Secret Assault on Terrorism Widens on Two Continents

NYTimes.com
 Aug 14, 2010

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Khaled Abdullah/Reuters

White House officials worked to win support for their efforts in Yemen from President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Expanding Battlefield

Articles in this series will examine the secret expansion of the war against Al Qaeda and its allies.

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Attacking Al Qaeda in Yemen

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Counterterrorism Geography

By SCOTT SHANE, MARK MAZZETTI and ROBERT F. WORTH

This article is by Scott Shane, Mark Mazzetti and Robert F. Worth.

WASHINGTON — At first, the news from Yemen on May 25 sounded like a modest victory in the campaign against terrorists: an airstrike had hit a group suspected of being operatives for Al Qaeda in the remote desert of Marib Province, birthplace of the legendary queen of Sheba.

But the strike, it turned out, had also killed the province’s deputy governor, a respected local leader who Yemeni officials said had been trying to talk Qaeda members into giving up their fight. Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, accepted responsibility for the death and paid blood money to the offended tribes.

The strike, though, was not the work of Mr. Saleh’s decrepit Soviet-era air force. It was a secret mission by the United States military, according to American officials, at least the fourth such assault on Al Qaeda in the arid mountains and deserts of Yemen since December.

The attack offered a glimpse of the Obama administration’s shadow war against Al Qaeda and its allies. In roughly a dozen countries — from the deserts of North Africa, to the mountains of Pakistan, to former Soviet republics crippled by ethnic and religious strife — the United States has significantly increased military and intelligence operations, pursuing the enemy using robotic drones and commando teams, paying contractors to spy and training local operatives to chase terrorists.

The White House has intensified the Central Intelligence Agency’s drone missile campaign in Pakistan, approved raids against Qaeda operatives in Somalia and launched clandestine operations from Kenya. The administration has worked with European allies to dismantle terrorist groups in North Africa, efforts that include a recent French strike in Algeria. And the Pentagon tapped a network of private contractors to gather intelligence about things like militant hide-outs in Pakistan and the location of an American soldier currently in Taliban hands.

While the stealth war began in the Bush administration, it has expanded under President Obama, who rose to prominence in part for his early opposition to the invasion of Iraq. Virtually none of the newly aggressive steps undertaken by the United States government have been publicly acknowledged. In contrast with the troop buildup in Afghanistan, which came after months of robust debate, for example, the American military campaign in Yemen began without notice in December and has never been officially confirmed.

Obama administration officials point to the benefits of bringing the fight against Al Qaeda and other militants into the shadows. Afghanistan and Iraq, they said, have sobered American politicians and voters about the staggering costs of big wars that topple governments, require years of occupation and can be a catalyst for further radicalization throughout the Muslim world.

Instead of “the hammer,” in the words of John O. Brennan, President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, America will rely on the “scalpel.” In a speech in May, Mr. Brennan, an architect of the White House strategy, used this analogy while pledging a “multigenerational” campaign against Al Qaeda and its extremist affiliates.

Yet such wars come with many risks: the potential for botched operations that fuel anti-American rage; a blurring of the lines between soldiers and spies that could put troops at risk of being denied Geneva Convention protections; a weakening of the Congressional oversight system put in place to prevent abuses by America’s secret operatives; and a reliance on authoritarian foreign leaders and surrogates with sometimes murky loyalties.

The May strike in Yemen, for example, provoked a revenge attack on an oil pipeline by local tribesmen and produced a propaganda bonanza for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. It also left President Saleh privately furious about the death of the provincial official, Jabir al-Shabwani, and scrambling to prevent an anti-American backlash, according to Yemeni officials.

The administration’s demands have accelerated a transformation of the C.I.A. into a paramilitary organization as much as a spying agency, which some critics worry could lower the threshold for future quasi-military operations. In Pakistan’s mountains, the agency had broadened its drone campaign beyond selective strikes against Qaeda leaders and now regularly obliterates suspected enemy compounds and logistics convoys, just as the military would grind down an enemy force.

For its part, the Pentagon is becoming more like the C.I.A. Across the Middle East and elsewhere, Special Operations troops under secret “Execute Orders” have conducted spying missions that were once the preserve of civilian intelligence agencies. With code names like Eager Pawn and Indigo Spade, such programs typically operate with even less transparency and Congressional oversight than traditional covert actions by the C.I.A.

And, as American counterterrorism operations spread beyond war zones into territory hostile to the military, private contractors have taken on a prominent role, raising concerns that the United States has outsourced some of its most important missions to a sometimes unaccountable private army.

A Proving Ground

Yemen is a testing ground for the “scalpel” approach Mr. Brennan endorses. Administration officials warn of the growing strength of Al Qaeda’s affiliate there, citing as evidence its attempt on Dec. 25 to blow up a trans-Atlantic jetliner using a young Nigerian operative. Some American officials believe that militants in Yemen could now pose an even greater threat than Al Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan.

The officials said that they have benefited from the Yemeni government’s new resolve to fight Al Qaeda and that the American strikes — carried out with cruise missiles and Harrier fighter jets — had been approved by Yemen’s leaders. The strikes, administration officials say, have killed dozens of militants suspected of plotting future attacks. The Pentagon and the C.I.A. have quietly bulked up the number of their operatives at the embassy in Sana, the Yemeni capital, over the past year.

“Where we want to get is to much more small scale, preferably locally driven operations,” said Representative Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington, who serves on the Intelligence and Armed Services Committees.

“For the first time in our history, an entity has declared a covert war against us,” Mr. Smith said, referring to Al Qaeda. “And we are using similar elements of American power to respond to that covert war.”

Some security experts draw parallels to the cold war, when the United States drew heavily on covert operations as it fought a series of proxy battles with the Soviet Union.

And some of the central players of those days have returned to take on supporting roles in the shadow war. Michael G. Vickers, who helped run the C.I.A.’s campaign to funnel guns and money to the Afghanistan mujahedeen in the 1980s and was featured in the book and movie “Charlie Wilson’s War,” is now the top Pentagon official overseeing Special Operations troops around the globe. Duane R. Clarridge, a profane former C.I.A. officer who ran operations in Central America and was indicted in the Iran-contra scandal, turned up this year helping run a Pentagon-financed private spying operation in Pakistan.

In pursuing this strategy, the White House is benefiting from a unique political landscape. Republican lawmakers have been unwilling to take Mr. Obama to task for aggressively hunting terrorists, and many Democrats seem eager to embrace any move away from the long, costly wars begun by the Bush administration.

Still, it has astonished some old hands of the military and intelligence establishment. Jack Devine, a former top C.I.A. clandestine officer who helped run the covert war against the Soviet Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s, said his record showed that he was “not exactly a cream puff” when it came to advocating secret operations.

But he warned that the safeguards introduced after Congressional investigations into clandestine wars of the past — from C.I.A. assassination attempts to the Iran-contra affair, in which money from secret arms dealings with Iran was funneled to right-wing rebels in Nicaragua known as the contras — were beginning to be weakened. “We got the covert action programs under well-defined rules after we had made mistakes and learned from them,” he said. “Now, we’re coming up with a new model, and I’m concerned there are not clear rules.”

Cooperation and Control

The initial American strike in Yemen came on Dec. 17, hitting what was believed to be a Qaeda training camp in Abyan Province, in the southern part of the country. The first report from the Yemeni government said that its air force had killed “around 34” Qaeda fighters there, and that others had been captured elsewhere in coordinated ground operations.

