Anwar al-Awlaki | emptywheel

Disposition Matrix: $5 Million Rewards in Lieu of Kill Lists?

By: emptywheel Thursday March 21, 2013 12:33 pm

Mike Rogers, perhaps bolstered by the Administration’s insistence that he can say all he wants about drone targeting without it amounting to “admission” of the program for FOIA purposes, ran his mouth the other day about whether any Americans are currently on the kill list.

“There is no list where Americans are on the list,” House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers told National Journal. Still, he suggested, that could change.

[snip]

“Some notion that every American would even rise to the list by just going over and even signing up is, candidly, just not the truth,” Rogers said.

Awlaki, Rogers said, was unique among homegrown terrorists—he publicly declared jihad against the United States, and he was involved in multiple terrorist-related plans, including the failed Christmas Day bombing and the Fort Hood shooting.

“What worries me is they are taking this isolated case and saying, ‘Oh well, there’s a list of Americans, and you could be on the list of Americans.’ That just simply is not how this works,” he said.

But Rogers, who said he reviews every strike after it is carried out and sends his staff to a monthly meeting with intelligence officials to ensure staffers have enough information on the strike program, cautioned that should another American citizen again attain the status Awlaki did, the U.S. government has the authority to kill him.

“If you ever got another American who rose to that same level in the ranks and leadership role in al-Qaida and they were operating in Yemen or Mali or southern Algeria or Libya, well, they’ve picked their team, and their team is al-Qaida. And the United States is in conflict with al-Qaida. In the rules of war, you’re allowed to defend yourself.”

And while the White House has no comment about Rogers running his mouth, just after he did so, the Administration announced $5 million rewards for tips leading to the capture of two American extremists, Omar Shafik Hammami and Jehad Serwan Mostafa, who have both been indicted on charges of materially supporting a terrorist organization. The Rewards for Justice descriptions, however, say Hammami and Mostafa have done more than just materially support terror.

It accuses Hammami of serving as a military leader.

In 2006, Hammami moved to Somalia where he joined and received training from Islamist militants. In 2007, Hammami began serving as a propagandist for al-Shabaab, helping to recruit English-speaking youth through his writings, rap songs, and televised statements. He also served as a military leader for al-Shabaab, and he at one time led foreign fighters under Jehad Mostafa.

Continue reading →

Yemeni Government Intensifies Harassment of Journalist Who Presented Counter-Evidence to US Case against Awlaki

By: emptywheel Thursday March 21, 2013 7:56 am

Ever since I wrote this post, I’ve been thinking about the fate of Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye. As Jeremy Scahill reported last year, President Obama personally intervened in February 2011 to make sure that Shaye would remain in prison, for terrorism charges presented at a kangaroo court, for at least five years.

In the course of pointing out the holes in the NYT piece on Anwar al-Awlaki, I revisited the discrepancy between what, according to DOJ, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab confessed to immediately after he was arrested on December 25, 2009 and what, according to DOJ, he said in interrogations conducted a month and more later. I’m now convinced, at a minimum, that the discrepancies are much more problematic than I thought when I first reported the discrepancy, and I also think (though I’m still working on this) that the original confession may be more reliable given other known facts. If that’s true, it significantly undermines the government’s case against Awlaki, as Abdulmutallab is the key known witness attesting to Awlaki’s operational role which — at least publicly — is the key criteria that must be met before Awlaki’s killing was legal (though at precisely the moment Abdulmutallab started cooperating, Dennis Blair described the standard to be something different).

Which brings me to this article, which reports on an interview Shaye conducted with Awlaki some time after the UndieBomb attack, presumably at least several days before it was published and therefore before Abdulmutallab started cooperating. The story originally took Awlaki’s acknowledgment he had “communications” with Abdulmutallab to support its claim that Awlaki “met” with the UndieBomber.

Anwar al-Awlaki, the fugitive American-born cleric accused of terrorist ties, acknowledged for the first time that he met with the Nigerian suspect in the Dec. 25 airliner bomb plot, though he denied any role in the attack, according to a Yemeni journalist who said he met with him.

Mr. Awlaki said he had met and spoken with the Nigerian suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, in Yemen last fall, according to the journalist, Abdulelah Hider Sha’ea, who played a digital recording of the cleric’s comments for this reporter.

