepped down after 33 years in power.

But today, extremists linked to al-Qaeda are still in and around Radda, as well as in other parts of Yemen, staging attacks on government and military officials.

In recent months, villagers in Sabool, about 10 miles from Radda, said they have heard U.S. drones fly over the area as many as three or four times a day. Some described them as “little white planes.”

“It burns my blood every time I see or hear the airplanes,” said Ali Ali Ahmed Mukhbil, 40, a farmer. “All they have accomplished is destruction and fear among the people.”

On that September morning, his brother Masood stepped into the Toyota truck in Sabool. It was filled with villagers heading to Radda to sell khat, a leafy narcotic chewed by most Yemeni males. After they sold their produce, they headed back in the afternoon.

Nasser Ahmed Abdurabu Rubaih, a 26-year-old khat farmer, was working in the valley when he heard the explosions. He ran to the site and, like others, threw sand into the burning vehicle to douse the flames. As he sifted through the charred bodies on the road, he recognized his brother, Abdullah, from his clothes.

“I lost my mind,” Rubaih recalled.

Mukhbil’s brother Masood also was dead.

‘Trying to kill the case’

Some witnesses said that they saw three planes in the sky, two black and one white, and that the black ones were Yemeni jets. But both missiles struck the moving vehicle directly, and the terrain surrounding the truck was not scorched — hallmarks of a precision strike from a sophisticated American aircraft.

“If you say it wasn’t a U.S. drone, nobody will believe you,” said Abdel-Karim al-Iryani, a former Yemeni prime minister who is a senior adviser to Hadi. “A Yemeni pilot to be able to hit a specific vehicle that’s moving? Impossible.”

The Yemeni government publicly apologized for the attack and sent 101 guns to tribal leaders in the area as a symbolic gesture, which in Yemeni culture is an admission of guilt. But a government inquiry into the strike appears to be stalled, human rights activists and lawmakers said.

For the past three months, lawmakers have unsuccessfully demanded that senior government officials reveal who was responsible for the attack. Yemen’s defense and interior ministries, Hadi’s office, and the attorney general’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Washington played a crucial role in ousting Saleh and installing Hadi, a former defense minister. The United States also provides hundreds of millions of dollars to the military and security forces in counterterrorism assistance. U.S. officials regard Hadi as an even stauncher counterterrorism ally than Saleh.

“The government is trying to kill the case,” said Abdul Rahman Berman, the executive director of the National Organization for Defending Rights and Freedoms, or HOOD, a local human rights group. “The government wants to protect its relations with the U.S.”

After the 2009 strike in al-
Majala, the Yemeni government took responsibility for the assault. “We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours,” Saleh told Gen. David H. Petraeus, who was then the head of U.S. Central Command, according to a U.S. Embassy e-mail leaked by the anti-secrecy Web site WikiLeaks.

Three weeks after the Radda attack, Hadi visited Washington and praised the accuracy of U.S. drone strikes in an interview with Washington Post editors and reporters, as well as publicly. “They pinpoint the target and have zero margin of error, if you know what target you’re aiming at,” he told an audience at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

‘That’s why we are fighting’

The day after the attack, tribesmen affiliated with al-
Qaeda blocked the roads around Radda and stormed government buildings. They set up a large tent and held a gathering to denounce the government and the United States. Fliers handed out around town read: “See what the government has done? That’s why we are fighting. . . . They are the agents of America and the enemy of Islam. . . . They fight whoever says ‘Allah is my God,’ according to America’s instructions.”

At the funeral, some mourners chanted “America is a killer,” said Mohammed al-Ahmadi, a human rights activist who attended.

A few days later, at a gathering, relatives of the victims urged Yemeni officials to be careful about the intelligence they provided to the Americans. “Do not rush to kill innocent people,” declared Mohammed Mukhbil al-Sabooly, a village elder, in testimony that was videotaped. “If such attacks continue, they will make us completely lose our trust in the existence of a state.”

…

By Sudarsan Raghavan, Published: December 25

Greg Miller in Washington and Ali Almujahed in Sanaa, Yemen, contributed to this report.

Find this story at 25 December 2012
© The Washington Post Company

Who is held to account for deaths by drone in Yemen?

There is a history of Yemeni officials lying to protect the US, and the Pentagon and CIA greeting queries with obfuscation

An unmanned US Predator drone takes off on a night sortie. Photograph: AP/Kirsty Wigglesworth

When news flashed of an air strike on a vehicle in the Yemeni city of Radaa on Sunday afternoon, early claims that al-Qaida militants had died soon gave way to a more grisly reality.

At least 10 civilians had been killed, among them women and children. It was the worst loss of civilian life in Yemen’s brutal internal war since May 2012. Somebody had messed up badly. But was the United States or Yemen responsible?

Local officials and eyewitnesses were clear enough. The Radaa attack was the work of a US drone – a common enough event. Since May 2011, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has recorded up to 116 US drone strikes in Yemen, part of a broader covert war aimed at crushing Islamist militants. But of those attacks, only 39 have been confirmed by officials as the work of the US.

The attribution of dozens of further possible drone attacks – and others reportedly involving US ships and conventional aircraft – remains unclear. Both the CIA and Pentagon are fighting dirty wars in Yemen, each with a separate arsenal and kill list. Little wonder that hundreds of deaths remain in a limbo of accountability.

With anger rising at the death of civilians in Radaa, Yemen’s government stepped forward to take the blame. It claimed that its own air force had carried out the strike on moving vehicles after receiving “faulty intelligence”. Yet the Yemeni air force is barely fit for purpose.

And why believe the Yemeni defence ministry anyway? Just 48 hours earlier it had made similar claims. But when it emerged that alleged al-Qaida bomber Khaled Musalem Batis had died in a strike, anonymous officials soon admitted that a US drone had carried out that killing.

There is a long history of senior Yemeni officials lying to protect Barack Obama’s secret war on terror. When US cruise missiles decimated a tented village in December 2009, at least 41 civilians were butchered alongside a dozen alleged militants, as a parliamentary report later concluded.

