U.S. Drone Strike Said to Kill Doctor Trying to Implant Bombs
A United States Air Force drone. Strikes by the unmanned aircraft have come under fresh scrutiny after President Obama disclosed in April that an attack had killed two Western aid workers held hostage by Al Qaeda in Pakistan. Lt. Col. Leslie Pratt/U.S. Air Force, via Reuters
WASHINGTON — Early in 2012, worried that suicide bombers might pass through airline security undetected, American counterterrorism officials ordered a drone strike in Yemen to kill a doctor they believed was working with Al Qaeda to surgically implant explosives in operatives, according to British intelligence documents.
The documents, previously undisclosed, include details about how terrorism suspects are targeted in drone strikes and how strikes can go wrong at times. The documents also show how closely the National Security Agency has worked in Pakistan and Yemen with its British counterpart, Government Communications Headquarters, or G.C.H.Q.
Britain has carried out drone strikes only in war zones in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. The documents raise the possibility that in addition, British intelligence may have helped guide American strikes outside conventional war zones.
President François Hollande in Brussels on Monday after talks on Greece's debt crisis. WikiLeaks published documents that says the N.S.A. eavesdropped on three French presidents.WikiLeaks Files Said to Show N.S.A. Spied on French LeadersJUNE 23, 2015
Edward J. Snowden appeared via streaming video at the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm to receive an award in December.Snowden Sees Some Victories, From a DistanceMAY 19, 2015
President Obama spoke on Thursday about the two hostages accidentally killed in a counterterrorism operation.Obama Apologizes After Drone Kills American and Italian Held by Al QaedaAPRIL 23, 2015
Drone strikes carried out by the C.I.A. and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command have received fresh scrutiny after President Obama disclosed in April that a strike had killed two Western aid workers held hostage by Al Qaeda in Pakistan. In that case, intelligence officers targeting the Qaeda compound had no idea the hostages were there, illustrating how incomplete or faulty information has led to civilian deaths in the drone campaign.
Last week offered two more examples of the uncertain outcomes of airstrikes. A prominent Algerian terrorist, widely reported dead in a Pentagon strike by F-15s, appears to still be alive. And only several days after a strike in Yemen did American officials learn that an attack had killed the leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, who was also the No. 2 leader of Al Qaeda’s global terror network.
The British documents were provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor, to The Guardian, the British newspaper and global website, and shared with The New York Times. Press officers for the N.S.A. and the C.I.A. declined to comment. G.C.H.Q. said in a statement that while it would not comment on intelligence operations, “We expect all states concerned to act in accordance with international law and take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian casualties when conducting any form of military or counterterrorist operations.”
An internal newsletter for the British agency identifies the doctor killed in a drone strike in Yemen on March 30, 2012, as Khadim Usamah, whom it describes as “the doctor who pioneered using surgically planted explosives.” The newsletter calls Dr. Usamah, who appears to have never been identified publicly before, a member of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the branch of the terrorist organization based in Yemen. It says he was killed along with a second Qaeda member.
The strike came at a time of especially intense concern inside the Obama administration about the persistent efforts of Al Qaeda in Yemen to use commercial aircraft to mount an attack on the United States. The chief bomb maker of the Arab peninsula branch, Ibrahim al-Asiri, was experimenting with designing explosives that a suicide attacker could carry undetected through conventional security checkpoints.
In August 2009, Mr. Asiri dispatched his younger brother, Abdullah al-Asiri, to Saudi Arabia with a bomb that by most accounts was inserted in his rectum. He detonated the explosives when he met with the Saudi counterterrorism chief, Mohammed bin Nayef, but the bomb killed only the younger Mr. Asiri.
On Dec. 25, 2009, a young Nigerian equipped by Mr. Asiri with explosives hidden in his underwear, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, made it through airline security and onto a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. But when he tried to blow up the flight as it approached Detroit, the bomb only ignited and burned Mr. Abdulmutallab, who was swiftly subdued by other passengers.