The next day, Mr. Obama called President Saleh to thank him for his cooperation and pledge continuing American support. Mr. Saleh’s approval for the strike — rushed because of intelligence reports that Qaeda suicide bombers might be headed to Sana — was the culmination of administration efforts to win him over, including visits by Mr. Brennan and Gen. David H. Petraeus, then the commander of military operations in the Middle East.

The accounts of the American strikes in Yemen, which include many details that have not previously been reported, are based on interviews with American and Yemeni officials who requested anonymity because the military campaign in Yemen is classified, as well as documents from Yemeni investigators.

As word of the Dec. 17 attack filtered out, a very mixed picture emerged. The Yemeni press quickly identified the United States as responsible for the strike. Qaeda members seized on video of dead children and joined a protest rally a few days later, broadcast by Al Jazeera, in which a speaker shouldering an AK-47 rifle appealed to Yemeni counterterrorism troops.

“Soldiers, you should know we do not want to fight you,” the Qaeda operative, standing amid angry Yemenis, declared. “There is no problem between you and us. The problem is between us and America and its agents. Beware taking the side of America!”

A Navy ship offshore had fired the weapon in the attack, a cruise missile loaded with cluster bombs, according to a report by Amnesty International. Unlike conventional bombs, cluster bombs disperse small munitions, some of which do not immediately explode, increasing the likelihood of civilian causalities. The use of cluster munitions, later documented by Amnesty, was condemned by human rights groups.

An inquiry by the Yemeni Parliament found that the strike had killed at least 41 members of two families living near the makeshift Qaeda camp. Three more civilians were killed and nine were wounded four days later when they stepped on unexploded munitions from the strike, the inquiry found.

American officials cited strained resources for decisions about some of the Yemen strikes. With the C.I.A.’s armed drones tied up with the bombing campaign in Pakistan, the officials said, cruise missiles were all that was available at the time. Drones are favored by the White House for clandestine strikes because they can linger over targets for hours or days before unleashing Hellfire missiles, reducing the risk that women, children or other noncombatants will fall victim.

The Yemen operation has raised a broader question: who should be running the shadow war? White House officials are debating whether the C.I.A. should take over the Yemen campaign as a “covert action,” which would allow the United States to carry out operations even without the approval of Yemen’s government. By law, covert action programs require presidential authorization and formal notification to the Congressional intelligence committees. No such requirements apply to the military’s so-called Special Access Programs, like the Yemen strikes.

Obama administration officials defend their efforts in Yemen. The strikes have been “conducted very methodically,” and claims of innocent civilians being killed are “very much exaggerated,” said a senior counterterrorism official. He added that comparing the nascent Yemen campaign with American drone strikes in Pakistan was unfair, since the United States has had a decade to build an intelligence network in Pakistan that feeds the drone program.

In Yemen, officials said, there is a dearth of solid intelligence about Qaeda operations. “It will take time to develop and grow that capability,” the senior official said.

On Dec. 24, another cruise missile struck in a remote valley called Rafadh, about 400 miles southeast of the Yemeni capital and two hours from the nearest paved road. The Yemeni authorities said the strike killed dozens of Qaeda operatives, including the leader of the Qaeda branch in Yemen, Nasser al-Wuhayshi, and his Saudi deputy, Said Ali al-Shihri. But officials later acknowledged that neither man was hit, and local witnesses say the missile killed five low-level Qaeda members.

The next known American strike, on March 14, was more successful, killing a Qaeda operative named Jamil al-Anbari and possibly another militant. Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch acknowledged Mr. Anbari’s death. On June 19, the group retaliated with a lethal attack on a government security compound in Aden that left 11 people dead and said the “brigade of the martyr Jamil al-Anbari” carried it out.

In part, the spotty record of the Yemen airstrikes may derive from another unavoidable risk of the new shadow war: the need to depend on local proxies who may be unreliable or corrupt, or whose agendas differ from that of the United States.

American officials have a troubled history with Mr. Saleh, a wily political survivor who cultivates radical clerics at election time and has a history of making deals with jihadists. Until recently, taking on Al Qaeda had not been a priority for his government, which has been fighting an intermittent armed rebellion since 2004.

And for all Mr. Saleh’s power — his portraits hang everywhere in the Yemeni capital — his government is deeply unpopular in the remote provinces where the militants have sought sanctuary. The tribes there tend to regularly switch sides, making it difficult to depend on them for information about Al Qaeda. “My state is anyone who fills my pocket with money,” goes one old tribal motto.

The Yemeni security services are similarly unreliable and have collaborated with jihadists at times. The United States has trained elite counterterrorism teams there in recent years, but the military still suffers from corruption and poor discipline.

It is still not clear why Mr. Shabwani, the Marib deputy governor, was killed. The day he died, he was planning to meet members of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch in Wadi Abeeda, a remote, lawless plain dotted with orange groves east of Yemen’s capital. The most widely accepted explanation is that Yemeni and American officials failed to fully communicate before the attack.

Abdul Ghani al-Eryani, a Yemeni political analyst, said the civilian deaths in the first strike and the killing of the deputy governor in May “had a devastating impact.” The mishaps, he said, “embarrassed the government and gave ammunition to Al Qaeda and the Salafists,” he said, referring to adherents of the form of Islam embraced by militants.

American officials said President Saleh was angry about the strike in May, but not so angry as to call for a halt to the clandestine American operations. “At the end of the day, it’s not like he said, ‘No more,’ ” said one Obama administration official. “He didn’t kick us out of the country.”

Weighing Success

Despite the airstrike campaign, the leadership of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula survives, and there is little sign the group is much weaker.

Attacks by Qaeda militants in Yemen have picked up again, with several deadly assaults on Yemeni army convoys in recent weeks. Al Qaeda’s Yemen branch has managed to put out its first English-language online magazine, Inspire, complete with bomb-making instructions. Intelligence officials believe that Samir Khan, a 24-year-old American who arrived from North Carolina last year, played a major role in producing the slick publication.

As a test case, the strikes have raised the classic trade-off of the post-Sept. 11 era: Do the selective hits make the United States safer by eliminating terrorists? Or do they help the terrorist network frame its violence as a heroic religious struggle against American aggression, recruiting new operatives for the enemy?

Al Qaeda has worked tirelessly to exploit the strikes, and in Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric now hiding in Yemen, the group has perhaps the most sophisticated ideological opponent the United States has faced since 2001.

“If George W. Bush is remembered by getting America stuck in Afghanistan and Iraq, it’s looking like Obama wants to be remembered as the president who got America stuck in Yemen,” the cleric said in a March Internet address that was almost gleeful about the American campaign.

Most Yemenis have little sympathy for Al Qaeda and have observed the American strikes with “passive indignation,” Mr. Eryani said. But, he added, “I think the strikes over all have been counterproductive.”

Edmund J. Hull, the United States ambassador to Yemen from 2001 to 2004, cautioned that American policy must not be limited to using force against Al Qaeda.

“I think it’s both understandable and defensible for the Obama administration to pursue aggressive counterterrorism operations,” Mr. Hull said. But he added: “I’m concerned that counterterrorism is defined as an intelligence and military program. To be successful in the long run, we have to take a far broader approach that emphasizes political, social and economic forces.”

Obama administration officials say that is exactly what they are doing — sharply increasing the foreign aid budget for Yemen and offering both money and advice to address the country’s crippling problems. They emphasized that the core of the American effort was not the strikes but training for elite Yemeni units, providing equipment and sharing intelligence to support Yemeni sweeps against Al Qaeda.

