That may account for the US closing its investigation of Anwar’s connections to the “blind sheik” Omar Abdel Rahman in 1999. Once Awlaki’s many ties to the 9/11 highjackers became clear, a JTTF San Diego investigation was reopened. But in 2002, US Attorney Gaouette rescinded an arrest warrant against Anwar for passport fraud, a day before he re-entered the US.

Anwar as a double agent for and a triple agent against the US might explain the utter communication breakdown between JTTF’s DC and San Diego offices on Awlaki’s email correspondence with the soon to be jihaddist murderer Nidal Hassan.

It might also explain why Awlaki was never charged with anything–not incitement, not conspiracy to murder, even after the Nigerian Abdumutallab said he met with Awlaki regarding the Dec 2009 airplane bombing plot hatched in Yemen. On the other hand, it could all be a string of incompetence and bad luck. I don’t know which would be worse.

News Rescue “In video, Lt.Col. Anthony Shaffer describes how Anwar al-Awlaki Was a triple agent, and an FBI Asset Before 9/11 on infowars. Anthony Shaffer is a U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel who gained fame for his claims about mishandled intelligence before the September 11 attacks and for the censoring of his book, Operation Dark Heart.

Shaffer and the Able Danger team also uncovered intelligence of an impending al Qaeda terror plot in the Gulf of Aden in the weeks immediately prior to the bombing of the USS Cole on Oct 12, 2000 in Yemen. Able Danger tried strenuously to issue a warning that, like DIA analyst Kye Fallis’ was thwarted.

Despite the NSA’s constant and years long monitoring of the Yemen hub and the CIA’s surveillance of the 2000 Malaysia meeting where both the Cole attack and 9/11 were planned, no intelligence warning on the Cole bombing was generated or forwarded from those agencies either. (The CIA later withheld info on the Malaysia meeting from the FBI as it was investigating the Cole, leaving connections to the impending 9/11 attack unexplored.)

Lt. Shaffer was black balled by DIA after he went public with the 9/11 Commission’s failure to include his testimony regarding the presence of Atta in the US. Commander Lippold was essentially forced to retire by DOD. Fallis quit DIA on the day of the Cole bombing.

The Malaysia meeting was attended by current AQAP leader Fahd al Quso and top AQ operatives from several nations. As I’ve been saying for nearly a decade, al Quso’s unique threat level comes from his operational experience (blowing up a warship) coupled with his international connections and credibility.

Al Quso was indicted on over 50 counts of terrorism in NY’s Southern District in 2003 following his 2002 escape from Aden jail. The Sanaa regime secretly released al Quso in May 2007 despite a ten year sentence handed down after his 2004 “recapture,” the Washington Post reported. Al Quso finally made it to the MWT list in Nov 2009 and was designated Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the US State Department in Dec 2010.

The US began its drone campaign in Yemen with strikes in Dec 2009, where Awlaki and other AQAP leaders were supposedly meeting at Fahd al Quso’s farm. Al Quso gave several media interviews recently, noting how lovely things are in the AQ occupied towns in Yemen, when they are not crucifying spies, beheading soldiers, looting banks and dehanding teen-agers. Yesterday, AG Holder, the bastion of flex-fit jurisprudence, gave the Obama administration’s rationale for targeting US citizens with drones.

Update: Gah! Must be something in the air. Fox: Mueller grilled on FBI’s release of al-Awlaki in 2002 (3/7/12)

The warrant was pulled by a judge in Colorado, after the cleric entered the U.S. A U.S. attorney in Colorado who oversaw the warrant and the Justice Department claimed the cleric’s earlier lies to the Social Security Administration, the basis of the charge, had been corrected. But new documents obtained by Fox News through the Freedom of Information Act show otherwise.

After al-Awlaki re-entered the U.S. in the fall of 2002 with the FBI’s help, the cleric then appeared in a high-profile investigation, in which Agent Ammerman was a lead investigator. The FBI has not made the agent available to Fox News to interview, nor has the Department of Justice made the U.S. attorney on the case available. Former FBI agents say Ammerman would have needed permission from higher up in the bureau to let al-Awlaki go.

The House Homeland Security Committee launched an official investigation into the cleric and his 9/11 connections last year, but sources tell Fox News that committee staffers have been frustrated by the FBI’s resistance to providing documents and witnesses, citing “ongoing investigations.”

Wolf urged the FBI director to brief other lawmakers, including the head of the house intelligence committee, so that a similar scenario “never happens again.”

Fox News confirmed that the October 2002 incident and the arrest warrant for al-Awlaki was never disclosed to the 9/11 Commission or to Congress.

