60 Words, 20 Years
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Hi, I'm Lula Miller. And I'm Latif Nasser. This is Radiolab. And today...

Our producer, Sara Khari, came to us and suggested that we rerun one of our old episodes. Oh, yeah. I mean, I feel really strongly about this story. I, you know, it, I feel like 60 words as an episode, like, means a lot to me. So the episode is called 60 Words, and it's about a set of actual words that were written down in the couple days after 9-11 that completely changed how and against whom the U.S. can use military force.

Now, that show was actually released back in 2014 before Zara was a producer here. So she heard it as a listener. It just hit me so hard. And I think that was like a real moment for me where I was like, this is the kind of story that I want to be making.

Because of my experience of 9-11 and what a big part of my childhood it feels like it was. And wait, so where were you when 9-11 happened? Like, I was in the second grade and...

It was like literally like maybe day four or five of Islamic school. Like my parents had enrolled my brother and I in this like full time Islamic school in Jersey, which is basically, you know, like Catholic school. But like instead of the Catholicism part, it's all just like Islamic studies classes.

And so that was like a totally new experience. I went from like being at a school where I was like the only brown kid to like all of a sudden being like in a class that was all Muslim kids, right? And I remember a TV getting like wheeled into the classroom seeing...

The Twin Towers on the TV, everything just being very hushed in class and like everyone being very, very afraid. And we got sent home like within a few hours. And then I remember being at home asking my parents what was going on. Like, wait, but like how could these people be Muslim? Like we're Muslim. And then what happened was that especially because of being at an Islamic school, the narrative changed.

around me became, you have to now represent your religion to the rest of the world. Like, you have to show people what Muslims actually are. And like that narrative. Don't embarrass the rest of us. Don't embarrass the rest of us. Or just like show people, show people that we're not that, you know. So much pressure on a little kid, on anyone. Yeah, exactly. Like that just became a constant part of my life over and over. And

Part of it was always hearing about some conflict or other, like, now the U.S. is going to Afghanistan. Now the U.S. is fighting al-Qaeda. Now the U.S. is in Pakistan killing Osama bin Laden. Like, now the U.S. is fighting ISIS. Like, it was just this constant thing of, like, the United States is now constantly present in these Muslim countries to fight terrorism. And when I first heard 60 Words, I was like,

It just felt like learning about the Genesis moment of it all. Like, it just felt like learning about the hidden thing that started the forever war. That's why it just had such a huge impact on me and gave me a sense of, like, this is the kind of thing I want to do as a journalist is, like, shed light on this kind of stuff. All right. So I guess should we just...

Listen now and then and then you're going to you're going to give us some updates at the end. Yeah, totally. Let's listen to the original. And I guess we should also say that the producers who worked on it, Matt Kielty and Kelsey Padgett, you won't hear them in the episode, but they did like amazing, amazing reporting and producing to make this happen. So, yes, Kelsey. Yes, Matt. OK, great.

Okay, ready? Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad. I'm Robert Krolwich. And this is Radiolab. Today we've got a story about the crazy power of words. In particular, 60 words. Single sentence. That is, well, that has, you could say, defined America for the last 12 years.

And the place to start is a difficult one. This just in, you are looking at obviously a very disturbing live shot there. September 11th, 2001, 8.46 a.m. A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center. We don't know anything more than that. This is a day that anyone who is old enough to remember does remember. We can remember where we were.

who we were with. And, of course, we can remember how we felt. It is the worst attack ever on American soil. But,

If you really want to understand the world we live in now, you've got to jump ahead one day to September 12th to a corner office in the White House where there's a lawyer sitting at a computer trying to figure out how are we going to declare war?

And one of the things that everybody realizes after sort of an initial discussion is, yes, we'd like to declare war, but we have no idea upon whom we should declare war. That is Gregory Johnson. The Michael Hastings National Security Reporting Fellow at BuzzFeed. Now, the reason this lawyer, a man by the name of Timothy Flanagan, the reason Flanagan is sitting at a computer in an office is because then-President George Bush had to do something. He had to act, and he didn't want to act alone. He wasn't going to do it alone.

He wanted congressional approval. Right. I mean, technically in an emergency. The president can defend the country. He is the commander-in-chief, after all. He doesn't have to go to Congress and say, hey, do I have authorization to use force? Not in an emergency. That's Ben Wittes, by the way. Senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. But President Bush needed Congress on his side, he felt. You know, it was important that we project unity.

that we were all standing together as one. And second, if this was an act of war... The power to declare war in the Constitution is given to Congress, not to the executive. And when Congress declares war, suddenly the president has a very clear and powerful mandate. Now... The declaration of war is kind of a dead instrument of international law. I mean, nobody's declared war since World War II. But the modern incarnation of the declaration of war...

The authorization to use force. What's called the authorization for the use of military force. Or as it's commonly referred to, the AUMF.

Right. So our lawyer in the White House, Flanagan. He's given a task. Go write an AUMF that Congress can send to the president. He really has no idea. So he goes back to the last time that the U.S. did this. Last time Congress passed one of these things. He does a quick sort of search on his computer. Boom, finds it. 1991, Iraq, the Gulf War.

Flanagan grabs the text. And then he copies that into a Word document, and that becomes his template. He makes some cuts, he makes some changes, he deletes some words. And then he hits send. Our war on terror, a just war. And he sets in motion this bewildering series of events. A U.S. drone strike linked to Al-Qaeda. In the war, bring the troops home.

This madness that is basically the world we live in. Fifteen members of a wedding procession were killed by U.S. troops.

And if you're like me, if you're like me and you find yourself flipping through the channels, seeing the news, basically ignoring it, but then every so often thinking, wait a second. Terrorism targets in Africa. From Libya now, the U.S. Air Force. A drone strike in southern Somalia. Wait, wait, how are we doing this in all these different places? 100 prisoners are on a hunger strike. And like that. In protest of their indefinite detention. How are we detaining people for so long? You mean, is it okay to do that?

