Reign of Terror

by Spencer Ackerman

  immediately backed down: Statement of Sen. Mitch McConnell, “Releasing Guantanamo Detainees into the U.S. Will Not Make America Safer,” April 24, 2009. Peter Finn and Anne E. Kornblut, “Guantanamo Bay: How the White House Lost the Fight to Close It,” Washington Post, April 23, 2011. Spencer Ackerman, “Uighur Men Held for 12 Years Leave Guantanamo Bay for Slovakia,” Guardian, December 31, 2013.

  Bernie Sanders was among: Mitch McConnell, “There Are No Good Alternatives to Guantanamo,” Washington Post, March 15, 2009. Helene Cooper and David Johnston, “Obama Tells Prison to Take Detainees,” New York Times, December 15, 2009. Spencer Ackerman, “ ‘No One but Himself to Blame’: How Obama’s Guantanamo Plans Fell Through,” Guardian, February 24, 2016. Roll Call vote, 111th Congress—1st Session, On the Amendment (Inouye Amdt. No. 1133), May 20, 2009.

  dozens of these people: Charlie Savage, Power Wars: The Relentless Rise of Presidential Authority and Secrecy (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2015), 117.

  Ben Rhodes wrote: Author’s interview with Ben Rhodes, July 13, 2020.

  Pentagon’s top lawyer, Jeh Johnson: Spencer Ackerman, “Johnson Opens the Door to Post-Acquittal Detentions,” Washington Independent, July 7, 2009.

  An effort predicated: Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President on National Security,” May 21, 2009. Transcript available at obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-national-security-5-21-09, accessed July 10, 2019.

  a bureaucratic death: Savage, Power Wars, 295–99, 309.

  McRaven fired a shot: Spencer Ackerman, “Drift: How This Ship Became a Floating Gitmo,” Wired, July 6, 2011. Savage, Power Wars, 339–40.

  a security inconvenience: It was hysterical because months earlier, the Southern District of New York successfully prosecuted a different Guantanamo and black-site denizen without any such calamity or expense. Spencer Ackerman, “Bloomberg Killed the Best Chance for Justice for the 9/11 Attacks,” Daily Beast, February 23, 2020.

  The detentions disaster: Author’s interview with Ben Rhodes, July 13, 2020.

  Abdulmutallab was not: An invaluable resource for our knowledge about Awlaki and Abdulmutallab are Abdulmutallab’s interviews, or 302s, with the FBI in 2010, most importantly in January and February. Disclosure of those 302s we owe to The New York Times, reporter Scott Shane, and the ACLU. They were not released until 2017, long after the U.S. executed Awlaki.

  Hasan had also emailed Awlaki: Scahill, Dirty Wars, 40–41.

  The series was enormously popular: There remains an uncertainty about the U.S. timeline for hunting Awlaki. Two missile strikes on Yemen in December 2009 predate Abdulmutallab’s identification of Awlaki as a figure within the AQAP chain of command. At least one of them, ironically on Christmas, is believed to have targeted him. Morten Storm, a jihadi defector and a premier CIA informant on AQAP, records in his memoir Agent Storm: My Life Inside Al Qaeda and the CIA (New York: Grove, 2015) that his CIA handler, “Jed,” sought to kill Awlaki in December 2009. Jeremy Scahill’s reporting in Dirty Wars presents a similar account. Charlie Savage, in his Power Wars, finds that the Obama administration did not decide on killing Awlaki until after interviewing Abdulmutallab. My reporting over the years does not decisively settle the question. Official alarm about Awlaki existed for years, particularly after he left the United States, gathered after he released “Constants on the Path of Jihad,” and crested after Canadian court documents indicated his role inspiring the “Toronto 18.” Sources with CIA counterterrorism experience, in conversation, tend to emphasize Awlaki’s incitement as the heart of the threat he posed, with his operational role taken for granted—further blurring the lines. While it remains possible that the CIA considered Awlaki a target of opportunity before the Abdulmutallab incident, the administration apparatus that both consigned Awlaki to death and created legal justification for it began deliberations after Abdulmutallab’s first Mirandized FBI interview on January 29, 2010.

  Holder would later say: Adam Martin, “Attorney General Holder: Due Process Doesn’t Necessarily Mean a Courtroom,” The Atlantic, March 5, 2012.

  Charlie Savage of The New York Times: Savage, Power Wars, 235–36. Abdulmutallab, who began his search for Awlaki on Wikipedia, was not the only one able to get close to him. The white jihadi turned CIA informant Morten Storm met with Awlaki several times in Yemen; see his Agent Storm, 90–109. As well, the CIA and JSOC all but directed Yemen’s security apparatus.

