“The Americans Really Wanted to Kill Anwar”
YEMEN, LATE 2009–EARLY 2010 —Nasser Awlaki had not heard from his son since May. On December 20, 2009, he received a call from President Saleh that caused his stomach to plummet. “He called me at three o’clock in the afternoon. He said, ‘Nasser, have you heard the news?’ I said, ‘What news?’ He said, ‘Four hours ago, your son was killed by an American airplane.’ I said, ‘What American airplane? Where?’” Saleh told him the location, a mountainous area of Shabwah. Nasser hung up and started calling tribal leaders in the area, desperate for any information. There had been no air strikes reported. “I don’t know why the president told me that,” Nasser later told me, adding that he believes the Americans had told Saleh they were going to hit Anwar on that day but that the operation had been called off for some reason. Regardless of the reason, it was now clear: “The Americans really wanted to kill Anwar.”
Four days after President Saleh called Nasser, on December 24, US forces carried out an air strike four hundred miles southeast of Sana’a in the Rafd mountain valley in Shabwah. According to official accounts, US and Yemeni intelligence indicated Awlaki was meeting with the two most important figures in the growing AQAP organization, Nasir al Wuhayshi, bin Laden’s former secretary, and AQAP leader Said Ali al Shihri. Yemeni officials charged they were “planning an attack on Yemeni and foreign oil targets.”
The air strikes killed thirty people, and media outlets began reporting that Awlaki was dead, along with the two al Qaeda figures. Former intelligence officials and Yemen “experts” appeared on news programs characterizing the killings as “a huge victory for the struggle against al-Qaida in Yemen.” An unnamed senior administration official told the Washington Post that the Obama administration had no problems with targeting a US citizen who it believed had joined al Qaeda, saying, “It doesn’t really change anything from the standpoint of whether we can target them” because “they are then part of the enemy.” The fact that the president had authorized an assassination strike against a US citizen went almost entirely unchallenged by Democrats and Republicans alike.
Although reports of the strikes being US operations made it onto major media outlets, primarily through leaks from US officials intent on showing they were hitting al Qaeda, there was no official ownership of the attacks by the White House or Pentagon. “While the U.S. has escaped the brunt of criticism to date, continued leaks from Washington and international media coverage of American involvement could stir up anti-American resentment in Yemen,” declared a cable sent from the US Embassy in Sana’a back to Washington.
Nasser watched the news reports that his son had been killed. He managed to reach a tribal figure who was in contact with Anwar. “I got information that day that my son was not there, and he was not killed,” he recalled. When a reporter for the Washington Post called Nasser to get a comment from him on Anwar’s death, Nasser told him Anwar was alive. Meanwhile, CBS News interviewed a source in Yemen who said that not only was Awlaki still alive, but the attacks were “far from his house and he had nothing to do with those killed.” Whether they were ever there or not, Wuhayshi and Shihri were not killed in the attack, either.
“They decided to kill [Anwar] at the end of 2009,” Nasser told me. “Is it legal for the United States to kill an American citizen, without a legal process, without due process? I want any decent American lawyer to tell me that it is right for the United States government to kill an American citizen, on the basis that he said something against the United States, or against American soldiers. I don’t understand 100 percent the American Constitution, but I don’t believe that the American Constitution, American law, will allow the killing of an American citizen because he said something against the United States.”
While the American government was hunting for Anwar Awlaki from the skies, Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye managed to track him down for an exclusive interview, which was broadcast around the globe and translated into multiple languages. In the United States, it was reported by major US television networks and printed in newspapers. Far from coming off as sympathetic, Shaye’s interview was tough and seemed aimed at actually getting answers. Among the questions he asked Awlaki: How can you agree with what Nidal Hasan did as he betrayed his American nation? Why did you bless the acts of Nidal Hasan? Do you have any connection with the incident directly? Shaye also confronted Awlaki with inconsistencies from his previous interviews.
