Dirty Wars Page #4

that we were on

two-weeks-old intelligence.

Two Iraqis started

shooting at us.

We killed them.

And, you know, we kind

of realized later

that these guys were

just out guarding the-

you know, the

neighborhood generator.

Now, I didn't lose

any sleep over it,

'cause these guys

were shooting at me,

but, you know, you start

thinking about it

from a strategic

perspective- that's a loss.

You start out with

a target list,

and maybe you got 50 guys on it;

maybe you got 200 guys on it.

But you can work your way

through those 50 or 200 guys,

and then suddenly,

at the end of that target list,

you've now got a new target list

of, you know, 3,000

people on it.

And how did this grow?

What Exum told me about

Iraq was a revelation.

I thought JSOC's rise

had happened later

in Afghanistan.

I'd worked in Baghdad for years

and had written countless

stories there,

many from the front

lines of the war.

It was there that I

first started reporting

for The Nation magazine.

But I'd never heard of JSOC.

The budget for the Joint

Special Operations Command,

you can't get it through

a FOIA request.

We've tried that.

I'd missed the most

important story.

In Iraq, the U.S. had

fundamentally changed

the way it fought war.

The real story, JSOC,

was hidden in the shadows,

out of sight.

What was hidden in the

shadows right now?

...That I propose

represent a new direction

from the last eight years.

What was I missing today?

We are embracing more

oversight of our actions,

and we're narrowing our use of

the state secrets privilege.

I discovered that,

over the past decade,

a series of secret

presidential orders

had given JSOC

unprecedented authority.

The battlefield was expanded,

and JSOC could now hit at will

in countries beyond

Iraq and Afghanistan.

I began to research

strikes against al-Qaeda

outside the declared

battlefields.

I looked for patterns

among the lists.

And then I found one.

In December 2009,

five strikes with

over 150 casualties

in a country without

a declared war.

[Man singing in native language]

ADEN, YEMEN

Aden.

Yemen's ancient port city

was nothing like Kabul.

In Afghanistan, life was

defined by the war.

Everything revolved around it.

But in Yemen, there was no war,

at least not officially.

The strikes seemed to have

come out of the blue,

and most Yemenis were going

about life as usual.

It was difficult to

know where to start.

The Yemeni government claimed

responsibility for the strikes,

saying they'd killed dozens

of al-Qaeda operatives.

But it was unclear who

the targets really were

or who was even responsible.

I arranged to meet the

most powerful man

in southern Yemen,

Sheikh Saleh Bin Fareed.

SHEIKH SALEH BIN FAREED

LEADER, AL-AULAQ TRIBE

When was the first time

that you heard about

someone being al-Qaeda

in that area?

How did you first

hear of the strikes

that had happened

on December 17th?

What was the news saying?

AL MAJALAH:

ABYAN PROVINCE:

People saw the smoke

and felt the earth shake.

They had never

seen anything like it.

Iran to the area.

I found scattered bodies

and injured women and children.

46 people were killed,

including 5 pregnant women.

If they kill innocent children

and call them al Qaeda,

then we are all al Qaeda.

If children are terrorists,

then we are all terrorists.

At 6 am they were sleeping

and I was making bread.

When the missiles exploded,

I lost consciousness.

I didn't know what happened to my

children, my daughter, my husband.

They all died.

Only I survived, along with this

old man and my daughter.

Missiles attacked me.

And my brother Ibrahim.

And my mother.

Their hands were cut.

The echoes of Gardez

were everywhere...

So many of the details

repeating themselves.

But there was one

important difference.

In Gardez, the American soldiers

went to obscene lengths

to cover up the killings.

Here in al-Majalah,

despite the official denial,

they'd left their fingerprints

strewn across the desert.

Why would they deny

something so obvious

when anyone who

visited the bomb site

would see the truth?

But maybe that was the point.

There was no declared

war in Yemen.

Out here, in the

middle of the desert,

no one was looking.

And the one local reporter

investigating the bombing

had disappeared.

The decision to arrest me was

made the day I exposed the cover-up

of the murder of women

and children in Abyan.

The day I exposed those who sent

cruise missiles to bedouin camps.

ABDULELAH HAIDER SHAYE

YEMENI JOURNALIS Abdulelah Haider Shaye had

traveled to al-Majalah

immediately after the strike,

and his reporting sparked

national outrage.

Soon after, his house was raided

by Yemen's American-trained

counterterrorism forces.

Abdulelah was thrown in prison.

Posters demanding his return

were hung around the capital.

ABDULRAH MAN BARMAN

ABDULELAH'S LAWYER

I met Abdulelah's

lawyer at a teahouse

because his office

was under attack.

They fired over 120

shells into my office.

And now we can't reach it

because the Republican Guard

are deployed in the area.

In court, I noticed that one of

Abdulelah's teeth had been pulled.

And another

had been broken.

And he had

scars on his chest.

My understanding was that

President Ali Abdullah Saleh

was going to pardon

Abdulelah Haider.

The president

agreed to release him.

But that same day, the

president got a call from Obama

expressing concern

about Abdulelah's release.

I'd heard the story

many times in Yemen-

President Obama

personally intervening

to keep a respected Yemeni

journalist in prison.

It sounded farfetched to me.

But then I found this

on the White House's

own website,

a readout from a phone call

between Obama and the

Yemeni president.

They badly misspelled

Abdulelah's name,

but Obama's point was clear.

He wanted him kept in jail.

Al-Majalah was the

first reported strike

inside Yemen in seven years.

It was clearly a U.S.

Cruise missile

that struck the Bedouin camp.

Since there was no

declared war in Yemen,

I knew the strike was

either JSOC or the CIA.

And then I found this photo.

The U.S. would have

never released it,

but Yemen's president posted

it on his personal website-

a presidential meeting with

an important American guest,

the head of the Joint

Special Operations Command,

Admiral William McRaven.

Joining us now is

Jeremy Scahill,

national security correspondent

for The Nation magazine.

His latest article is all about

the U.S. relationship

with Yemen.

Jeremy, thank you

for joining us.

Thank you.

Back in New York,

I started writing

stories about JSOC,

their rise to lead

force in Afghanistan,

their covert strikes in Yemen,

and it felt as though

I had crossed an

invisible tripwire.

The reality is that

U.S. counterterrorism

obsession with Yemen

trumped concern

for human rights.

- That's not true.

- And it's-

Well, it is true.

- It's not true.

Yup, back there.

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