getting the new affiliates so al qaeda went out and, as a sign of their weakness rather than strength get some local pakistanis for their affiliate but the second american killed was an al qaeda leader. and in terms of the legality of killing american citizens without due process and i m talking about guardianad an and farouk and the strike against american targets, what is that process? what is the legality there? according to the administration they did not know specifically they were trying to kill these two americans. they were not disappointed they were killed but this was not a targeted killing in the way the killing of the cleric al-awaki was. these were just other kbad ants
and come batd ants and the position of president obama is if you join in with al qaeda which is an enemy of the united states and there is a bill passed by congress, and if you join the enemy, you take your chances and if we attack al qaeda, and you get killed too bad and you can t conduct say war other wise because you can t draw those distinctions even with the act of a drone. and fred you talked about the heightened actions the white house would have to go through and what are they. the administration didn t know this particular one is what they call a signature strike. they have persistent surveillance and they can tell from pattern life and the convoys and they look for markers to understand how senior members of al qaeda is an operational leader and what kind of package of security does he have around him and so they establish that over periods of
weinstein, an aid worker pleaded for his freedom. it seems i have been totally abandoned. today president obama apologized for a fatal mistake. we believed this was an al qaeda compound and no civilians were present and that capturing these terrorists was not possible. weinstein s wife in a statement blamed his captors for his death and demanded answers from washington saying we do understand that the u.s. government will be conducted an independent investigation of the circumstances. we look forward to the results of that investigation. killed in the same attack was al qaeda leader auck men farouk. he was the deputy head of al qaeda, who attempted to hijack pakistani naval vessels last september. in the framework of america s war on so-called terror killed in another air strike in january, american al qaeda operative and propagandist adam
shrapnel and dirt landed there. and the drone strikes were effective. and they talked about a famous foreign militant who taught them how to make bombs and he was killed in a drone strike. so it is a difficult process, but from what i saw, and just my personal experience they were largely effective. and david, that is what is interesting, people haven t been there in the region you can hear the drones buzzing flying overhead? yeah. they are like small propeller aircraft a piper or like a cessna circling overhead. and they knew that. they would order me inside of the house when there was a drone overhead and they assumed that the american government was hunting me and the american government wanted to kill me because they had this crazy ideas about what they could get for one american captive. they are constantly overhead. peter, what do we know and they mentioned farouk and adam
gadan and i think we have talked about him on this broadcast repeatedly over the years, how important were they. gaddan was the first american charged with treason and it carried the death penalty and it is a charge very rarely invoked. there is no evidence that he was he was planning operations against the united states but he was a leading spokesperson for al qaeda and u.s. prosecutors must have felt there was a good case to advance the treason case against him. and farouk we hear he is an american but what we know about him is not a very great deal. he s he s head of this new al qaeda affiliate, the south asian affiliate and they have had a number of leaders killed in the last several months and has positioned itself in a way of competing with isis which is