Sting of the Drone (15 page)

Congressman Scott looked unconvinced. “Well, I just can’t remember the last time when the United States actually staged an arrest raid to get a big terrorist target. See the thing is, when you say that it’s too risky, the result is that you have decided to implement the death penalty instead. And you do that without any kind of trial, any kind of defense, any kind of transparent, public process. It’s just the kind of government activity that the Founding Fathers, many of them from my state, opposed and tried to prevent through the Constitution. Now I know you two aren’t lawyers and while I am, I am no Constitutional scholar, but this worries me.”

After her last intervention, Sandra looked to Ray for a nod before commenting. She got it. “Well, actually, Congressman, I am a lawyer, graduate of the University of Virginia Law School, as I believe you are.” She waited for that remark to hit home. “But also like you, I do not pretend to be a Constitutional scholar. We do have them, however, in the Justice Department and the White House General Counsel’s office, and they have examined this question in great detail. Their view, which we can provide in writing, is that the Supreme Court has held that killing enemy combatants is not a part of the criminal justice system. On the traditional battlefield, there are no lawyers reviewing things before they happen. In our program, there are.”

The Chairwoman seemed agitated. “Ms. Vittonelli, I think you have put your finger on part of the problem that makes so many of us up here uneasy. For you, the whole world is the battlefield and anyone is an enemy combatant. And as a lawyer, a graduate of Harvard Law, I think that you and the Justice Department have overconstrued the Supreme Court case about the Nazi soldiers in World War II.”

Before she could respond, Congressman O’Connell was waving his hand at the Chair for recognition. “Madam Chairwoman, I think you are exactly on point. They not only can declare anyone an enemy combatant, they have declared American citizens as enemy combatants and killed them without a grand jury, a defense lawyer, a judge, a jury of peers, or an appeal court.”

Ray put his right hand on Sandy’s arm to indicate she should not respond. He did. “Congressman, to the best of our knowledge only four American citizens have been killed by the program and they were self-declared members of al Qaeda. They were engaged in planning the killing of Americans. They had been involved in terrorist attacks that did kill Americans. If we waited to the day when we could arrest them and give them their Miranda rights, there would be more Americans dead now.

“If an American in 1943 moved to Germany and put on the Nazi uniform and fought U.S. troops, no one would think his American citizenship should make him invulnerable to U.S. bombing raids, or that our troops should have tried to separate him out from the Wehrmacht and arrest him during a battle. With Americans who join al Qaeda and then scheme to kill their fellow citizens, they are a threat in being. Our first responsibility is to defend the other Americans they are trying to kill. And the best way to do that under current circumstances is often to use the UAV program. If we did otherwise, this Committee would, rightly, be criticizing us for not doing enough to protect Americans from terrorists.”

Sandra was wondering if there were any Members on the committee who supported the program. If there were, they were being quiet, or absent. The Chair resumed her questioning. “This battlefield you keep referring to, Mr. Bowman, where is it? What countries are you operating in today? How many aircraft do you fly a day?”

Ray asked Sandra to respond. “On a given day, like today, we have probably fifty UAVs take off. We are flying UAVs over Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Mali, Turkey, Iraq, the Philippines, and parts of the Indian Ocean. Some of those are armed, some are reconnaissance,” she said.

“What about Mexico and the Caribbean?” another Congresswoman asked.

“There are UAV flights there, for counternarcotics purposes, but they are run by the Coast Guard and Customs under a separate Homeland Security program,” Ray replied. “They are not under the Intelligence Finding signed by the President.”

“What about Vienna?” Congressman O’Connell asked. “Are you trying, Ms. Vittonelli, to hide from the Committee the fact that you staged an attack in downtown Vienna, in the capital of a friendly country, where an arrest would have been possible? Where instead you killed and injured innocent civilians and destroyed a five-star hotel?”

How does he know that? Sandra asked herself. The Vienna attack was under a special Presidential authority and only eight of the leaders of Congress had been briefed. Besides, the question was where are you flying today. “Congressman, I answered the question that was asked, truthfully.”