Former FBI agents, familiar with al-Awlaki’s re-entry in October 2002, say only two scenarios seem to explain what happened. The FBI was tracking the cleric for intelligence or the FBI was working with the cleric and saw him as a “friendly contact.”

Al-Qaeda leader in southeastern Yemen killed by elder brother

Yemen Post Staff: Hazam al-Thahb, Yemeni tribal chief from the southeastern Yemeni town of Rada, which was briefly taken over by al-Qaeda militants, killed his younger brother, Tariq al-Thahb, a high-profile leader in AQAP.

Hazam broke on Wednesday evening into a mosque, where his brother and some of al-Qaeda militants were living, and killed his Tariq and some of his followers, tribal dignitary from the area told Yemen Post on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

“He has killed his younger brother after he repeatedly warned him not to align himself with the islamists, however his brother was obstinate and did not pay heed to his warnings and advice. That’s why he had to kill him before he is killed by the authorities, said the tribal dignitary.

“Al-Qaeda militants have quickly avenged their leader loss as they have launched some attacks on Hazam’s, the older brother and tribal chief, house, shelling it with Rocket Propellant Grenades and mortars,”

Furthermore, the younger brother followers (al-Qaeda militants) have also planted some mines around the brother home, leaving Hazam and a number of his guards killed on Thursday morning, the local tribal source added.

Tribal Yemeni customs and traditions make it obligatory for a brother to stand by his brother even if he was on the wrong, and that it’s very shameful not to avenge your brother murder regardless of what he was killed for.

Realizing one day his brother Tariq would be killed by either Yemeni government or by US drone, Hazam tried to make his brother disassociate himself with al-Qaeda. When Tariq refused to listen to his elder and wiser brother, Hazem preferred to kill his brother by his own in order not to have to take revenge against any one involved in his murder, according to tribal sources close to al-Thahb.

Rada, some 170km southeast of the Yemeni capital of Sana’a, was briefly taken over by Yemen-based al-Qaeda branch militants led by Tariq al-Thahb. But the militants pulled out based on a tribal mediation that guaranteed the release of their brother, Nabil.

Although Hazam was not affiliated to al-Qaeda he got ready to fight the government alongside the islamists because he felt obliged to stand by his younger brother.

Hazam and Tariq are the in laws of American-Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Walaqi’s, who was assassinated by US drone last year, brothers in law.

USA Today: According to court documents, Abdulmutallab spent months pursuing American-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, where the two men eventually met and hatched out a plan to blow up an American airliner over U.S. soil on Christmas Day 2009. In the weeks leading up to the bombing attempt, the two men texted each other, spoke briefly on the phone and ended up spending three days together at al-Awlaki’s house planning the attack, the government wrote in court documents.

Al-Awlaki eventually led Abdulmutallab to a bomb maker, who trained the Nigerian defendant on how to ignite the bomb, according to court documents. It was al-Awlaki, the government says, who ultimately approved the martyrdom mission.

“Awlaki’s last instructions to him were to wait until the airplane was over the United States and then to take the plane down,” prosecutors wrote in court documents.

According to court documents, Abdulmutallab disclosed the details of his relationship with al-Awlaki in statements he gave to the FBI in 2010.

Al-Awlaki, who had become a leading al-Qaida figure in Yemen, was killed in a U.S. drone attack last year.

In 2009 while in Yemen, Abdulmutallab visited mosques and asked locals whether they knew how he could meet al-Awlaki, records show. Eventually, he met someone with a connection: the individual took Abdulmutallab’s cell phone number and gave it to al-Awlaki, who texted him shortly after.

Eventually, the two men met. Abdulmutallab successfully sold himself as an ideal candidate for a martyrdom mission, and a bomb maker was summoned, records show.

For two weeks, Abdulmutallab trained in a camp, where he received weapons instructions and indoctrination in jihad, records show. The bomb maker eventually delivered the bomb to Abdulmutallab and showed him how to use it, records show.

Yemen Post According to the al-Awlaki family back in Sana’a, the Yemeni capital, Abdul rahman al-Awlaki, the cleric’s son would have run away from home after news of his father’s death in a desperate bid to find him. The 17 year-old was killed subsequently in an American air raid this Friday. Outraged, his family is now speaking out against what they call a murder.

The family’s statements to the WaPo is here. His family says he ran away from home and was having a picnic when the drone hit. However what he was doing with known terrorist Ibrahim al Banaa and Fahd al Quso’s brother is unknown and not raised in the article.