Well, just who signed off on this, you know? And it turns out we all did because it was in that document. This is the legal foundation for everything that the U.S. has done, everything from Guantanamo Bay to drone strikes to secret renditions to seal raids. It's all been hung off these 60 words. And that's the crazy part. The body of this document, the part that really matters, and the reason that when I was reading Gregory's reporting on this, I was like, what?

is that it all goes back to one single sentence. 60 words, one sentence. Can you read it? Absolutely. That the president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned,

authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations, or persons. 60 words.

Today, a collaboration with BuzzFeed. And with reporter Gregory Johnson. We're going to try to decode those words. And ask, where did those words come from? And how did they come to mean what they mean? Which is not what you think they mean. No. And how did they end up leading us into what is arguably the longest war in American history? Nobody saw it coming. Absolutely nobody. That's the weirdest part. Well, nobody minus one. Let's start there.

Maybe you should introduce us to Barbara Lee. Right. Barbara Lee is a congresswoman from right around Berkeley, California. Hello. Hello, hello. Hi, it's Barbara. And she is someone who has been in many ways a lifelong activist. Going all the way back to when she was 15 in high school in San Fernando Valley. Because I wanted to be a cheerleader. But, you know, since this was the early 60s. You had to have certain criteria like...

at least whether it was stated or not, blonde and blue eyes. That would have been hard for you, I would figure. That was really hard. So I went to the NAACP. She got them to pressure the school to change the rules. And I won. And she became the first black cheerleader at her high school. Yeah, yeah. That's just by way of introduction. Fast forward many years, she becomes a congresswoman. She gets elected to a second term. And on that day...

There is smoke pouring out of the Pentagon. She was at the Capitol. No one knew where to go, so the police officers just said, run, run, run, go, go, go. This was an apparent terrorist attack on our country. So I ran out of the Capitol down Pennsylvania Avenue. I remember looking back and saw a lot of smoke. Which was, you know, the Pentagon. You know, clearly the country's under attack. Clearly people have died. Clearly we've got to deal with whoever did this, whatever it takes.

Fast forward two days, September 13th, Barbara Lee is back at the Capitol to meet with her Democratic colleagues to review that document that Flanagan had sent over. The mood in the room was very somber and very angry. The thing we have to keep in mind when we're talking about this is all of this was done within 72 hours after the worst terrorist attack in United States history. And very confused. What would be the appropriate response?

So as she and her colleagues read those 60 words... There was a lot of debate going on back and forth. Oh yes, oh yes, from everyone. Because this actually wasn't the first draft. Flanagan had sent one over the night before. September 12, 2001. And that one... Was something that almost no one agreed to. According to Gregory, that early draft had a few extra lines in it. One gave the president the power to preempt any future acts of aggression against the United States.

And Barbara Lee and her colleagues knew... That look, so many things can be packed into this word "aggression" that if we sign on to this, that if we give the president this power, the president may never have to come back to Congress ever again and request authorization from military force because he can say that anything is aggression and we're also giving him the power to preempt. So they kicked it back to the White House, Flanagan took out those words, and now they have this new draft.

That the president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force... Which is what you heard. But still, when Barbara read that and saw phrases like all necessary and appropriate force, she thought...

What does that even mean? I said this is too broad. It's not definitive. It's open-ended. And as she was speaking, this is taking place in the basement of the Capitol building, she sees some of her Democratic colleagues start to nod. Yep, people were nodding. People were nodding. Because everybody there knew the danger of ill-defined words. You just had to go back 50 years. To the Gulf of Tonkin. Yep. Gulf of Tonkin. Tonkin. Tonkin. Tonkin with an N. Yes. To explain.

My fellow Americans, as president and commander-in-chief,

1964, LBJ announces that two American ships... Two U.S. destroyers... ...parked in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of Vietnam were torpedoed by North Vietnamese boats. By a number of hostile vessels... Many people now argue that one of these attacks never even happened. Nonetheless, President Johnson wanted to strike back, so he asked Congress... To pass a resolution. Which they did, giving him the power to, quote, "...take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack..."

against the forces of the United States, and to prevent further aggression. Making it clear that our government is united in its determination to take all necessary measures in support of freedom and in defense of peace in Southeast Asia.

Now, it is the broad language of that document, most people believe, that opened the door to the worst part of the Vietnam War. The rangers and marines took casualties, mostly from hidden snipers. The thousands and thousands of casualties. You just keep dropping in. There's nothing you can do. Horrific atrocities. Charges have been made that troops killed as many as 567 South Vietnamese civilians during a sweep in March 1968.

And in a television interview in 1969, when President Johnson was asked to justify it all, he said you can't just blame him. Congress gave us this authority in August 1964 to do whatever may be necessary. That's pretty far-reaching. The sky's the limit.

So the lessons of the Gulf of Tonkin and Vietnam, that was very much in the air in that meeting on September 13th, 2001. Several key leaders hoped to avoid a repeat of the 1964 Tonkin Gulf Resolution. So it was understandable that when Barbara Lee stood up and said to her colleagues that she was worried about some of this language... People were nodding. People were nodding. So there was...

A lot of uncertainty about what to do. But in the end, those concerns were ultimately outweighed by another desire. We've got to be unified with the president. We can't show political divisions. Let's have the nation, let's have Congress speaking with one voice. It was a time for unity and for action. And so walking out of that Democratic caucus meeting... On the evening of September 13th... Congressional leadership decided that these 60 words... This is the version. There's no going back to the drawing board. And so...

At 10.16 a.m., September 14, 2001, the Senate is gaveled into session. Daschle calls a vote. There are 98 senators on the floor. Mr. Derbin. Mr. Voinovich.

