• In first public acknowledgement, Holder says 4 Americans died in US drone strikes

    Chip Somodevilla / Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images file

    Attorney General Eric Holder testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 6.

    By Michael Isikoff, National Investigative Correspondent, NBC News

    The Obama administration publicly acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that U.S. drone strikes have killed four American citizens since 2009, including the previously undisclosed death of a North Carolina resident who left the United States for Pakistan and was later indicted on federal terrorism charges.


    Attorney General Eric Holder, in a letter to congressional leaders and chairman of key congressional committees made public on the eve of what was billed as a major counterterrorism speech by President Barack Obama, also confirmed the deaths in drone attacks in Yemen of three other Americans that already had been widely reported: those of radical cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki , his teenage son, Abd al-Rahmn Anwar al-Awlaki; and Samir Khan, the American who ran al Qaeda’s web-based propaganda magazine Inspire.  Previously the Obama administration had only acknowledged the senior Awlaki’s killing and refused to publicly confirm or deny reports of the other deaths.

    The letter also confirmed that U.S. drones had killed Jude Kenan Mohammed of Raleigh, N.C., more than a  year after a local news report quoted a friend as saying he had died in an attack in Pakistan in November 2011.

    Holder said in the letter that the senior Awlaki was the only U.S. citizen targeted in a drone strike.

    Anonymous / AP

    Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born Yemeni cleric and recruiter for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen, is shown in an October 2008 file photo.

    He also provided new details about what the U.S. says were Awlaki's operational roles in terror plots, including his role in a 2010 attempt to bomb cargo planes by putting bombs in printer cartridges.

    It also included an explicit explanation of the U.S. policy for targeted killings of Americans, much of which was included in a “white paper” obtained by NBC News in February.

    Mohammed’s death appears to have been news to the FBI, which as of Thursday still listed him on its “most wanted” list, saying, “On July 22, 2009, a federal grand jury in North Carolina indicted Jude Kenan Mohammad for conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and conspiracy to murder, kidnap, maim, and injure persons in a foreign country. Mohammad is at large … (and) is believed to be in Pakistan.”

    A law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity told NBC News: “We don’t know when he was killed. That fact was classified.”

    FBI spokeswoman Shelley Lynch said in an email: "Jude Kenan Mohammed remained wanted until there was official confirmation of death.  Until now, the matter was classified and it is now appropriate for the wanted poster to be removed from our website." 

    Obama is expected to discuss the drone program Thursday in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C.

    Release of Holder’s letter came as classified documents obtained by NBC News raised new questions about the CIA-run drone program and whether it is consistent with public comments by Obama and other administration officials describing  the strikes as “very precise” and targeted at specific al Qaeda operatives and their associates. In fact, the documents show, the agency has frequently attacked low-level militants and foreign fighters in Pakistan whose names and nationalities were not known, as well as militant groups not directly connected to al Qaeda.

    The documents, similar to those recently reported by McClatchy Newspapers, offer a window into the secretive drone program and how its actual operations sometimes differ from the public accounts provided by the administration.

    They appear to officially confirm that the agency has engaged in “signature strikes” – a much discussed and controversial practice that has never been publicly acknowledged -- in which CIA drone operators target individuals based on the “signature characteristics” of suspects but whose actual identities are not clear.

    They surface at a time that U.S officials appear to be scaling back the drone program – amid warnings from some  former military and intelligence officials that the attacks may be creating a backlash harmful to U.S. interests in the long run.

     When Obama was asked about the drone program last year during a Google News forum, he called it “a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists.” In an April 2012 speech, then White House counter-terrorism adviser and now CIA Director John Brennan said: “The United States Government conducts targeted strikes against specific al Qaeda terrorists,” while acknowledging that drone targets included “associated forces.”

    But a CIA list of 53 drone strikes in the fall of 2010 indicates that fewer than half – 22 -- listed al Qaeda operatives as the targets. Other strikes were aimed at targets that included suspected members of the militant al-Haqqani network in Pakistan, which is believed to have harbored and worked with al Qaeda; members of the Pakistani Taliban, an Islamic fundamentalist military group that aims to overthrow the Pakistani government; and members of another Pakistani terrorist network identified as the “Commander Nazir Group.”  Fourteen of the strikes listed the targets only as “other militants.”

    Agency lists for other periods show a higher proportion of strikes being specifically aimed at Al Qaeda operatives. For example, during a nine month period between January and September 2011, 28 out of 42 strikes listed al Qaeda members as targets.

    But in other accounts of the strikes, agency officials refer to the targeting of individuals whose identifies do not appear to be known. One 2009 attack was described as being aimed at “military aged males”  at a site “associated with al Qaeda explosives training.” Another, in 2010, described the target as “four adult males conducting weapons training.”