Under Shaye’s questioning, Awlaki went into great depth articulating his defense of Nidal Hasan’s massacre at Fort Hood, and he told Shaye he wanted to “clarify” his position on Hasan’s shooting spree. “I did not recruit Nidal Hasan, but America did with its crimes and injustice, and this is what America does not want to admit. America does not want to admit that what Nidal carried out, and what thousands of Muslims besides Nidal are doing in fighting against America, is because of its oppressive policies against the Islamic world,” Awlaki told the journalist. “Nidal Hasan, before he became an American, is a Muslim, and he is also from Palestine and he sees what the Jews are doing through oppressing his people under American cover and support. Yes, I may have a role in the intellectual direction of Nidal, but the matter does not exceed that, as I don’t try to disconnect myself with what Nidal has done because of disagreement with it, but it would be an honor to me if I had a bigger role in it.”
Awlaki provided his e-mail correspondence with Hasan to Shaye so the journalist could reach his own conclusions about its contents. “I gave it to you to publish it because the American administration has prohibited publishing it,” Awlaki told him. “Why do they not want it out? What is the reason? Do they want to cover their security failure? Or, do they not want to confess that Nidal Hasan was a man of principle and that he did what he did as a service to Islam? Do they [want] to show it as a sudden, individual act with no relation to the actions of the criminal American Army?” Awlaki pointed out that the US government had been intercepting his e-mails with Hasan, including the first one, sent a year before the Fort Hood shootings, in which Hasan “asked whether killing American soldiers and officers is lawful or not.” Awlaki said the e-mails revealed the failure of US intelligence agencies. “I wonder where were the American security forces that one day claimed they can read the numbers of any license plate, anywhere in the world, from space.”
Shaye had caused trouble for the United States and the Yemeni government when he reported on the US role in the al Majalah bombing and other strikes. Now he was in contact with Anwar Awlaki, giving the preacher another opportunity to get his message out. Shaye was a serious journalist, chasing down important stories inside his own country. If anything, Shaye’s interviews provided the US intelligence community, politicians and the pro-assassination pundits with ammunition to support their campaign to kill Awlaki. Nonetheless, the United States perceived Shaye as a threat—and one that had to be dealt with.
Awlaki, meanwhile, was quickly becoming a household name. In the aftermath of the December strikes and raids, the media and Congress began to awaken to the reality that the United States seemed to be heading toward an undeclared war in Yemen. The events of Christmas Day in 2009 would shake the entire country.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA and his family were singing Christmas carols in Hawaii when one of the president’s aides interrupted the festivities, pulling Obama aside for an urgent phone call with John Brennan, his top counterterrorism adviser.
A few hours earlier, a young Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 253 in Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. Three days before, he had turned twenty-three years old. At around 8:00 a.m. local time, he made his way down the aisle of the plane and settled into seat 19A. At 8:45 a.m., the plane was wheels up, headed across the Atlantic en route to Detroit. Abdulmutallab’s father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, was a retired businessman, former federal commissioner for economic development in Nigeria, and one of the wealthiest men on the African continent.
The path that led the wealthy young Nigerian to Flight 253 ran straight through Yemen. Abdulmutallab had attended elite private schools in Lomé, Togo, where he was known to be a devout Muslim and was described by one instructor as “every teacher’s dream.” In 2005, he spent part of the year studying Arabic in Sana’a and, like many figures being watched in Yemen by the US counterterrorism apparatus, attended lectures at Iman University. Later that year, Abdulmutallab moved to London, where he enrolled in college. There, he became president of the University College of London’s Islamic society and participated in nonviolent protests against the US-UK wars in Muslim countries. He organized a conference to protest the “war on terror.”