  Judge John Bates: Evan Perez, “Judge Dismisses Targeted Killing Suit,” Wall Street Journal, December 8, 2010.

  ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer: Terry Frieden, “Judge Throws Out Assassination Lawsuit,” CNN, December 7, 2010. Press release, “Court Dismisses Targeted Killing Case on Procedural Grounds without Addressing Merits,” Center for Constitutional Rights, December 7, 2010.

  The loudest objection: Spencer Ackerman, “11 Years On, Senate Wakes Up to War on Terror’s ‘Battlefield America,’ ” Wired, March 6, 2013.

  a military authorization bill: Fiscal 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, December 31, 2011, www.congress.gov/112/plaws/publ81/PLAW-112publ81.pdf.

  Obama had intended: Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President at Cairo University,” June 4, 2009. Transcript available at https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-cairo-university-6-04-09.

  “killed some militants”: Ackerman, “Victim of Obama’s First Drone Strike.”

  Penn State Law report: Office of the Inspector General, Department of Homeland Security, “Information Sharing on Foreign Nationals: Border Security (Redacted),” February 2012, available at https://www.oig.dhs.gov/assets/Mgmt/2012/OIGr_12-39_Feb12.pdf. Rights Working Group, Penn State Law Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, “The NSEERS Effect: A Decade of Racial Profiling, Fear and Secrecy,” Center for Immigrants’ Rights Clinic Publications 11, May 2012, https://elibrary.law.psu.edu/irc_pubs/11.

  broader goals of counterterrorism: Barack Obama, “Remarks by President Obama at Cairo University,” June 4, 2009.

  Obama’s approach, formalized: “Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States,” August 2011, available at www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/empowering_local_partners.pdf. “Strategic Implementation Plan for Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States,” December 2011, available at https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/sip-final.pdf.

  white supremacists were infiltrating: FBI Intelligence Assessment, “White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement,” October 17, 2006. Available at https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house.gov/files/White_Supremacist_Infiltration_of_Law_Enforcement.pdf.

  Janet Napolitano, quietly dismantled: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” April 2009, fas.org/irp/eprint/rightwing.pdf, accessed July 23, 2019. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, statement of Janet Napolitano “on the threat of right-wing extremism,” April 15, 2009. R. Jeffrey Smith, “Homeland Security Department Curtails Home-Grown Terror Analysis,” Washington Post, June 7, 2011. Spencer Ackerman, “DHS Crushed This Analyst for Warning about Far-Right Terror,” Wired, August 7, 2012.

  Enduring and effective counterterrorism: Spencer Ackerman, “FBI Teaches Agents ‘Mainstream’ Muslims Are ‘Violent, Radical,’ ” Wired, September 14, 2011. Ackerman and Noah Shachtman, “Video: FBI Trainer Says Forget ‘Irrelevant’ al-Qaida, Target Islam,” Wired, September 20, 2011. Ackerman, “New Evidence of Anti-Islam Bias Underscores Deep Challenges for FBI’s Reform Pledge,” Wired, September 23, 2011.

  Obama’s horrified White House: Spencer Ackerman, “FBI Purges Hundreds of Terrorism Documents in Islamophobia Probe,” Wired, February 15, 2012.

  Dooley told the officers: Noah Shachtman and Spencer Ackerman, “U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for
‘Total War’ on Islam,” Wired, May 10, 2012.

  Student officers gave: Spencer Ackerman, “Exclusive: Senior U.S. General Orders Top-to-Bottom Review of Military’s Islam Training,” Wired, April 24, 2012.

  Ordering a thorough review: Spencer Ackerman, “Top U.S. Officer: Stop This ‘Total War’ on Islam Talk,” Wired, May 10, 2012.

  Dempsey’s review didn’t recommend: Spencer Ackerman and Noah Shachtman, “ ‘Institutional Failures’ Led Military to Teach War on Islam,” Wired, June 20, 2012. Kurtis Lee and Jenny Jarvie, “Anti-Sharia Rallies around the U.S. Denounce Islam While Stoking Concerns among Muslim Groups,” Los Angeles Times, June 10, 2017.

  Alpha Cavalry Troop: Spencer Ackerman, “Hunt for Weapons Cache Continues,” Washington Independent, September 16, 2008. I am referring to “Sergeant Rob,” rather than using his full name, at his wife’s request.

  “fifty times more important”: Steve Coll, Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan (New York: Penguin, 2019), 352.