Still, the historical track record of limited military efforts like the Yemen strikes is not encouraging. Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations, examines in a forthcoming book what he has labeled “discrete military operations” from the Balkans to Pakistan since the end of the cold war in 1991. He found that these operations seldom achieve either their military or political objectives.

But he said that over the years, military force had proved to be a seductive tool that tended to dominate “all the discussions and planning” and push more subtle solutions to the side.

When terrorists threaten Americans, Mr. Zenko said, “there is tremendous pressure from the National Security Council and the Congressional committees to, quote, ‘do something.’ ”

That is apparent to visitors at the American Embassy in Sana, who have noticed that it is increasingly crowded with military personnel and intelligence operatives. For now, the shadow warriors are taking the lead.

Muhammad al-Ahmadi contributed reporting from Yemen.

U.S. citizen on no-fly list discusses being stranded in Egypt and talks with FBI

Fairfax man finally returns to U.S. after being put on no-fly list in Cairo

After traveling to Yemen to find love and learn Arabic, Yahya Wehelie was stranded in Cairo for six weeks when the FBI put him on a no-fly list.

» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY

By Ian Shapira

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 27, 2010; B01


Yahye Wehelie, 26, born and raised in Fairfax County, was supposed to have been home this spring, telling friends and family about his 18-month stay in Yemen: the technology classes, his quest for a Muslim bride, the wedding and reception that featured a DJ playing music by Michael Jackson and Celine Dion.

Instead, while on his way home in early May, Wehelie was stopped while changing planes in Cairo. It turns out he had been placed on the U.S. government's no-fly list. From that moment until last weekend, Wehelie, a graduate of Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke, was stranded in Egypt, shuttling between a $16-a-night Cairo hotel room and a windowless room at the U.S. Embassy. There, he said, FBI special agents fed him Oreos and chips and told him he might never see Virginia again.

In his first extensive interview since his return home July 17, Wehelie said the FBI peppered him with questions about possible ties to terrorists. In about six exhausting sessions over his 11 weeks in Egypt, agents made Wehelie log his daily activities dating back several months. They asked whether he was a "devout" Muslim. They probed about connections he might have to Islamic radicals, including Sharif Mobley, an alleged al-Qaeda recruit from New Jersey whom Wehelie met on a street in Yemen.

And then their tone changed, morphing into entreaties to help protect his native land: Might Wehelie consider being a mole in the Muslim community when he got home?

"I've lived in Virginia my whole life," Wehelie said, dressed in loose jeans and a striped Ralph Lauren shirt. "I listen to rap. I play basketball. I watch football. I wasn't brought up the way these crazy people [terrorists] are brought up. I just want to live on with my life. I don't want to be an informant. I want to work for an IT company. I want to be a normal person."

Wehelie -- who says he was in Yemen because his mother sent him to learn Arabic and find a Muslim wife -- sees his experience as what could be described as a Kafkaesque ordeal in which he agonized for weeks over how to prove that he was no threat to his native land. But the government says it must maintain a tight watch over those who may have had contact with known terrorists, and Yemen has been a special point of concern in law enforcement circles of late.

Since Christmas, when a Nigerian man who had trained in Yemen tried to blow up an airplane landing in Detroit, about 30 Muslim Americans have been restricted from leaving, returning to or traveling within the United States, according to a log kept by the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations.

"Several recent high-profile attempted terror plots against U.S. targets, including the attempted Christmas Day attack and the Times Square incident, remind us of the need to remain vigilant and thoroughly investigate every lead to fend off any potential threats," said Paul Bresson, an FBI spokesman, who declined to address Wehelie's case specifically. "The American public correctly demands that of us."

Bresson said the "FBI is always careful to protect the civil rights and privacy concerns of all Americans. . . . We are very mindful of the fact that our success in enforcing the law depends on partnerships with the Muslim community and many other communities."

Federal prosecutors in Alexandria and the FBI are still investigating Wehelie, according to his attorney, Tom Echikson. The family met Thursday with government officials, but Echikson would not discuss the talks. He said he is trying to get Wehelie removed from the no-fly list.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for the U.S attorney's office in Alexandria, said he could not confirm or deny any investigation into Wehelie's activities.

Wehelie's parents, Shamsa Noor and Abdirizak Wehelie -- Somali immigrants who studied at the University of the District of Columbia -- said they had been worried about the second-oldest of their six children, who they thought seemed adrift.

Yahye Wehelie had dropped out of Norfolk State University. By 2008, when he was working as a DHL delivery man, his parents urged him to learn Arabic so he could launch a more lucrative career and maybe find a Muslim wife.

Wehelie, who likes playing Xbox video games and reading Slam and Sports Illustrated magazines, pushed back.

"I was thinking, no, I didn't want to do it. . . . I didn't need to go to a foreign country to learn no foreign language," he said. "I was scared. I went on YouTube to see some clips of Yemen and didn't like what I had seen. I was like, man, this place is in the Stone Ages. I got mad. I actually got depressed.

"How could I match up with someone in Yemen?" Wehelie remembered complaining. "They won't understand American culture. I was going to have to man up."

In October 2008, Wehelie boarded a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight from Dulles and was soon ensconced in Yemeni society. He enrolled at Lebanese International University in Sanaa, the capital. He rented a one-bedroom apartment, played basketball and visited Internet cafes. Soon, he found a bride, a Somali refugee a few years his junior. Maryam was the sister of a friend of a friend -- a nurse.

He thought she was cute. They both liked spaghetti and walks in the park. More important, she made him curious about his Somali heritage.

"Other women who want to meet Americans are like, 'Oh, he'll bring me back to the States,' " he said. "She wasn't like that. . . . She wanted her Somali culture -- and I wanted to get back to that, too."

A year after Wehelie arrived in Yemen, the couple married. Some of his family showed up, including his youngest brother, Yusuf, who wound up staying long-term. Guests danced to Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean." The couple posed in their wedding attire -- Yahye in a dark suit, Maryam in a gown with flowing train -- for souvenir photographs emblazoned with the words "With Love."

Soon, Wehelie got homesick. He wanted to return to the United States to file for permission to bring his wife home. Early this May, he and his brother boarded an EgyptAir flight to Cairo, where they expected to switch to a flight to New York.

But at the Cairo airport, airline officials told the brothers they couldn't make the transfer. They were directed to the U.S. Embassy.

Mystified, the brothers jumped into a cab, thinking the detour would last half an hour and they'd still make their flight. But at the embassy, they were told to wait, go get some lunch. When the brothers got back from Hardee's, they were told that FBI agents from Washington were flying in to see them.

Wehelie borrowed a cellphone and called his mother to say he might be delayed by up to four days. The brothers shuffled off to the nearby Garden City House Hotel, paying with money the U.S. government lent them. The brothers were given coupons for fast-food restaurants and plenty of time to check out the Nile and the Pyramids. After a few days, Yusuf was cleared to go home, but Yahye had to stay.

Wehelie said he met with two FBI agents in a small room at the embassy. The agents -- a man and a woman -- asked a barrage of questions: Do you pray every day? Have you ever met the following people? He took a polygraph test. He handed over passwords to his e-mail and Facebook accounts.

"The FBI, you think they're smart, but these people . . . they'll ask you the stupidest questions that are so irrelevant," Wehelie said. "I am cool with them trying to make screenings safe for my country and all U.S. citizens. I just think in my case, it took a little longer."

