Klaidman Daniel - Kill or capture: the war on terror and the soul of the Obama presidency

First Mariner Books edition 2013

Copyright 2012 by Daniel Klaidman

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Klaidman, Daniel.

Kill or capture: the war on terror and the soul of the Obama presidency / Daniel Klaidman.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-547-54789-3

ISBN 978-0-544-00216-6 (pbk.)

1. War on Terrorism, 20012009. 2. TerrorismPreventionUnited States. 3. United StatesForeign relations21st century. 4. Obama, Barack. I. Title.

HV 6432. K 56 2012
363.325'1560973dc23
2012008228

e ISBN 978-0-547-54778-7
v2.0413

For my parents,
Kitty and Steve Klaidman, with love.

And to the memory of my grandparents,
Ernest, Ilonka, Moe, and Sis.

THE WHITE HOUSE

Barack Obama, President of the United States

Joe Biden, Vice President of the United States

Rahm Emanuel, Chief of Staff

William M. Daley, Chief of Staff (succeeding Emanuel)

Jim Messina, Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations

David Axelrod, Senior Adviser to the President

David Plouffe, Senior Adviser to the President (succeeding Axelrod)

John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism

Greg Craig, White House Counsel

Robert Bauer, White House Counsel (succeeding Craig)

Daniel Meltzer, Deputy White House Counsel

Tom Donilon, Deputy National Security Adviser, National Security Adviser

Valerie Jarrett, Senior Adviser to the President

Robert Gibbs, Press Secretary and Senior Adviser to the President

Jim Jones, National Security Adviser

Denis McDonough, Chief of Staff to the National Security Council, Deputy National Security Adviser

Ben Rhodes, Speechwriter, Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications

Dan Pfeiffer, Deputy Communications Director, Communications Director

State Department

Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State

Harold Koh, Legal Adviser

Ambassador Daniel Fried, Special Envoy for the closure of the Guantnamo Bay detention facility

Department of Defense

Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense

Jeh C. Johnson, General Counsel

Department of Justice

Eric Holder, Attorney General

David Ogden, Deputy Attorney General

Robert Mueller, FBI Director

Kevin Ohlson, Chief of Staff for the Attorney General

Amy Jeffress, National Security Adviser for the Attorney General

Matthew Miller, Director of Public Affairs

Matthew Olsen, Executive Director, Guantnamo Review Task Force

Andrew Tannenbaum, Deputy Director, Olsen task force

David Barron, Office of Legal Counsel

Preet Bharara, US Attorney, Southern District of New York

David Raskin, chief prosecutor of the New York Southern District Courts terrorism unit

Department of Homeland Security

Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security

David Martin, Principal Deputy General Counsel, Department of Homeland Security

MILITARY & INTELLIGENCE

Admiral Michael Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

General James Hoss Cartwright, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

William H. McRaven, Commander, Joint Special Operations Command; Commander, US Special Operations Command

General James Mattis, Commander, US Central Command

Michael Hayden, Director of Central Intelligence

Leon Panetta, Director of Central Intelligence (succeeding Hayden)

Stephen Steve Kappes, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence

Michael Mike McConnell, Director of National Intelligence

Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence (succeeding McConnell)

AL-QAEDA AND ITS AFFILIATES

Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda leader

Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Ladens deputy

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, high-level al-Qaeda operative and principal architect of 9/11 attacks

Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, leading al-Qaeda operative in East Africa

Anwar al-Awlaki, chief of external operations for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula

Abu Zubaydah, alleged al-Qaeda member

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day bomber

Baitullah Mehsud, leader of Pakistani Taliban

Richard Reid, the Shoe Bomber

Najibullah Zazi, would-be terrorist, planned attack on New York subway system

Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square bomber

Mohammed Saleh Mohammed Ali al-Kazemi, code name Akron, deputy, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula

Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, Shabab member, liaison to al-Qaeda

OTHER PLAYERS

Sabin Willett and Susan Baker Manning, defense attorneys representing Uighur detainees at Guantnamo

Thomas Wilner, lawyer for Guantnamo detainees

Richard Clarke, counterterrorism adviser to candidate Obama

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, powerful player on counterterrorism issues

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-RI, supported Justice Department effort to investigate Bush-era torture

Bruce Riedel, former CIA official who led a White House review of US policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Laurence Tribe, Harvard law professor and Obama adviser

Sharon Malone, wife of Eric Holder

Michelle Obama, First Lady

Anthony Romero, Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union

Tom Malinowski, Washington Director, Human Rights Watch

For this book I drew on interviews with more than two hundred sources, most of whom are current or former Obama administration officials. I also benefited from the valuable perspective of many who served in previous administrations, both Democratic and Republican. I talked to numerous academics and legal experts for their insights on the range of issues covered herein. As often as possible, I consulted internal government documents, including contemporaneous notes of key meetings taken by participants and private emails. I also relied on the transcripts of speeches, press conferences, and background briefings provided by the White House and other government agencies. In those instances where I rely on exclusive reporting in newspaper or magazine stories, I cite them in the body of the text.

Ultimately, narrative accounts of events unfolding essentially in real time depend on the willingness of participants to speak candidly to reporters about what theyve observed firsthand. Most of the interviews for this book were conducted on background, which means I agreed not to attribute direct quotes by name. For a variety of reasons, individuals working in presidential administrations are simply unwilling to discuss the inner workings of governmenthow important decisions are made, how ethical dilemmas are resolved, or the human dimensions of their jobswithout a grant of anonymity. That is especially the case when the subject is national security. The late Washington Post editorial-page editor and columnist Meg Greenfield once observed that the off the record part is where the reality and authenticity are to be found.

But implicit in allowing sources to speak anonymously is a reporters obligation to carefully verify the accuracy of their accounts, and to give readers a glimpse into the reporting process so that they can assess the credibility of the information themselves. There are many techniques reporters use to authenticate the accounts of their sources. Most important is cross-referencing what they say with other sources, something I have endeavored to do throughout this book. When I quote President Obama or other key characters, I do so only if that quote was relayed to me by a source who personally heard it. Where possible, I have checked those quotes against contemporaneous notes taken by participants in meetings. Ultimately, I am dependent on the memory of my sources.