As we now know, thanks to WikiLeaks, the US and Yemen sought to cover up the US role in that attack. We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours,” President Saleh informed US Central Command (Centcom)’s General Petraeus.

Pakistan’s own former strongman, General Pervez Musharraf, had performed a similar deed for the CIA, with the army claiming early US drones strikes as its own work. A senior Musharraf aide told the Sunday Times, “We thought it would be less damaging if we said we did it rather than the US.” Only when civilian deaths became too unbearable in 2006 did Islamabad end that charade.

Still, dictators may have been better able to rein in US covert attacks than their democratic successors. When US special forces accidentally killed Jaber al-Shabwani, the deputy governor of Yemen’s Marib province in May 2010, Saleh was able to secure a year-long pause in the US bombing campaign.

With new president Abd-Rabbuh Mansour Hadi owing his position to the US he is unlikely to enjoy similar leverage, if Pakistan’s present impotence against CIA strikes is any guide.

The odds of finding out who was really responsible for Sunday’s deaths are not good. At the height of this year’s US-backed offensive against al-Qaida in May, at least a dozen civilians died in a double air strike in Jaar. As onlookers and rescuers came forward after an initial attack, they were killed in a follow-up strike.

The event was reminiscent of CIA tactics in Pakistan, and there is circumstantial evidence that US drones carried out the attack. Times reporter Iona Craig recalls the testimony of one survivor she met in Jaar:

“He didn’t know who carried out the strike but said they didn’t hear any planes or fighter jets before either strike and they dived to the ground when they saw a ‘missile’ with a jet stream of ‘white smoke behind it’, flying through the sky towards them before the second strike happened’.”

Four months on, neither Yemen nor the US has taken responsibility for that attack. According to Haykal Bafana, a lawyer based in Sanaa, “the greatest worry for people here is not only a lack of accountability but a lack of transparency. Civilians at risk in the areas being targeted are being given no information at all about how best to protect themselves.”

There is also the issue of compensation. Yemen’s government has now ordered an inquiry into the Radaa bombing. Yet following the 2009 killing of 41 civilians relatives were compensated with just a few hundred dollars, after details of Centcom’s role were deliberately hidden from that inquiry. In contrast, US forces in Afghanistan not only admitted responsibility in a recent incident, but paid out $46,000 (£29,000) for each person killed and $10,000 for those injured.

There is a growing gulf between what Yemen’s people are experiencing and what their government claims. Bafana says Yemen’s official news agency Saba has only used the word “drone” once since February 2011. A confirmed US strike on August 29 killed not only three alleged militants but a policeman and a local anti-al-Qaida imam, according to local reports. Those civilian deaths remain absent from Saba’s coverage.

…

Chris Woods
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 6 September 2012 12.28 BST

Find this story at 6 September 2012
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Bloody Sunday murder inquiry planned

Police to launch criminal investigation into deaths of 14 people after British paratroopers opened fire on crowd, in 1972

British troops behind a wire barricade in Derry, on Bloody Sunday, when 13 people were killed at a protest march, in 1972. Photograph: Bentley Archive/Popperfoto/Getty Images

A murder inquiry into the Bloody Sunday killings in Derry is to begin in the new year.

Senior commanders from the Police Service of Northern Ireland on Thursday briefed relatives of the 14 people who died after British paratroopers opened fire on demonstrators in the city, in 1972.

Earlier this year, police signalled an intent to investigate the incident after they and prosecutors reviewed the findings of the Saville public inquiry into the controversial shootings. Until now it had been unclear when such an investigation would start.

After the 12-year inquiry, Lord Saville found that the killings were unjustified and none of the dead posed a threat when they were shot.

That contradicted the long-standing official version of events, outlined in the contentious 1972 Widgery report, which had exonerated soldiers of any blame.

…

Press Association
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 20 December 2012 17.31 GMT

Find this story at 20 December 2012

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

ISI enjoys immunity in 26/11, says US

Efforts to bring Pakistan’s former spy masters before a New York court to face charges filed by relatives of American victims in the Mumbai terror attacks are getting nowhere with the US Government taking the stand that the notorious Inter-Services Intelligence and its top brass enjoy immunity under the US Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.

In response to a civil case filed on behalf of the American victims, a top official of the Department of Justice said the United States strongly condemns the 26/11 attacks and believes that Pakistan “must take steps to to dismantle Lashkar-e-Taiba and to support India’s efforts to counter this terrorist threat”.

But the ISI and its former chiefs Shuja Pasha and Nadeem Raj cannot be proceeded against in a US court because of immunity conferred under the American law, Principal Deputy Attorney General Stuart Delery informed the New York court.

In a 12-page affidavit, the official said the State Department has determined that Pasha and Taj are immune because the allegations by the plaintiffs relate to actions taken by them in their official capacities as directors of ISI, which is a fundamental part of the Government of Pakistan.

Six Americans were among the 166 people killed in the Mumbai attacks in 2008. Some, such as Linda Ragsdale of Tennessee, survived the attack. Ragsdale, who had been shot in her back at the Oberoi Trident Hotel, had filed a case in a New York court. Another lawsuit had been filed by the relatives of Rabbi Gavriel Noah Holtzberg and his pregnant wife Rivka.

Following the lawsuit, a US court did issue summons to Pasha, the ISI chief at the time and Lashkar’s top guns including founder Hafiz Saeed. But Pak moved to block the lawsuit by roping in top-notch US lawyers, who sought quashing the case on the grounds that the US had no jurisdiction in the matter. They argued that any US assertion of jurisdiction over Pakistani officials would be “an intrusion on its sovereignty, in violation of international law”.

Ragsdale, in her civil complaint, sought a compensation of a minimum of $75,000 from the ISI. The US Government’s affidavit in the case, filed on Monday, sought to emphasise that while making the immunity determination, it was not expressing any view on the merits of the claims put forth by the plaintiffs.

Besides the former ISI chiefs and Saeed, the case filed in the US court has also named other top Lashkar operatives involved in the Mumbai operation: Zaki-ur-Rahman, Sajid Mir and Azam Cheema.