All 98 of them vote yay. No senator voted in the negative. So it was a sweep. Yeah. Later in the day, the resolution would go to the House, where Barbara Lee was a representative. Daschle had actually rushed the vote through the Senate. Because the White House has called for a national prayer meeting at the National Cathedral. For the victims of 9-11. That's supposed to start right at noon. And so...

right after the vote. All the senators pour out of the Capitol and get onto the buses trying to get through the drizzle. It was actually raining that day. Now at that moment, Barbara Lee. She hadn't decided how it is that she was going to vote. I struggled with it. For the previous two nights, September 12th and 13th, she stayed up late. Calling back to advisors, to friends in California. We talked everything

every day. Including this guy. This is Ron Dellums. I served for over 27 years in the U.S. House of Representatives. Barbara used to be his chief of staff, and when he resigned, she won his congressional seat. You know, she would say, well, what about this? And what do you think about that? And we kind of talked through the emotional state of the country. That we are feeling pain,

Anger. We're shocked. Both Barbara and Ron were trained as psychiatric social workers, so they both knew that when a person is feeling all of those things, it's generally better to do nothing. Yeah, psychology 101. You don't make decisions when you're mourning, afraid. On the other hand... I believe, you know, in unity, too. I want to be unified with the president when the country's under attack. I understood. He didn't tell me. He didn't say which way I should vote. But I did say to her, Barbara...

However you vote, I will always respect you. You will always be friend. You will always be family. So at that moment, with the memorial service about to start in a few hours till the House vote, Barbara Lee was at the Capitol. I was in the cloakroom. And since she wasn't sure how she was going to vote, she planned to skip the memorial service. She wanted to stay. She wanted to think. And then...

I don't know what it was. It may have been the spirit moving me. I don't know, but at the very last minute. She was drinking actually a can of ginger ale at the time. I said, I think I'm going to go, and I just ran out. I probably was the last one on the bus. I had the can of ginger ale in my hand and ran down the steps and got on the bus. She got to the cathedral. The house buses arrived about 30 minutes or so before the opening. And so for 30 minutes, she's in the cathedral. About halfway back, listening to the organ music,

thinking about the families and those who were killed. There are people around her who are sort of whispering. The pain and anguish. The few people who are crying. I said, I got to pray over this. And she's just wrestling with her vote. Her heart is saying one thing. This is too broad. And her head is saying unity. How is it that you can be against the president at this point? Speaking of the president, eventually President Bush takes the podium. We are here in the middle hour of our grief.

Just three days removed from these events, Americans do not yet have the distance of history. But our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil. And then as soon as President Bush steps down, everyone in the congregation stands up. And they sing the battle hymn of the republic.

which is a very powerful, a very moving piece of music, but it's not the sort of thing that is typically sung at a memorial service. It's a very forward and almost aggressive sounding... What's the phrase? Terrible swift sword. Yeah. Oh, my God. It was not quite what I expected in a memorial service. But...

The second speaker... A reverend by the name of Nathan Baxter. He got up and he gave a reading from Jeremiah 31. When ancient Israel suffered...

The excruciating pain and tragedy of militant aggression and destruction. Hearing that all over again takes me right back there, and I remember... A voice is heard in Ramah. Lamenting and bitter weeping. Rachel weeping for her children. Rachel is weeping for her children. When he spoke, that's when, to me, it was a memorial. And then...

He started to pray for the healing of our grief-stricken hearts, for the souls and sacred memory of those who have been lost. And he said something that really struck Barbara Lee. Let us also pray for divine wisdom. He said as we act, that as we act, we not become the evil we deplore. That evil that we deplore.

When he said that, I became very, it was this sense of peace and calm came over me. And Barbara Lee says it was right then that she knew what she'd do. The clerk will report the title. House Joint Resolution 64, joint resolution to authorize the use of United States armed forces. Later that evening, the House opens up its debate on the AUMF. Mr. Speaker.

In congressperson after congressperson. Mr. Speaker stands up. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to fully endorse and authorize the use of force. One after another. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the authorization. I rise today in support of this resolution. We will rally behind our president. Sixteen in a row.

until gentleman from california is recognized for a minute and a half we get to barbara lee mr speaker members i rise today really with a very heavy heart one that is filled with sorrow for the families and the loved ones who were killed and injured this week only the most foolish and the most careless would not understand the grief that has really gripped our people and millions across the world now i have agonized over this vote

But I came to grips with it today, and I came to grips with opposing this resolution during the very painful, yet very beautiful memorial service. As a member of the clergy so eloquently said, "As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore."

Just after the vote, Barbara Lee says she was in the cloakroom again, and she starts getting accosted by colleagues. All of these friends are coming up to her and saying, you've got to go back. You cannot vote this way. I'm not changing my vote. One of them actually said to her, look, you've done so much on HIV. You've done so much on AIDS. This vote is going to take you out. Think of the bigger picture. They're saying you're dead. Yeah. But that's the right vote. I'm not going to.

give any president the authority to go to war and we don't know what we're doing, you know, only Congress can declare a war. Help me on this, guys. Has the House vote... Okay, the House has just now finished that vote and we see one no vote. The final vote for the House was 420 to 1. We know it's a Democrat. We don't yet know who. We'll figure that out in a moment or so. But that vote is now...

Barbara Lee was the only person in the Senate or the House to cast a no vote. That must have been a very lonely moment. To be perfectly honest with you, I said some prayers for my friend. This was the right thing to do. And, you know, votes like this...

You have to be ready to pay the consequences. Over the next few weeks and months, her office was inundated with letters. Barbara Lee, you are a traitor and a disgrace to the office that you hold. You can find all these letters archived at Mills College. You are a blade on American society, a terrorist yourself. So much hatred. I don't know why you decided to place yourself into the camp of terrorists. Those attacks came and they came and they came. Subject headline, what's your...

Death threats. Now off to hell with you. You Benedict Arnold wannabe. So I had to have security day and night. Thanks for supporting the child ban. Hey, Hanoi Barbara Lee, what are you? What do you believe in? If you go to Mills College in Oakland and we send a reporter there, you will find 60,000 letters. They're not all negatives, but most are. But Congressman Lee says she never faltered because right after the vote, when she was in her office... My dad called me. Lieutenant Colonel, retired, in the Army.

She thought, "Alright." Now we should note that Barbara Lee is still a congresswoman. She did not pay the price for that no vote.

