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    September 30, 2011

US Strike Silences Prominent Al-Qaida Voice

   Sean Maroney | Washington

   Radical cleric and wanted terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki was killed Friday
   in Yemen in what news reports say was a coordinated air strike by the
   U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Al-Awlaki was an American citizen who
   became a prominent al-Qaida figure and coordinated terror from Yemen
   hideouts.

   Anwar al-Awlaki, the public face in the West of al-Qaida in the Arabian
   Peninsula, is dead.
   U.S. and Yemeni authorities hunted him for years, and on Friday, they
   got him, nearly five months after U.S. Special Forces killed al-Qaida
   leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.
   The U.S.-born extremist had the rare distinction of being an American
   approved for killing without trial by the U.S. government. Authorities
   tied him to two terrorist incidents in the United States in 2009. In
   Yemen, he faced charges in connection to the death of a French oil
   industry worker.
   Awlaki was born in the U.S. in 1971 to Yemeni parents and later served
   as an imam in several U.S. mosques.
   He was fluent in Arabic and English. It was this fluency and access to
   the internet that the former director of the U.S. National
   Counterterrorism Center Michael Leiter said made Awlaki particularly
   dangerous.
   "Ideologues and operational leaders like Anwar al-Awlaki, [and] other
   Americans who are using al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula as a platform
   to try to recruit Westerners - this I think makes them the most
   significant threat of all the affiliates we face."
   Al-Awlaki attracted a loyal following with his YouTube lectures, blog
   and Facebook page.
   Former CIA chief Michael Hayden says al-Awlaki's death is an important
   win in the global fight against terrorism, but his al-Qaida syndicate
   still remains a threat.
   "You've killed their messenger," said Hayden. "And he's a really
   important messenger. But the organization that's going to threaten us
   operationally remains intact."
   Thanks to the digital age, Awlaki's words will echo in cyberspace long
   after his death even as Western eyes look for whoever replaces him.

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