[snip]

“Umar Farouk is one of my students; I had communications with him,” Mr. Awlaki can be heard saying on the recording. “And I support what he did, as America supports Israel’s killing of Palestinians, and its killing of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

[snip]

Mr. Awlaki, 38, said on the recording that he had no part in the planning or execution of the bomb plot. He did not say whether he had advance knowledge of it. “I did not tell him to do this operation, but I support it,” Mr. Awlaki said on the tape, adding that he was proud of Mr. Abdulmutallab. [my emphasis]

Nine days later it added this correction, and took the word “met” out of the second though not lead paragraph of the article.

An article last Monday about possible connections between Anwar al-Awlaki, a fugitive American-born cleric accused of terrorist ties, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian suspect in the Christmas Day plot against an American passenger jet, paraphrased incorrectly from comments by a Yemeni journalist about the relationship between the two men. The journalist, Abdulelah Hider Sha’ea, said that Mr. Awlaki told him he had “communications” with Mr. Abdulmutallab last fall, not that the two men had met in person. [my emphasis]

To be sure, the correction (which presumably came from Shaye and not Awlaki) doesn’t rule out Awlaki meeting with Abdulmutallab; it just clarifies that’s not what Awlaki said (or even, to take the most cynical view, that Shaye shifted the emphasis after reports of Abdulmutallab’s cooperation were made public).

Continue reading →

Breaking! Brennan Extends No Rule Drones for 2 Years

By: emptywheel Wednesday March 20, 2013 10:22 am

It’s hard to take this story — reporting, Exclusive: No More Drones for CIA — all that seriously given this assertion:

Brennan has publicly stated that he would like to see the CIA move away from the kinds of paramilitary operations it began after the September 11 attacks, and return to its more traditional role of gathering and analyzing intelligence.

Here’s what Brennan has in fact said about paramilitary operations and the CIA, in statements to Congress and therefore presumably with a bit more legal weight than what he says secretly to journalists.

What role do you see for the CIA in paramilitary-style intelligence activities or covert action?

The CIA, a successor to the Office of Strategic Services, has a long history of carrying out paramilitary-style intelligence activities and must continue to be able to provide the President with this option should he want to employ it to accomplish critical national security objectives.

How do you distinguish between the appropriate roles of the CIA and elements of the Department of Defense in paramilitary-style covert action?

As stated in my response to Question 6 above, the CIA and DOD must be ready to carry out missions at the direction of the President. The President must be able to select which element is best suited. Factors that should be considered include the capabilities sought, the experience and skills needed, the material required, and whether the activity must be conducted covertly. [my emphasis]

What Brennan does have the habit of doing is providing evasive answers when people who want CIA out of the paramilitary business ask him about it, as he did several times in his confirmation hearing.

MIKULSKI: So, let me get to my questions. I have been concerned for some time that there is a changing nature of the CIA, and that instead of it being America’s top spy agency, top human spy agency to make sure that we have no strategic surprises, that it has become more and more executing paramilitary operations.

And I discussed this with you in our conversation. How do you see this? I see this as mission-creep. I see this as overriding the original mission of the CIA, for which you’re so well versed, and more a function of the Special Operations Command. Could you share with me how you see the CIA and what you think about this militarization of the CIA that’s going on?

BRENNAN: Senator, the principal mission of the agency is to collect intelligence, uncover those secrets, as you say, to prevent those strategic surprises and to be the best analytic component within the U.S. government, to do the allsource analysis that CIA has done so well for many, many years. At times, the president asks and directs the CIA to do covert action. That covert action can take any number of forms, to include paramilitary.

[snip]

And the CIA should not be doing traditional military activities and operations.

Now, Brennan has actually made that last comment — that he wants CIA out of traditional military activities — several times, as well.

From this we can make the following conclusions:

If flying remotely piloted aerial vehicles and shooting missiles from them is a traditional military operation — and they sure should be — then Brennan wants out.
If flying remotely piloted aerial vehicles and shooting missiles from them is a paramilitary operation (which is the implied understanding of most people who comment on this), then Brennan very much plans on keeping that capability in case the President wants to conduct such operations covertly.

Continue reading →

Why Would Jeh Johnson Suggest the Drone and/or Targeted Killing Court Would Be Bipartisan?