  “very much a counterinsurgency approach”: Spencer Ackerman, “The Making of Michèle Flournoy,” Washingtonian, September 2011.

  In December, Obama: Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation on the Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” December 1, 2009. Transcript available at https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-address-nation-way-forward-afghanistan-and-pakistan.

  suspended the use: C. J. Chivers and Rod Norland, “Errant U.S. Rocket Strike Killed Civilians in Afghanistan,” New York Times, February 14, 2010.

  the Taliban continued: Fred Kaplan, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014), 329–32.

  he called Marja: Michael Hastings, “The Runaway General,” Rolling Stone, July 8, 2010.

  “We aren’t putting fear”: Ibid.

  He dismissed questions: Spencer Ackerman, “Drones Surge, Special Ops Strike in Petraeus Campaign Plan,” Wired, August 16, 2010.

  Petraeus removed McChrystal’s: Noah Shachtman, “U.S. Escalates Air War over Afghanistan,” Wired, August 30, 2010.

  He remembered telling the village elders: Spencer Ackerman, “ ‘Why I Flattened Three Afghan Villages,’ ” Wired, February 1, 2011. Ackerman, “25 Tons of Bombs Wipe Afghan Town off Map,” Wired, January 19, 2011.

  “We’re being forced”: Spencer Ackerman, “Petraeus Team: Taliban Made Us Wipe Out Village,” Wired, January 20, 2011.

  forty-seven-year-old Niaz Mohammed: Kevin Sieff, “Years Later, a Flattened Afghan Village Reflects on U.S. Bombardment,” Washington Post, August 25, 2013.

  The 3/5 marines: Tom Bowman, “Afghan Success Comes at High Price for Commander,” NPR, October 30, 2011.

  General David Rodriguez: Robert Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (New York: Knopf, 2014), 560.

  Gates made Kelly: Greg Jaffe, “Lt. Gen. John Kelly, Who Lost Son to War, Says U.S. Largely Unaware of Sacrifice,” Washington Post, March 2, 2011.

  an open secret: Spencer Ackerman, “Troops Wonder: WTF Are We Doing in Afghanistan, Again?” Wired, August 26, 2010. Mark Boal, “The Kill Team,” Rolling Stone, March 28, 2011.

  Staff Sergeant Robert Bales: Brendan Vaughan, “Robert Bales Speaks: Confessions of America’s Most Notorious War Criminal,” GQ, October 21, 2015.

  suffered lasting scars: Greg Jaffe, “The Cursed Platoon,” Washington Post, July 2 and 3, 2020.

  an outraged Karzai: BBC News, “Afghanistan’s Taliban Suspend Peace Talks with U.S.,” March 15, 2012. Coll, Directorate S, 581–85.

  As Sergeant Rob died: Tom Sileo, “Go Get ’Em: Soldier’s Final Words Still Ring,” Bowling Green Daily News, February 2, 2014.

  New Yorker writer Peter Maass: Peter Maass, “Celebrating the Celebrations,” The New Yorker, May 4, 2011.

  Annabel Hogg, three years older: Sam Fulwood III, “Osama’s Death Unites Americans that Came of Age After 9/11,” Center for American Progress, May 3, 2011.

  Brennan also claimed: “Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney and Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John Brennan,” May 2, 2011, transcript available at https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2011/05/02/press-briefing-press-secretary-jay-carney-and-assistant-president-homela. Josh Gerstein and Matt Negrin, “W.H. Changes bin Laden Account,” Politico, May 4, 2011. “How the CIA’s Fake Vaccination Campaign Endangers Us All,” Scientific American, May 1, 2013.

  bin Laden’s death offered: Barack Obama, A Promised Land (New York: Crown, 2020), 698.

  “I’m going to plead”: U.S. v. Faisal Shahzad, U.S. Southern District Court of New York, plea transcript, June 21, 2010.

  Restricted Counterterrorism Security Group: Redactions and current disclosures at the time of this writing conceal the other members, as well as the entire membership of the Interagency Disposition Planning Group.

  Obama’s order states: May 22, 2013, Presidential Planning Guidance, reprinted in Jameel Jaffer, The Drone Memos: Targeted Killing, Secrecy and the Law (New York and London: The New Press, 2016). The process generated extraordinary amounts of record-keeping, but all by the “National Security Staff,” i.e., White House officials, whose records are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. It remains unknown if or how often Obama delegated life-and-death decisions. Nor is it clear whether Obama ratified decisions functionally made at lower levels. “When operations are proposed in Yemen, Somalia or elsewhere, it is Brennan alone who takes the recommendations to Obama for a final sign-off”: Karen DeYoung, “CIA Veteran John Brennan Has Transformed U.S. Counterterrorism Policy,” Washington Post, October 24, 2012.

  wage a war of regime change: Spencer Ackerman, “What Happened in Benghazi Was a Battle,” Wired, September 12, 2012.