And whatever you think of her vote, whether you think it was the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do, what is interesting to me is that as we're sitting here looking back on 12 years of war, she was sitting there 12 years ago looking forward. And maybe she saw something about how this would play out, about how these words, these 60 words would start to grow and expand. That's next.

This is Gregory Johnson. My name is Benjamin Wittes. Radiolab is supported in part by the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. End of message.

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Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad. I'm Robert Krolwich. This is Radiolab, and today... 60 Words. This is a collaboration with BuzzFeed and reporter Gregory Johnson. The story is based on an article that Gregory wrote about the 60 simple words...

that have really defined American counterterrorism for more than a decade. It's called the Authorization for Use of Military Force. That's shortened to AUMF, and it was passed by Congress three days after September 11th. And here it is again, read by Senator John McCain. Which says, the president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, organizations,

or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations or organizations. All right, so why would we be looking at that boring-ass sentence? He seems almost bored saying it. Yeah, he does. Can I just be honest with you for a second? Yeah. I generally move through the world with the...

which has been proven over and over again to be true, that I don't know how the world works. Like somehow I missed that day in school or something. Are you referring to something in specific? No, I'm referring to a general sense that somehow Oz is out there behind the curtain pulling the levers and I'm just always going to be stuck on this side. I think it's what motivates the show for me. I feel kind of stupid most of the time. And these shows are a way to engage the world and really examine the world. Right. Exactly. Exactly.

And when it comes to these matters of national security, I really feel clueless. And so when I read Gregory's article, I felt like I understood something crucial for the first time about the way words actually operate in the world.

Because, like, again, this sentence, this totally boring sentence. This is the legal foundation for everything that the U.S. has done. Everything from Guantanamo Bay to drone strikes to secret renditions to seal raids. It's all been hung off these 60 words. One lawyer who was in the Bush administration said, look, this sentence is like a Christmas tree. All sorts of things have been hung off of this. But how? Because you read the thing and you don't see any mention of

Guantanamo Bay in those 60 words. It doesn't mention detention. It doesn't mention drone strikes. It doesn't mention drone strikes against American citizens. Okay, so that guy is one of the first folks we called to help us decode this. That's John Bellinger. I served as the legal advisor for the National Security Council from 2001 to 2005.

and as the legal advisor for the Department of State from 2005 to 2009. You can't do any speed dating with a credential like that because the date will be over. That's my congressional testimony voice. And we asked him, like, okay, so detention isn't anywhere in this document. So how do you read detention from these 60 words?

The argument with which I am comfortable as a legal matter is this. He says if you go eight words into those 60 words and you get to the phrase all necessary and appropriate force. All necessary and appropriate force. You got to ask yourself what is force? What does that mean?

You know what force is? If I punch you in the face, that's amusing force. That's one kind of force. You can use force to kill people, but a lesser use of force is to detain them. Detention is simply lesser included in the use of force that comes naturally in a military operation. It's like a subset of force.

basically. So if you're authorized to use force to kill people, you are also by default authorized to use force to detain them. Essentially to knock them out of the battle in other ways and that that force is both necessary and it's appropriate. And the courts have upheld that.

So that one word, force, that is how you justify Guantanamo Bay. Well, the controversy surrounding Guantanamo Bay continues. The Authorization to Use Military Force Act has been the legal basis for the detention of thousands of individuals. Now, many of them have been detained for more than 10 years. None have ever been charged. And the words detention are never mentioned.

Okay, so that's the tension. It gets even trickier if you go just a few words past all-necessary and appropriate force. To what? You get to the mention of the enemy, who the force is supposed to be used against, right? And it seems to be...

Very limited language. You mean maybe we can't shoot everybody or anybody? No, only the people who... Planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored sexual... That sounds much more... Sounds very much tethered to 9-11, right? Yeah. Which is why a lot of congressmen and women voted for it. Joe Biden, on the day of the vote, September 14, 2001, he says...

Look, people, don't freak out about this language. It relates to the incident, and there's broad authority relating to the incident. It does not relate to all terrorism every place. Because we're just talking about al-Qaeda who did this and the Taliban who have harbored them, right? Nope. Not necessarily. Gregory Johnson again. Over time, what's happened is there's been this other sort of

catch-all category that has been read into these 60 words even though it appears nowhere in these 60 words.

And that catch-all category is associated forces. Associated forces. Yeah. What we've been calling the 61st and 62nd words. Oui, oui. And if you define the enemy as Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces, it's a whole different ballgame. Yeah. So when you read all those words, it did not include the phrase... Associated forces is nowhere in the text.

So then why could people cite something that isn't in the text? This is one of the enduring mysteries of this. The earliest example that we could find of those two words is in a 2004 memo from Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. He defines the enemy as Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces. But the truth is...

It may have just been there from the beginning. What do you mean? Because according to Ben Wittes from the Brookings Institution... There is a concept in the laws of war called co-belligerency. It's the idea that if you're at war with person A and person B is on person A's side in the war, you're also legally at war with person B.

Makes perfect sense if you think of it in traditional war terms, because like we're at war with Germany, Italy joins their side. So by default, we're at war with Italy too. Right. So just transpose that here. If we're at war with this group called Al-Qaeda. And a certain set of groups.

that aren't them, join the war on Al-Qaeda's side, then you are legally at war with them. If you don't think about that too hard, it is crystal clear. But then the question that has arisen over time is how broad do you make that circle? Because the problem, obviously, is that we're

We're not talking about nation states anymore. We're talking about groups. So, okay, how close does the link to Al-Qaeda and the people who carried out September 11th have to be? So if you have someone who's connected to someone who's connected to someone who's connected to someone who is connected to September 11th, is that enough? Or is it only three links? Or can you be an associate of an associate?

Now, we can't exactly know how broadly the Obama and Bush administrations have defined those words. We'll talk about why in a second. But you just have to look at the news.

