by Scott Shane
Some security officials were stung by the report, which they resented as expedient scapegoating by the White House. But more detached observers found the brutal language quite justified. The spy bureaucracy had seen its budget approximately double since 2001 and had become accustomed to presidential praise for its bravery and dedication. If Obama had any thoughts during his campaign about cutting back this secret empire, they had quickly fallen by the wayside. Like all presidents, he had quickly become dependent on the agencies. A rationalist who wanted to base his decisions on information, he had a voracious appetite for what they could serve up. After the near disaster, Obama had not chosen to fire anyone; characteristically, his approach focused on fixing the technical problems the AQAP plot had exposed rather than finding individuals to blame, which might have been more emotionally satisfying and politically protective.
In the months after Christmas, however, Obama began to get deeper into the weeds at intelligence briefings and the weekly terrorism meetings. He demanded that security officials describe not just specific threats but what each agency was doing about them. “After that, as president, it seemed like he felt in his gut the threat to the United States,” said Michael Leiter, who as head of the National Counterterrorism Center might have made a handy scapegoat had the president been looking for one. “It meant a president who was more deeply engaged in the process of counterterrorism.” Such presidential involvement, he said, was an “enormous hammer” that forced the agencies to be diligent and responsive. Ben Rhodes, a National Security Council aide, remembered the president forcefully and repeatedly making the point that the Christmas episode had exposed intolerable shortcomings in the security system. “He said, ‘In the long run, as a country, we cannot be spending billions of dollars every time some scared twenty-three-year-old spends $10,000 and tries to attack a plane,’ ” Rhodes recalled. It was, of course, exactly the point Awlaki had made about what he called Al Qaeda’s “war of attrition” against America.
To restore American confidence in the administration’s ability to keep the country safe, Obama’s aides knew, it would not suffice to wait and hope to foil the next attack launched by AQAP. They would have to go on the offensive in Yemen, stepping up the campaign to find and take out Al Qaeda plotters there. At the very top of the list was Anwar al-Awlaki.
Once upon a time, before 9/11, the mobilization of the entire American security apparatus to find one guy hiding out with a ragtag band of militants roaming the hills of Shabwah province might have seemed almost comic. It was as if some YouTube remix artist had taken the villains from Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and sent the ruthless techno-spy agencies of The Bourne Identity after them. But the Awlaki hunt was just another instance of what academics liked to call asymmetric warfare, posing a gang of terrorists against a superpower, and Americans had grown used to it in the age of Al Qaeda. The president gave the orders, and soon the agencies were competing to get scraps of intelligence about AQAP and Awlaki into the President’s Daily Brief.
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Every president since John F. Kennedy has had a personal, daily connection to the spy agencies, in the form of a top-secret binder delivered to the White House each morning at 6:30 a.m. The binder contains about a dozen articles, each up to four pages long, describing the most significant threats and scoops from the previous twenty-four hours. The President’s Daily Brief, or PDB, as it is known around Washington, is the most exclusive daily newspaper on the planet, and agencies compete fiercely to get their items in. The binder is hand-delivered to a small number of top officials, including the vice president and secretary of state, and contains the spy agencies’ greatest hits, including verbatim excerpts from the intercepted phone calls of world leaders and stunningly detailed satellite photos of terrorist training camps. If the president chooses, the written PDB comes along with personal briefings by top intelligence officials or specialized analysts to elaborate on its contents.
Presidents developed their own, idiosyncratic styles for handling intelligence briefings. Reagan, who found detailed briefings tedious, often delegated the daily CIA briefings and perusal of the PDB to his national security adviser, happy to get an oral summary later on. By contrast, George H. W. Bush, who had himself served as CIA director in the 1970s, read the PDB carefully but still sat down with CIA briefers each morning, often asking for additional raw intelligence. Bill Clinton had little patience for the oral briefings and famously shunned his own CIA chief, James Woolsey, but studied the written PDB. George W. Bush favored oral briefings and made sure they happened six days a week, especially after 9/11.