  Chapter Five: The Right vs. Obama’s War on Terror

  “There is nothing holy”: John Brennan, speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, May 26, 2010. Brennan, addressing an audience question, lamented that terms like “terrorism” had cemented themselves within the post-9/11 “American lexicon,” despite their shortcomings. Available at www.c-span.org/video/?293739-1/john-brennan-remarks-national-security.

  On Fox News Charles Krauthammer: Charles Krauthammer et al., Fox News All-Stars, Fox News, May 28, 2010.

  The Washington Times editorialized: Editorial, “Terrorists Are the Real Victims? Obama Legitimizes the Terrorist Viewpoint,” Washington Times, June 14, 2010.

  An anti-Islam activist: Pamela Geller, “Obama’s Counterterror Adviser Calls Jihad ‘Legitimate Tenet’ of Islam,” Atlas Shrugs, May 27, 2010. Doug Chandler, “The Passions (and Perils) of Pamela Geller,” New York Jewish Week, September 1, 2010.

  Islam in Cairo: Nile Gardner and Morgan Lorraine Roach, “Barack Obama’s Top 10 Apologies: How the President Has Humiliated a Superpower,” Heritage Foundation, June 2, 2009.

  Dick Cheney explained: Bill Hoffman, “Cheney to NewsMax: ‘Obama Doesn’t Believe in an Exceptional America,” NewsMax, September 2, 2005.

  Yusef Salaam recalled: Oliver Laughland, “Donald Trump and the Central Park Five: The Racially Charged Rise of a Demagogue,” Guardian, February 17, 2016. Donald Trump, “Donald Trump: Central Park Five Settlement Is a ‘Disgrace,’ ” New York Daily News, June 21, 2014.

  “I don’t agree”: Glenn Kessler, “A Look at Trump’s ‘Birther’ Statements,” Washington Post, April 28, 2011. Ari Melber, “The Nation: Confronting Trump’s Coded Racism,” NPR, April 27, 2011.

  Islamophobic think tank: Spencer Ackerman, “The Islamists Have Brainwashed General Petraeus!,” Wired, April 28, 2011.

  Far from Washington: “Anti-Sharia Law Bills in the United States,” Southern Poverty Law Center, February 5, 2018.

  Brian Michael Jenkins: Brian Michael Jenkins, “Would-Be Warriors: Inciden
ts of Jihadist Terrorist Radicalization in the United States Since September 11, 2001,” RAND Corporation, 2010, vii.

  native son Moses Maimonides: Ira M. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, 3rd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 378–89. Herbert A. Davidson, Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Works (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 11–17. Maimonides did not seek refuge in Christian Europe but in Muslim Egypt.

  Rauf delivered a moving address: “Message delivered by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf,” Daniel Pearl Memorial, B’Nai Jeshurun, February 23, 2003, www.bj.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/daniel_pearl_memorial.pdf [inactive], accessed August 13, 2019.

  “We strive for a ‘new Córdoba’ ”: Faisal Abdul Rauf, What’s Right with Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West (New York: HarperOne, 2005), 1– 32.

  Rauf had been preaching: Anne Barnard, “In Lower Manhattan, Two Mosques Have Firm Roots,” New York Times, August 13, 2010.

  Rauf and his wife: Ralph Blumenthal and Sharaf Mowjood, “Muslim Prayers and Renewal Near Ground Zero,” New York Times, December 8, 2009.

  explained to the committee: Christian Salazar, “Building Damaged in 9/11 to Be Mosque for NYC Muslims,” Associated Press, May 5, 2010.

  a “monster mosque”: Anne Barnard and Alan Feuer, “Outraged, and Outrageous,” New York Times, October 8, 2010.

  Geller was also a birther: Chandler, “The Passions (and Perils) of Pamela Geller.” Pamela Geller, “How Could Stanley Ann Dunham Have Delivered Barack Hussein Obama Jr. in August of 1961 in Honolulu, When Official University of Washington Records Show Her 2680 Miles Away in Seattle Attending Classes the Same Month?” Atlas Shrugs, October 24, 2008. The theory, which defies summarization, is attributed to Rudy Schultz as a “more plausible” explanation for the question animating Geller’s headline, which relies foundationally on a confusion between enrollment records and attendance records.