And you could see that we started with a war that was in Afghanistan and then it spread to a lot of different places. Pakistan, Libya, Somalia. Yemen. Yeah. And in Yemen, there's a lot of debate and a lot of discussion about like, is this legal? Does this have anything to do with September 11th anymore? Because now the group in Yemen, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is a group that was first formed in 2009, they have their own hierarchy and their own structure. And it's not clear how...

and in what fashion they take orders from either Osama bin Laden while he was still alive or now Ayman al-Dawahiri. So does this make them an associated force or does it make them part of Al-Qaeda? The answer, at least on... Good morning, everyone. It is Friday. It's September 30th, 2011. Mark it down on your calendar. September 30th, 2011 seemed to be yes when the U.S. assassinated two members of the group. This is not confirmed yet, but...

It could very well have been a U.S. predator drone strike, that is, a U.S. government attack. And to put all this in context, between 2002 and 2014, according to some estimates, there have been about 65 drone strikes in Yemen, killing about 400 people.

So much hinges on how you define those words. So much is in the definition. I asked the Pentagon, I said, "Who, what are the list of associated forces?" So Al-Qaeda, yes, the US is at war, that's clear. What about the other groups? Al-Shabaab, Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Armed Islamic Group, Abu Sayyaf, Jami'ah al-Zami'ah, Brotherhood of This, Brotherhood of That. Who are these groups? Who is the US at war with? And the Pentagon emailed me back and they said, "That list is classified and not for public release."

Wait, so who we are at war with is... We don't know. Wait, so you're saying when you approach the Pentagon... They say that they will not tell you the names of the people we're at war against. Well, maybe they shouldn't. Maybe that's invaluable. Well... Don't you want to know as a citizen of America who we're fighting? On the other hand, do I want to know as the... If the United States has determined that I am dangerous to it...

If it announces, then that would give me a certain amount of notice, which perhaps would be disadvantageous to the United States. It could also, though, act as a disincentive for you to take action. Maybe. Maybe.

But maybe not. Maybe they will just get quieter, more dangerous. I mean, it's true. There might be reasons for this. They have not wanted to provide a public list because they – This is John Bellinger again. One, the groups move all the time. And so if you say, well, these are associated groups, well, then certain people just move from group A to group B. And they also want to leave these different groups guessing. Right.

But it still raises democratic concerns if the American people don't really know who the executive branch believes is covered by the AUMF. In a democracy and in a representative democracy, that has to be weighed out. Should the citizens of the United States know who...

Who it is that the United States is targeting for death around the world. Who it is that the United States is technically at war with. Should war be a decision that the citizens of a democracy, of a representative democracy, have a say in? Well, we're a representative democracy, as you just said. So I'm assuming that the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee knows every item on that.

I'm not so sure. One of the more interesting Senate hearings took place in early 2013. It was the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Senator Carl Levin of Michigan is the chairman of the committee. Senator McCain is on the committee. I'd like to welcome our witnesses. And Gregory says the senators called a couple of Defense Department officials to answer questions. Members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify about the legal framework for the U.S. military operations to defend our nation. Because they wanted to know, like, now that we're 12 years into this war, how are you using this document? Does it need to be changed? So the Department of Defense officials, and there were four of them...

came and said, look, I believe that existing authorities are adequate for this armed conflict. Don't revisit this sentence. Don't repeal it. This sentence is sufficient. It gives us all the power that we need. Against al-Qaeda and associated forces. And as they're laying out their case, they say those two words. Associated forces. Associated forces. And associated forces. Over. Associated forces.

And over. And associated forces. And associated forces. And associated forces. And their associated forces. Associated force. And associated forces. And instead of just nodding along, a lot of the senators were like, "What?"

Gentlemen, I've only been here five months, but this is the most astounding and most astoundingly disturbing hearing that I've been to since I've been here. You guys have essentially rewritten the Constitution here today. That's Angus King, independent senator from Maine. And you keep using the term associated forces. You use it 13 times in your statement. That is not in the AUMF.

And you said at one point, it suits us very well. I assume it does suit you very well because you're reading it to cover everything and anything. But one of the most striking moments of this hearing is when the head of the committee, Senator Carl Levin, turns to one of the DOD officials and asks him. Is there a list now, is there an existing list of groups that are affiliated with al-Qaeda?

Senator, I'm not sure there's a list per se. I'm very familiar with the organizations that we do consider right now are affiliated with Al Qaeda, and I could provide you that list. Would you give us that list? Yes, sir, we can do that. And when you add or subtract names from that list, would you let us know? We can do that as well, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Let me just see if I understand what you just said. At a committee hearing, a U.S. senator asks specifically, so who's on the list of people we're allowed to kill? Right. That suggested that the Senate Armed Services Committee, who had oversight, really had no idea. Which made us wonder, like, all right, if we don't have any idea who we're at war with and the Senate Armed Services Committee doesn't seem to have any idea...

Then who does? Well, one of the things that became clear to me as I was reporting on this story was that many of the people who were making these decisions had never been elected by anyone to any position. And they were the ones who were making the decision, not the elected representative. And so who are they?

Is that WNIC? I guess so, yeah. So we were rooting around for a while looking for an answer to that question until we found this guy. This is Daniel Kleidman. He's a journalist. And I've covered national security and counterterrorism for many years. And based on hundreds of confidential interviews that became his book, Killer Capture, he was able to paint a picture for us of who makes these decisions and how. He told us about these meetings. You say it's the SDF?

TVS meetings. What are they? Who's in the room? How do the events unfold? Well, these are, they call them civets meetings in the vernacular of the bureaucracy. It stands for secure video teleconference meetings. Describe them as a sort of a massive top secret Google Hangout chat where literally hundreds of people from throughout the national security bureaucracy log in to decide who's on the list and who isn't.

You said literally hundreds? Literally hundreds of people. Now, many of them are backbenchers. They're not participating in the call, but they're taking notes before they get together in this meeting. Many of the folks at this meeting, he says, are given little packets of information on each target. They call them baseball cards.

because they sort of look like it. You got a picture and some stats. Like Yogi Berra on one side, and then you got his batting average and his hometown on the back. Well, the terrorist equivalent of all of that. So who is this person? Where does he rank? And what kinds of operations has he been involved in in the past?

