WASHINGTON - The principal architect of the CIA’s drone campaign and the leader of the hunt for Osama bin Laden is a convert to Islam, known only by the name he uses to cover his identity - Roger, The Washington Post reported Monday.
“Roger is also married a Muslim woman whom he met abroad, prompting his conversion to Islam,” the newspaper said in a dispatch, adding he has also been the driving force of the Obama administration’s embrace of targeted killing as a centrepiece of its counterterrorism efforts. Citing his colleagues, the Post said he “doesn’t shy away from mentioning his religion but is not demonstrably observant”
“There is no prayer rug in his office although he is known to clutch a strand of prayer beads”. A chain-smoker who spends countless hours on a treadmill. Notoriously surly yet able to win over enough support from subordinates and bosses to hold on to his job,” the dispatch said, highlighting his contradictions.
“He presides over a campaign that has killed thousands of militants and angered millions of Muslims, but he is himself a convert to Islam.”
When Michael Hayden became CIA director in May 2006, Roger began laying the groundwork for an escalation of the drone campaign, the newspaper said. Over a period of months, as CIA’s Counterterrorism chief, he used regular meetings with the director to make the case that intermittent strikes were allowing Qaeda to recover and would never destroy the threat.
“He was relentless,” said a participant in the meetings. Roger argued that the CIA needed to mount an air campaign against Qaeda “at a pace they could not absorb” and warned that “after the next attack, there would be no explaining our inaction.”
Under Hayden, the agency abandoned the practice of notifying the Pakistanis before launching strikes, the Post said, adding the trajectory began to change - from three strikes in 2006 to 35 in 2008.
A second proposal from the CTC chief, a year or so later, had even greater impact. “He came in with a big idea on a cold, rainy Friday afternoon,” said a former high-ranking CIA official involved in drone operations. “It was a new flavour of activity, and had to do with taking senior terrorists off the battlefield.” The former official declined to describe the activity. But others said the CTC chief proposed launching what came to be known as “signature strikes,” meaning attacks on militants based solely on their patterns of behaviour.
Previously, the agency had needed confirmation of the presence of an approved Qaeda target before it could shoot, the Post said. With permission from the White House, it would begin hitting militant gatherings even when it wasn’t clear that a specific operative was in the drone’s crosshairs.
Roger’s relentless approach meshed with the Obama mindset. Shortly after taking office, Obama met his first CIA director, Leon Panetta, and ordered a redoubled effort in the fight against Qaeda and the search for the terrorist group’s elusive leader.
“When the bin Laden operation concluded, he stepped outside to smoke,” the Post said.