Back home in Burke, where the walls are decorated with artwork featuring the Koran, Wehelie's mother said she "felt guilty. I would wake up at 3 a.m. and pray to God to help me. I sent him there to be a better person for this country."

But in Cairo, the FBI's questions seemed designed to examine her son's possible ties to people with very different loyalties. When they showed Wehelie photographs of radicals, one looked familiar, if only vaguely. It was Sharif Mobley, a U.S. citizen accused of killing a hospital guard in Yemen after Mobley was arrested in a sweep of suspected al-Qaeda militants.

Wehelie told The Washington Post that he met Mobley once at random in Sanaa on Hadda Street, a popular spot for foreigners, but knew nothing about his past.

"I don't consider myself knowing this guy," he said. "I met him outside on Hadda Street. He came up to me and said, 'Are you American?' I said, 'Yeah, I am.' 'Well, cool dude, where are you from?' It was small talk."

As his sessions with the FBI wound down, Wehelie said, agents asked whether he might attend mosque services in the Washington area and report back on potential terrorist plots or security threats.

"I was like, 'Man, I don't know,' " he said. "It was very weird. I don't think that's right."

Finally, on July 17, Wehelie was allowed to fly to New York, but because he's still on the no-fly list, he could not continue on to Washington, so his parents picked him up at John F. Kennedy International Airport and drove him home. By morning, he was back playing video games on his Xbox.

Now he wonders whether he'll see the female FBI agent again. In Egypt, she told him she'd like to take him out for a meal -- "for a chitchat"-- when he got home.

"I said, 'Cool, it depends on if I have free time,' " Wehelie recalled. "I didn't want to be rude. I am willing to talk if it coincides with my schedule."

U.S. considers partially lifting ban on transfers of detainees to Yemen

Image via Wikipedia

By Peter Finn
Saturday, June 19, 2010; A03

The Obama administration is considering partially lifting its suspension of all transfers of Guantanamo Bay detainees to Yemen, officials said, following a federal court ruling that found "overwhelming" evidence to support a Yemeni's claim that he has been unlawfully detained by the United States for more than eight years.

The case of Mohammed Odaini has become so pressing that senior administration officials, including the secretaries of defense and state, or their deputies, will discuss it next week. A White House official stressed that any decision "should not be viewed as a reflection of a broader policy for other Yemeni detainees."

"What isn't being considered is lifting, in a blanket fashion, the moratorium on detainee transfers to Yemen," the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because deliberations are ongoing.

The administration, though, may come under further pressure to quickly release Yemenis besides Odaini. As many as 20 more Yemenis could be ordered released by the courts for lack of evidence to justify their continued detention, a second administration official estimated.

The official said the government may have to periodically carve out an exception to its ban.

"There is a group of Yemenis who are going to win their habeas cases," the official said. "Some of them will not be as clear as this case, but some will be, and that poses a real dilemma."

Odaini's detention

Odaini was a 17-year-old student at a religious institution in Faisalabad, Pakistan, in March 2002 when he accepted an invitation to spend the evening at a nearby guesthouse that he had never before visited. He ended up spending the night, and after Pakistani authorities raided the house overnight, they turned Odaini and a number of other men over to the United States.

The government argued "vehemently" that Odaini's presence in the guesthouse demonstrated that he was part of "the al-Qaeda affiliated network of a man named Abu Zubaydah," according to the court opinion. But a federal judge was unconvinced.

"The evidence before the court shows that holding Odaini in custody at such great cost to him has done nothing to make the United States more secure," wrote U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr., ordering Odaini's release in an opinion that was declassified this month. "There is no evidence that Odaini has any connection to al Qaeda. . . . The court therefore emphatically concludes that Odaini's motion must be granted."

Transfers suspended

In January, after a Nigerian man who had been in Yemen allegedly tried to down a Detroit-bound airliner, President Obama suspended all transfers of detainees to Yemen. A month earlier, Republicans had strenuously objected to the repatriation of six Yemeni detainees.

An interagency task force Obama created has cleared 29 Yemenis for repatriation and conditionally cleared 30 more if security conditions in Yemen improve. Most are likely to stay at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for some time. But Odaini's case presents a particular challenge to the administration, and to those on Capitol Hill who are opposed to any transfers to Yemen.

"This is a bad case to argue. There is nothing there. The bottom line is: We don't have anything on this kid," said the administration official. "The judge wants a progress report by June 25th. We have to be able to report something other than we are thinking about it."

In previous cases in which Yemenis have been ordered released, the government has appealed. But the administration official said it would be "unconscionable" to appeal in this case.

Two options

Odaini was recommended or approved for transfer out of Guantanamo Bay by various military or government officials in 2002, 2004, 2007 and 2009, according to Kennedy's judgment. But he remained at Guantanamo Bay.

The administration official said there are basically two options in the case: repatriate Odaini, the son of a retired Yemeni security official, or quickly find another country willing to resettle him.

The second option may be complicated, however. Odaini's "strong preference" is to return home, according to his attorney, David Remes. And countries that have so far resettled Guantanamo detainees have accepted only those who had nowhere else to go and who wanted to be resettled.

There are about 90 Yemenis held at Guantanamo Bay, the largest single group by nationality among the 181 detainees held at the military detention center.

Administration officials fear that the Yemeni government, which does not control all of its own territory and is facing a terrorist threat from a splinter group called al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, is not able to ensure that released detainees will not return to the fight.

Advocates for some of the Yemeni detainees say they do not pose a security risk. Asked whether there are other cases as stark as Odaini's, his attorney, Remes, said he was "certain of it."

"Why the government fights so tenaciously to keep men such as Mr. Odaini in prison unless and until the government sees fit to release them is the great mystery of this litigation, especially since President Obama took office," said Remes, who represents 14 Yemenis held at Guantanamo Bay. "They seem unable to admit they've ever made a mistake."

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Insurgents Attack Yemeni Government Security Headquarters in Aden |

Edward Yeranian | Cairo19 June 2010

Photo: AFP

Security forces set up a road block in the city of Aden, 19 June, 2010, after insurgents attacked a Yemeni intelligence headquarters in this southern port city

Insurgents, possibly belonging to al-Qaida, attacked the main Yemeni police intelligence headquarters in the Southern Yemeni capital of Aden Saturday, killing at least 11 people and wounding at least nine others. Eyewitnesses report that a number of prisoners were also set free during the bloody shootout.

Insurgents wearing military uniforms stormed the main gate of the Yemeni police intelligence compound in the city of Aden Saturday, causing numerous casualties and embarrassing the government.

Eyewitnesses say the attackers fired assault weapons, mortars and grenades at those guarding the building, as well as employees and civilians inside the compound. The bloody shootout lasted for over an hour and set fire to parts of the building.

Yemeni government TV said that the attackers freed a number of prisoners. Police in Aden set up roadblocks all across the old city after the insurgents withdrew.

Yemeni security forces have stepped up attacks against southern separatist rebels, as well as al-Qaida militants, during the past month, causing numerous casualties among their ranks, as well as among civilians, according to some sources.

Yemen Post newspaper editor-in-chief Hakim Almasmari says that facial features of the assailants reveal that they were southerners, but he argues it is still not clear if they were separatists or al-Qaida militants. Al-Qaida, he points out, announced Friday that it would retaliate for government attacks against it in eastern Yemen.

