Brian Williams - Predators

Years later President Musharraf admitted to giving the CIA permission to carry out surveillance with drones but denied giving the organization the right to fire missiles. 33This retroactive denial does not, however, seem plausible in light of the subsequent drone campaign carried out during his tenure as president. It is more likely that Musharraf gave the Americans full authority to hunt terrorists as part of his new relationship with them but kept this agreement hidden from his own people. The Pakistani authorities had thus come a long way since their days of supporting the Taliban. The CIA had also come a long way since September 4, 2001, when Director Tenet worried about issues related to how the U.S. government and others would react when Arab terrorists began being assassinated. Clearly the CIA was now actively hunting terrorists operating from the autonomous “Talibanistan” zone in the FATA, which was officially claimed by the Pakistani government.

Not all voices were in favor of this new cooperation in killing terrorists in Pakistan. The human rights group Amnesty International issued a statement after the killing of Haithem al Yemeni that said,

Amnesty International fears that, if the circumstances of these killings have been reported accurately, the USA has carried out an extrajudicial execution, in violation of international law. Amnesty International reminds the USA that it has condemned such unlawful actions when carried out by other states in the past. It calls upon the USA to end immediately all operations aimed at killing suspects instead of arresting them, investigate all past suspected cases of extrajudicial executions, and revoke all orders that may allow extrajudicial execution. 34

Despite such calls for an end to the assassination campaign, the cooperation between Pakistan and the United States in carrying out the killings was expanded. In fact, NBC reported that the drone attack on Yemeni had actually been preceded by several strikes on sites in Pakistan described as terrorist training camps. 35This was not surprising considering the growth in terrorist camps in the FATA since the overthrow of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001. According to one source, the Taliban and al Qaeda eventually established as many as 157 terrorist training camps throughout the FATA. 36Numerous terrorist attacks, including the 2002 Bali bombings, the 2003 Istanbul bombings, and the 2005 bombings in London, could be traced to these camps. The CIA feared that future 9/11s were being plotted in the terrorist camps in the FATA and continued to monitor them by means of high-flying drones.

Word that the reconnaissance drones were armed may not, however, have gotten out yet. That would change with the next assassination: the killing of the new number three in al Qaeda, Abu Hamza al Rabia, in November 2005. Rabia had been involved in two terrorist plots to kill President Musharraf. 37Before his death, one Pakistani source stated that he had been playing hide-and-seek with the CIA. 38In fact, he had survived a drone strike on November 5, 2005, that had reportedly broken his leg and killed his wife and child. 39Then he and four bodyguards, two of them Syrian, were mysteriously killed on November 30, 2005, at 1:45 a.m. in a village located near the capital of North Waziristan, Miranshah. Rabia died in an unexplained explosion that destroyed the mud-walled compound where he was living at the time.

In response to media inquiries about the possible role of a Predator in Rabia’s death, a Pakistani intelligence official ambiguously stated that the terrorist had been killed while “working with explosives.” 40But such comments directly contradicted eyewitnesses who reported seeing white streaks flying from the sky into the house. 41One witness reported, “I heard more explosions and went out to the courtyard, and when I looked up at the sky, I saw a white drone. I saw a flash of light come from the drone followed by explosions.” 42

The truth came out when a local Pashtun freelance journalist named Hayatullah Khan was hired by the U.S. television show Frontline and traveled to the scene with a camera. There he filmed local villagers holding pieces of shrapnel with the words “U.S. Guided Missile, Contact Serno, AGM-114” clearly visible on them. 43Hayatullah’s pictures were subsequently broadcast around the world and deeply embarrassed the Pakistani government, which had sought to downplay its covert working relationship with the CIA.

Afterward, Hayatullah feared that he had incurred the wrath of the Pakistani authorities and told reporters, “When I published the picture of the missile I knew the government would harm me.” Hayatullah’s premonition proved to be correct; he was subsequently kidnapped by unknown people. After his tribe launched a massive search for him that included questioning the local Taliban, Hayatullah’s body was found with five bullet holes in it; his hands were bound by government-issued handcuffs. 44

The Pakistani security forces were clearly sensitive to the issue of the drone strikes—so sensitive that they were willing to resort to murder to keep secret their role in them. Hundreds of Pakistani journalists subsequently protested the killing of one of their own by the country’s security forces. The Pakistani government may have also tried to keep the lid on the news that the son and nephew of the man who had given hospitality to Rabia had also been killed in the drone strike. These two were possibly the second pair of collateral damages of the Pakistani drone campaign (the first being Abu Hamza al Rabia’s wife and child, who were killed in the earlier strike). 45

For their part the Americans were thrilled with the death of the third-highest ranked al Qaeda terrorist in Pakistan. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said, “This is law enforcement, this is not assassination. This is going against the leadership of an organization that has declared war on the United States.” 46By this time the Pakistanis had lost more than 250 soldiers fighting against the Taliban while searching for al Qaeda terrorists and were still willing to continue to live with the lie that the terrorists’ deaths were carried out by “car bombs” or “explosive mishaps.” 47Many in the ISI and military who had previously supported the Taliban had been purged. President Musharraf clearly saw the Taliban and al Qaeda (which had tried to assassinate him on several occasions) as a threat. While there had been cases of Pakistani frontier soldiers firing on U.S. troops in support of newly reorganized Afghan Taliban insurgents along the border, the Pakistani military and intelligence appeared to be tentatively throwing in its lot with the Americans.

This newfound cooperation would be strained following the next drone strike, which was aimed at none other than Ayman al Zawahiri. As it transpired, the Pakistanis had gained considerable insight into the al Qaeda number two’s movements following the interrogation of the arrested al Qaeda operative Abu Faraj al Libbi. According to Libbi, Zawahiri had found sanctuary among militants in the village of Azam Warsak in South Waziristan. He had in fact married a Pashtun woman from the region to cement his relationship with the local tribesmen. In mid-March 2004 the Pakistani army bombed Azam Warsak and later received word that Zawahiri had been injured in the bombing. 48

Zawahiri then fled north to the tribal agency of Bajaur and found refuge in the village of Damadola, which was controlled by pro-Taliban militants led by Sufi Muhammad. But the CIA was not far behind, and on or around January 5, 2006, it fired a missile into a compound believed to be housing Zawahiri. The al Qaeda operative was not killed in the attack, but eight family members of a “militant cleric” who was said to have given him hospitality were. 49