…

Thursday, 20 December 2012 13:44 S Rajagopalan | Washington

Find this story at 20 December 2012

Copyright © 2011 The Pioneer. All Rights Reserved.

US wants immunity for Pakistanis implicated in attacks that killed 166

The United States government has argued in court that current and former officials of Pakistan’s intelligence service should be immune from prosecution in connection with the 2008 Mumbai attacks. At least 166 people, including 6 Americans, were killed and scores more were injured when members of Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba stormed downtown Mumbai, India, taking the city hostage between November 26 and 29, 2008. The Indian government has openly accused Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) of complicity in the attack, which has been described as the most sophisticated international terrorist strike anywhere in the world during the last decade. Using evidence collected by the Indian government, several Americans who survived the bloody attacks sued the ISI in New York earlier this year for allegedly directing Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Mumbai strikes. But Stuart Delery, Principal Deputy Attorney General for the US Department of State, has told the court that the ISI and its senior officials are immune from prosecution on US soil under the US Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. According to the 12-page ‘Statement of Interest’ delivered to the court by Delery, no foreign nationals can be prosecuted in a US court for criminal actions they allegedly carried out while working in official capacities for a foreign government. The affidavit goes on to suggest that any attempt by a US court to assert American jurisdiction over current or former Pakistani government officials would be a blatant “intrusion on [Pakistan’s] sovereignty, in violation of international law”. It appears that nobody has notified the US Department of State that the US routinely “intrudes on Pakistan’s sovereignty” several times a week by using unmanned Predator drones to bomb suspected Taliban militants operating on Pakistani soil. Washington also “intruded on Pakistan’s sovereignty” on May 2, 2011, when it clandestinely sent troops to the town of Abbottabad to kill al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden. Reacting to the US position, the Indian government expressed “extreme and serious disappointment” on Thursday, arguing that “It cannot be that any organization, state or non-state, which sponsors terrorism, has immunity”. Indian media quoted Foreign Office spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin as saying that all those behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks “should be brought to justice irrespective of the jurisdiction under which they may reside or be operating”.

…

December 21, 2012 by Joseph Fitsanakis 2 Comments

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |

Find this story at 21 December 2012

CIA’s Global Response Staff emerging from shadows after incidents in Libya and Pakistan

The rapid collapse of a U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya exposed the vulnerabilities of State Department facilities overseas. But the CIA’s ability to fend off a second attack that same night provided a glimpse of a key element in the agency’s defensive arsenal: a secret security force created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Two of the Americans killed in Benghazi were members of the CIA’s Global Response Staff, an innocuously named organization that has recruited hundreds of former U.S. Special Forces operatives to serve as armed guards for the agency’s spies.

The GRS, as it is known, is designed to stay in the shadows, training teams to work undercover and provide an unobtrusive layer of security for CIA officers in high-risk outposts.

But a series of deadly scrapes over the past four years has illuminated the GRS’s expanding role, as well as its emerging status as one of the CIA’s most dangerous assignments.

Of the 14 CIA employees killed since 2009, five worked for the GRS, all as contractors. They include two killed at Benghazi, as well as three others who were within the blast radius on Dec. 31, 2009, when a Jordanian double agent detonated a suicide bomb at a CIA compound in Khost, Afghanistan.

GRS contractors have also been involved in shootouts in which only foreign nationals were killed, including one that triggered a diplomatic crisis. While working for the CIA, Raymond Davis was jailed for weeks in Pakistan last year after killing two men in what he said was an armed robbery attempt in Lahore.

The increasingly conspicuous role of the GRS is part of a broader expansion of the CIA’s paramilitary capabilities over the past 10 years. Beyond hiring former U.S. military commandos, the agency has collaborated with U.S. Special Operations teams on missions including the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and has killed thousands of Islamist militants and civilians with its fleet of armed drones.

CIA veterans said that GRS teams have become a critical component of conventional espionage, providing protection for case officers whose counterterrorism assignments carry a level of risk that rarely accompanied the cloak-and-dagger encounters of the Cold War.

Spywork used to require slipping solo through cities in Eastern Europe. Now, “clandestine human intelligence involves showing up in a Land Cruiser with some [former] Deltas or SEALs, picking up an asset and then dumping him back there when you are through,” said a former CIA officer who worked closely with the security group overseas.

Bodyguard details have become so essential to espionage that the CIA has overhauled its training program at the Farm — its case officer academy in southern Virginia — to teach spies the basics of working with GRS teams.

The security apparatus relies heavily on contractors who are drawn by relatively high pay and flexible schedules that give them several months off each year. In turn, they agree to high-risk assignments in places such as Benghazi and are largely left on their own to take basic precautions, such as finding health and life insurance.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said the GRS has about 125 employees working abroad at any given time, with at least that many rotating through cycles of training and off-time in the United States.

At least half are contractors, who often earn $140,000 or more a year and typically serve 90- or 120-day assignments abroad. Full-time GRS staff officers — those who are permanent CIA employees — earn slightly less but collect benefits and are typically put in supervisory roles.

The work is lucrative enough that recruiting is done largely by word of mouth, said one former U.S. intelligence official. Candidates tend to be members of U.S. Special Forces units who have recently retired, or veterans of police department SWAT teams.

Most GRS recruits arrive with skills in handling the weapons they will carry, including Glock handguns and M4 rifles. But they undergo additional training so they do not call attention to the presence or movements of the CIA officers they are in position to protect.

Although the agency created the GRS to protect officers in war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan, it has been expanded to protect secret drone bases as well as CIA facilities and officers in locations including Yemen, Lebanon and Djibouti.

In some cases, elite GRS units provide security for personnel from other agencies, including National Security Agency teams deploying sensors or eavesdropping equipment in conflict zones, a former special operator said. The most skilled security operators are informally known as “scorpions.”

“They don’t learn languages, they’re not meeting foreign nationals and they’re not writing up intelligence reports,” a former U.S. intelligence official said. Their main tasks are to map escape routes from meeting places, pat down informants and provide an “envelope” of security, the former official said, all while knowing that “if push comes to shove, you’re going to have to shoot.”