By: emptywheel Monday March 18, 2013 3:26 pm

I’ll have more to say about Jeh Johnson’s skeptical speech on a drone and/or targeted killing court later.

But I wanted to point to this detail:

Our government finds itself in a lose-lose proposition: it fails to officially confirm many of its counterterrorism successes, and fails to officially confirm, deny or clarify unsubstantiated reports of civilian casualties.

Our government’s good efforts for the safety of the people risks an erosion of support by the people.

It is in this atmosphere that the idea of a national security court as a solution to the problem — an idea that for a long time existed only on the margins of the debate about U.S. counterterrorism policy but is now entertained by more mainstream thinkers such as Senator Diane Feinstein and a man I respect greatly, my former client Robert Gates – has gained momentum.

To be sure, a national security court composed of a bipartisan group of federal judges with life tenure, to approve targeted lethal force, would bring some added levels of credibility, independence and rigor to the process, and those are worthy goals.

In the eyes of the American public, judges are for the most part respected for their independence.

In the eyes of the international community, a practice that is becoming increasingly controversial would be placed on a more credible footing. [my emphasis]

As I understand it, the model under discussion is simply to give the existing FISA Court the additional task of reviewing kill decisions, not creating a new court.Yet the FISA Court — whose judges are appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (and therefore, for the entire life of the FISA Court, by a Republican appointee) — is in no way bipartisan.

Continue reading →

The Global War on Wayward Knuckleheads

By: emptywheel Tuesday March 12, 2013 1:06 pm

103 minutes into todays Global Threat Hearing in the Senate Intelligence Committee, National Counterterrorism Center Director Matt Olsen got asked his first question, about what his agency is seeing as rising threats. As part of the discussion that ensued, he noted that homegrown Islamic terrorists continued to be a threat though, he admitted, such attacks would be “unsophisticated.”

He then admitted that those who get inspired by Al Qaeda propaganda are “wayward knuckleheads.”

The comment sure seems to confirm a key premise of Trevor Aaronson’s book, The Terror Factory. Our domestic war on terror — complete with FBI-concocted plots — really consists of getting wayward knuckleheads to respond to FBI incitment. “FBI’s trawling in Muslim communities has resulted largely in sting operations that target easily susceptible men on the margins of society.”

Meanwhile, Robert Mueller had a curious comment in his discussion about the ongoing al Qaeda threat. He said that airplane plots remain a threat. The individuals responsible for previous airline attempts still out there, he said.

Um, I thought we had killed at least one individual responsible for previous airline attempts in September 2011. You mean Anwar al-Awlaki wasn’t the mastermind of the UndieBomb threat?

Of course not: Ibrahim al-Asiri was the operational mastermind of it (or maybe Abu Tarak!). Which is why we had another purported attempt last year, more than six months after Awlaki died.

In any case, Mueller’s comment seems to be an at least implicit admission that the Administration oversold Awlaki’s single centrality to the first UndieBomb plot.

The Author of the White Paper, Stuart Delery, Argues Selective, Misleading Disclosures Should Not Be Checked by FOIA

By: emptywheel Monday March 11, 2013 1:48 pm

As I noted in this post, Daniel Klaidman has identified the author of the targeted killing white paper as Stuart Delery.

At the time he wrote the white paper, Delery was Senior Counselor to Attorney General Eric Holder. Last March, he became Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division of DOJ and, in the absence of an Assistant AG (or, as far as I can tell, even a nominee, in which case this feels a lot like what George Bush did with Steven Bradbury when he left the Acting head in charge for years on end), the Acting head of the Civil Division.

As I also noted, Delery actually argued the government’s case in the ACLU’s Drone FOIA on September 20, 2012. Now, that’s the ACLU’s other drone FOIA, not the one specifically requesting information that should have included the unclassified white paper Delery wrote if DOJ had answered the FOIA in good faith.

Nevertheless, it asked for closely related information:

The Request seeks a variety of records relating to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to conduct targeted killings, including the legal basis for the strikes and any legal limits on who may be targeted; where targeted drone strikes can occur; civilian casualties; which agencies or other non-governmental entities may be involved in conducting targeted killings; how the results of individual drone strikes are assessed after the fact; who may operate and direct targeted killing strikes; and how those involved in operating the program are supervised, overseen or disciplined.