Eventually, a general will come on the screen and say, here's our target. Objective Akron. For some reason, he says, they always refer to the targets by the name of American cities. Objective Toledo. General might say, target is in Yemen. We have a drone overhead. There's an opportunity to kill this person. Can we legally do it? And the fascinating thing, although maybe it won't come as much of a surprise, is that the people he's making this pitch to are not generals, but... Lawyers. Lawyers.

There are lawyers everywhere. That is just a basic fact of modern warfare, says John Bellinger. You now have lawyers on the ground. With artillery units, tank commanders. Lawyers in Kevlar, lawyers in helicopters. There are lawyers really almost behind every bomb.

Just lawyers everywhere? Yeah, and that's a very good thing. That's Harold Coe. He was the top lawyer at the State Department from 2009 to 2013. Because it means that we're not just shooting away at people willy-nilly or because we're angry at them or anything. It's a considered, careful decision. Now, Harold Coe, according to Dan Cliven's reporting, was in those civets meetings, and he would often be the one to answer the general's questions. Can we legally kill this person?

So we asked him, like, if lawyers are now the ones deciding who we are at war with and who we aren't, how do you do it? And unfortunately for us... I don't think I can get into that on this call. There are multiple methods, but I'm not going to go into that. He said he couldn't comment on any of it because it's classified.

But, according to Dan Kleidman, who spoke with a lot of people familiar with the process, Coe in particular had a fascinating way of determining who is and is not an associated force. In other words, who we are or aren't at war with. And it seems to be less about the groups as a whole and more about individuals within the group.

For example? Seniority. That was an important issue. For Coe, if you're going to target a guy, he has to be a senior member of a group like Al-Qaeda? Right. He has to be able to give orders, and he has to be unique within the organization. You couldn't simply, under Harold Coe's theory, go after, say, a driver or a cook who was in Al-Qaeda, or even...

foot soldiers because they were fungible. Meaning they could be easily replaced. Another criteria was whether they were externally oriented. For Coe, if they were just participants in a civil war, you couldn't target them. But if they were targeting Westerners or Western interests, then yes.

So if you take Dan Kleidman's account of Harold Coe's criteria as a representative, and we personally have no way of verifying it, but if you take that as the norm, then maybe there is a strong vetting process in place. But I interviewed numerous people who participated in these meetings. And one of the things that I heard over and over again was that there was this kind of inexorable fear

momentum toward killing and that the military people in these meetings could speak with a kind of a tone of do or die urgency. In fact, two of the people who I quote in my book used exactly the same metaphor to describe that sense of momentum that was very difficult to resist. It was like standing on a train track with a train hurtling toward them at 100 miles an hour. But then I guess like

The important question for me is like, how often do they say no? Well, the answer has been 99 times yes and one time no or 50 times yes and 50 times no. How many no's are there? Well, look, I'd say I did not come across many, many examples. But he did tell us about this one instance.

This was a meeting between the top lawyer at the Defense Department, a man named Jay Johnson, and the top lawyer at the State Department, who was then Harold Coe. And according to Dan's sources, Harold Coe and Jay Johnson were faced with determining the fate of a 40-year-old man, roughly 40, named... Sheikh Muhtar Robo. I think that's the right way to say his name. I'm not sure. He was a member of the Somali group Al-Shabaab.

And for context... World Cup celebrations have turned to tragedy in the Central African nation of Uganda. A few months before this conversation, this is in 2010, El Shabaab bombed a rugby club and a restaurant at the same time in Uganda, killing 74 people. Broken chairs, smashed tables, and the sounds of pain as rescuers search for the living and the dead. Let's help! Let's help!

So that had just happened. And according to Dan Kleidman, at this moment in intelligence circles, there was a debate raging as to whether al-Shabaab should or should not be considered an associated force. At the time, their leader had sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden, but their agenda was primarily a local agenda. They had never struck out against the United States or against American interests in the region.

So you've got the top lawyer at the State Department and the top lawyer at the Pentagon facing off as to whether this fellow Robo from al-Shabaab should live or die. And how does this work? Does somebody just like – does someone pound the table? Yes. This was a very heated meeting. Jay Johnson argued vehemently that Robo was covered under the AUMF. He was after all a founding member of al-Shabaab. Harold Koh vehemently disagreed. Harold Koh was a founding member of al-Shabaab.

Harold Coe's conclusion, based on the evidence and the intelligence that he saw, was that Robo was not externally focused. In fact, he belonged to a faction of al-Shabaab that was arguing against attacking the United States and other Western interests. So according to Kleidman, these two men went back and forth and back and forth until eventually Harold Coe just drew a hard line.

And essentially said, look, if you do this, you need to know that you will be doing it over the unambiguous objections of the State Department's legal advisor. The unambiguous move. And that's very strong language coming from a lawyer. And the signal that it sent to the White House was you will be taking military action even though the top lawyer at the State Department said that this would be an illegal action. So what happened? Did they decide not to? They did not do it.

We'll continue in a moment.

Science Reporting on Radiolab is supported in part by Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science.

Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad. I'm Robert Krolik. This is Radiolab. Today we've devoted the entire—we're continuing to devote the entire show to a single sentence. One sentence. Sixty words. That's all. It's the 2001 authorization to use military force was signed into law on September 18th, 2001. And together with BuzzFeed and reporter Gregory Johnson, we have...

We have manhandled these words. Yeah, we have dissected, we have bisected. Trisected. And whatever other kind of sected you could do. Quadrasected. To the AUMF, as it's called. Yes. And, you know, we've looked at how the sentence has defined our last 12 years of counterterrorism. And now? How will it define our future? Gentlemen, thank you for being here today. This is a very... So when we were thinking about that Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, we ended up calling someone who sat on the committee. Tim Kaine, Senator from Virginia. And who was there that day. Yeah, that was a...

That was a very kind of hair-raising day. And Senator Kaine told us that one of the most hair-raising moments for him was when one of his fellow senators, Lindsey Graham, asked one of the Department of Defense officials... Do you agree with me? The war against radical Islam or terror, whatever description you'd like to provide, will go on after the second term of President Obama.

