On November 3, 2002, a remotely piloted aircraft operated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) launched an airstrike on a vehicle travelling through Marib Governorate, Yemen. The strike killed six militants including its target Abu Ali al-Harithi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Yemen. It was the first drone strike conducted by the United States outside of a conventional battlefield, and the first targeted killing in the war on terror.
Harithi was a high-profile al-Qaeda member wanted for a role in the USS Cole bombing of 2000, and was subject to a joint US-Yemeni manhunt after the latter failed to capture him in 2001. On the day of the strike, his phone signal was intercepted by the National Security Agency (NSA) and his location pinpointed to a farm where the CIA's Special Activities Division routed an MQ-1 Predator to follow him as he left in a vehicle. After the NSA confirmed Harithi was in the vehicle CIA director George Tenet ordered the airstrike, which destroyed it and killed six people—one occupant escaped injured. DNA analysis verified the deaths of Harithi and four other militants along with Kamal Derwish, ringleader of the Lackawanna Six and an American citizen. The CIA publicly denied knowledge of his presence in the vehicle, although later reports contradict this.
Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh agreed to the strike on the basis that it would be kept a secret, but with the George W. Bush administration seeking to capitalize on a victory in the war on terror during midterm elections season, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz publicly revealed it during a CNN interview two days afterwards. The announcement elicited concern from the international community and fury from the Yemeni public over what was perceived as a violation of sovereignty. Saleh and his government proceeded to ban further drone strikes in Yemen.
American legal experts generally believed the strike was not an assassination, which is illegal under American law, but instead a wartime action against enemy combatants, as claimed by the Bush administration. Many international observers disputed this and decried the strike as an extrajudicial killing, including the United Nations' expert on the matter, Asma Jahangir. The strike effectively neutralized al-Qaeda in Yemen for several years, though the group had reorganized by 2009 prompting further US intervention. American officials supported the operation and noted its success afterwards, with targeted killing soon being adopted as a core strategy in the war on terror across multiple theatres.
Background
Prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001, targeted killing was a sensitive topic within the US government due to Executive Order 11905, which banned political assassinations upon its signing in 1976. Some exceptions and workarounds were permitted since then—a 1989 clarification ruled that terrorists could be subject to military strikes if they posed a threat to the US. The Bill Clinton administration considered giving the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) authority to kill Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, after his 1998 fatwa declaring war on the US. No decision was reached on the matter, partly due to debates regarding what circumstances Bin Laden could be killed in without it being considered an assassination. A week before 9/11, senior officials from the George W. Bush administration were deliberating on whether to target Bin Laden using the MQ-1 Predator, a remotely piloted aircraft which had recently been modified to launch missiles.
The debate was effectively settled after the attacks—on September 17, Bush signed a secret presidential finding which authorized the CIA to pursue and kill members of al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups, including American citizens, without presidential monitoring if they were listed as a high-value target. The finding, requested by CIA director George Tenet, also approved the development of paramilitary-like formations engaged in targeted killing. Administration and military officials now generally endorsed the tactic provided the target could not be captured. According to then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Bush later authorized the CIA to conduct targeted killings through drone strikes in early 2002. The Predator was first utilized by the CIA during the invasion of Afghanistan, and was used throughout the next year to target al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders in the country.
Relations between the US and Yemen were already strained following the bombing of the USS Cole, a guided-missile destroyer belonging to the US Navy. The attack, perpetrated on October 12, 2000, involved two suicide bombers ramming a small boat loaded with explosives into the side of the vessel while it was docked in Aden, killing 17 American sailors. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) launched an investigation into the attack but encountered significant difficulties throughout it. American agents were operating under the constant monitoring and disdain of local authorities and officials, while the US suspected Islamist sympathizers within the Yemeni government, some of whom were former mujahideen, were complicit. The FBI determined in December al-Qaeda perpetrated the bombing. As the investigation shifted to Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, the FBI grew even more cautious of the locals. The investigation was completely halted in mid-2001 when a plot to bomb the local US embassy was discovered.
The 9/11 attacks posed an even greater threat to Yemen's standings with the US. Within the American government, Yemen had begun to be seen as a central front for the war on terror and a prime destination for al-Qaeda members seeking refuge and a place to regroup, owing to its lawlessness and ungoverned areas. Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, feared his country would be the next to see US military action after Afghanistan. Thus, Yemen took the role of a partner in the war on terror, with Saleh sending an advisor to Washington soon after the attacks to clarify what was needed of his country. Several demands were made by the US to assure greater collaboration on counterterrorism, such as the facilitation of greater intelligence cooperation, which allowed the CIA and FBI to resume the Cole investigation and gain access to key case documents, the establishment of a joint US-Yemeni intelligence room to rapidly share information on terrorist targets, with a Cryptologic Support Group (CSG) from the National Security Agency (NSA) being deployed to do so, and the sharing of phone records and dossiers for several al-Qaeda suspects with the CIA.
Abu Ali al-Harithi
Saleh made a visit to the United States in late November 2001. During a meeting at Yemen's official residence in Washington, CIA director George Tenet directly handed him a list of militants the US government wanted neutralized. The top priority on the list was the elimination of Abu Ali al-Harithi, al-Qaeda's chief of operations in Yemen as well as a central conspirator in the Cole bombing. This demand was reiterated the next day as Saleh publicly visited the White House, when Bush told him a "good first step" to prove his country's commitment to fighting terrorism was the arrest of Harithi. Although Bush expressed he would be comfortable sending in US special forces to complete the mission if the Yemenis were unable to, Saleh insisted his government alone would first try to deal with it. Harithi, along with a handful of other militants, were seeking tribal protection in the remote village of Hosun al-Jalal in Marib Governorate, remaining there from late August 2001 until mid or late November 2001, when they were pressured by the locals into leaving after authorities had demanded they be turned over. On December 18, 2001, Yemeni Republican Guard forces trained by the US launched a raid on the village in an attempt to capture Harithi and his associates. Clashes with local tribesmen left 18 soldiers dead.