At the time ACLU submitted the request on January 13, 2010, Delery was in the Deputy Attorney General’s Office. DOJ responded to its part of the FOIA on February 3, 2010 — 16 days after DOJ worked on a briefing on targeted killing Eric Holder would make to President Obama and 15 days after he delivered that briefing — by claiming only FBI would have responsive records. When FBI searched its records it found none. DOJ made that initial response 6 days before someone in DAG — Delery’s office — wrote an email to OLC about the Holder briefing.

So while DOJ’s non-responsiveness in the drone FOIA is not as egregious as it was in the Awlaki FOIA, it’s still clear that the department Delery worked in, if not (as in the Awlaki FOIA) Delery’s work itself, was shielded from FOIA by a disingenuous FOIA response.

Yet Delery, the Acting head of the Civil Division, nevertheless decided he should argue the government’s case. Technically, Delery was arguing for CIA’s right to pretend it hadn’t confirmed its role in drone strikes in spite of repeated public statements doing just that, so he wasn’t defending the non-disclosure of his Department’s work, per se. Still, it’s not generally considered good form for a lawyer to argue a matter in which he has been so closely involved. He did so, however, at a time before we knew just how centrally involved he was in this matter.

With all that in mind, I thought I’d look at what Delery said to the DC Circuit.

MR. DELERY: May it please the Court, Stuart Delery for the Appellee, CIA.

This Court in several cases has identified two important interests that the strict test for official confirmation serves. It protects the Government’s vital interest in information related to national security and foreign affairs, and it advances FOIA’s interest in disclosure by not punishing officials for attempting to educate the public on matters of public concern because otherwise officials would be reluctant to speak on important national security matters.

Here, the Government has acknowledged that the United States makes efforts to target specific terrorists as part of its counter-terrorism operations, that as part of those operations or, in some cases, those operations involve the use of remotely piloted aircraft or drones, and it’s also described the legal framework and standards that apply in this context in a series of speeches and interviews including by the President’s counter-terrorism advisor, John Brennan, but also the Attorney General, the legal advisor to the State Department, the General Council of DOD, and as has been referenced in yesterday’s or the recent exchange of 28J letters including a recent interview by the President. But, there’s been no official acknowledgment one way or the other about whether the CIA is involved in these particular operations. [my emphasis]

Delery suggests that a series of Leon Panetta comments (both before and after he moved from CIA to DOD) making the CIA’s role in drone killing clear should not amount to confirmation that the CIA is involved in drone killing because, he says, FOIA’s interest in disclosure should not punish public officials for attempting to educate the public.

Or, to put it another way, the Administration giving a bunch of self-serving speeches should not then make the topic of those speeches subject to FOIA because, in Delery’s mind, that would work contrary to FOIA’s support for disclosure because it would punish officials for giving self-serving speeches.

Continue reading →

Somehow DOD Kept Missing Anwar al-Awlaki

By: emptywheel Monday March 11, 2013 9:30 am

I was going to leave well enough alone with this NYT article on Anwar al-Awlaki, having criticized both its legal editorializing and its selective presentation of evidence against Awlaki. But since I suspect it is intended to prepare the ground for an Obama speech on targeted killing, I want to look at how assiduously the article hides Yemeni former President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s questionable commitment to our war on terror.

Let’s start by comparing this description of the May 25, 2010 drone strike that killed Saleh rival Jabir Shabwani from the WSJ:

On May 25, 2010, a U.S. missile attack killed at least six people including Jabir Shabwani, the 31-year-old deputy governor of Yemen’s central Mareb province. The Yemeni government provided intelligence used in the strike but didn’t say Mr. Shabwani would be among those there, say several current and former U.S. military officials.

These people say they believe the information from the Yemenis may have been intended to result in Mr. Shabwani’s death. “We think we got played,” said one participant in high-level administration discussions.

The government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh denies it used the U.S. campaign to eliminate a political rival or provided misleading intelligence. They say the president and other officials were furious when they learned of Mr. Shabwani’s death. Not all U.S. officials believe the U.S. was set up.

With the version the NYT gave us:

A disastrous American missile strike in May 2010 accidentally killed a deputy provincial governor in Yemen and infuriated President Saleh, effectively suspending the clandestine war.

While even the WSJ pays lip service to Saleh’s claim to be “furious,” the NYT not only completely ignores the widely held understanding that Saleh was not furious at all because he set up the attack, but claims Shabwani was only accidentally targeted.