“Madam Chairwoman, I ask that we dismiss the witnesses and go into Executive Session to discuss whether we have had a case of perjury here, an intentional attempt to mislead the Congress,” O’Connell hissed.

Ray looked at the Chair. She was one of the eight leaders who had been informed of the Vienna operation, in advance of its being carried out. They exchanged nods.

“I think this briefing is over,” the Chair intoned. “But I want to leave the Administration in no doubt that there is concern up here. When you are launching fifty killer drones every day over a dozen countries, you are going to make mistakes. You are going to get America in trouble. And you are slipping into something potentially dangerous, where it is all too easy to kill and killing becomes like a computer game. Think about what our attitude will be when other nations do this. What would we think about a North Korean drone killing somebody in Seoul or a Chinese drone killing a Chinese dissident in San Francisco? Be very, very careful with this program. We will be watching. Meeting adjourned.” She dropped the gavel.

Ray’s legislative liaison officer moved the two witnesses quickly out of the room and to the elevator, avoiding any opportunity for Congressman O’Connell to say something more to Sandra Vittonelli, or vice versa. “Next time we are going to Little Big Horn, can you give me a better heads-up?” Ray said as the elevator descended. As the doors of the elevator parted, a bright light shone in. A television news camera crew had been waiting, along with a gaggle of about six reporters. Somebody on the Committee had leaked the fact of the top secret hearing. They had set up a press ambush. Sensing from the camera crew’s presence that somebody important might be coming out of the slightly hidden elevator, a crowd of tourists had gathered.

Ray whispered to Sandra, “disappear” and then he pushed out into the mob scene and began to talk to a reporter to draw the media attention to him. Sandra Vittonelli, hoping to avoid her picture being taken and her identity being made public, put her head down, brought her papers up close to her face and slipped into the crowd on the opposite side from Bowman. She found the Suburban still parked under the staircase. Inside, feeling secure behind the darkened windows, she turned on her secret level Blackberry. There was an e-mail from Colonel Erik Parsons. “We need a Kill Call this afternoon. The sooner the better.”

17

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13

THE POLICY EVALUATION GROUP

NAVY HILL

WASHINGTON, DC

“We had been following the truck for four days, since it crossed the border from Kenya. Kenyan police gave us a tip,” Erik spoke, looking into the video camera in Las Vegas. His image appeared on the central screen of the Policy Evaluation Group’s conference room wall.

Raymond Bowman sat in the conference room where “Wild Bill” Donovan had met every day with his deputies during World War II. Donovan had run the first real American intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services, from the same building. Back then it took hours to send a cable to an office in Europe. Ray and Sandra had driven straight down Constitution Avenue, from the Capitol to Foggy Bottom’s Navy Hill at the end of that broad boulevard, in less than five minutes and were now sitting in Donovan’s old OSS conference room watching a live image of a truck near Mogadishu, Somalia. Erik Parsons in Vegas was on a screen-in screen.

“Then we lost it two days ago,” Erik continued. “Just found it again yesterday, close to Mog.”

“How the hell did we lose it?” Sandra Vittonelli asked. She sat next to Ray looking at half a dozen flat screens beaming in images from UAVs and from the operations centers of other U.S. departments and agencies on the videoconference call.

“We think they did a switch on us when it stopped for the night at one of the Shabab rebel camps. We followed the wrong truck when it left in the morning,” Erik admitted.

“What makes us think it’s a truck bomb?” Ray asked.

The face on the screen showing CIA headquarters fielded the question. “The Kenyans raided a warehouse up near the Somali border, found it full of bomb-making material. One of the Shabab guys they arrested gave up about the truck, ah, under questioning. Gave us the plate and the names of the drivers. Two of them, alternating.”

The red light came on next to the Justice Department screen. Ray hit the control so that the lawyer from Justice could be heard next by everyone on the videoconference. “That’s not going to be good enough for us. You admit you have a confusion about which truck is which. Besides, we are just not sure over here how this qualifies. There is no HVI identified as a driver or passenger of the truck. We don’t see how destroying the truck would irreparably harm the Shabab.”