The consequences in such cases can be severe. Former CIA officials who worked with the GRS still wince at the fallout from Davis’s inability to avoid capture as well as his decision to open fire in the middle of a busy street in Pakistan. The former security contractor, who did not respond to requests for comment, said he was doing basic “area familiarization” work, meaning learning his surroundings and possibly mapping routes of escape, when he was confronted by two Pakistanis traveling by motorcycle.

Davis became trapped at the scene, and his arrest provoked a diplomatic standoff between two tense allies in the fight against terrorism.

The CIA took heavy criticism for the clumsiness of the Davis episode, temporarily suspending the drone campaign in Pakistan before U.S. payments to the families of the men Davis had killed helped secure his release.

By contrast, the CIA and its security units were praised — albeit indirectly — in a report released last week that was otherwise sharply critical of the State Department security failures that contributed to the deaths of four Americans in Libya three months ago.

In Benghazi, a GRS team rushed to a burning State Department compound in an attempt to rescue U.S. diplomats, then evacuated survivors to a nearby CIA site that also came under attack. Two GRS contractors who had taken positions on the roof of the site were killed by mortar strikes.

Among those killed was Glen Doherty, a GRS contractor on his second CIA assignment in Libya who had served in about 10 other places, including Mexico City, according to his sister, Kathleen Quigley.

“Was he aware of the risks? Absolutely,” Quigley said in an interview, although she noted that “he wasn’t there to protect an embassy. He was there to recover RPGs,” meaning he was providing security for CIA teams tracking Libyan stockpiles of rocket-propelled grenades.

Doherty took the CIA job for the pay and abundant time off, as well as the chance to continue serving the U.S. government abroad, Quigley said.

…

By Greg Miller and Julie Tate, Thursday, December 27, 2:00 AM

Find this story at 27 December 2012

© The Washington Post Company

Did general David Petraeus grant friends access to top secret files?

Petraeus was forced out of the CIA in part because his mistress read sensitive documents. Now it is alleged he granted two friends astonishing access to top secret files as he ran the Afghan surge. In a painstaking investigation, Rajiv Chandrasekaran reveals how the volunteers won big donations from defence firms – and how they pushed the army towards a far more aggressive strategy

Frederick and Kimberly Kagan, a husband-and-wife team of hawkish military analysts, put their jobs at influential Washington think tanks on hold for almost a year to work for General David H. Petraeus when he was the top US commander in Afghanistan.

Given desks, email accounts and top-level security clearances in Kabul, they pored through classified intelligence reports, participated in senior-level strategy sessions and probed the assessments of field officers in order to advise Petraeus about how to fight the war differently.

Their compensation from the US government for their efforts, which often involved 18-hour work days, seven-day weeks and dangerous battlefield visits? Zero dollars.

Although Fred Kagan said he and his wife wanted no pay in part to remain “completely independent”, the extraordinary arrangement raises new questions about the access and influence Petraeus accorded to civilian friends while he was running the Afghan war.

Petraeus allowed his biographer-turned-paramour, Paula Broadwell, to read sensitive documents and accompany him on trips. But the access granted to the Kagans, whose think-tank work has been embraced by Republican politicians, went even further.

The general made the Kagans de facto senior advisers, a status that afforded them numerous private meetings in his office, priority travel across the war zone and the ability to read highly secretive transcripts of intercepted Taliban communications, according to current and former senior US military and civilian officials who served in the HQ at the time.

The Kagans used those privileges to advocate substantive changes in the US war plan, including a harder-edged approach than some officers advocated in combating the Haqqani network, a Taliban faction in eastern Afghanistan, the officials said.

The pro bono relationship, which is now being scrutinised by military lawyers, yielded valuable benefits for the general and the couple. The Kagans’ proximity to Petraeus, the country’s most famous living general, provided an incentive for defence contractors to contribute to Kim Kagan’s think tank. For Petraeus, embracing two respected national security analysts in Republican circles helped to shore up support for the war among Republican leaders on Capitol Hill.

Fred Kagan, speaking in an interview with his wife, acknowledged the arrangement was “strange and uncomfortable” at times. “We were going around speaking our minds, trying to force people to think about things in different ways and not being accountable to the heads” of various departments in the headquarters, he said.

The extent of the couple’s involvement in Petraeus’s headquarters was not known to senior White House and Pentagon officials involved in war policy, two of those officials said. More than a dozen senior military officers and civilian officials were interviewed for this article; most spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters. Petraeus, through a former aide, declined to comment for the piece.

As war-zone volunteers, the Kagans were not bound by the stringent rules that apply to military personnel and private contractors. They could raise concerns directly with Petraeus, instead of going through subordinate officers, and were free to speak their minds without repercussion.

Some military officers and civilian US government employees in Kabul praised the couple’s contributions — one general noted that “they did the work of 20 intelligence analysts”. Others expressed deep unease about their activities in the headquarters, particularly because of their affiliations and advocacy in Washington.

Fred Kagan, who works at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, was one of the intellectual architects of President George W Bush’s troop surge in Iraq and has sided with the Republican Party on many national security issues. Kim Kagan runs the Institute for the Study of War, which favours an aggressive US foreign policy. The Kagans supported President Obama’s decision to order a surge in Afghanistan, but they later broke with the White House on the subject of troop reductions. Both argue against any significant drawdown in forces there next year.

After the couple’s most recent trip in September, they provided a briefing on the war and other foreign policy matters to the Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan.

The Kagans said they continued to receive salaries from their think-tanks while in Afghanistan. Kim Kagan’s institute is funded in part by large defence contractors. During Petraeus’s tenure in Kabul, she sent out a letter soliciting contributions so the organisation could continue its military work, according to two people who saw the letter.

On 8 August 2011, a month after he relinquished command in Afghanistan to take over at the CIA, Petraeus spoke at the institute’s first “President’s Circle” dinner, where he accepted an award from Kim Kagan. The private event, held at the Newseum in Washington, also drew executives from defence contractors who fund the institute.

“What the Kagans do is they grade my work on a daily basis,” Petraeus said, prompting chortles from the audience. “There’s some suspicion that there’s a hand up my back, and it makes my lips talk, and it’s operated by one of the Doctors Kagan.”