As Bush had learned, the PDB could become a political time bomb. He had been the recipient of perhaps the most famous item ever to appear in the PDB—the article headlined “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US,” which had appeared thirty-six days before the 9/11 attacks. When it was later declassified, it became Exhibit A for those who accused the Bush administration of being oblivious to the terrorist threat. That episode was not forgotten when Bush left office. When Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s first chief of staff, saw a PDB item in 2009 that highlighted terrorist threats to the homeland, he accused the nonplussed director of intelligence, Dennis Blair, of setting up the Obama White House to face the blame if an attack occurred. Blair thought Emanuel’s suspicion preposterous, the fevered imaginings of a pol who didn’t understand how intelligence agencies worked.
Obama, the former Harvard Law Review editor, read the PDB each day before his discussion with the briefer—sometimes Blair, a retired admiral, sometimes one of Blair’s deputies. As with other presidents, the session was a two-way street: Obama would ask for information beyond the brief, giving the agencies a sense of his concerns and preoccupations, and answers would often come back the same day.
The threat from Yemen was an increasing worry, and one that seemed uncannily connected to Obama’s presidency: on the very day of his inauguration as president, January 20, 2009, Saudi and Yemeni militants had announced on jihadist web forums that they were uniting to form a new group called Tanzim Qa’idat al-Jihad fi Jazirat al-Arab, literally “the Base for Jihad in the Arabian Peninsula,” which came to be called AQAP. The CIA veteran Obama had chosen as his counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, was a former CIA station chief in Riyadh with a special interest in Saudi Arabia and its impoverished neighbor to the south. And through the first year of Obama’s presidency, a rising number of PDB items focused on this troubled country that few Americans could find on a map.
Obama had plenty of help in trying to make sense of the flow of information from Yemen. The National Security Council, his in-house think tank, had grown steadily from a dozen people at its creation in 1947 to a formidable staff of about 240 by the time Obama took office, many of them young, bright, and shockingly inexperienced, as intelligence agency veterans were more than willing to complain. There was a “policy director” on the NSC staff for each major country and issue—sixteen directors for the Middle East alone, and an entire separate staff for terrorism. Yemen was judged to warrant its own director, and not because of its economic significance or diplomatic sway. By 6 a.m., each director would get a BlackBerry message listing the items in that day’s PDB. If the list included an item on Yemen or AQAP, the Yemen director would scramble to write a half-page background blurb for senior NSC staff so that they would be well prepared in case the president zeroed in on the item later in the morning. All day long—and well into the night, since NSC staffers were routinely at their desks till 9 p.m. or later—reports from the agencies would flow into an intelligence file in each NSC staffer’s Outlook e-mail account, tailored to match the employee’s assignments and clearances. When things in Yemen heated up, as they did steadily in Obama’s first year, the flow of intercepted communications, satellite photos, and topical analyses to NSC computers became a torrent.
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Back in November, as the first news reports linked Anwar to Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, and as Anwar praised Hasan as a hero on his b
log, Nasser al-Awlaki’s phone had begun ringing. Reporters wanted to talk about his son. Dr. Awlaki said he hadn’t had any contact with Anwar in eight months—but he nonetheless claimed to know about his activities and allegiances. “He has nothing to do with al-Qaida,” the elder Awlaki said. “But he’s a devout Muslim. He has never been involved in anything against anybody.” It was a reflection less of scrupulous research than of a father’s loyalty to his son. On December 24, as the false reports circulated that Anwar had been killed, Nasser spoke to a Washington Post reporter in Sanaa, his voice cracking. “If the American government helped in attacking one of [its own] citizens, this is illegal,” the father said. “Nidal Hasan killed 13 people and he’s going to get a trial. My son has killed nobody. He should face trial if he’s done something wrong.” Obama’s election had thrilled Dr. Awlaki a year earlier, but now he personalized the case, knowing that only Obama could make a decision on such a matter. “If Obama wants to kill my son,” he said, “this is wrong.”
