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National Security

CIA seeks new authority to expand Yemen drone campaign

By Greg Miller,April 18, 2012

(Page 2 of 2)

The agency might be able to replicate that success in Yemen, the former intelligence official said. But he expressed skepticism that White House officials, including counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan, will approve the CIA’s request.

The situation in Pakistan’s tribal territory “is far less ambiguous than in Yemen,” the former official said. “Brennan has been deliberate in making sure targets we hit in Yemen are terrorist targets and not insurgents.”

As a result, the CIA has been limited to “personality” strikes in Yemen, meaning it can fire only in cases where it has clear evidence that someone on its target list is in a drone’s crosshairs.

Often, that requires information from multiple sources, including imagery, cellphone intercepts and informants on the ground.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, as the Yemen-based group is known, has not been linked to a major terrorist plot since its failed attempt to mail parcels packed with explosives to addresses in Chicago in 2010. The death of Awlaki in a CIA drone strike last year is thought to have diminished the group’s ability to mount follow-on attacks.

But U.S. counterterrorism officials said that Awlaki’s death did not extinguish the group’s determination to attack the United States and noted that other key operatives — including Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, who designed the bombs used in the parcel plot — remain at large.

A quickening pace

The pace of U.S. airstrikes in Yemen is still far from the peak levels in Pakistan, but it is on a distinctly upward trend, with about as many strikes so far this year as in all of 2011.

Which U.S. entity is responsible for each strike remains unclear. In Pakistan, the CIA carries out every drone strike. But in Yemen, the United States has relied on a mix of capabilities, including drones flown by the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command, as well as conventional military aircraft and warships parked off the coast.

The JSOC has broader authority than the CIA to pursue militants in Yemen and is not seeking permission to use signature strikes, U.S. officials said.

Obama administration officials have refused to provide details of how militants are targeted or to disclose the identities of those killed.

Asked to explain the surge in strikes this year, U.S. officials denied that there has been any change in authorities. Instead, they attributed the pace to intelligence-gathering efforts that were expanded several years ago but are only beginning to pay off.

“There has never been a decision to step up or down” the number of strikes, said a senior U.S. official involved in overseeing the Yemen campaign. “It’s all intelligence-driven.”

The Long War Journal, a Web site that tracks drone operations, estimates that there have been 27 strikes in Yemen since 2009 and that 198 militants and 48 civilians have been killed.

Awlaki was killed last September, six weeks after the CIA began flying armed drones over Yemen. This year, one senior AQAP operative has been killed: Abdul Mun’im Salim al Fatahani, who was suspected of involvement in the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, was killed in January by a drone strike in Abyan province, according to the Long War Journal.

Staff writers Karen DeYoung and Julie Tate contributed to this report.

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