“It qualifies,” Erik responded from the Global Coordination Center in Las Vegas, “because it is an imminent terrorist attack. They didn’t pack that truck full of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil to heat their house or fertilize a field.”

The one-star General at the Pentagon signaled he wanted to contribute. “We have a JSOC team in Mog advising the Ugandan Army peacekeepers from the African Union. The Ugandans snuck a guy into that camp last night and he swiped the truck with a kit that our guys gave him. Came back this morning, definitely a truck bomb. This truck that we are looking at, no confusion with some other truck, this one that is on the screen now.”

The State Department member of the meeting wanted to ask a question. “If we got somebody inside who confirmed that it was a truck bomb, why didn’t he leave a timed charge on the thing to blow it up after he got out of camp?”

“Collateral damage,” the General replied. “You see where it is parked now. That may be a pro-Shabab village there on the outskirts of Mog, but it is a village. With women and children and possibly noncombatant adult males. We can’t strike while it is in the village.”

“I don’t understand something,” the Justice Department lawyer said. “Why are we talking about using a Predator strike? Why don’t you shoot the tires out? Why don’t we just tell the Ugandan peacekeepers or the Somali government forces to go get the thing or set up a roadblock?”

“Our estimate is that if the drivers think that they are about to be stopped, they will detonate. If we ask the Ugandans to shoot at it, the thing might go off. That would wipe out the troops at the road block and probably everything else around,” the General answered. “That’s why we want to wait until it is back on a road and then strike it when it is in the middle of nowhere.”

Ray and Sandra were examining a hard copy map of the area around the war-riddled Somali capital of Mogadishu. They had found the village where the truck was about fifty kilometers outside of the city. “Looks like there is a fairly open stretch of highway between the village and where the urban sprawl begins,” Sandra observed.

“That’s where we suggest you hit it,” the General replied.

As they watched the screen, the truck was clearly visible in the early morning light. It began to move out of the village and onto the road. In front of and behind it were open pickups. “Erik, zoom in on the pickups,” Sandra ordered. Everyone on the conference call was watching the same video feed, which was being sent to all of the departments on the Kill Call.

“Oh, shit,” Sandra said into an open microphone. The image on the screen was of a flatbed truck filled with at least four women and perhaps as many as eight children. As the image panned to the lead vehicle, they saw an identical image, a dozen more civilians.

“Can’t hit that,” the Justice lawyer announced. “If that truck bomb is as big as you think, if you hit the truck, it’s taking out all those civilians in the trucks in front and behind it.”

“He’s got that right,” Ray said to Sandra with his microphone on mute so that the other sites could not hear him. “Looks like the bad guys have figured out our rules and are using human shields.”

The small convoy turned onto the main road for Mogadishu and began to pick up speed. “We’ve only got about twenty minutes or so before they get into built-up areas. If we are going to hit it, we need to do so when it’s on this road,” the General announced.

With the microphone still off, Ray said, “We better call Winston.” He picked up a handset and hit a button for the office of the National Security Advisor. Sandra saw his expression change when someone at the other end answered. “Then could you please ask him to step out of the dinner for a minute. We’re on a Kill Call.” He hit the Speaker button so that Sandra could hear when Dr. Burrell came on the line.

“Ray, I hear you two got slaughtered this afternoon at hipsy. Not good,” Burrell began. “We better be extra careful on these strikes. What’s this one look like?”

Ray let the remark about the House Intel Committee go, for now. “We have a large truck bomb on the road into Mogadishu. It was made by Shabab, the local al Qaeda affiliate. In a few minutes it will be driving into a built-up area where we won’t be able to take it out without causing all sorts of collateral damage from our missile and the truck bomb itself going off as a secondary explosion.

“Right now it’s on an open road in the middle of nowhere, but the trouble is that it’s being escorted by two trucks, each of which has about a dozen women and children.”

“Well, sounds like you are out of Schlitz, Ray,” Burrell replied.

“Well, sir, it’s a matter of what is worse, killing people who seem to be escorting this bomb to its destination or allowing it to go off and killing maybe ten times more innocent people,” Sandra interjected.