Before the Iraq war hit rock bottom, the Kagans were little-known academics with doctorates in military history from Yale University who taught at West Point. He specialised in the Soviets, she in the ancient Greeks and Romans.

In 2005, Fred Kagan jumped to the American Enterprise Institute and joined the fractious debate over the Iraq war, arguing against the Bush administration’s planned troop withdrawals. His follow-on research, conducted with his wife and retired General Jack Keane, the former vice chief of staff of the Army, provided the strategic underpinning for the troop surge Bush approved in January 2007. After Obama was elected, he made clear that his strategic priority was Afghanistan. In March 2009, they co-wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times that called for sending more forces to Afghanistan.

When General Stanley McChrystal assumed command of the war that summer, he invited several national security experts to help draft an assessment of the conflict for the Defence Secretary, Robert Gates. The 14-member group included experts from several Washington think-tanks. Among them were the Kagans. The Afghan assessment struck an alarming tone that helped McChrystal make his case for a troop surge, which Obama eventually authorised.

The Kagans should have been thrilled, but they soon grew concerned. They thought McChrystal’s headquarters was not providing enough information to them about the state of the war. The military began to slow-roll their requests to visit Afghanistan. In early 2010, they wrote an email to McChrystal, copied to Petraeus, that said they “were coming to the conclusion that the campaign was off track and that it was not going to be successful,” Fred Kagan said. Worried about the consequences of losing the Kagans, McChrystal authorised the trip, according to the staff members.

After their trip, which lasted about two weeks, the Kagans penned a piece for the Wall Street Journal. “Military progress is steadily improving dynamics on the ground,” they wrote.

“We obviously came away with… a more nuanced view that persuaded us that we were incorrect in the assessment that we had gone in with,” Fred Kagan said in the interview. The Defence Department permits independent analysts to observe combat operations, but the practice became far more common when Petraeus became the top commander in Iraq. He has said that conversations with outside specialists helped to shape his strategic thinking.

The take-home benefit was equally significant: when the opinion makers returned home, they inevitably wrote in newspapers, gave speeches and testified before Congress, generally imparting a favourable message about progress under Petraeus, all of which helped him sell the war effort and expand his popularity. Petraeus called them his “directed telescopes” and urged them to focus on the challenge of tackling corruption and building an effective government in Afghanistan.

When they returned in September 2010, the Kagans’ writ no longer resembled the traditional think tank visit or an assessment mission intended to inform an incoming commander.

They were given desks in the office of the Strategic Initiatives Group, the commander’s in-house think-tank, which typically is staffed with military officers and civilian government employees. The general’s staff helped upgrade their security clearances from “Secret” to “Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information, the highest-level of US government classification.

The new clearances allowed the Kagans to visit “the pit”, the high-security lower level of the Combined Joint Intelligence Operations Centre on the headquarters. There, they could read transcripts of Taliban phone and radio conversations monitored by the National Security Agency.

“They’d spend hours in there,” said one former senior civilian official at the headquarters. “They talked about how much they loved reading intel.”

Their immersion occurred at an opportune time. Petraeus was fond of speaking about the importance of using troops to protect Afghan communities from insurgents, but he recognised that summer that the Obama White House wanted to narrow the scope of the war. As a consequence, the general decided to emphasise attacking insurgent strongholds – and so did the Kagans. They focused on the Haqqani network, which US officials believe is supported by Pakistan’s intelligence service. Haqqani fighters have conducted numerous high-profile attacks against US and Afghan targets in Kabul and other major cities.

The Kagans believed US commanders needed to shift their focus from protecting key towns and cities to striking Haqqani encampments and smuggling routes, according to several current and former military and civilian officials familiar the issue.

In the summer of 2010, they shared their views with field officers during a trip to the east. “They implied to brigade commanders that Petraeus would prefer them to devote their resources to killing Haqqanis,” said Doug Ollivant, a former adviser to the two-star general in charge of eastern Afghanistan. But Petraeus had not yet issued new directives to his three-star subordinate or the two-star in the east. “It created huge confusion,” a senior officer said. “Everyone knew the Kagans were close to Petraeus, so everyone assumed they were speaking for the boss.”

While the Kagans refused to discuss their work in detail — they said it was privileged and confidential — Fred Kagan insisted that they were careful to note before every meeting “that we were not speaking for Petraeus”.

Fred Kagan said he and his wife wanted to facilitate conversations about vital tactical issues, exposing field commanders “to different ideas and different ways of looking at the problem.”

The Kagans are prolific contributors to debates about national security policy, cranking out a stream of opinion pieces and convening panel discussions at their respective institutions. But once they began working for Petraeus, they ceased writing and commenting in public. “When we were in Afghanistan… we were not playing the Washington game,” Fred Kagan said. “We were not thinking about anything … except how to defeat the enemy.”

Although they functioned as members of Petraeus’s staff, they said they did not want to be paid. “There are actual patriots in the world,” Fred Kagan said. “It was important to me not to be seen to be profiting from the war.” Military officials said the Defence Department travel rules permit civilian experts to provide services to the military without direct compensation. A spokesman for the US Central Command, Colonel John Robinson, said that the military was still examining to what extent Petraeus’s arrangement with the Kagans “satisfied regulations regarding civilian services to government organisations”.

The Kagans’ volunteerism was an open secret at the headquarters, and it bred suspicion. Some officers questioned whether they funnelled confidential information to Republicans – a claim the Kagans deny. Others worried that the couple was serving as in-house spies for Petraeus. A colonel who worked for Petraeus said the Kagans “did great work,” but “the situation was very, very weird. It’s not how you run an HQ.”

…

Timeline: David Petraeus

7 November 1952: Born in New York.

1972: Marries Holly Knowlton.

2006: Meets Paula Broadwell, a Harvard graduate.

October 2008: Promoted to head of US Central Command.

June 2010: Appointed head of international forces in Afghanistan.

September 2011: Takes up post as director of the CIA. November 2011: Starts affair with Ms Broadwell.

January 2012: Ms Broadwell publishes book on General David Petraeus.