In other words, how long do you think this particular war as declared in the section is going to go on? Senator, in my judgment, this is going to go on for quite a while. And yes, beyond the second term of the president and beyond this term of Congress. Yes, sir. I think it's at least 10 to 20 years. It was chilling because like this is already the longest war in the history of the United States. Longer than Vietnam.

And now a DOD official is saying add on 10 or 20 years? So I said, is it the administration's position that you tell me if somebody is born after 9-11? Let's imagine in 2030. They join a group that has just become associated with Al Qaeda. In 2030. Is it the administration's position that the AUMF would...

would cover them and those organizations. And without hesitation, the administration witnesses said yes. As long as they become an associated force under the legal standard that was set out. It's not limited in time, not limited in geography. Really troubling. But, you know, I'm also troubled by another thing. I mean, you know the iconic, it's a New York picture of...

The VJ Day kiss in Times Square. August 14th, 1945. There ought to be a day where those who have served in war, that you declare that the war is over and then you celebrate them. You get asked sometimes by service families, like, when is this going to end? Does it ever come up? Yes. Yes. Yes.

He told us that something like one in three people in his state of Virginia are connected to the military. So he does get that question a lot. And the truth is, we all want a VJ Day. We need it. And so, seven days after that Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, President Obama... It is a great honor... ...gave a speech. ...to return to the National Defense University... Where he seems to say, basically, it's time. This war, like all wars, must end.

That's what history advises. And that is why I intend to engage Congress about the existing authorization to use military force, or AUMF. Basically, he announces that he would like to get rid of those 60 words and end this war. Yeah. But common sense tells you that these are different kind of enemy forces.

Senator McCain has a great line. He goes, look, we're in an age of warfare where the war isn't going to end with the signing of a peace treaty on the deck of a destroyer. That's not how it happens these days. There's no clear start and ending. And yet the president, he wants to end the war, says Ben Wittes.

And every war has come to an end. He sees himself as a person who came in to a country fighting two wars, and he brought them all to an end. And I think he wants to have done that. But how do you do that?

How do you end a war when the vast amount of people that you're calling the enemy haven't stopped fighting? So what he does in the May speech, and it's extremely clever, and by the way, it's really well-lawyered.

is he announces a set of rules going forward for drone strikes. America does not take strikes to punish individuals. We act against terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people. That he's only going to use drone strikes when there's an imminent threat. And it's well understood.

by people who understand this kind of stuff, that in the Constitution and also in international law, the president is allowed to act unilaterally in self-defense when there is an imminent threat, meaning it's urgent and you can't feasibly capture that person. Ben fears that what President Obama was doing there by stressing that word... An imminent threat to the American people. ...is that he was laying a new foundation...

He was saying, when the AUMF ends, and I want it to end, I do have another way of justifying all these things. Maybe they wouldn't change. So the drone strikes and the raids would continue. As long as you have a capacious enough understanding of what the word imminent means, you might be able to continue a whole lot of this stuff, and then you don't have to go to Congress at all. And you can say you've ended the war, and the human rights groups will cheer for you.

And we're going to mysteriously find that there are a whole lot of imminent threats for freedom. Thank you very much, everybody. God bless you. May God bless the United States of America. And in the context of what happened to those 60 words, you do have to wonder what's going to happen to a word like imminent. And all the while, according to Ben Wittes and pretty much everyone we spoke with,

We haven't really answered the big questions. When do we want to attack the enemy? Who is the enemy? And if we're going to be fighting them, even when we're not technically at war with them, then what's the difference between war and peace? And that's why this whole subject is so unsettling. If you don't know the common sense definition anymore of when you're at war and when you're at peace, then how do you write rules? Yeah. This was an attempt to begin a war, right?

And so it had the usual beginning questions. Okay, you, who are you? You out there, where? You for how long till you surrender? No, you're not going to surrender. Like all the usual business of warfare just doesn't apply in this case. So then you have to think, now what do we do? Yeah. It's just like one long improvisation.

Huge thanks this hour to BuzzFeed and to their reporter, Gregory Johnson. Check out Gregory's piece. It's where we started with this. We will link to it from Radiolab.org. It's on BuzzFeed as well. It's called 60 Words and a War Without End, the Untold Story of the Most Dangerous Sentence in U.S. History. That is a title right there. Also, thanks to the great Dylan Keefe for original music and Glenn Kochi for music from his album Adventureland.com.

And, oh, and also thank you to Beth Fertig and the WNYC archives for the 9-11 tape you heard at the top of the hour. This hour was produced by Kelsey Padgett and Matthew Kilty and myself. I'm Jad Abubarot. I'm Robert Grillwich. We'll see you next time. Okay, so Lulu here again. That was the original story. And now we are back in the present with our producer, Sara Khari.

Yeah. Well, let's just say like maybe people have an idea about why this matters right at this moment, but just tell us anyway. Yeah. I mean, we know how it is that we started the Forever War story.

But truly, I feel like the question we're all asking ourselves right now is, how do you actually end it? And part of that is born out of the 20th anniversary of 9-11. And then part of it is observing what has happened in the last few weeks in Afghanistan and watching the U.S. very messily and...

tragically try to extract itself from this conflict. And I think, yeah, I think that's the question that I feel I'm still grappling with is like, how do you end it? And, you know, it turns out that Barbara Lee, the congresswoman from the original piece, has also been asking herself this question for all these years. Hello, hello. Really? Connecting to audio. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hi, hold on a minute. Hi.

Jad and I called her up. Yeah, it's good to talk to you in a very different world, although kind of the same world. And the first thing she told us is that she actually recently sponsored a bill. We are here because of the courage of Congresswoman Barbara Lee. In the House. The question is on passage of the bill. Called H.R. 256. The ayes have it. That has since passed in the House and now is waiting to be voted on in the Senate.

that would basically repeal one of the AUMFs that has come about since 9-11. Yes. Wait, what do you mean one of the AUMFs? Well, it turns out after the 2001 original 60 Words one, there was a second AUMF in 2002. For the Iraq military action, the invasion and war in Iraq.