After Christmas, Nasser, who was already caring for Anwar’s first wife and five children at his son’s request, had watched the growing American hysteria about his eldest child with alarm and dismay. He didn’t want to believe the things Obama administration officials and the media were saying about Anwar. He did not know whether to believe news reports that Abdulmutallab had implicated his son as an organizer of the airliner plot; the details would only be confirmed publicly in court documents two years later. On January 11, 2010, he agreed to speak to CNN reporter Paula Newton in Sanaa—though not on camera—and portrayed Anwar as a preacher who had expressed “controversial views” and was now “a wanted man” who was “cornered” and had no choice but to seek refuge with his tribe in the mountains. He did not know whether Anwar had met Abdulmutallab, he told Newton, but he did not think so. He was certain that his son was not a member of Al Qaeda, he said. Grasping for a way out of an impossible situation, Nasser al-Awlaki said he wanted to convince his son to talk to Yemeni and American officials and perhaps to surrender. But he complained that “they are not giving me time. They want to kill one of their own citizens. This is a legal issue that needs to be answered.”
It was only one interview in what would become a years-long public fight by Nasser al-Awlaki to defend his son. But the elder Awlaki felt he was fighting not just for Anwar. He was calling on the United States to live by the moral and legal principles he believed it stood for, the idea of equal justice under the rigorous rule of law that had so impressed him as a young graduate student. In America, he had learned, a suspect was innocent until proven guilty. If Anwar had committed a crime, he said, let him face the charges in court.
But as Nasser al-Awlaki supported Anwar’s family, defended his reputation, and scrambled to protect him from American missiles, Anwar offered no hint that he appreciated the help. All the evidence, in fact, was to the contrary. Anwar’s public statements undermined his father’s efforts to protect him. He praised Nidal Hasan’s shooting spree at Fort Hood; he lauded Abdulmutallab, who he said had been his student; he wholeheartedly endorsed the mass murder of American civilians.
In another Internet statement in the spring of 2010, titled “Western Jihad Is Here to Stay,” Awlaki showed off his easy fluency in Americana, quoting Donald Rumsfeld’s famous memo as defense secretary that asked whether the United States was killing, capturing, or deterring more terrorists than the madrasas and radical clerics were producing. Awlaki asserted that despite huge expenditures the United States was losing the battle for hearts and minds. “The jihad movement has not only survived but is expanding,” he said. “Jihad is becoming as American as apple pie and as British as afternoon tea.”
Awlaki’s gleeful phrasemaking brought to mind his mother’s devotion to apple pie, the favorite Betty Crocker recipe she had brought home to Yemen from America. Now her son had turned it into a rhetorical weapon.
Nasser al-Awlaki said he did not believe Anwar had joined Al Qaeda, but since the Christmas attack all the evidence was going the other way. In May 2010, AQAP’s leader Nasser al-Wuhayshi issued a statement embracing “the hero who strikes with righteousness, Sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki.” Wuhayshi poured scorn on Obama, whom he mentioned seven times, and the American hunt for Awlaki. “Do not worry, oh Muslims, about the Sheikh,” said the AQAP leader, “for he is in safe hands.” Without expressly stating that Awlaki was part of Al Qaeda, Wuhayshi made it clear that theirs was a common cause and that AQAP would protect the cleric to the end.
A week later, the terrorist group’s media arm released a lengthy video interview with Awlaki, who coolly dashed his father’s hope of preserving his life by arranging his surrender. Senior Yemeni officials had raised such a possibility, saying they were talking to leaders of the Awaliq tribe in Shabwah about turning over the cleric to Yemeni authorities. But in the interview with AQAP’s media unit, Al Malahem, Awlaki stated flatly that he would not turn himself in to either Yemeni or American authorities, declaring that “justice is not open for negotiation.” He was trusting his fate to a loftier authority, he said.