In the aftermath of the failed raid, the Yemeni government quietly permitted the US to intensify its hunt for Harithi, including authorization for the CIA to fly surveillance drones over its airspace. Numerous US government agencies were involved in tracking down Harithi, including the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, the Intelligence Support Activity surveillance unit, US Central Command (CENTCOM) special forces, and State Department diplomats. US Special Forces teams ostensibly sent in March 2002 to train the Republican Guard were also preparing to "establish operational capacity to track al Qaeda suspects to find and fix their location so that US forces could finish them off." Ambassador Edmund Hull arranged meetings with local tribesmen and tribal sheikhs in Marib where he distributed payments in exchange for information on Harithi's whereabouts.
A breakthrough in the search came in August 2002, when an al-Qaeda plot to attack the local US embassy was foiled after two Islamists handling explosives accidentally detonated them in a Sanaa apartment. Yemeni and US authorities collaborated in the subsequent investigation and the interrogation of the apartment owner, which "regained the initiative" in the search for Harithi. Further advances were made in late October 2002 upon the arrest of Abdul Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the Cole bombing, in the United Arab Emirates, where interrogators were able to listen to phone calls between him and Harithi. Harithi had kept on him up to five phones during his time on the run, each suspected to have been equipped with multiple SIM cards to throw off spies. From there, NSA agents gathered a partial list of phone numbers used by Harithi and set up a system which would sound an alarm at their headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, if one of his recorded numbers was ever in use.
By the time of October, Harithi and his bodyguards were believed to be residing in Yemen's portion of the Rub al Khali desert, constantly shifting locations while utilizing different vehicles and paying local Bedouins to navigate for them. Saudi Arabian license plates were later found on the vehicle he was killed in, suggesting to investigators he had been crossing the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Both Yemeni and American special forces contingents, such as the 5th Special Forces Group, had been searching for Harithi on the ground for months, while US Air Force U-2 planes and CIA Predator's patrolled the airspace. In at least two instances, US forces were preparing to launch a drone strike before Yemeni agents informed them they were mistakenly targeting civilian Bedouins.
Kamal Derwish
Separately, by mid-2002, American authorities had launched an international manhunt to locate Kamal Derwish, a naturalized US citizen of Yemeni descent who was believed to be the ringleader of the Lackawanna Six, an alleged sleeper cell of Yemeni Americans charged with giving material support to al-Qaeda. Derwish was reportedly a "card carrying member of Al Qaeda" who radicalized the six men and recruited them to attend a training camp in Afghanistan in 2001. At the time of the arrest of the Lackawanna Six in September 2002, Derwish was referred to as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case. Later in the month, officials voiced belief he was hiding in Yemen, possibly in contact with Harithi. The possibility of killing Derwish was secretly discussed and approved within the government prior to the strike.
Airstrike
On the afternoon of November 3, 2002, a TROJAN intelligence dissemination antenna system stationed at a US Army base in Kuwait intercepted the signal of a recorded phone number belonging to Harithi. NSA agents at their headquarters and the CSG unit in Yemen both responded to the signal and, using GPS tracking, pinpointed it to a farm in Marib Governorate. Stationed at a military base across the Gulf of Aden in the East African country of Djibouti, CIA agents from the Special Activities Division directed a Predator armed with two Hellfire missiles to the location. The drone operators had access to a live video feed from the Predator which was being transmitted to the base.
As the Predator reached and surveyed the position overhead, US special forces were preparing to launch a raid on the farm when Harithi left the premises. A Yemeni agent on the US ambassador's payroll watched Harithi enter a black Toyota Land Cruiser alongside five other men, and contacted the CIA to share the information. The agent also noted another vehicle was going with them designated specifically for women. The drone was monitoring Harithi as the group entered their vehicles and proceeded to follow them. CIA director George Tenet, who was viewing the Predator's video feed through a broadcast at the Counterterrorism Mission Center in Langley, phoned CENTCOM deputy commander Lieutenant General Michael DeLong to inform him on the target. DeLong went to the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) room in MacDill Air Force Base, where the video feed displayed the vehicle driving through the desert.
Tenet goes "You going to make the call?" And I said, "I'll make the call." He says, "This SUV over here is the one that has Ali in it." I said, "OK, fine." You know, "Shoot him." They lined it up and shot it.
When the intercepted call started, an NSA analyst immediately began listening, but was unfamiliar with the person speaking on the phone, who was driving the car while seemingly arranging a rendezvous point with another al-Qaeda operative. He eventually recognized Harithi was in the back seat of the Land Cruiser after hearing a six-second conversation of him giving directions to the driver, confirming it with a colleague. Tenet received and relayed the information to DeLong, both of them agreeing that Harithi was positively identified. The CIA had additionally determined Derwish was present in the vehicle, with Tenet reportedly telling DeLong over the phone "one of them is an American—the fat guy. But he's al-Qaeda." After receiving final approval to launch the strike from DeLong as well as President Saleh, Tenet gave permission to fire.