    The CIA and White House did not respond to requests for comment about the documents. But U.S. officials have vigorously defended the drone program and their public accounts of it, while saying they are limited in what they can say because of its classified nature and the potential impacts of full public disclosure in Pakistan. As for the use of signature strikes , they have argued that “when you have a bunch of guys building explosives, you don’t need to know who they are. They are an imminent threat.”

    NBC News’ Pete Williams, Chuck Todd and Tom Curry contributed to this report.

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  • American drone deaths highlight controversy

    MSNBC

    Samir Khan (left) and Anwar al-Awlaki, both U.S. citizens, were killed in in Yemen by an American drone strike.

    By Andrew Rafferty, Staff Writer, NBC News

     

    Of the scores of people dubbed terrorists who have been targeted by American military drone strikes, three men -- all killed in the fall of 2011 -- were U.S. citizens.

    And their lives illustrate the complexity of the issue, recently brought to light amid a newly discovered government memo that provides the legal reasoning behind drone strikes on Americans.

    Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were killed by a missile strike in Yemen on Sept. 30, 2011, while al-Awlaki’s son, Abdulrahman, was killed in the country just weeks later. 

    Since the attacks, family members have called the deaths unjust and sued the U.S. government, calling the killings unconstitutional.

    Anwar al-Awlaki, born in New Mexico, became well known for his fiery anti-American sermons posted throughout the Internet.


    Samir Khan, who'd lived in both New York and Charlotte, N.C., produced a magazine called “Inspire” that became known for its extreme jihadist views.

    But the most controversial drone strike took place on Oct. 14, 2011, when 16-year-old Abdulrahman was killed by U.S. forces.

    Family of the Denver-born teenager say he had no ties to terrorist organizations and was unjustly targeted because of his father.  

    Nassar al-Awlaki, grandfather of Abdulrahman and father to Anwar, said he tried to protect his grandson as Anwar al-Awlaki’s profile grew.

    In December, Nassar al-Awlaki told CNN, “In Anwar it was expected because he was under targeted killing, but how in the world they will go and kill Abdulrahman. Small boy, U.S. citizen from Denver, Colorado.”

    Nassar al-Awlaki said his grandson snuck out of their Yemen home one night, leaving a note for his mother saying he would return in a few days. The boy never returned, killed instead while eating at an outdoor restaurant.

    “Since the issue regarding Anwar came, I tried to insulate the family of Anwar from everything, regarding this matter,” Nassar al-Awlaki told CNN. “I took care of him, and suddenly after 2 year absence from his father, he decided to go to our government in Yemen to seek information from his father. That was the only reason he went, and he did not tell us.”

    The Obama administration has remained mostly mum regarding Abdulrahman's death, and at times has struggled to explain it. 

    Read more: Memo details legal case for drone strikes

    "I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well-being of their children," former White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs said to a gaggle of reporters in October. "I don't think becoming an al-Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business."

    During his presidential campaign, Republican Rep. Ron Paul criticized the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, saying: “Al-Awlaki was born here, he is an American citizen. He was never tried or charged for any crimes. No one knows if he killed anybody. ... But if the American people accept this blindly and casually that we now have an accepted practice of the president assassinating people who he thinks are bad guys, I think it's sad.”

    Anwar al-Awlaki’s ties to the United States go back to his father Nassar, who came to the country to earn a master’s degree. His son was born in New Mexico, and though the family returned to Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki came back to the U.S. for college, eventually becoming an iman.

    Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, he became a popular spokesman for moderate Islam, and was often used to juxtapose perceptions that Islam is a religion that spreads hate.  But less than a decade later, he was hiding in Yemen as a name on the CIA's kill list.

    “I eventually came to the conclusion that jihad against America is binding upon myself just as it is binding on every other Muslim,” he said in an audio message in March 2010.    

    Conversely, Khan was never interested in the peaceful side of Islam. The New York Times reports that as a teen, Khan’s attraction grew exponentially to militant sites on the Internet after 9/11. Parental concerns and intervention from community leaders proved unsuccessful. Khan was 25 when he died in Yemen.

    In July 2012, Samir Khan’s mother, Sarah, joined Nassar al-Awlaki in a lawsuit against four senior national security officials.

    “I don’t really necessarily agree with some of the things Anwar said against the United States, but does that mean they should kill him outside the law?” asked Nassar al-Awlaki.

    A secretive memo from the Justice Department, provided to NBC News, provides new information about the legal reasoning behind one of the Obama administration's controversial policies. Now, John Brennan, Obama's nominee for CIA director, is expected to face tough questions about drone strikes on Thursday when he appears before the Senate Intelligence Committee. NBC's Michael Isikoff reports.

    Update: A fourth American-born citizen, Kamal Derwish, was killed by predator drone in Yemen in 2002. Derwish was not the primary target of the strike, but was riding in an SUV carrying an al-Qaida leader.