“If the Americans want me, let them search for me,” Awlaki said. “Allah is the best protector. If Allah, glorified and exalted be He, wants to rescue me from them, if they were to spend all what is on this earth, they won’t be able to get to me. And if Allah predestined that my death be on their hands and the hands of their agents, then that would be my fate.”
PART TWO 1990–2002
3
HE HAD A BEAUTIFUL TONGUE
For two Arab freshmen who had bonded during their first months at Colorado State, the trouble started, oddly enough, over the Super Bowl. Ghassan Khan, from Saudi Arabia, wanted to watch the Buffalo Bills face off against the New York Giants. Anwar al-Awlaki, from Yemen, objected.
“I told him, ‘I want to watch the Super Bowl,’ ” Khan said. “He said it would be better even to stare at the wall than to watch. He didn’t like the beer ads and the cheerleaders.”
He watched despite Awlaki’s protests, and it was a good game, Khan recalled: The Giants beat the Bills 20–19, the only Super Bowl to be decided by a single point. But Khan was bemused; his friend had been absurdly transformed over the monthlong Christmas break. Gone was the fun-loving character who had led him on various escapades in their first semester of college. In his place was a puritanical scold, a kid acting like a censorious old man, suddenly embracing a starkly conservative brand of Islam.
The two nineteen-year-olds had become fast friends after arriving in Fort Collins in the fall of 1990. They were both smokers and engineering students, the only two Arabic speakers in their stone-walled dormitory, and they connected while huddled outside with their cigarettes in the gathering autumn cold. There was a third Muslim in Allison Hall, a tall Indian student named Hozaifa, and the trio often hung out together, testing their new freedom in the time-honored style of college freshmen. For young men from conservative Muslim backgrounds, the liberties were especially heady.
None of the three was especially religious, and they went to parties and did some drinking. Because he looked older, Hozaifa was assigned to try to buy alcohol; Khan remembered that Anwar had urged Hozaifa to ask for a sweet coconut-flavored liquor, Malibu Rum, that Anwar said he had tried the summer before.
“Of the three of us, he was the fun guy,” recalled Khan, now vice president of an investment bank in Riyadh. Anwar had an interest in politics and occasionally talked about the plight of the Palestinians. But he also had a hookah, or water pipe for smoking tobacco, and he was more comfortable than the other two talking to girls. One night at 2 a.m., Anwar, who had bought a car, suddenly said, “Let’s go to Boulder!” Despite some grumbling from the others, the three teens made the hourlong drive and discovered—surprise!—that everything was closed. They found a twenty-four-hour Denny’s, ate and hung around, and drove back to Fort Collins at 8 a.m., Khan said.
Khan and Awlaki grew so close that they decided to move off campus together for second semester, and th
ey agreed to move into an apartment with an older Yemeni who had recently finished a master’s degree in economics and knew Anwar’s father. But because Khan headed home for the winter break, while Anwar stayed in Colorado, they were separated for several weeks. When Khan returned, he was stunned by what had happened to his roommate.
Awlaki, clean-shaven the first semester, had begun to grow a beard, often a clue to a Muslim man’s growing religiosity. It turned out that he had fallen in with a group of Islamic proselytizers in Fort Collins from Tablighi Jamaat, which translates as “society for spreading the faith,” a global movement encouraging piety and devotion. He had come under the particular influence of an older student from Egypt working on a master’s in civil engineering who had the beard and somber style of a religious conservative.
And something else had happened during the break: on January 17, ten days before the Super Bowl, the United States had begun bombing Iraq in the opening air raids of Desert Storm. When Anwar saw CNN’s Peter Arnett reporting live from Baghdad as the bombs began falling, he called his father at home in Sanaa, where it was 4 a.m., and woke him to tell him the news. Baghdad held special historical and symbolic significance for any Arab, Nasser al-Awlaki said, and his son’s angry reaction to the bombing was the first time he had criticized the United States.