Related: I posted this below but it belongs in a drone-related post: Marib Press Tribes in Marib issued a statement saying Sheikh Saleh al Taaman was killed in the air rad with Ibrahim al Banaa but not reported killed by the regime. The Sheikh was connected to the state’s security policy and paid by Ghalib al Qamish (PSO) 100K YR/month; tribesmen accuse the regime of the manipulating the terror file and US CT ops to retain power. They say the Sheikh was not listed among the dead and that’s reason to ignore the regime’s fatality lists.

Safe copy at Jihadology has link to original post: al-Malāḥim Media presents new statement from al-Qā’idah in the Arabian Peninsula: “Blood of the Martyr, Light and Fire: Statement on the Martyrdom of Shaykh Anwar al-’Awlaqī and his Colleagues”

No mention of al Assiri per @Inteltweet but Sami confirmed dead as well.

“The blood of the sheik (al-Awlaki) and his brothers will not go in vain; there are heroes behind him who do not sleep under oppression, and they will retaliate soon,” the group said. “We and the Americans are at war: we get them and they get us, and the end is for those who are patient – they are the ones who will be victorious.” FOX

The full statement at Flashpoint here has a little different translation; also includes AQAP’s trashing the Yemeni opposition parties.

Aden Press

The leader of the al-Qaeda al-Awlaki Anwar Al-Nasser after he left the United States of America live in the hometown of Shabwa South Yemen. However, knowing the United States exact location of his residence made ​​the life of Anwar al-Awlaki is in danger.

This situation made ​​the authorities of Sanaa, which was used and the presence on its territory to blackmail the United States of America for their financial and political feeling that his life is in danger, and that the killing may lead to loss of a chicken that lays Bayada dollars. He was secretly transferred to Sana’a, lived in a house, an official in the ruling party and a family close to him for five months.

Yemeni President Saleh wanted to provide a precious gift to the United States of America. In order to ensure continued support for his remaining in power.

After returning secrecy and surprise to President Saleh from Saudi Arabia to Yemen on 23 September told the National Security Agency in charge of the Yemeni who lived in his home, Anwar al-Awlaki that he must leave the house because the house is located in an area of conflict between the forces opposed to President Saleh and the forces supporting him. And that in the case discovered in the home will be a political scandal par excellence.

However, the owner of the house which is close to a family of Anwar al-Awlaki rejected his departure as a safe house. Anwar Al-Awlaki insisted on the move to Shibuya. However, the National Security suggested to him not to go to Shibuya, because U.S. intelligence is there and that the best way to go first to the al-Jawf province, and then leave later to Shibuya, and the national security of all measures to ensure the transfer.

The National Security informed the U.S. intelligence on the presence of Awlaki in the cavity. Here, the CIA began to indict him. On the morning of Friday, September 30, 2011 m at ten in the morning out Anwar Al-Awlaki of the house, who lives in which to perform the Friday prayers, He got a car has a staff of the National Security Service Yemeni installing the transmitter enabled a U.S. drone of the track and killed by a rocket strike.

Original; Many foreign al Qaeda still at Okaimi’s al Ahram says.

al Ahram: The locals told Al-Ahram Weekly that Al-Awlaki came to Al-Jawf 10 days ago and he was staying in three places. The house of Salem Saleh Afrag, the local driver who was killed with him, was the first place. Al-Awlaki was killed immediately after he left this house. Khamis Afrag, brother of Salem, is a leading member in the Islamist opposition party, Islah.

The second place was the farm of local tribal leader Amin Al-Okaimi in Al-Jar. Al-Okaimi is a member of parliament and chairman of Islah. Many Al-Qaeda operatives including Egyptians, Algerians and Libyans are supposedly still hiding in the farm of Al-Okaimi until now, according to local sources.

Al-Okaimi and his tribesmen have been controlling the eastern province of Al-Jawf since March when ex-general Mohsen encouraged them to dismiss the president’s loyalists and replace them with rebel troops.

The third place frequented by Al-Awlaki was the farm of the Islamist leader Abdel-Majid Al-Zandani, wanted by the UN and US as a global terrorist, in the area of Nebta in the same province of Al-Jawf.

Al Zindani was a decades long time Saleh ally. In fact, Saleh announced his presidential candidacy from Al Iman university in 2006. After the March massacre in Sana’a, al Zindani defected to the rev but was jeered by some. He left Sana’a and went to Arhab, which had been under bombardment for some time. Meanwhile, the Houthis are fighting against Islahis in al Jawf and Oakimi is Ali Mohsen’s overseerer of the province.