June 2012: FBI establishes harrassing emails between Broadwell and Jill Kelley.

22-29 October: Petraeus admits to affair with Ms Broadwell, but denies leaking any security information.

9 November: President Obama accepts his resignation.

13 November: General John Allen, the top US commander in Afghanistan, under internal investigation.

Washington Post

Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post
Thursday, 20 December 2012

Find this story at 20 December 2012

© independent.co.uk

Acting CIA Chief shoots down Osama bin Laden film, ‘Zero Dark Thirty,’ as ‘not a realistic portrayal of the facts’

The enhanced interrogation techniques portrayed in the film are being decried as inaccurate.

Acting CIA Director Michael Morell critized “Zero Dark Thirty” as a “dramatization, not a realistic portrayal of the facts” in a letter to employees released Friday.

“Zero Dark Thirty” isn’t getting five stars from the CIA.

The acting head of the agency shot down the highly-anticipated movie that chronicles the hunt for Osama bin Laden in a rare letter to employees, adding to the controversy already brewing over the flick’s factuality.

“What I want you to know is that ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ is a dramatization, not a realistic portrayal of the facts,” Michael Morell wrote in a memo posted on the CIA’s website Friday.

“CIA interacted with the filmmakers through our Office of Public Affairs but, as is true with any entertainment project with which we interact, we do not control the final product.”

Morell slammed the Oscar-contender, which he said “departs from reality,” for suggesting that “enhanced interrogation techniques,” or what some would call torture, “were the key” to locating and killing the Al Qaeda leader.

MOVIE REVIEW: ‘ZERO DARK THIRTY’

The film, which hit theaters Dec. 19, shows agents using waterboarding and other extreme techniques to force Guantanamo Bay detainees to speak.

Jonathan Olley
The film, starring Jessica Chastain, follows the hunt and May 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden by Navy SEAL Team 6.

“That impression is false,” Morell wrote. “And, importantly, whether enhanced interrogation techniques were the only timely and effective way to obtain information from those detainees, as the film suggests, is a matter of debate that cannot and never will be definitively resolved.”

The acting CIA director also blasted “Zero Dark Thirty” for taking “considerable liberties in its depiction of CIA personnel and their actions, including some who died while serving our country.”

“We cannot allow a Hollywood film to cloud our memory of them,” he added.

Morell’s note comes just two days after three senators, Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), John McCain (R-Az.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.), condemned the flick for being “grossly inaccurate and misleading” in suggesting that torture led to the May 2011 killing of bin Laden by Navy SEAL Team 6.

The trio sent a letter to Sony Pictures, the film’s distributor, calling for the studio to add a disclaimer to the film.

…

By Christine Roberts / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Sunday, December 23, 2012, 12:35 PM

MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

Find this story at 23 December 2012

© Copyright 2012 NYDailyNews.com. All rights reserved

Revealed: CIA agents envious of glamorous Hollywood treatment of Jessica Chastain’s real-life relentless Bin Laden tracker ‘Maya’

Upcoming film ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ claims that Bin Laden might not have been found if not for a young female CIA analyst
She devoted the best part of a decade to finding the terrorist
According to colleagues, she was one of the first to advance the theory that the key to finding Bin Laden was in Al Qaeda’s courier network

CIA agents were envious of the glamorous treatment given to the real-lief tenacious operative who tracked Osama bin Laden for the better part of a decade, it was revealed today.

Hollywood starlet Jessica Chastain plays the undercover analyst known as Maya, the woman who eventually finds the location of the then al-Qaeda leader. She is portrayed in a glamorous light – with wardrobes full of designer clothes and an enviable figure.

But the real-life ‘Maya’ didn’t have it as easy as the strawberry-blonde Chastain; despite being one of the key people responsible for bin Laden’s demise, Maya was passed over for a promotion.

Jealousy? Robert Baer, left, said that the CIA was and continues to be a boy’s club, left, Valerie Plame, a former CIA officer herself said that she’d love to get a drink with the real-life ‘Maya’

Former CIA operative Bob Baer told the ‘TODAY’ show that it was unsurprising that the female CIA operative was looked over for a promotion that would have given her an additional $16,000 per annum. ‘It’s an old-boy network,’ he explained.

‘You don’t know why people are promoted, why people are held back, and often people think the worst.’

Valerie Plame, a CIA officer whose identity was leaked, told the show that she admired the operative’s moxy. ‘I’d love to have a drink with her one day,’ she said.

The Washington Post’s David Ignatius told the ‘TODAY’ show that the response from the CIA was not unusual, saying that operatives are often ‘quite contrary,’

The reality of America’s battle against terrorism couldn’t have been more different to the glamorized, politically-correct fiction of Homeland, the hit TV show in which Claire Danes plays a beautiful CIA agent who spots the Al Qaeda plot which her misguided male colleagues have missed.

CIA supersleuth: A attractive young female CIA agent, played by Jessica Chastain in the film Zero Dark Thirty, spent the best part of a decade to finding Bin Laden and became the SEALs’ go-to expert on intelligence matters about their target

The world’s most dangerous terror group foiled by a killer blonde in Calvin Klein who wars with her superiors? Only in Hollywood’s dreams, surely.

But, astonishingly, it has now emerged that truth may indeed be as strange as fiction. According to Zero Dark Thirty, a forthcoming film about the hunt for Bin Laden — whose makers were given top-level access to those involved — he might never have been found if it hadn’t been for an attractive young female CIA agent every bit as troublesome as Homeland’s Carrie Mathison.

CIA insiders have confirmed claims by the film’s director Kathryn Bigelow that she is entirely justified in focusing on the role played by a junior female CIA analyst, named Maya in the film and played by Jessica Chastain. And just as in Homeland, the real agent has been snubbed by superiors and fallen out with colleagues since the Bin Laden raid in May last year.

But who is this CIA supersleuth? Although the woman is still undercover and has never been identified, Zero Dark Thirty’s emphasis on Maya’s importance tallies with the account of a U.S. Navy SEAL involved in the raid who later wrote about it in a book.