The event is one of the signature examples of how our reliance on unreliable partners has contributed to counterproductive drone deaths. And yet the NYT doesn’t explain that part of the tragedy.

Continue reading →

18 USC 1119 Foreign Murder and Obama Targeted Kill White Paper

By: bmaz Sunday March 10, 2013 8:42 pm

Back in February, when the “White Paper” was first “leaked”, Marcy wrote a fantastic article entitled Article II or AUMF? “A High Level Official” (AKA John Brennan) Says CIA Can Murder You on the issues of Article II authority versus AUMF authority in relation to the Obama targeted killing program. First off, let me say that the the lack of recognition of the presence of both these these respective authorities in the targeted killing program, even among legal commentators I respect greatly, is one of, if not the, most discouraging aspects of the discussion being had. Sadly, the big filibuster by Sen. Rand Paul did not necessarily improve the understanding, and even the New York Times continues to propagate the misdirection and misinformation peddled by the Obama Administration.

I wish to discuss the interaction of the statutory law contained in 18 USC 1119, the “Foreign Murder statute”, with the greater Obama Administration Targeted Killing Program, and the White Paper foundation for it. Specifically I want to point out the circular and disingenuous way in which the White Paper tries to bootstrap itself, and the Administration, around criminal liability for murder in the case of a targeted US citizen such as Anwar Awlaki. Frankly, Marcy let fly with another must read post on 18 USC 1119 and the White Paper yesterday in the wake of the New York Times sop to the Administration, and it filets both the White Paper, and the NYT, open at the seams.

The most important principle to understand about the White Paper’s discussion of 18 USC 1119 is, as Marcy noted, that it is impertinent if the the law of war (formally the “Law of Armed Conflict” or “LOAC”) is truly in play. In short, if the Administration is using the AUMF – military force – in an active battle situation, there is no need for further discussion, whether Mr. Awlaki is a US citizen or not. That, of course is diametrically opposed to what the facts were at the action point with Awlaki, and that we now know.

The truth is the Administration used a civilian agency, the CIA, to kill a US citizen without judicial due process, far from the “hot battlefield” and that is why such a deliberate attempt was made in the White Paper to obfuscate the legal basis for their targeting and killing, and why such a seemingly inordinate time was spent in the White Paper on a traditional criminal law statute, 18 USC 1119.

The statutory language of 18 USC 1119 states:
Continue reading →

Is Stuart Delery the One Who Flubbed DOJ’s FOIA Response?

By: emptywheel Sunday March 10, 2013 3:38 pm

In a piece describing how badly the Administration has botched its treatment of the Anwar al-Awlaki killing, Daniel Klaidman elaborates on his past reporting on why the Administration responded the way it did. Of particular note, he reveals the white paper was written not by anyone in DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, but by the then Senior Counselor to Eric Holder, Stuart Delery.

A Justice Department lawyer named Stuart Delery set out to produce a stripped down version of the memo. But the White House had still not decided what form the disclosure would take. One proposal was an op-ed piece that would run under Holder’s byline, but Delery’s document ended up being so long that option was scrapped. Another possibility was releasing a white paper to the public. In the end, the White House settled on letting Holder deliver a so-called “top-wave” speech, an address that would deal with a host of pressing national security issues and would include a section on the legal rationale behind killing American citizens. But, critically, the administration did not give anything separately to Congress.

Soon thereafter, a draft of the speech was sent over to the White House for approval. For reasons that remain unclear, it languished on National Security Adviser Tom Donilon’s desk for months. Then, in January 2012, it was circulated by the National Security Council for final approval.

So the white paper was written not by the department that wrote the actual legal memo authorizing killing Awlaki (remember, both Marty Lederman and David Barron were long gone by this point), but in the Office of Attorney General.

With that in mind, consider how grossly unresponsive the Office of Information Policy (which handles FOIA requests involving the OAG) was to the ACLU FOIA for information on the authority for killing Awlaki, which I laid out here and here.

Continue reading →

Anwar al-Awlaki Is the New Aluminum Tube

By: emptywheel Sunday March 10, 2013 11:39 am

Mark Mazzetti, Charlie Savage, and Scott Shane team up to provide the government’s best case — and at times, an irresponsibly credulous one — for the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki and the collateral deaths of Samir Khan and Abdulrahman al-Awlaki.