On at least two occasions, Abdulmutallab traveled to the United States for visits and, in 2008, was given a multiple-entry visa. In August 2008, he attended lectures at an Islamic institute in Texas before returning to Yemen to study Arabic. During that period, Abdulmutallab’s father described his son as growing increasingly radical, becoming obsessed with Sharia law and what he called “the real Islam.” Eventually, Abdulmutallab fell off the map. His father grew so concerned that on November 19, 2009, he went to the US Embassy in Nigeria and met with two US security officials, later identified as CIA, to tell them that his son had gone missing in Yemen. During the meeting, he described his son’s “extreme religious views.”
As Flight 253 began its descent into Detroit, Abdulmutallab complained that he had a stomachache and went into a bathroom, where he remained for about twenty minutes. When he returned to his seat, he covered himself with a blanket. Moments later, other passengers say they heard a noise that sounded like a firecracker. In a flash, Abdulmutallab’s pants leg was on fire, as was part of the plane’s inner wall. A nearby passenger jumped on him, and flight attendants scrambled to put out the fire. When a flight attendant asked Abdulmutallab what he had in his pants, he reportedly responded, “Explosive device.”
It was Christmas morning and families across the United States were opening presents and preparing for celebrations when the news broke that there had been an attempted attack on a US airliner. Abdulmutallab quickly became known as the “Underwear Bomber” after it was revealed that he had smuggled explosives in his undergarments. It didn’t take long before Abdulmutallab’s Yemen connection was out in the open, with intense focus on the possible involvement of AQAP. The fact that PETN was among the explosives in Abdulmutallab’s makeshift underwear bomb was cited as evidence of the involvement of Ibrahim Asiri, who made the pentaerythritol tetranitrate bomb his brother had used in the attempt to kill Prince bin Nayef of Saudi Arabia a few months earlier.
As the Obama administration scrambled to respond, the US intelligence community and congressional Republicans began to spring leaks. Before long, Abdulmutallab was presented as an AQAP operative who had been sent on a suicide mission by Anwar Awlaki. Yemeni intelligence officials told the United States that Abdulmutallab had traveled to Awlaki’s tribal area of Shabwah in October 2009. There, they say, he hooked up with members of AQAP. A US government source said that the National Security Agency had intercepted “voice-to-voice communication” between Abdulmutallab and Awlaki in the fall of 2009 and had determined that Awlaki “was in some way involved in facilitating this guy’s transportation or trip through Yemen. It could be training, a host of things. I don’t think we know for sure,” the anonymous source told the Washington Post.
A local tribal leader from Shabwah, Mullah Zabara, later told me he had seen the young Nigerian at the farm of Fahd al Quso, the alleged USS Cole bombing conspirator. “He was watering trees,” Zabara told me. “When I saw [Abdulmutallab], I asked Fahd, ‘Who is he?’” Quso told Zabara the young man was from a different part of Yemen, which Zabara knew was a lie. “When I saw him on TV, then Fahd told me the truth.”
Awlaki’s role in the “underwear plot” was unclear. Awlaki later claimed that Abdulmutallab was one of his “students.” Tribal sources in Shabwah told me that al Qaeda operatives reached out to Awlaki to give religious counseling to Abdulmutallab, but that Awlaki was not involved in the plot. While praising the attack, Awlaki said he had not been involved with its conception or planning. “Yes, there was some contact between me and him, but I did not issue a fatwa allowing him to carry out this operation,” Awlaki told Abdulelah Haider Shaye in an interview for Al Jazeera a few weeks after the attempted attack: “I support what Umar Farouk has done after I have been seeing my brothers being killed in Palestine for more than sixty years, and others being killed in Iraq and in Afghanistan. And in my tribe too, US missiles have killed” women and “children, so do not ask me if al-Qaeda has killed or blown up a US civil[ian] jet after all this. The 300 Americans are nothing comparing to the thousands of Muslims who have been killed.”
