Enclave meteorite his book predator the secret origins of the drug revolution is the book wes are discussing today. Ere he cut his teeth that us a rallied observer and in moving over to defense. I happen to be a fan of hisitteb earlier book called the dream machine and he had written this book predator both of which i wouldar contend are remarkable biographies. A remarkable book. Into mine left the author just recently two weeks ago a received an award of the most outstanding englishlanguage john ford affairs given by Foreign Policy magazine in university of toronto and global affairs. I remember staffer my time at the Naval Academy rating for the Baltimore Sun troyring a number of issues like the breakup of the soviet union in his most recent book is about the assassination so we start with the origins of thears to a technology of the drone warfare in the way andin the lastly that is for thehe drawer where fault warfare that is another tremendous book. A true academic serving as an adviser to the most important operations froman special Operations Command to revising people in general petraeus also the experting counterinsurgency but he has an entire generation the key has my time impacted. As i look around my time in the marine corps to talk about these issues here is one of the guys bureau is talking about in with that i will turnover for mark to talk of raw his book predator. I am honored to be a part of this distinguished panel in to talk about my book creditor. It is the book that tells what i thank you will agree is a surprising story about the predator cover how it was invented and how it changed the world. Ors can stalk this is after all the first weapon in history beckons stocking kill a single individual on the other sidevu of the planet from a position of total ambush. Le whoe my book is largely based on first person interviews with our resources. I tell in detail how they are under creditor 2001 and air force pilots and Ground Control station tucked away are thus yeah a campus begin using this exotic weapon. I have been writing about surprises. Itary for threee decades but in the five years it took me to Research Iran into a lot of problems first was not invented by the usual suspects but by this may and a former as a israeli Aeronautical Engineer that is considered a genius a couple of years later he emigrated to the United States, the land of opportunity 71 to work in military who and he went bankrupt trying to sell his ideas to the u. S. Military who was not interested in droves and the 80s but a pair of billionaire brothers who decided to get into the drug business heard about have bankruptcy hired him in the top engineers to good work for them. The private owners of the San Diego Company now in their late seventies are fascinating in their own right and in 1957 in the early twenties they made the cover of life magazine by a flying a small plane around latin america during Summer Vacation a trip they decided to take before they ever took there first flying lesson because they were notss standing traveling for five and theyre traveling around latin america to look for a Business Opportunity to pursue after college did as a result after theycreated a graduated the began starting with the banana and cal plantation in partnership of may with their ruth finley. Italy last a couple of years but the first of many the by a. D. 80s had made them an uncommonly well feet to buy general atomics is 65 million. Beginning as a Nuclear Energy company but i got into the drum business bought it from chevron andns 86. Ent. The number of reasons they may be a good businessin investment but how to look at the rebels over nicaragua to overthrow the Business Partners gps navigation was brand new in those days ofd the cia could package gps node knows with sanives to support meighens Cruise Missile on behalf of the sandinista that went nowhere but if necessity is the mother of invention war is the mother of necessity mitt few years later and the difficulty of that artillery in 1993 led to the birth of the predator from smaller less capablelts. 1983 they bought to to use as biplanes in bosnia and got good results that inspire them to develop the predator the flu for the first time july 1994. In the first as it could be thrown by full by satellite there is a satellite dish inside. It was not armed shoppers just carrying video camera in sensors that could beeillance used for the acronym of intelligence surveillance. Ne as long as 40 hours at a time without landing to refuel. And all the while sending its video back to its Ground Control station. Partly for that reason in the spring of 2000, an innovative air force general named john jumper decided to arm the predator. Jumper assigned that project to a very special air force unit that goes by the exotic nickname big safari. In my book i describe big safari as a reallife version of q branch, the Technology Shop in the james bond movies. And thats where the cia comes into the predator story. Because as big saw farly was starting safari was starting that project to arm the predator, Richard Clark, the counterterrorism director at the National Security council, and charlie allen, a very senior cia official, had come to the conclusion that the United States needed to kill Osama Bin Laden before he killed more americans as alqaeda had done in bombing our embassies in kenya and tanzania in 1998, and as it would do again by bombing the uss cole on october 12, 2000, killing 17 american sailors. But if they were going to kill bin laden, first the cia had to find him. So in september of 2000, the big