Which, by the way, she also voted against at the time. And that's the AUMF that she's trying to get repealed right now. To repeal the Iraq resolution. Basically, that's what it says. Which, like I said, passed the House and is headed to the Senate. And maybe it'll come to a vote middle of September and get to the president's desk. But that bill wouldn't repeal the original 2001 AUMF.

which is honestly still the one that we mostly use to justify military action nowadays. So does it even matter anyway? I mean, so it kind of matters because taking it off the books would at least prevent it from being abused in the future. But yeah, no, it's not the original one. And so we asked Barbara Lee. Do you have any plans to actually go after the original one? And wouldn't it be kind of useless to go after the second and not the first?

No, we're going after the first. We're working now. I've introduced the 2001 authorization repeal. And the big issue there is support. Get to 218 on the floor. It's a heavier lift. It's still such a big hurdle to get rid of.

Those original 60 words. Because the 2001 is Afghanistan. But it's like, like to me, the idea that Osama bin Laden is dead. The U S is involvement in Afghanistan is over. We're so, we're so far from the thing for, we're so far from nine 11 now, a Testament of which is that someone who is in the second grade is now reporting a story about it. You know what I mean? Um,

Like, we're so far from that. And to then keep using this sort of zombie legal justification feels like there's... Like, what...

What leg do they have to stand on? Like, I don't know. It seems like a lot harder to justify now, no? Can I jump in as the least informed, but just as a... Yeah. One thing that in terms of legs to stand on, what really struck me in the language was like, in order to prevent against any future acts of international terrorism. It's like, it's not a thing that was done, but a thing that might happen. Like, that feels like a leg that could then just...

It could stand on forever. It feels like there'd always be a case. There'd always be like the lawyers or whoever saying like, well, maybe. Yeah. No, totally. Totally. And I think that they have a real interest in maintaining it, even if they say that like, you know, we want to end this specific war and we don't want to be there. It's still like a tool that can allow them to.

to act fast and without Congress's approval. In a world where situations like the one in Afghanistan are changing day by day, the 2001 AUMF still allows the president and the military to act with so much agility and agility

Like in some ways, you can kind of see their argument. Because we're just sort of in this open-ended conflict and the whole nature of war has changed, the United States is fighting against war

like startup groups of people that didn't exist in 2001 before 9-11. You know, it's not like World War II anymore where like, you know, we begin and we end the war and Congress, according to the Constitution, has the power to declare war. I guess I'm not even convinced that Congress is the right place

body of people to do that anymore. Like there's so much partisanship. There's so much gridlock. It just feels like trying to use the Pony Express like a world full of cell phones. Like, I mean, I agree, but like, like, I don't know. Like, like the idea that it's like, oh, okay, well, the president has this power and a bunch of very creative lawyers like and like that. That's that's even more terrifying to me. Um,

I don't know. This is like a menu of two really terrible options here. The problem to me feels like if you completely repeal the 2001 AUMF, like let's say like tomorrow, it just like doesn't exist. What is the right tool for declaring military action moving forward? Like in this world where things move so fast and Congress is so slow and warfare is so different, like

What do you do when you need to resort to military action? Yeah, I hear that 100 percent because I certainly sometimes despair that it feels like, you know, no matter what we do. So I ended up talking to this national security expert. My name is Ona Hathaway and I teach international law at Yale Law School. And she actually made me feel kind of optimistic that Congress and the administration were

might be ready to find a new way forward. I guess the one hopeful part of me sees the fact that we're now nearly at the 20-year anniversary of this authorization. And, you know, anybody who looks at this realizes this was not what Congress wanted.

And she thinks that Congress might be ripe to come up with something that could actually replace the 2001 AUMF.

And that the Biden administration... They're recognizing they're on pretty thin legal ground. And that's just not a good either political or legal position for the president to be in. So I think they're recognizing it's actually in their interest if they can get a good replacement to be supportive of that. And Ona's idea, and this is Barbara Lee's thought too, is that the problem might not be with AUMFs in general. The problem is...

is with those original 60 words that were written in this moment of doubt and fear and rage and trauma. And what we need instead is an AUMF that's written in a moment of clarity. If

If we had Congress come in and say... If you want to use force, these are the specifics that we want you to adhere to. This is the criteria. Here are the groups that we're fighting against. You know, here's how you can add new groups or take them out. You know, we want you to give us an exit strategy.

what an estimated end time would be. Have an actual process whereby Congress actually makes clear that it supports what we're doing. And the costs and consequences have to be laid out. So the idea is that, you know, you need an AUMF that is written better, that is more specific and doesn't have language that's wishy-washy. But how...

I mean, in terms of what that actually looks like on paper, I don't know. It's like when we set our employee goals, like it's like, you know, the smart, like it's what is it like specific measurable? Like we need smart war goals. You know what I mean?

No, totally, totally. Time bound, time bound. That's the end of time bound. All of these things, like it's literally take our employee handbook and just hand it out to Congress. Like, I think that's what we need. This update was produced and reported by Sarah Kari. And the original episode, again, is produced by Kelsey Patchett and Matthew Kilty. Thanks so much for listening.

To play the message, press 2. Start of message. Hi, it's John Bellinger at Arnold and Porter calling. I'm about to read to you the text of your credits. Hi, this is Dan Kleitman, and I'm going to read the credits.

as I've been asked to. Radiolab is produced by WNYC and distributed by NPR. Radiolab is produced by Jad Abumrad. Our staff includes Ellen Horn, Soren Wheeler, Tim Howard, Brenna Farrell, Molly Webster, Melissa O'Donnell, Dylan Keith, Jamie York, Lynn Levy, Andy Mills, and Kelsey Patchett. With help from Ariane Wack,

Matt Gielty, Simon Adler, and Chrisnell Storr. Special thanks to Bruce Kane, Liz Mack, Steve Kandel, Ben Smith, and Carrie Adams. That's a wrap. End of message.