Shaye pressed Awlaki on his defense of the attempted downing of the plane, pointing out to Awlaki that it was a civilian airliner. “You have supported Nidal Malik Hasan and justified his act by saying that his target was a military not a civilian one. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s plane was a civilian one, which means the target was the US public?” Shaye pressed him. “It would have been better if the plane was a military one or if it was a US military target,” Awlaki replied. But, he added:
The American people live [in] a democratic system and that is why they are held responsible for their policies. The American people are the ones who have voted twice for Bush the criminal and elected Obama, who is not different from Bush as his first remarks stated that he would not abandon Israel, despite the fact that there were other antiwar candidates in the US elections, but they won very few votes. The American people take part in all its government’s crimes. If they oppose that, let them change their government. They pay the taxes which are spent on the army and they send their sons to the military, and that is why they bear responsibility.
Soon after the attempted bombing, AQAP posted a web statement praising Abdulmutallab as a hero who had “penetrated all modern and sophisticated technology and devices and security barriers in airports of the world” and “reached his target.” The statement boasted that the “mujahedeen brothers in the manufacturing department” made the device and that it did not detonate due to a “technical error.” Four months after the attempted attack, AQAP released a video showing Abdulmutallab, armed with a Kalashnikov and wearing a keffiyeh, at a desert training camp in Yemen. In the video, masked men conducted live-ammunition training. One scene showed AQAP operatives firing at a drone flying overhead. At the end of the video, Abdulmutallab read a martyrdom statement in Arabic. “You brotherhood of Muslims in the Arabian Peninsula have the right to wage jihad because the enemy is in your land,” he said, sitting before a flag and a rifle and dressed in white. “God said if you do not fight back, he will punish you and replace you.”
The incident gave ammunition to Republicans and former Bush administration officials who accused President Obama and his national security team of missing repeated warning signs leading up to the incident, saying that Abdulmutallab’s father’s warning at the embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, should have been taken more seriously. An intelligence official pushed back, telling Newsweek, “While this is the season for second-guessing and finger-pointing, I have not seen anything to come from the meeting in Abuja that suddenly would have rocketed Abdulmutallab to the no-fly list. You had a young man who was becoming increasingly pious and was turning his back on his family’s wealthy lifestyle. That alone makes him neither Saint Francis nor a dead-eyed killer. Every piece of data, of course, looks different when you know the answer, as everyone does now.”
At the same time, Republicans used the incident to portray Obama as a naïve peacenik. “The Obama administration came in and said, ‘We’re not going to use the word “terrorism” anymore. We’re going to call it “manmade disasters,”’ trying to, you know, I think, downplay the threat from terrorism,” quipped Representative Pete Hoekstra, then the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, on Fox News two days after the failed attack.
On December 30, former vice president Cheney launched another scathing public attack on Obama. “As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war,” declared Cheney. “He seems to think if he has a low-key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war.” Cheney’s attack was bold, not least for its hypocrisy. When the so-called Shoe Bomber, Richard Reid, tried to blow up a flight in a similar way, the Bush administration prosecuted him in civilian courts and Rumsfeld declared that the case was “a matter that’s in the hands of the law enforcement people.” Unlike Obama, who responded to the incident swiftly, it took President Bush six days to address Reid’s attempted attack.
Cheney further charged that Obama “seems to think if he gets rid of the words, ‘war on terror,’ we won’t be at war. But we are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe.” Cheney’s statement was a phenomenal misrepresentation. Obama had already bombed Yemen more times in his first year in office than Bush and Cheney had in the entire eight years of their term in the White House. “A lot of the knuckleheads I’ve been listening to out there on the network shows don’t know what they’re talking about,” Brennan fumed to the New York Times. “When they say the administration’s not at war with Al Qaeda, that is just complete hogwash. What they’re doing is just playing into Al Qaeda’s strategic effort, which is to get us to battle among ourselves instead of focusing on them.” At his inauguration, Obama had declared, “Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred.” When it came to Yemen, Obama certainly viewed the country’s al Qaeda presence as a priority target, despite Cheney’s very public allegations.
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