"Al-Qaida last night announced that they will attack because of [government raids on its militants] in Maarib over the past month. The government killed many in Maarib, and many of those who were killed were also civilians, even though seven al-Qaida [militants] were killed. So, al-Qaida [was] on the verge of retaliation," said Almasmari.

Southern tribesmen in Maarib also recently blew up a key oil pipeline after a government airstrike accidentally killed an official trying to mediate with al-Qaida militants in the region.

Al-Qaida militants have attacked Yemeni police headquarters in the capital Sana'a, several times, in recent years, freeing a number of prisoners. Hakim Almasmari, however, insists that Saturday's attack in Aden was by far the biggest and most embarrassing for the government.

"This is massive," he said. "This is much, much bigger than what happened last year [in Sana'a]. This attack is very, very massive and the death toll is very high. The government has even fired the two main political security officials in Aden. They were fired early in the morning [Saturday]. So, the government is surprised that they were able to enter the [southern] capital and also they're questioning other officials inside the public security to see if they aided the attackers."

Yemen has prompted increasing concerns among Western governments, as al-Qaida militants and southern separatists wage battle against the central government in Sana'a. Both threats follow a protracted rebellion by Zaidi shi'ite rebels in the northern Saada province, last year.

Yemen says militants died in raid

Two al-Qaeda militants killed in Yemen have been identified, government officials have said.

A third suspected senior militant has also reportedly been killed in two days of air raids by the Yemeni airforce.

The bombing raids were carried out Sunday and Monday on the southern province of Abyan.

Also on Tuesday, a series of small blasts reportedly went off in the southern city of Aden, which officials attributed to southern separatists.

Jamil Nasser Abdullah al-Ambari, 25, believed to be the leader of al-Qaeda in southern Abyan province, was one of two militants killed in the overnight raid, the security official told AFP.

The other militants were named as Smir Al-Sayari, and Ahmed Al-Zarba by local media.

The al-Qaeda operatives were connected to the failed bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Boxing Day, government officials told journalists.

It is not clear how many other people were killed in the airstrikes.

Separatist fight

The government of Yemen is facing three different militant groups, al-Qaeda, southern secessionists, and a rebel movement in the north - although it has it has called a truce with the later.

South and north Yemen were united in 1990 and fought a brief civil war in 1994, and grievances with separatists still remain.

The series of blasts in Aden were likely to be home-made firebombs or grenades belonging to southern separatists, government officials told the news agency Reuters.

There have been clashes between security services and separatists in a number of towns in the past month.

A truce with another rebel group, known as the Houthis, in northern Yemen has allowed the government in Sanaa to turn its attention to the secessionist movement and to the al-Qaeda cadre said to be hiding out in the same area.

But the truce between the government and the Houthis was reportedly under strain on Tuesday with government officials telling reporters the Houthis were not sticking to the agreements they made.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, an offshoot of the al-Qaeda core around Osama bin Laden, have been using Yemen as a base since several militants broke out of a Saudi jail in 2008 and escaped over the border.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian accused of trying to blow up an airliner with explosives hidden in his underpants reportedly had contact with the al-Qaeda group when he was studying in Yemen in the months before his alleged bombing attempt.

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In Yemen’s South, Protests Could Cause More Instability

By ROBERT F. WORTH

ADEN, Yemen — Less than an hour’s drive outside this dilapidated port town, the Yemeni government’s authority is scarcely visible, and a different flag appears, that of the old independent state of South Yemen.

The flags are one sign of a rapidly spreading protest movement across the south that now threatens to turn into a violent insurgency if its demands are not met. That could further destabilize Yemen, already the poorest and one of the most troubled countries in the Arab world, and create a broader haven for Al Qaeda here.

The movement’s leaders say the Yemeni government — based in the north — has systematically discriminated against the south, expropriating land, expelling southerners from their jobs and starving them of public money. They speak with deep nostalgia of the 128-year British occupation in South Yemen, saying the British, who withdrew in 1967, fostered the rule of law, tolerance and prosperity. The north, they say, respects only the gun.

In recent months, calls for secession have grown louder after a harsh government crackdown on demonstrations and opposition newspapers. The movement’s leaders say that they believe in peaceful protest, but that their ability to control younger and more violent supporters is fraying.

“It is too late for half measures or reforms,” said Zahra Saleh Abdullah, one of the few Southern Movement leaders who agreed to be identified in print. “We demand an independent southern republic, and we have the right to defend ourselves if they continue to kill us and imprison us.”

Another movement leader, sitting across the room, held up a coin minted under the British in 1964 and pointed to the words engraved on it: South Arabia.

“This is our true identity, not Yemen,” he said. “A southern republic or death.”

Public outrage swelled last month after Yemeni security forces laid siege to the house of a prominent newspaper editor in Aden, setting off a barrage of rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire as the editor and his young children cowered inside. (The government said he was stockpiling weapons.) They were not injured, but the clash left at least one of the family’s guards dead and others wounded, fueling more demonstrations. All told, more than 100 people have been killed in clashes with the police since the movement began in 2007, its leaders say, and about 1,500 supporters remain in prison.

In some rural areas of South Yemen, police officers refuse to wear their uniforms for fear of being shot, according to several accounts from local residents.

The Yemeni government has largely dismissed the movement as a small band of malcontents and has repeatedly accused its leaders of being affiliated with Al Qaeda.

The movement’s leaders call that an outrageous perversion of the truth: they say that they stand for law, tolerance and democracy, and that it is the north that has a history of using jihadists as proxy warriors. But some human rights workers say a shared hatred of the government could be creating a sense of unity between some members of the movement — which is broad and very loosely organized — and members of Al Qaeda.

Perhaps a greater danger, some say, is the spread of lawlessness across the south if the movement’s demands for greater equity are not addressed and it grows more violent. The movement’s own internal contradictions also pose a real threat.

“There is no clear leadership, everyone wants to be the boss,” said Afra Khaled Hariri, a lawyer here who has represented arrested members of the movement. The movement’s leaders include socialists and Islamists with wildly different goals and unresolved disputes dating to internal conflicts between socialist factions that left thousands of southerners dead during the 1980s.

“If the movement succeeds in making a separate state, I expect disaster because of our bloody past,” Ms. Hariri said. And Aden — the heart of the British protectorate and the base of the south’s intelligentsia — would be the chief victim, she added.

For that reason, some in the south say, the best solution is not secession, but a political accommodation in which the north agrees to address some of the movement’s main grievances about land expropriation and job discrimination. Many also say that moving away from Yemen’s highly centralized system of government and granting the provinces more power to govern themselves would ease tensions.

So far the government has shown little sign it intends to do that.

Behind the Southern Movement’s protests is an old belief that North and South Yemen are fundamentally different societies, and that their unification — achieved with great fanfare on both sides in 1990 — has been a failure.

The differences are apparent even to a first-time visitor. Aden has churches, parks, a smaller model of Big Ben and a stately garden where a statue of Queen Victoria presides. The roads, though a little faded, are generally better than those in the north. It is a commonplace that people respect red lights and driving lanes here, unlike in the north.

The people of the south are generally better educated, a legacy not only of the British but of the Socialist government that ruled here during the 1970s. Although they shattered the economy and suppressed their opponents brutally, the Socialists also put an end to harmful tribal practices like child marriage, championed women’s equality and achieved some of the highest literacy rates in the Arab world.