safari crew and a Ground Control station at an air base in germany flew an unarmed predator over a place near kandahar, afghanistan, called tarnac farms. The cia believed bin laden was living there as a guest of the taliban and, indeed, the air force predator crew found him. At that point, big safaris product to arm the predator project to arm the predator went into high gear. They quickly figured out how to put a missile called the hellfire on the predator and wired it so that the Ground Control station could aim and fire the missile from the other side of the planet. Starting with a test launch from a predator strapped down to a concrete pad on january 23rd, 2001, the big safari team, the predator team, launched test shots from the air and at a target tank and then into a building the cia ordered constructed to find out whether hellfire missiles which were designed to destroy tanks would kill Osama Bin Laden if fired into his residence in afghanistan. The arizona contractor apparently misread the specifications and built an adobe brick structure that bore little resemblance to the mud houses of afghanistan. So the testers nicknamed it taco bell and hung this sign on it. [laugher] they were in a hurry at this point, so to help measure the hellfires lethality inside a building, they had to dispense with the usual mannequins filled with ballistic jelly. Instead as you can see in this photo, they used watermelons to simulate people in test shots. Now, i was surprised to learn that in those days, before 9 11, the Defense Department didnt want its people to be the ones who pulled the trigger on a predator hellfire strike that killed Osama Bin Ladennen. So at first they had big safari create a trigger that was connected to the air force flight crews control panel by a long, white cable but was to be operated by someone from the cia. Then the cia argued that they shouldnt be the ones to fire a military weapon, especially in something that would count as an assassination. For years there had been executive orders banning assassinations. So an air force Master Sergeant who was working for big safari dubbed this remote trigger the monkey switch. Excuse me. Whoa, i lost my slide. With wheres the monkey switch . I had it, sorry. Ill dig it up later. [laughter] they called it the monkey switch because they figured that maybe they could just train a monkey to press the trigger, and nobody would have to take responsibility. But while big safari and people at the lower levels of the cia were getting prepared in that summer of 2001 to send an armed predator at Osama Bin Laden p, Richard Clark was having trouble getting the Bush Administration to focus on the threat he and others saw in alqaeda. The Bush AdministrationNational Security council held its first meeting to discuss sending the armed predator after bin laden on september 4, 2001. Many of the preparations had been made. Im not sure how well you can see it in these google earth photos, but this is the happeningly campus at the cia in early september, 2001. The inset shows a doublewide mobile home that was put there to is serve as a command center for an air force predator team. The small rectangle ajays are sent to it is a adjacent to it is a Ground Control station painted white to make it look like an ordinary construction bin. But at that september 4th National Security council meeting, neither the cia, nor the military wanted to take responsibility for pulling the trigger on this unfamiliar new weapon, even using the monkey switch. So they decided to wait. One week to the day later, of course, everything changed. And the day after that, three armed predators were on their way to a base in uzbekistan where they could take off and land for missions over afghanistan. Predator 3034, flown by big safaris captain Scott Swanson and Master Sergeant jeff with quaw, launched the fist lethal drone first lethal drone strike on the first night of the war there, october 7, 2001, a story that i tell in great detail in my book. Three days later president bush, at another National Security council meeting, said why cant we fly more than one predator at a time . We ought to have 50 of these things. And in december of that year, bush gave a speech to the corps of cadets at the citadel in South Carolina where he said, before the war the predator had skeptics because it did not fit the old ways; now it is clear the military does not have enough unmanned vehicles. I think thats when the drone revolution began, and now ill leave it to my fellow authors, scott shane and mark moyar, to talk about how the cias initial reluctance changed in succeeding years quite dramatically. Thank you. Thank you very much, richard. [applause] i want to, im going to give a quick personal vignette as i turn it over to scott shane. I had the great honor to serve as a Research Assistant for admiral turner when i was in graduate school in the early 990s. He was the director of the cia in the carter administration, and you mentioned during your talk, richard, about the executive orders banning assassination. In the aftermath of the Church Committee hearings which some in this room are not old enough to remember, there was a lot of consternation about some cia programs that had as their aim to assassinate political leaders. And executive order 11095 was signed by jimmy carter in february of 1976 that banned political assassination. President carter expanded on that two years later, in january of 78, that banned any sort of assassination. And then ronald reagan, in his first year in office, used that same language in executive order 12333 