July 22, 2002: New Rumsfeld Policy Prefers Interrogation or Killing of Terrorists Over Legally Arresting Them

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld issue a secret directive ordering commander of Special Operations Air Force General Charles Holland “to develop a plan to find and deal with members of terrorist organizations” anywhere in the world (see July 22, 2002). The directive says, “The objective is to capture terrorists for interrogation or, if necessary, to kill them, not simply to arrest them in a law-enforcement exercise.” Holland is to cut through the Pentagon bureaucracy and process deployment orders “in minutes and hours, not days and weeks.” In internal Defense Department memos, Rumsfeld and the civilian officials close to him lay out the case for a new approach to the war on terrorism, one that would partly rely on the killing of individuals outside war zones. [New Yorker, 12/16/2002] The first public manifestation of this new policy will be the November 2002 assassination of al-Qaeda leader Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi in Yemen with a Predator missile strike (see November 3, 2002).