Reply #23: This contradicts stories that nobody was actually assassinated by Xe. Predator killed a US Citizen

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Kamal Derwish was blown up by a Hellfire missile fired by a Predator in Yemen during 2002, in the first such attack. See, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/14/AR2005051401121.html

SNIP

Al-Yemeni's death is one of only a handful of known incidents in which the CIA has fired the remote-controlled, missile-equipped Predator to kill an al Qaeda member. In November 2002, the CIA used a Predator fitted with a five-foot-long Hellfire missile to kill a senior al Qaeda leader, Abu Ali al-Harithi, as he was riding in a car in the Yemeni desert. Also killed with Harithi, who was suspected of masterminding the October 2000 attack on the destroyer USS Cole, was a naturalized U.S. citizen, Kamal Derwish.

Derwish, it was determined later, was part of the Lackawanna, N.Y., group of Yemeni men who admitted to training in al Qaeda camps.

The CIA is permitted to operate the lethal Predator under presidential authority promulgated after the Sept. 11 attacks. Shortly after the attacks, Bush approved a "presidential finding" that allowed the CIA to write a set of highly classified rules describing which individuals could be killed by CIA officers. Such killings were defined as self-defense in a global war against al Qaeda terrorists.

The rules have been vetted by the White House, CIA and State Department lawyers. They allow CIA counterterrorism officials in the field to decide much more quickly when to fire, according to former intelligence officials involved in developing the rules.

This report of Blackwater/Xe operating the Predator program does not square with the claim heard elsewhere in today's news that nobody was actually killed by Blackwater's assassination program. It's gotta be one or the other, unless Blackwater was running multiple wet ops.

P.S. - Derwish has been identified as a possible double-agent who was in Afghanistan with bin Laden just weeks before the 9/11 attack. He was one of the first to be silenced. Derwish was a key figure in US intelligence surveillance of al-Qaeda cells inside the U.S., and provided a direct link between the bombings of the USS Cole and 9/11.

Derwish had trained in Afghanistan in 1992 and fought with the U.S.-backed Muslim Army in Bosnia. In the Spring of 2002, U.S. intelligence intercepted communications between him and two important al-Qaida figures, one of them involved in the USS Cole bombing. Derwish had been instrumental in organizing the the Lackawanna 6 into an al-Qaeda sleeper cell. Warrants were issued to conduct round-the-clock surveillance on members of the group.

The FBI monitored phone calls from Derwish in Yemen to some members of the group that appeared to be intended to assess their status or availability. It also intercepted e-mails from one of the group, Mukhtar al-Bakri, who was then in Bahrain. One of them appeared particularly suspicious. The e-mail was entitled "Big Meal" and read in English translation as follows:

"How are you my beloved, God willing you are fine. I would like to remind you of obeying God and keeping him in your heart because the next meal will be very huge. No one will be able to withstand it except those with faith. There are people here who had visions and their visions were explained that this thing will be very strong. No one will be able to bear it." 12

The phone calls and e-mails had the intense interest of the White House, the CIA and the FBI that the Lackawanna group was about to be activated for a major terrorist attack. At this point, the Buffalo FBI field office was required to send briefings on the results of their investigation to FBI Headquarters twice a day, and these were often passed on to the White House in the president's daily threat briefings.

At the request of the CIA, al-Bakri was detained by the Bahrain police, coincidentally on his wedding night. He admitted to having traveled to the Al Farooq camp in late spring and early summer and also gave the names of the rest of the Lackawanna group. Based on al-Bakri's testimony, the six Lackawanna men were arraigned in September, 2002, and charged with providing material support to Al-Qaeda. Somehow, despite the intense surveillance, Derwish was allowed to leave the U.S. and travelled to Yemen, where he was killed by a CIA Predator drone. See, http://www.rjhresearch.com/ADR/counterterrorism/Counterterrorism.doc