that banned any agent of the United States from taking part in any assassination. Lawyers within the government revisited that decision in 1998 after the embassies in kenning ya and tanzania were bombed and determined that anyone who was confirmed to be a terrorist could be the target of an assassination. And that was the legal logic behind those tomahawk strikes against those camps of bin laden in afghanistan in 1998. Boy, where have we come from there. The story of not just that, but also specifically the assassination of an american citizen is the story that scott shane has told, and so with that, i want to turn the floor over to him, and i look forward to hearing your few minutes. Thank you, scott. Thank you, scott. So my book is called objective troy, and the subtitle is a terrorist, a president and the rise of the drone. And if ricks book is the biography of the machine, the predator, mine is really the biography of a guy who got killed by one of these machines. Anwar alawlakiment one of my reasons for writing this book was actually to understand how somebody becomes a terrorist, how somebody in this case, Anwar Alawlaki, who had had a happy life for quite a few years in the u. S. , an american citizen, a very successful imam, muslim preacher, condemned 9 11, called for bridge building after 9 11 from his post at a big mosque outside washington, d. C. , how he ended up spending his last years with alqaeda in yemen trying to to kill americans. And so im going to sort of fast forward really to the second half of my book to where Anwar Alawlaki has moved to yemen, has joined alqaeda, and im really going to start with the moment when alawlaki is essentially, hes become essentially the leading spokesperson, certainly in english, for alqaeda and for the cause it represented. Looks like were having a little bit of trouble. Should with play it through the microphone up here . [inaudible] okay. Well, while he works on that, i will tell you what you would have seen. In march the first video is in march of 2010. Anwar alawlaki, this guy who was a, you know, sort of peaceloving preacher in the u. S. Shows up, hes dressed in a camo jacket with a traditional yemeni dagger in his belt, and he speaks right into the camera and says that it is hes speaking english, and hes addressing muslims in the west and in the u. S. In particular. And hes saying it is your obligation, your religious obligation to join the violent jihad against the United States, that the United States is at war with islam and every muslims obligation is to attack america. And this comes on top of, first, he sort of comes to public attention in november of 2009 after nidal hasan, a army psychiatrist, u. S. Army psychiatrist and major, opens fire on people at fort hood. And it turns out they were in communication, and the next day anwr with alawlaki, who was a very techsavvy guy, put on his blog that nidal hasan was a hero and did exactly what youre supposed to do as a muslim in america. Then the second thing that happened was on Christmas Day in 2009 some of you will remember the underwear bomber who tried to blow up an airliner as it came into detroit. The bomb, fortunately, didnt go off, it burned him. But when he came off and eventually was interviewed by the fbi, he told the fbi that Anwar Alawlaki, this guy in yemen, had recruited him, vetted him, coached him and prepared him for his mission blowing up a plane. So when, you know, when he has been proven to be not just a propagandist, but an operational terrorist, president obama asks the Justice Department can i put this guy on the kill list. Will it be legal and constitutional to kill a u. S. Citizen in this circumstance. And the answer comes back in february of 2010 in secret memos written by the Justice Department that, yes, it will be, it is legal and constitutional based on, first, the idea that its infeasible to capture this guy in the wilds of yemen, and secondly, that he poses a continuing and imminent threat to the National Security of the u. S. And to the safety of americans. So thats the order he gives. What follows is, essentially, an 18month manhunt involving all 16 intelligence agencyies, nsa, the National Security agency, essentially drops an electronic net over yemen. The cias offering 5 million to family members and anyone else who can tell them where this guy is. And eventually, after some close calls, they catch up with him at the end of september 2011, and they fire some hellfire missiles at the vehicle that hes in, and hes killed along with a Young American named samir khan, another member of alqaeda and two yemeni alqaeda guys. Theyre basically incinerated in their vehicle are. So the at that point on that day, obama mentions publicly that alawlaki is dead and mentions that the brave men and women of the military and intelligence agencies deserve, you know, its a special achievement for them or Something Like that but doesnt quite say how this man came to die. Because theyre still being very secretive about the Drone Program. A couple years later in a big speech on drones at National Defense university, obama makes the killing of this more than citizen for the first time of this american citizen for the first time sort of the centerpiece of his argument in favor of drones. Maybe you can queue up the next video if it works. Down on the lefthand corner. Oh, no, go back. Forward or backwards . Hit the left arrow, and youll go back to the other one, and then go down to the lefthand corner. You have to use the cursor to go down to the lefthand corner yeah, which slide . The next one. [inaudible] tha