Bin Laden hunt: A very different side of the agent was seen days after Bin Laden’s body was brought back. She even started crying

Matt Bissonnette writes in No Easy Day of flying out to Afghanistan before the raid with a CIA analyst he called ‘Jen’ who was ‘wicked smart, kind of feisty’ and liked to wear expensive high heels.

She had devoted the best part of a decade to finding Bin Laden and had become the SEALs’ go-to expert on intelligence matters about their target, he said.

And while her colleagues were only 60 per cent sure their quarry was in the compound in Abbottabad, she told the SEAL she was 100 per cent certain.

‘I can’t give her enough credit, I mean, she, in my opinion, she kind of teed up this whole thing,’ Bissonnette said later.

The commando saw a very different side of her days later when they brought Bin Laden’s body back to their Afghan hangar. Having previously told Bissonnette she didn’t want to see the body, ‘Jen’ stayed at the back of the crowd as they unzipped the terrorist’s body bag.

She ‘looked pale and stressed’ and started crying. ‘A couple of the SEALs put their arms around her and walked her over to the edge of the group to look at the body,’ wrote Bissonnette. ‘She didn’t say anything . . . with tears rolling down her cheeks, I could tell it was taking a while for Jen to process.

She’d spent half a decade tracking this man. And now there he was at her feet.’

Jen’s role in the operation passed largely unremarked when Bissonnette’s book came out but now the new film — which is released in the UK in January — has confirmed his estimation of her importance.

Although she remains active as a CIA analyst, it is believed Mark Boal, Bigelow’s screenwriter, was allowed to interview her at length. It has emerged that she is in her 30s and joined the CIA after leaving college and before the 9/11 attacks turned American security upside down.

On target: The agent was one of the first to advance the theory that the key to finding Bin Laden lay in Al Qaeda’s courier network which led to his compound (pictured is the attack scene in the movie)

According to the Washington Post, she worked in the CIA’s station in Islamabad, Pakistan, as a ‘targeter’, a role which involves finding people to recruit as spies or to obliterate in drone attacks.

But CIA insiders say she worked almost solely on finding Bin Laden for a decade. She was still in Pakistan when the hunt heated up after Barack Obama became President in 2008 and ordered a renewed effort to find him.

According to colleagues, the female agent was one of the first to advance the theory — apparently against the views of other CIA staff — that the key to finding Bin Laden lay in Al Qaeda’s courier network.

The agency was convinced Bin Laden, who never used the phone, managed to communicate with his disparate organisation without revealing his whereabouts by passing hand-delivered messages to trusted couriers.

The agent spent years pursuing the courier angle, and it was a hunch that proved spectacularly correct when the U.S. uncovered a courier known as Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti and tracked him back to a compound in the sleepy Pakistan town of Abbottabad.

Fiesty: Jessica Chastain as agent Maya in Zero Dark Thirty about the hunt for Bin Laden

It was a stunning success for the dedicated agent, though she hardly endeared herself to her colleagues in the process.

As one might expect of a woman working in the largely male world of intelligence, colleagues stress she is no shrinking violet but a prickly workaholic with a reputation for clashing with anyone — even senior intelligence chiefs — who disagreed with her.

‘She’s not Miss Congeniality, but that’s not going to find Osama Bin Laden,’ a former colleague told the Washington Post.

Another added: ‘Do you know how many CIA officers are jerks? If that was a disqualifier, the whole National Clandestine Service would be gone.’

In the film, Maya is portrayed as a loner who has a ‘her-against-the-world’ attitude and pummels superiors into submission by sheer force of will. CIA colleagues say the film’s depiction of her is spot-on.

If this is the case, then she shows little of the feminine tenderness that serves Carrie Mathison so well in Homeland and which Hollywood usually uses to soften female protagonists like Maya.

Instead, the film shows her happily colluding in the torture by waterboarding of an Al Qaeda suspect.

And Navy SEAL Bissonnette reported how she had told him she wasn’t in favour of storming the Bin Laden compound but preferred to ‘just push the easy button and bomb it’. Given that the bombing option would almost certainly have killed the women and children the CIA knew were inside, her comment suggests a cold indifference to ‘civilian’ casualties.

But then the real female agent is hardly your archetypal film heroine. She has reportedly been passed over for promotion since the Bin Laden raid, perhaps adding to her sense of grievance.

Although she was among a handful of CIA staff rewarded over the operation with the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the agency’s highest honour, dozens of other colleagues were given lesser gongs.

Fellow staff say this prompted her anger to boil over: she hit ‘reply all’ to an email announcing the awards and added her own message which — according to one — effectively said: ‘You guys tried to obstruct me. You fought me. Only I deserve the award.’

Although colleagues say the intense attention she received from the film-makers has made many of them jealous, they are shocked she was passed over for promotion and merely given a cash bonus for her Bin Laden triumph.

Glamorised fiction: The reality of America’s battle against terrorism couldn’t have been more different to the politically-correct hit TV show Homeland, in which Claire Danes plays a beautiful CIA agent who spots the Al Qaeda plot which her misguided colleagues missed

She has also been moved within the CIA, reassigned to a new counter-terrorism role.

…

By Tom Leonard

PUBLISHED: 23:54 GMT, 13 December 2012 | UPDATED: 23:54 GMT, 13 December 2012

Find this story at 13 December 2012

© Associated Newspapers Ltd

In ‘Zero Dark Thirty,’ she’s the hero; in real life, CIA agent’s career is more complicated

 

She was a real-life heroine of the CIA hunt for Osama bin Laden, a headstrong young operative whose work tracking the al-Qaeda leader serves as the dramatic core of a Hollywood film set to premiere next week.

Her CIA career has followed a more problematic script, however, since bin Laden was killed.

The operative, who remains undercover, was passed over for a promotion that many in the CIA thought would be impossible to withhold from someone who played such a key role in one of the most successful operations in agency history.

She has sparred with CIA colleagues over credit for the bin Laden mission. After being given a prestigious award for her work, she sent an e-mail to dozens of other recipients saying they didn’t deserve to share her accolades, current and former officials said.