All those achievements have since collapsed: literacy and education have dropped precipitously across the south, child marriage has returned and lawlessness prevails.

Many here blame the north for all that. A brief civil war broke out in 1994, during which the north used jihadists who had fought in Afghanistan as proxy fighters.

“They want to push us into backwardness so we are like them,” said Ali Abdo, a professor of transportation engineering at Aden University and a member of a party that supports decentralization but not secession. “Aden was tolerant: there were Jews, Christians, Muslims all living together here. The North is not.”

The Southern Movement began in 2007 with protests led by former military officers who said they had been mistreated and denied pensions after the 1994 civil war. Gradually, it has grown to encompass other groups. Last year, it received a large boost when Tareq al-Fadhli, a former Afghan jihadist and ally of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, defected to the movement.

The movement now includes a substantial body of powerful tribal figures as well as Aden-based intellectuals and political figures. There is a 42-member leadership committee, though it is not clear how many of the movement’s supporters it represents. Most supporters seem to acknowledge Ali Salim al-Bidh, the exiled former president of South Yemen, as their leader. Mr. Bidh emerged from years of silence recently and began actively advocating southern independence.

The movement has its own songs, which can be heard blasting from the open windows of cars in southern towns. “We swear to God, we will not put up with this corrupt dictator and his gang, even if the whole sky erupts in fire,” goes one song by Aboud Khawaja, a singer now based in Qatar.

This month, a 27-year-old man named Faris Tamah was arrested near Aden while playing that song from his car stereo, and he was later shot to death in prison after being tortured, said several movement supporters who know his family and say they saw a medical report. Yemen’s government-run newspapers later ran an article saying that Mr. Tamah was arrested for drunken driving and committed suicide in custody by grabbing an officer’s gun and shooting himself. “The movement began with demands, but they were refused and the pressure grew,” Professor Abdo said. “Now, the movement is in every house in the south.”

U.S. military teams, intelligence deeply involved in aiding Yemen on strikes

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By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 27, 2010; A01

U.S. military teams and intelligence agencies are deeply involved in secret joint operations with Yemeni troops who in the past six weeks have killed scores of people, among them six of 15 top leaders of a regional al-Qaeda affiliate, according to senior administration officials.

The operations, approved by President Obama and begun six weeks ago, involve several dozen troops from the U.S. military's clandestine Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), whose main mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists. The American advisers do not take part in raids in Yemen, but help plan missions, develop tactics and provide weapons and munitions. Highly sensitive intelligence is being shared with the Yemeni forces, including electronic and video surveillance, as well as three-dimensional terrain maps and detailed analysis of the al-Qaeda network.

As part of the operations, Obama approved a Dec. 24 strike against a compound where a U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi, was thought to be meeting with other regional al-Qaeda leaders. Although he was not the focus of the strike and was not killed, he has since been added to a shortlist of U.S. citizens specifically targeted for killing or capture by the JSOC, military officials said. The officials, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the operations.

The broad outlines of the U.S. involvement in Yemen have come to light in the past month, but the extent and nature of the operations have not been previously reported. The far-reaching U.S. role could prove politically challenging for Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who must balance his desire for American support against the possibility of a backlash by tribal, political and religious groups whose members resent what they see as U.S. interference in Yemen.

The collaboration with Yemen provides the starkest illustration to date of the Obama administration's efforts to ramp up counterterrorism operations, including in areas outside the Iraq and Afghanistan war zones.

"We are very pleased with the direction this is going," a senior administration official said of the cooperation with Yemen.

Obama has ordered a dramatic increase in the pace of CIA drone-launched missile strikes into Pakistan in an effort to kill al-Qaeda and Taliban members in the ungoverned tribal areas along the Afghan border. There have been more such strikes in the first year of Obama's administration than in the last three years under President George W. Bush, according to a military officer who tracks the attacks.

Obama also has sent U.S. military forces briefly into Somalia as part of an operation to kill Saleh Ali Nabhan, a Kenyan sought in the 2002 bombing of an Israeli-owned resort in Kenya.

Republican lawmakers and former vice president Richard B. Cheney have sought to characterize the new president as soft on terrorism after he banned the harsh interrogation methods permitted under Bush and announced his intention to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Obama has rejected those two elements of Bush's counterterrorism program, but he has embraced the notion that the most effective way to kill or capture members of al-Qaeda and its affiliates is to work closely with foreign partners, including those that have feeble democracies, shoddy human rights records and weak accountability over the vast sums of money Washington is giving them to win their continued participation in these efforts.

In the case of Yemen, a steady stream of high-ranking officials has visited Saleh, including the rarely seen JSOC commander, Vice Adm. William H. McRaven; White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan; and Gen. David H. Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command.

A Yemeni official briefed on security matters said Tuesday that the two countries maintained a "steadfast cooperation in combating AQAP, but there are clear limits to the U.S. involvement on the ground. Information sharing has been a key in carrying out recent successful counterterrorism operations." AQAP is the abbreviation for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the affiliate operating in Yemen.

In a newly built joint operations center, the American advisers are acting as intermediaries between the Yemeni forces and hundreds of U.S. military and intelligence officers working in Washington, Virginia and Tampa and at Fort Meade, Md., to collect, analyze and route intelligence.

The combined efforts have resulted in more than two dozen ground raids and airstrikes. Military and intelligence officials suspect there are several hundred members of AQAP, a group that has historical links to the main al-Qaeda organization but that is thought to operate independently.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, told a Navy War College class in early January that the United States had "no plans" to send ground troops to Yemen and that he had been concerned about the growing al-Qaeda presence there "for a long time now."

"We have worked hard to try to improve our relationships and training, education and war-fighting support," Mullen said. "And, yet, we still have a long way to go."

Saleh has faced pressure not only from the United States but also his country's main financial backers, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to gain better control over its lawless northern border. In August, Saleh asked U.S. officials to begin a more in-depth conversation over how the two countries might work together, according to administration officials. The current operation evolved from those talks.

"President Saleh was serious about going after al-Qaeda and wasn't going to resist our encouragement," the senior official said.

The Obama administration's deepening of bilateral intelligence relations builds on ties forged during George J. Tenet's tenure as CIA director.

Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Tenet coaxed Saleh into a partnership that would give the CIA and U.S. military units the means to attack terrorist training camps and al-Qaeda targets. Saleh agreed, in part, because he believed that his country, the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden, was next on the U.S. invasion list, according to an adviser to the Yemeni president.

Tenet provided Saleh's forces with helicopters, eavesdropping equipment and 100 Army Special Forces members to train an antiterrorism unit. He also won Saleh's approval to fly Predator drones armed with Hellfire missiles over the country. In November 2002, a CIA missile strike killed six al-Qaeda operatives driving through the desert. The target was Abu Ali al-Harithi, organizer of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole. Killed with him was a U.S. citizen, Kamal Derwish, who the CIA knew was in the car.

Word that the CIA had purposefully killed Derwish drew attention to the unconventional nature of the new conflict and to the secret legal deliberations over whether killing a U.S. citizen was legal and ethical.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush gave the CIA, and later the military, authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests, military and intelligence officials said. The evidence has to meet a certain, defined threshold. The person, for instance, has to pose "a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests," said one former intelligence official.

The Obama administration has adopted the same stance. If a U.S. citizen joins al-Qaeda, "it doesn't really change anything from the standpoint of whether we can target them," a senior administration official said. "They are then part of the enemy."