Yet even in a 3,600 word story, they don’t present any evidence against the senior Awlaki that was fresher than a year old — the October 2010 toner cartridge plot — at the time the Yemeni-American was killed. (I’m not saying the government didn’t have more recent intelligence; it just doesn’t appear in this very Administration-friendly case.) Not surprisingly, then, the story completely ignores questions about the definition of “imminent threat” used in the OLC memo and whether Awlaki was an “imminent” threat when he was killed.

The “linked in various ways” standard for killing Americans

Moreover, the case they do present has various weaknesses.

The story provides a fair amount of space to Awlaki’s celebration of the Nidal Hasan attack (though it does make it clear Awlaki did not respond enthusiastically to Hasan’s queries before the attack).

Investigators quickly discovered that the major had exchanged e-mails with Mr. Awlaki, though the cleric’s replies had been cautious and noncommittal. But four days after the shootings, the cleric removed any doubt about where he stood.

“Nidal Hassan is a hero,” he wrote on his widely read blog. “He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people.”

It uses far vaguer language to describe Awlaki’s role in the Faisal Shahzad and toner cartridge plots.

Meanwhile, attacks linked in various ways to Mr. Awlaki continued to mount, including the attempted car bombing of Times Square in May 2010 by Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized American citizen who had reached out to the preacher on the Internet, and the attempted bombing by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula of cargo planes bound for the United States that October.

“Linked in various ways” seems to be the new standard for killing an American. That, in spite of the fact that Shahzad’s tie to Awlaki seems to be the same Hasan had: an inspiration, but not any involvement in the plot. And while Awlaki is reported to have had some role in the toner cartridge plot, reports from Saudi infiltrator Jabir al-Fayfi apparently fingered others in AQAP as the chief plotters.

I guess that would be too much nuance to include in a 3,600 word article.

NYT doesn’t care about problems with the Abu Tarak explanation

Which leaves the UndieBomb attack as the sole attack in which the NYT presents evidence about Awlaki’s direct role. But there’s a problem with their claims there, too.

The would-be underwear bomber told F.B.I. agents that after he went to Yemen and tracked down Mr. Awlaki, his online hero, the cleric had discussed “martyrdom and jihad” with him, approved him for a suicide mission, helped him prepare a martyrdom video and directed him to detonate his bomb over United States territory, according to court documents.

In his initial 50-minute interrogation on Dec. 25, 2009, before he stopped speaking for a month, Mr. Abdulmutallab said he had been sent by a terrorist named Abu Tarek, although intelligence agencies quickly found indications that Mr. Awlaki was probably involved. When Mr. Abdulmutallab resumed cooperating with interrogators in late January, an official said, he admitted that “Abu Tarek” was Mr. Awlaki. With the Nigerian’s statements, American officials had witness confirmation that Mr. Awlaki was clearly a direct plotter, no longer just a dangerous propagandist.

I don’t doubt that Awlaki was directly involved in this attack in some way. And I got the same explanation about Abu Tarak from “an official” back when I first noted the discrepancy between DOJ’s public claims (thanks for not crediting me on that one, NYT boys). But either Abdulmutallab said something beyond “Abu Tarak was Awlaki,” or the entire explanation is not credible.

That’s because Abdulmutallab’s initial interrogation — according to the version presented by Jonathan Tukel in the opening arguments of Abdulmutallab’s trial — said Abu Tarak did the following:

Spoke daily with Abdulmutallab about jihad and martyrdom
Suggested to Abdulmutallab that he become involved in a plane attack against the United States aircraft
Gave him training in detonating the bomb
Told him to make sure he attacked a U.S. aircraft and make sure the attack takes place over the United States

Yet according to the version of Abdulmutallab’s interrogation presented in his sentencing memo, here’s who did those things:

Awlaki and Abdulmutallab discussed martyrdom and jihad
Defendant and Ibrahim Al Asiri discussed defendant’s desire to commit an act of jihad; Asiri discussed a plan for a martyrdom mission with Awlaki, who gave it final approval
Asiri trained defendant in the use of the bomb
Awlaki instructed defendant that the only requirements were that the attack be on a U.S. airliner, and that the attack take place over U.S. soil

Continue reading →