The woman has also come under scrutiny for her contacts with filmmakers and others about the bin Laden mission, part of a broader internal inquiry into the agency’s cooperation on the new movie and other projects, former officials said.

Her defenders say the operative has been treated unfairly, and even her critics acknowledge that her contributions to the bin Laden hunt were crucial. But the developments have cast a cloud over a career that is about to be bathed in the sort of cinematic glow ordinarily reserved for fictional Hollywood spies.

The female officer, who is in her 30s, is the model for the main character in “Zero Dark Thirty,”a film that chronicles the decade-long hunt for the al-Qaeda chief and that critics are describing as an Academy Award front-runner even before its Dec. 19 release.

The character Maya, which is not the CIA operative’s real name, is portrayed as a gifted operative who spent years pursuing her conviction that al-Qaeda’s courier network would lead to bin Laden, a conviction that proved correct.

At one point in the film, after a female colleague is killed in an attack on a CIA compound in Afghanistan, Maya describes her purpose in near-messianic terms: “I believe I was spared so I could finish the job.”

Colleagues said the on-screen depiction captures the woman’s dedication and combative temperament.

“She’s not Miss Congeniality, but that’s not going to find Osama bin Laden,” said a former CIA associate, who added that the attention from filmmakers sent waves of envy through the agency’s ranks.

“The agency is a funny place, very insular,” the former official said. “It’s like middle-schoolers with clearances.”

The woman is not allowed to talk to journalists, and the CIA declined to answer questions about her, except to stress that the bin Laden mission involved an extensive team. “Over the course of a decade, hundreds of analysts, operators and many others played key roles in the hunt,” said agency spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood.

Friction over mission, movie

The internal frictions are an unseemly aspect of the ongoing fallout from a mission that is otherwise regarded as one of the signal successes in CIA history.

The movie has been a source of controversy since it was revealed that the filmmakers — including director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal — were given extensive access to officials at the White House, the Pentagon and the CIA.

Members of Congress have called for investigations into whether classified information was shared. The movie’s release was delayed amid criticism that it amounted to a reelection ad for President Obama.

The film’s publicity materials say that Maya “is based on a real person,” but the filmmakers declined to elaborate. U.S. officials acknowledged that Boal met with Maya’s real-life counterpart and other CIA officers, typically in the presence of someone from the agency’s public affairs office. The character is played by Jessica Chastain.

Her real-life counterpart joined the agency before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, officials said, and served as a targeter — a position that involves finding targets to recruit as spies or for lethal drone strikes — in the CIA’s station in Islamabad, Pakistan.

She was in that country when the search for bin Laden, after years of being moribund, suddenly heated up. After Obama took office, CIA operatives reexamined several potential trails, including al-Qaeda’s use of couriers to hand-deliver messages to and from bin Laden.

“After this went right, there were a lot of people trying to take credit,” the former intelligence official said. But the female targeter “was one of the people from very early on pushing this” courier approach.

Lashing out in an e-mail

This spring, she was among a handful of employees given the agency’s Distinguished Intelligence Medal, its highest honor except for those recognizing people who have come under direct fire. But when dozens of others were given lesser awards, the female officer lashed out.

“She hit ‘reply all’ ” to an e-mail announcement of the awards, a second former CIA official said. The thrust of her message, the former official said, was: “You guys tried to obstruct me. You fought me. Only I deserve the award.”

Over the past year, she was denied a promotion that would have raised her civil service rank from GS-13 to GS-14, bringing an additional $16,000 in annual pay.

Officials said the woman was given a cash bonus for her work on the bin Laden mission and has since moved on to a new counterterrorism assignment. They declined to say why the promotion was blocked.

The move stunned the woman’s former associates, despite her reputation for clashing with colleagues.

“Do you know how many CIA officers are jerks?” the former official said. “If that was a disqualifier, the whole National Clandestine Service would be gone.”

…

By Greg Miller, Published: December 11

Joby Warrick contributed to this report.

Find this story at 11 December 2012

© The Washington Post Company

Why the woman who tracked down Bin Laden was denied promotion by her CIA bosses

Operative at heart of new film was ‘difficult’ and sent abusive emails

A picture of the real-life CIA agent at the heart of Zero Dark Thirty – director Kathryn Bigelow’s new film about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden – has emerged this week. But the young and determined agent named “Maya”, who is played by actress Jessica Chastain, has been described by colleagues as combative and difficult.

“She’s not Miss Congeniality, but that’s not going to find Osama bin Laden,” one of her former CIA colleagues told The Washington Post. “Do you know how many CIA officers are jerks?” said another. “If that was a disqualifier, the whole National Clandestine Service would be gone.”

The woman, who remains undercover and is in her 30s, was reportedly passed over for promotion this year, and clashed with colleagues about who should take credit for tracking down the al-Qa’ida leader to the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he was killed by US Special Forces in May 2011, in the 12.30am raid that gives Ms Bigelow’s film its title.

A CIA operative since before 9/11, she was stationed in Islamabad in the years before the raid, where she worked to uncover the network of couriers that would eventually lead to Bin Laden.

Though hundreds of people were involved in the decade-long search, the Post’s CIA sources acknowledge that “Maya’s” contribution was crucial. Following the raid, she was awarded the CIA’s Distinguished Intelligence Medal, and given a cash bonus. But she riled colleagues by responding to the award with a group email, accusing others in the agency of having obstructed her in her work. Those colleagues were further irked by the amount of attention she has received. The woman also appears, as “Jen”, in No Easy Day, a book about the raid by former Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette, who took part in the mission.

Zero Dark Thirty is Ms Bigelow’s follow-up to her Oscar-winning Iraq war film The Hurt Locker (2008), and is expected to feature heavily during the 2013 awards season.

When Bin Laden was killed, the director was working on a project about the attempts to find him. Screenwriter Mark Boal tore up the script and started again, and the film began shooting in spring this year. It opens in US cinemas this week, delayed to avoid accusations that it would give an electoral boost to President Obama, who ordered the raid.

…

Tim Walker

Los Angeles

Wednesday 12 December 2012

Find this story at 11 December 2012

© independent.co.uk