Both the CIA and the JSOC maintain lists of individuals, called "High Value Targets" and "High Value Individuals," whom they seek to kill or capture. The JSOC list includes three Americans, including Aulaqi, whose name was added late last year. As of several months ago, the CIA list included three U.S. citizens, and an intelligence official said that Aulaqi's name has now been added.

Intelligence officials say the New Mexico-born imam also has been linked to the Army psychiatrist who is accused of killing 12 soldiers and a civilian at Fort Hood, Tex., although his communications with Maj. Nidal M. Hasan were largely academic in nature. Authorities say that Aulaqi is the most important native, English-speaking al-Qaeda figure and that he was in contact with the Nigerian accused of attempting to bomb a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day.

Yemeni Foreign Minister Abubaker al-Qirbi said in Washington last week that his government's present goal is to persuade Aulaqi to surrender so he can face local criminal charges stemming from his contacts with the Fort Hood suspect. Aulaqi is being tracked by the country's security forces, the minister added, and is now thought to be in the southern province of Shabwa.

Staff writer R. Jeffrey Smith and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

U.S. Targets Radical Cleric Anwar al-Awlaki

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by Bobby Ghosh

Pity poor Yemen. Three armed conflicts are being fought in the nation that hugs the southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula: there is a separatist insurgency in the south and a fight between the mostly Sunni government forces and Shi'ite rebels in the north, while in the east, home of Osama bin Laden's ancestors, the local affiliate of his network is plotting to undermine the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

So the average resident of Sana'a, Yemen's ancient capital, can be forgiven for regarding Anwar al-Awlaki as just another warmongering imam with a grudge against the West and a deep hatred for the U.S. In fact, until last fall, most Yemenis had never heard of the American-born cleric living in their midst. Those most familiar with him were a small group of Western counterterrorism officials and experts — and even they thought al-Awlaki was of relatively little consequence. (See Muslims encouraging debate, not hate.)

Not anymore they don't. In the past two months, al-Awlaki's anonymity has been replaced by the glare of U.S. government and media attention — and very likely the searching eyes of spy satellites. His connection to both the Nov. 5 massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, and the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a passenger jet over Detroit has persuaded the Obama Administration that al-Awlaki is a big-time bad guy. On Jan. 4, President Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, told CNN, "Al-Awlaki is a problem ... He's not just a cleric. He is in fact trying to instigate terrorism." (See pictures of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.)

The Administration is trying to be careful in its assessment of al-Awlaki. Officials recognize that in demonizing a jihadist, they may create a monster they cannot control as the U.S. seemingly did in 2003 when it identified Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi as the top al-Qaeda leader in Iraq at a time when he was little more than a relatively obscure Jordanian terrorist operating north of Baghdad. The notoriety was a bonanza for al-Zarqawi, as mujahedin streamed to join his group. As for al-Awlaki, "the best way to describe him is inspirational rather than operational," says a senior U.S. official. But, as this official points out, "the inspirational element is motivating people to take action. Where do you draw the line?"

Wherever the line between inspiration and operation is drawn, al-Awlaki seems to have come very close to crossing it. White House officials say e-mail exchanges with al-Awlaki may have spurred Major Nidal Malik Hasan to go on a rampage in Fort Hood, killing 13 people. And Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the failed Christmas Day bomber, reportedly told the FBI he had met with al-Awlaki in Yemen. Moreover, research into al-Awlaki's past has now revealed that he had been investigated by the FBI for his connections to al-Qaeda as long ago as 1999. He had met three of the 9/11 hijackers, and his sermons and speeches had turned up in the computers of the 2005 London bombers, terrorist plotters in Toronto in 2006 and the six men who planned an attack on Fort Dix, N.J., in 2007. (See the top 10 crime stories of 2009.)

Put all that together, and it explains why, even before the Christmas Day incident, al-Awlaki was of such interest to the U.S. government that it tried to kill him. On Dec. 24, the Yemeni military, pressed by the CIA, fired rockets into his home south of Sana'a. Al-Awlaki was not the principal target — the top leadership of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was thought to be meeting there — but U.S. officials were hoping the strike would also take out the cleric. He wasn't home.

Made in the U.S.A.
So who is this man whom U.S. counterterrorism officials would like to see dead? Just like bin Laden, al-Awlaki comes from an influential family: one of his relatives is Prime Minister of Yemen, and his father Nasser al-Awlaki was Agriculture Minister and head of the country's biggest university. Like bin Laden, al-Awlaki is soft-spoken, mild-mannered and austere.

The parallels end there. Although bin Laden saw plenty of Western culture in his youth, he seems to have been profoundly uncomfortable with it. Not so al-Awlaki. Now 38, he has lived in the West for more than half his life, speaks fluent English and peppers his sermons with references to Western places and people. A recent lecture on death, for instance, was informed by an old Michael Jackson interview in which the singer said he wanted to "live forever." Hard to imagine bin Laden referring to the King of Pop in a sermon.

Al-Awlaki was born in 1971 in Las Cruces, N.M., where his father was studying for a master's degree at New Mexico State University. The family spent nearly a decade on American campuses. Anwar was 7 when they returned to Yemen, where they lived in a newish Sana'a neighborhood.

See Muslims encouraging debate, not hate.

See a bin Laden family photo album.

See pictures of a jihadist's journey.

A Yemeni government scholarship allowed Anwar to return to the U.S.; in 1991 he enrolled in Colorado State University's civil-engineering program. Friends remember al-Awlaki as a low-key young man who lived modestly in a one-bedroom apartment and drove around Fort Collins in a beat-up old Buick. He prayed at the Islamic Center of Fort Collins but did not stand out as being especially religious and was not active in CSU's Muslim students association.

When he visited Afghanistan in 1993, a journey that fired thousands of young Muslim men with jihadist zeal, the Soviet occupation had ended, and al-Awlaki was depressed by poverty and hunger in the homes where he stayed. "My impression was that he didn't like it there," says Abdul Belgasem, a fellow student at CSU. "He wouldn't have gone with al-Qaeda. He didn't like the way they lived." But at some point, al-Awlaki must have had something of a spiritual awakening. After graduating in 1994, he set aside civil engineering and applied to be imam of the Denver Islamic Society. He got the job because of his grasp of the Koran and his ability to preach in English. "The people there liked his translations," Belgasem says. Two years later, he moved to San Diego to run the larger al-Ribat al-Islami mosque and enrolled in a master's program in education at San Diego State University. It was in San Diego that he had his first brushes with the law: intelligence officials have told TIME that al-Awlaki was twice detained for soliciting prostitutes. (See the top 10 scandals of 2009.)

San Diego, intelligence officials say, was also where al-Awlaki first made contact with jihadists. He was on the board of a charity run by a Yemeni associate of bin Laden; the FBI has said the charity was a fundraising front for al-Qaeda. Officials also say al-Awlaki met with a close associate of Omar Abdel Rahman, the "Blind Sheik" behind the 1993 attempt to bomb New York City's World Trade Center.

These associations remained hidden from most of al-Awlaki's congregants. Many in San Diego remember him as a likable, articulate preacher with moderate views. Ahmad Ibrahim, president of the Muslim Student Association at the University of California at San Diego in 1999-2000, heard al-Awlaki speak on several occasions and says the cleric only occasionally addressed controversial topics like Palestinian suicide bombers. "He had the opinion that ... their mission was acceptable," Ibrahim says but adds, "I don't believe he ever proposed killing civilians." Another worshipper says the congregation wouldn't have tolerated extremist preaching. "[He wasn't] about speaking out against America or Americans. It was all about becoming a better Muslim," says this worshipper, who asked not to be named. "If anyone in our community had known anything about his leanings, we would have reported it."