Some intelligence officials expressed concern after that failed attack that Mr. Asiri had recruited one or more surgeons to experiment with implanting a bomb with no metal parts into the abdomen of a suicide bomber. There is no known case in which such an attack was carried out, but the British documents suggest that intelligence officials believed Dr. Usamah was part of an effort to develop such plans when he was killed.
Some of the British agency’s documents suggest, though they do not explicitly state, that it provided intelligence for that strike in Yemen and other American strikes. That would be no surprise, since intelligence cooperation between the United States and Britain has long been close, particularly in the area of signals intelligence, or eavesdropping. The documents discuss the British agency’s employees who work at an N.S.A. station in Fort Gordon, Ga., and at a large N.S.A. center in England called Menwith Hill Station.
British officials rarely speak publicly about cooperation with the program of targeted killings. In a formal answer to a parliamentary inquiry last year about whether Britain was participating in unmanned aerial vehicle strikes in Yemen, the British defense minister, Mark Francois, replied in writing that “U.A.V. strikes against terrorist targets in Yemen are a matter for the Yemeni and U.S. governments.” The answer did not explicitly deny a British role, but certainly suggested there was not one.
American drone strikes are supported by a majority of the public in the United States but opposed by the British public. A poll last year by the Pew Research Center found that 52 percent of Americans backed the strikes, with 41 percent opposed. In Britain, 59 percent were opposed, while 33 percent approved of the strikes.
Opposition to the strikes is often based on reports of civilians killed unintentionally. While proponents argue that missiles fired from unmanned aircraft are the most precise way to eliminate terrorists, intelligence agencies often do not have enough detailed information about who is in a strike zone to be certain that all are militants posing a threat to the United States or to Americans overseas.
The British agency’s documents underscore the central role of eavesdropping and the tracking of electronic signals in identifying suspects and in determining their exact location. Such sophisticated technology may improve the odds of finding and hitting the intended target.
But the British documents also hint at the flawed conclusions that signals intelligence can produce.
For example, a smartphone carried by a target can be easily tracked by the N.S.A. or its British counterpart, and can contribute to what the agencies call “PID,” or positive identification. But phones can, of course, be passed from person to person, leading to mistaken identifications.
“Of significant note,” the British agency’s October 2010 guide to targeting says with careful understatement, “is whether the handset is identified as single user or multi-user.” The guide has a reference to the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, indicating that it was written to assist in strikes there.
With such uncertainties in mind, agencies try to identify targets by both voice and physical appearance, the document says. It also describes attempts to determine a suspect’s “B.D.L.,” or bed-down location.
Some suspects are more “Comsec aware” than others, the guide says — in other words, some of them pay more attention to communications security, aware that counterterrorism agencies may be tracking their calls.
The guide talks about a suspect “detaching” from communications — for example, ending a call or turning off a mobile phone — and notes the obvious: that someone who is talking on the phone will “detach” when hit by a missile.
“Immediately after a strike it should be possible to detect whether the target detached at time of strike,” the guide notes. “This is a good indication that the correct target has been struck.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/world/middleeast/us-drone-strike-said-to-kill-doctor-trying-to-implant-bombs.html?emc=edit_na_20150624&nlid=55714762&ref=headline&_r=0
GCHQ documents raise fresh questions over UK complicity in US drone strikes
Details of 2012 Yemen drone strike prompt call for UK to reveal extent of involvement in US targeted killing programme outside recognised war zones
British intelligence agency GCHQ is facing fresh calls to reveal the extent of its involvement in the US targeted killing programme after details of a fatal drone strike in Yemen were included in a top secret memo circulated to agency staff.
A leading barrister asked by the Guardian to review a number of classified GCHQdocuments said they raised questions about British complicity in US strikes outside recognised war zones and demonstrated the need for the government to come clean about the UK’s role.
The documents, provided to the Guardian by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and reported in partnership with the New York Times, discuss how a joint US, UK and Australian programme codenamed Overhead supported the strike in Yemen in 2012.
