al qaeda leader. there s one other element of near certainty standard that a lied to the first operation. the one that resulted in the death of ahmed farouq. that is that there were hundreds of hours of surveillance against that particular al qaeda compound. this surveillance included near continuous surveillance many thein the days leading up to the operation. that led to the near certain assessment that it was an al qaeda compound frequented by an al qaeda leader and did not include or that civilians would not be included in the operation. only the latter assessment was incorrect. you know these strikes took place in january. you said the u.s. recently confirmed what happened and that these individuals had died. can you tell us when exactly was
there. reporter: bill something that is extraordinary about the limited information the white house has put out so far is that they give four names, and they say that none of the people were where they thought they d be. they say, yes, the two american al-qaeda, ahmed farouq and adam gadahn, were killed but they were not specifically targeted and yet two innocent hostages warren weinstein and giovanni lo porto were killed, but the u.s. had no reason to think they were in the region where the drone strike that killed them took place. they re revealing that a few months ago they did not know very much about where any of these people were. now they are all deadment two of them dead. two of them innocent, two of them members of al-qaeda. so the president is going to have a lot of ground to cover to explain why we didn t know where these people were and how the targeting process worked that an american and another innocent hostage ended up dead. bill: peter in your time at the
been the intended targets of terror operation that ended with tragic deaths of warren and giovanni. thank you very much. in fact the president said they were not aware of al qaeda americans or american hostages there. more accurately these were two separate drone strikes several days apart. one two hostages were killed and in the other two al qaeda members were killed including one american. what do we know about the al qaeda operatives killed in the strike? let s talk about ahmed farouq. he appeared in videos audios and books preaching jihad. he directed messages mostly to
same week in the same area and yes, he was a mayor propagandist for al-qaeda he, you know was seen in several videos calling for attacks against america. so that was a successful strike. but also we must add that in the strike that inadd inadvertently killed the hostages they killed ahmed farouq who was also a u.s. citizen and who had been the deputy leader of al-qaeda in the indian subcontinent. this is a branch of al-qaeda that had attempted a hijacking of a pakistani naval vessel last september. so this is a very dangerous organization a threat to both the u.s. as well as pakistan. and so, you know, what we can say is the drone strikes have been effective in degrading al-qaeda s leadership. they have probably saved countless not only u.s., but other innocent lives from al-qaeda s attacks.
white house there and perhaps maybe more appropriate for the pentagon this question, have these individuals come up in the briefings from day-to-day, week to week or not? reporter: you hard about them from time to time, but it s not a daily or a weekly thing. in fact, the white house in the limited information they ve given us so far ahead of the president s statement says they had no information about whether adam gadahn or ahmed farouq where are so obviously not something you d want to avoid in a wartime scenario, but they say they didn t know where they were and that s not something that a lot of the people in the press corps here or at the pentagon are asking about on a day-to-day basis. as you know, there are other things that come up, and these guys have been out there for a long time. we ve known that they re bad american members of al-qaeda for a long time but we have not seen them on the front pages or at the beginning or at any point in the briefings lately. martha: yeah. w