The al-Qaeda Connection
But intelligence officials say al-Awlaki was leading a double life. In 2000 he met with Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, two of the five men who on Sept. 11, 2001, would hijack American Airlines Flight 77 and fly it into the Pentagon. These sources say that al-Awlaki held several closed-door meetings with the hijackers and that they regularly attended his sermons. But although the FBI investigated al-Awlaki's possible al-Qaeda connections before 9/11, it was unable to make anything stick. (See TIME's photo-essay "Double Agents: A Photo Dossier.")

In early 2001, al-Hazmi would follow al-Awlaki to his next mosque, the Dar al-Hijrah in Falls Church, Va. Again, al-Awlaki paired his new job with an academic interest: he began working on a doctorate at George Washington University in Washington and, for good measure, became the university's Muslim chaplain. The double life continued. As in San Diego, al-Awlaki's sermons at Dar al-Hijrah were largely uncontroversial. Indeed, he spoke out against radicals, prompting the New York Times in October 2001 to label him as one of a "new generation of Muslim leader capable of merging East and West." But at the same time, intelligence officials say, he was steadily drawing closer to al-Qaeda: al-Hazmi introduced him to Hani Hanjour, another of the Flight 77 hijackers.

After 9/11, al-Awlaki swiftly condemned the hijackers. A PBS NewsHour program in October 2001 shows him in a sermon criticizing U.S. foreign policy but arguing that it did not justify killing Americans. On the contrary, he told PBS, "Every nation on the face of the earth has a right to defend itself and to bring the perpetrators to justice."

By this time, however, intelligence agencies were looking closely at al-Awlaki's connections to the hijackers. At the home in Hamburg of Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni who was a leading figure in the 9/11 plot, German authorities found al-Awlaki's phone number. The FBI questioned the cleric but didn't have enough information to arrest him. In March 2002, he left the U.S. for Yemen. He made one final trip to the U.S. in October of that year and was briefly detained at New York City's JFK airport, but the FBI's attempt to arrest him on the charge of giving false information in a passport application came to nothing. After leaving the U.S., he spent nearly two years in London, returning to Yemen in 2004. He taught at a radical university before being arrested by Yemeni authorities and imprisoned for 18 months. The exact reasons are unknown; he was never charged. Al-Awlaki has blamed the U.S. for pressuring the Yemeni government to detain him and claims the FBI interrogated him in prison. (The FBI did not respond to requests for information about al-Awlaki.)

See what happened to the accused 9/11 plotters.

See pictures from the October 2009 suicide bombings in Islamabad.

See Muslims encouraging debate, not hate.

Terrorism Speaks Your Language
There are dozens of "e-imams" who preach hatred toward the West on the Internet, and some have greater clout among the faithful than al-Awlaki. But his books and CDs have become best sellers, and his YouTube sermons are getting hundreds of thousands of hits. The hype reached new heights recently when the Arabic-language news channel al-Arabiya dubbed al-Awlaki "the bin Laden of the Internet."

What distinguishes al-Awlaki is not his record; other preachers have had demonstrably closer links to al-Qaeda and jihad. It is his target audience. Al-Awlaki aims his sermons at young Muslims mostly living in the U.S. and Britain. This is a group he understands better than any other radical preacher. In his fluent English, he has become that rare specimen: the jihadist cleric who can communicate effortlessly with audiences in the West. His tone and his message can appear seductively conciliatory. Most of his sermons have nothing at all to do with radical ideology; they are simple translations from the Koran and stories about the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Al-Awlaki appeals to Muslim immigrants who worry that their English-speaking children are unable to connect to their faith. "He's lived amid such people, and he understands their dilemmas very well," says Jarret Brachman, author of Global Jihadism: Theory and Practice and former director of research at West Point's Combating Terror Center. "He's giving them an option, telling them, 'Here's how to be good Muslims when you don't have an imam to turn to.' " (See pictures of the battle against the Taliban.)

Brachman, who monitors jihadist websites, reckons that al-Awlaki's sermons are "totally harmless nine times out of 10 ... but in the 10th, he starts to breathe a little fire." Much of the brimstone can be found in his blog posts, in which al-Awlaki states baldly that Islam and the West are in conflict and argues that all Muslims should join the holy war. In a how-to guide titled "44 Ways to Support Jihad," he says, "Jihad today is obligatory on every capable Muslim. So as a Muslim who wants to please Allah it is your duty to find ways to practice it and support it."

Most of the "44 ways" involve helping the mujahedin, or holy warriors: giving them money, praying for them, sponsoring their families and encouraging others to join the jihad. Believers are also urged to be physically fit, learn to use arms and spiritually prepare for holy war. Al-Awlaki stops short of telling his readers to go out and fight unbelievers. Instead, he suggests it is enough to have the "right intention" and to pray for "martyrdom." But later in 2009, al-Awlaki's tone grew more strident. "I pray that Allah destroys America and all its allies," he said in a blog post. "And the day that happens, and I assure you it will and sooner than you think, I will be very pleased." If al-Awlaki merely exhorted his audience to jihad, he might have gotten no more than passing attention from Washington. But intelligence officials and counterterrorism experts insist that he is no longer content to preach. His association with AQAP, which may be the terrorist network's most ambitious franchise, has brought al-Awlaki closer to the practice of terrorism. "Over the past several years, he has gone from propagandist to recruiter to operational player," a counterterrorism official tells TIME. "He is clearly moving up the terrorist supply chain."

The exact nature of al-Awlaki's operational role remains in dispute. "There's nothing to suggest that he's sitting down and planning attacks," says Ben Venzke of IntelCenter, a private intelligence contractor. "But his connections to Hasan and Abdulmutallab show that he does more than just make some jihadist literature available online. His role is more important than that." Granted, al-Awlaki lacks combat experience. But Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, believes that the cleric has a strong influence on operational issues. "He plays a role in setting a strategic direction for AQAP," he says. "He's telling them, 'Attacking the U.S. homeland should be one of our priorities.' " Is that reason enough for the U.S. to try to take al-Awlaki out? "Absolutely, yes," says Hoekstra. "This is a guy who is encouraging and organizing people to kill Americans." The counterterrorism official agrees: "Taking him off the street would deal a blow to [AQAP]." (See TIME's tribute to people who passed away in 2009.)

That sounds reasonable. But even if the U.S. is right in identifying al-Awlaki as a present danger, getting to him won't be easy. Since the missile strike on his house, the preacher is thought to have gone into hiding among his tribe in Shabwa province. The Yemeni government, already burdened with its three civil wars, is unlikely to start a fourth with the al-Awlakis.

That leaves a U.S. drone strike as the most likely option. There is a precedent for that, but also an unpleasant reminder that al-Awlaki is not the first man brought up in the West — and will surely not be the last — who threw in his lot with jihadists. For in November 2002, one of the first ever drone operations took place in Yemen, killing, among others, Ahmed Hijazi, a suspected al-Qaeda operative. He was an American too.

— With reporting by Mark Thompson, Massimo Calabresi and Caitlin Duke / Washington; Rita Healy / Fort Collins; Teri Figueroa and Jill Underwood / San Diego; and Heather Murdock (GlobalPost) and Catrina Stewart / Sana'a