Hard to say who this is an indictment of, if its true (ye old local sources) beyond al Zindani for sheltering him, and both Mohsen and Saleh for their long term tolerance, and who gets the credit in Yemen; there’s so many possible ways to look at it. As I said before, its just a clusterfck.

Radical American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was directly involved in the failed Christmas 2009 plot on a commercial jet and failed October 2010 plot on cargo planes, according to the federal bulletin issued after Awlaki was killed Friday in a U.S. drone attack in Yemen.

The Homeland Security/FBI bulletin, obtained by Fox News, specifically says Awlaki, an influential new-generation figure in Al Qeada, showed the suspected Christmas Day bomber how to detonate the bomb he is accused of hiding in his underwear.

Read more: Fox

Awlaqi moved freely in Yemen’s lawless regions, AFP

ADEN — Long sought-after US-born Al-Qaeda cleric, Anwar al-Awlaqi, who was killed in a US air strike last week, used to move freely around Yemen’s lawless provinces and even preach in mosques, witnesses said.

During the past few months, the radical cleric had moved between the Al-Qaeda hotbed regions of Abyan and Shabwa in the south and Marib in the east, one tribal chief told AFP on condition of anonymity….Awlaqi and AQAP number two, Saeed al-Shehri, escaped death on September 20, when US drones carried out several air strikes on the village of Al-Mahfad in Abyan, the tribal chief said.

The imam fled to Al-Jawf, a desert area further in the north, near the borders with Saudi Arabia, he added. Four Al-Qaeda militants were killed in that raid, a tribal source close to the jihadist network said.

Awlaqi used to “spend most of his time in Khor al-Awaleq,” a mountainous region in Shabwa province controlled by the cleric’s tribe, the tribal chief said. “He also went to the nearby towns of Azzan and Rawda.”

“I had attended three sermons by Awlaqi in mosques, two in Azzan and another one in Al-Rawda, during and after Ramadan,” the Muslim holy month of fasting that fell in August this year, said one Shabwa resident.

“Awlaqi used to call for jihad (holy war) and for fighting Americans,” he said, adding the cleric’s thoughts “impressed many youths.”

Another witness said he saw Awlaqi perform dawn prayers at a mosque in Loder, another Al-Qaeda stronghold in Abyan.

But the imam quickly fled after US drones were spotted flying overhead, the witness added.

Awlaqi was surrounded by tight security, according to another tribal chief, who told AFP he had met with the cleric in August upon the latter’s request.

The chief said said that partisans of the radical imam asked him to meet them in a certain area from which he was taken to “an arid mountainous region.”

“I saw dozens of armed men deployed on the hills surrounding the meeting area,” he said. The tribal chief said he refused Awlaqi’s request to allow Al-Qaeda militants to freely pass through the area held by his tribe, which had mostly opposed the militant group.

AQAP has taken advantage of the weakening of central authority by nearly nine months of deadly protests against veteran President Ali Abdullah Saleh to bolster its presence in several southern provinces as well as Marib.

Hundreds of militants from the Al-Qaeda linked Partisans of Sharia (Islamic law) group overran Zinjibar, Abyan’s capital, in May and the city and adjacent towns have since been the scene of bitter fighting with the army.

Early this year, a Yemeni court specialising in terrorism cases handed down a 10-year jail sentence in absentia to Awlaqi for taking part in an armed group and for incitement to kill foreigners.

However, the cleric’s whereabouts had remained unknown and he escaped a US drone strike in early May, days after US special forces carried out a raid in which they killed Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in his hideout inside Pakistan.

Yemen Post: “As is happens, al-Qaeda in Yemen is now claiming that both al-Awlaki and al-Asiri are still alive and were in fact nowhere near the explosion.”

But there hasn’t been an actual press release, if we can call it that, from AQAP. Supposedly they promised a video of Anwar disputing reports of his death to Xinjua, but there’s been nothing beyond that a few days ago. ( Here’s the summary of the reports of Anwar alive from 11/1.) Maybe the YP has sources. Marib Press says the local population confirmed to the family that Anwar is alive but has nothing from AQAP itself.

The fact that his family was unable to identify Awlaki from among the body parts was unsurprising. His father has my sympathy for that task alone. YP: “Tribal leaders in Jawf told the family that Awlaqi was not killed in the attack. Tribes in the province say there is no proof that Awlaqi was amongst the killed and DNA tests on the remains of the five killed can prove that.”

At the same time, Yemeni muj are confirming on the forums that he is dead. And DOD would never let President Obama make the statement if there was a chance Awlaki was still alive; otherwise, undead terrorists are quite common in Yemen. Al Reimi was announced dead three times and al Quso twice, but none of these were USG statements.