The files also show GCHQ and Overhead developed their ability to track the location of individuals – essential for the targeted killing programme – in both Yemen and Pakistan. The legality of the US’s lethal operations in both countries has been questioned by international lawyers and human rights groups.
Jemima Stratford QC, who reviewed the Snowden documents for the Guardian, said: “Assuming that the documents which I have seen are genuine, in my view they raise questions about the extent to which UK officials may have had knowledge of, or helped to facilitate, certain US drone strikes which were not carried out in the context of an international armed conflict,” she said.
“These documents underline why greater transparency as to UK official policies would help to ensure legality from a domestic and international law perspective.”
Stratford published a legal opinion last year warning that UK intelligence support for lethal strikes outside traditional battlefields – such as Iraq and Afghanistan – was likely to be illegal. “In our view, if GCHQ transferred data to the NSA in the knowledge that it would or might be used for targeting drone strikes that transfer is probably unlawful,” she wrote.
British officials and ministers follow a strict policy of refusing to confirm or deny any support to the targeted killing programme, and evidence has been so scant that legal challenges have been launched on the basis of single paragraphs in news stories.
The release of the information, they wrote, would “underline the distinction between Reaper strikes by our armed forces in Afghanistan, and now Iraq, and those of other states elsewhere”.Even a former head of GCHQ has objected to Britain’s continuing secrecy over the issue. David Omand joined MPs Tom Watson and David Davis in signing a letter last November calling on the government to disclose its guidance on intelligence-sharing where individuals may be targeted by covert strikes.
Watson told the Guardian: “The government has always maintained we are not complicit in targeted extra-judicial killings. Any note of ambiguity identified by these documents has to be thoroughly investigated.”
The new documents include a regular series of newsletters – titled Comet News – which are used to update GCHQ personnel on the work of Overhead, an operation based on satellite, radio and some phone collection of intelligence. Overhead began as a US operation but has operated for decades as a partnership with GCHQ and, more recently, Australian intelligence.
The GCHQ memos, which span a two-year period, set out how Yemen became a surveillance priority for Overhead in 2010, in part at the urging of the NSA, shortly after the failed 2009 Christmas Day bomb plot in which Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to detonate explosives hidden in his underpants on a transatlantic flight.
Ten months later a sophisticated plot to smuggle explosives on to aircraft concealed in printer cartridges was foiled at East Midlands airport. Both plots were the work of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the Yemen-based al-Qaida offshoot.
GCHQ noted in the memos that the NSA’s focus on Yemen was a “great opportunity” for UK agents to focus on any leads they had in the country. Given the domestic terror threat to the UK as well as internal conflicts in the country, GCHQ has multiple reasons to be monitoring individuals in the country.
One Comet News update reveals how Overhead’s surveillance networks supported an air strike in Yemen that killed two men on 30 March 2012. The men are both described as AQAP members.
In the memo, one of the dead men is identified as Khalid Usama – who has never before been publicly named – a “doctor who pioneered using surgically implanted explosives”. The other is not identified.
In the two years of memos seen by the Guardian, this was the only specific strike detailed, raising questions as to why GCHQ’s team decided to notify staff about this particular strike among hundreds.
The Guardian asked GCHQ whether this was because UK personnel or bases were involved in the operation. The agency declined to comment, and offered no explanation as to why British staff were briefed on this particular strike.
US officials confirmed to Reuters in 2012 that there had been a single drone strike in Yemen on 30 March of that year. According to a database of drone strikes maintained by the not-for-profit Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the only incident in Yemen on that date targeted AQAP militants, causing between six and nine civilian casualties, including six children wounded by shrapnel.
Asked whether the strike described in the GCHQ documents was the same one as recorded in the Bureau’s database, GCHQ declined to comment.
The incident is one of more than 500 covert drone strikes and other attacks launched by the CIA and US special forces since 2002 in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia – which are not internationally recognised battlefields.
The GCHQ documents also suggest the UK was working to build similar location-tracking capabilities in Pakistan, the country that has seen the majority of covert strikes, to support military operations “in-theatre”.
A June 2009 document indicates that GCHQ appeared to accept the expanded US definition of combat zones, referring to the agency’s ability to provide “tactical and strategic SIGINT [signals intelligence] support to military operations in-theatre, notably Iraq and Afghanistan, but increasingly Pakistan”. The document adds that in Pakistan, “new requirements are yet to be confirmed, but are both imminent and high priority”.
The note was written months after Barack Obama entered the White House and escalated the use of drones in Pakistan, conducting more strikes in his first year in office than George W Bush had in the previous four years.
By this point NSA and GCHQ staff working within the UK had already prioritised surveillance of Pakistan’s tribal areas, where the majority of US covert drone strikes have been carried out. A 2008 memo lists surveillance of two specific sites and an overview of satellite-phone communications of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, in which nearly all Pakistan drone strikes have taken place, among its key projects.
British intelligence-gathering in Pakistan is likely to have taken place for a number of reasons, not least because UK troops in Afghanistan were based in Helmand, on the Pakistani border.
One of the teams involved in the geo-location of surveillance targets was codenamed “Widowmaker”, whose task was to “discover communications intelligence gaps in support of the global war on terror”, a note explains.
Illustrating the close links between the UK, US and Australian intelligence services, Widowmaker personnel are based at Menwith Hill in the north of England, in Denver, Colorado, and in Alice Springs in Australia’s Northern Territory.
Other Snowden documents discuss the difficult legal issues raised by intelligence sharing with the US.
A secret 2009 legal briefing suggests that British military lawyers believe that some US operations beyond traditional battlefields may be unlawful – a document that also highlights GCHQ’s efforts to operate within the bounds of the law in a complex and challenging environment.
The briefing prepared for GCHQ personnel sharing target intelligence in Afghanistan instructed them to refer to senior compliance staff before sharing information with the US if they believed it may be used for a “detention or cross-border operation”.
This, the documents states, was because the US forces were operating under Operation Enduring Freedom rules, which are less restrictive than the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force rules governing UK personnel. As a result, sharing intelligence “may result in unlawful activity” by GCHQ staff.
The Guardian contacted GCHQ with the information contained in this article, and asked a series of questions on the extent of intelligence sharing with the US in connection with targeted killing, and the legal framework for any such activities. The agency declined to comment on specifics, but provided the following statement.
“It is longstanding policy that we do not comment on intelligence matters,” said a spokesman. “Furthermore, all of GCHQ’s work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework, which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous oversight, including from the secretary of state, the interception and intelligence services commissioners and the parliamentary intelligence and security committee.
“All our operational processes rigorously support this position. In addition, the UK’s interception regime is entirely compatible with the European convention on human rights.”
The Guardian asked Downing Street why it refused to clarify any UK role in US drone strikes. A government spokesperson said: “It is the longstanding policy of successive UK governments not to comment on intelligence operations. We expect all states concerned to act in accordance with international law and take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian casualties when conducting any form of military or counter-terrorist operations.”
Asked last year about the Britain’s role in US operations outside traditional war zones, defence minister Mark Francois told parliament that “strikes against terrorist targets in Yemen are a matter for the Yemeni and US governments”. Ministers including Sayeeda Warsi have used similar language when discussing drone strikes in Pakistan.
The UK has faced previous legal challenges over the issue. In 2012, the family of a tribal elder killed in Pakistan, Noor Khan, launched a court case in England in which barristers claimed GCHQ agents who shared targeting intelligence for covert strikes could be “accessory to murder”. Judges twice refused to rule on the issue on the grounds it could harm the UK’s international relations.
• Alice Ross formerly worked on The Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s drones team.http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/24/gchq-documents-raise-fresh-questions-over-uk-complicity-in-us-drone-strikes