<\/p>\n
White House counterterrorism<\/span> czar Sebastian Gorka was on a mission. He wanted someone dead, and he knew who could make it happen.<\/p>\n It was eight days after Donald Trump took office for a second time, and Gorka, the senior counterterrorism director on President Trump\u2019s National Security Council, walked into the Oval Office accompanied by a member of his own counterterrorism team and his boss, then-National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. The group approached the Resolute desk and laid an intelligence \u201cplace mat\u201d with information about a man in Somalia in front of the president.<\/p>\n \u201cSir, ISIS leader, killed Americans, planning to kill more Americans,\u201d is how Gorka recalled the summary they provided to the president. \u201cWe informed him that the Biden administration had been watching him for about a year and a half.\u201d According to Gorka, Trump replied<\/a>: \u201cWhat do you mean, we\u2019ve been watching him? Kill him!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Gorka said Trump ticked off the \u201cgo box\u201d on the operation orders with one of his signature presidential Sharpie markers. Moments later, outside the Oval Office, Gorka recalled, a call was made to Fort Bragg and \u201celsewhere\u201d to arrange the attack. Less than 30 hours later, Gorka and his colleague were in the White House Situation Room watching the target on massive television screens. \u201cIt was Tom Clancy, but it was real,\u201d Gorka recalled recently. \u201cGo time was 8:45 in the morning.\u201d Two minutes before the scheduled attack, there was still no sign of Waltz. A minute later, he walked in, and 60 seconds after, Gorka\u2019s quest was complete.<\/p>\n \u201cEight forty-five the platform launches what it launches and this individual just disappears from the earth,\u201d Gorka recalled recently<\/a> in a version of the account told during a softball interview with Dean Cain, a MAGA influencer best known for his role in the 1990s TV series \u201cLois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.\u201d Gorka told the story again and again on Breitbart\u2019s Alex Marlow Show<\/a>, and to other<\/a> pro-administration<\/a> outlets<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the aftermath of that first strike<\/a>, Trump took to social media to boast about the attack. \u201cThis morning I ordered precision Military air strikes on the Senior ISIS Attack Planner and other terrorists he recruited and led in Somalia,\u201d he wrote<\/a>. \u201cThe message to ISIS and all others who would attack Americans is that \u2018WE WILL FIND YOU, AND WE WILL KILL YOU!\u2019\u201d\u00a0In honor of this line \u2014 which he said has become the motto of his directorate<\/a> and is arguably the mantra of the second Trump administration<\/a> \u2014 Gorka and his team wear custom lanyards that say: WWFY & WWKY<\/a>. Gorka calls it the \u201cmost coveted lanyard in the U.S. government.\u201d <\/p>\n Since that strike, the Trump administration has taken the murderous motto to heart, proclaiming versions of it in avenues from Pentagon<\/a> social media posts to Trump\u2019s foreword to Gorka\u2019s recently released \u201cCounterterrorism Strategy<\/a>\u201d \u2014 and conducting a global killing spree. \u201cSince our first operation on day 11 of this administration, a scant 15 months ago, we have killed 860 jihadis across the globe,\u201d Gorka told<\/a>\u00a0Newsmax, noting elsewhere<\/a> that this figure does not include those killed in the wars in Iran, Venezuela, or Yemen. (Gorka also claimed<\/a>, two days later<\/a>, that the number killed in lethal strikes was actually 815<\/a>. The White House did not reply to a request for clarification.)<\/p>\n While the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, the war with Iran, and even the so-called boat strikes in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean have been front page news, Trump has supercharged America\u2019s longest ongoing forever war \u2014 the conflict in Somalia \u2014 with very little notice. But as Trump\u2019s attacks in Somalia have skyrocketed, so has terrorist violence there, according to the Pentagon. War Department statistics show that attacks and fatalities in Somalia have reached epic proportions, even though the War Department seemed to claim that ISIS-Somalia has been annihilated and Trump claims ISIS was wiped out years ago.<\/p>\n \u201cSomalia saw the biggest surge in reported fatalities across all regions,\u201d according to an April report<\/a> by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research institution. \u201cThe 8,813 deaths linked to al Shabaab and the Islamic State (ISIS) over the past year represent a 93-percent increase from the previous year.\u201d This record throws into broad relief the failure of Gorka\u2019s and the president\u2019s primary counterterrorism strategy and the inability of the administration to kill its way to victory.<\/p>\n Loosened rules of<\/span> engagement during Trump\u2019s first term had a profound effect in Somalia, where strikes tripled after Trump relaxed targeting principles. The U.S. conducted\u00a0219 declared attacks<\/a>\u00a0in Somalia during Trump\u2019s first four years in the White House, a more than 350 percent increase over the eight years of the Obama presidency.<\/p>\n \u201cThey know innocent people were killed, but they\u2019ve never told us a reason or apologized.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n A review of Trump-era rules by the Biden administration found<\/a>\u00a0that for attacks in some countries, a requirement for \u201cnear certainty\u201d that civilians would \u201cnot be injured or killed in the course of operations\u201d was reportedly enforced only if the civilians were women and children. A lower standard was applied to adult men. All military-age males were considered legitimate targets if they were observed with suspected al-Shabab members in the group\u2019s territory, retired Brig. Gen.\u00a0Donald Bolduc, who led Special Operations Command Africa at the time,\u00a0told The Intercept.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n A 2023 investigation by The Intercept found that Trump\u2019s directive contributed to a particularly disastrous attack in Somalia that killed at least three \u2014 and possibly five \u2014 civilians, including 22-year-old\u00a0Luul Dahir Mohamed and her 4-year-old daughter, Mariam Shilow Muse.<\/a>\u00a0The mother and child survived the initial strike but were killed by a double-tap attack as they fled for their lives. \u201cThey know innocent people were killed, but they\u2019ve never told us a reason or apologized,\u201d said Abdi Dahir Mohamed, one of Luul\u2019s brothers. \u201cNo one has been held accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n Under President Joe Biden, the U.S. military conducted 51 strikes in Somalia over four years, according to D.C.-based think tank New America. Last year alone, Trump oversaw 126 attacks, exceeding the previous one-year record of 66 under Trump in 2019. He has already conducted 64 attacks in Somalia this year, and a total of at least 190 there so far in his second term \u2014 including an attack that one top U.S. commander called the \u201clargest airstrike in the history of the world<\/a>.\u201d Trump and Gorka are on pace to eclipse the 219 strikes of his first term in just a year and a half in office.<\/p>\n Gorka frames the Biden administration\u2019s failure to conduct wholesale strikes on supposed \u201cjihadis\u201d as a soul-crushing experience for national security professionals from the Intelligence Community and special operations forces. \u201cThe morale was so bad,\u201d he recently told Cain.\u00a0\u201cI\u2019ve got a targeter on my team, an amazing lady, who are in the bowels of an intelligence agency and their job is \u2026 for 10 hours a day with headphones watching a screen tracking jihadis.\u2026 And for four years, they\u2019re basically not allowed to kill people.\u201d\u00a0He added: \u201cYou say, \u2018Hey, we\u2019ve got the coordinates. Can we do something?\u2019 And the White House says, \u2018No.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Wes Bryant, who called in thousands of strikes against ISIS as a special operations joint terminal attack controller,\u00a0scoffed at Gorka\u2019s assessment that the Biden administration was negligent in its war on ISIS and capriciously allowing terrorists to operate freely.<\/p>\n \u201cOften, we gain more by watching senior operatives for extended periods because we can then piece together more of an entirety of an operation or organization. Otherwise, all it becomes is whack-a-mole,\u201d Bryant told The Intercept. \u201cTargeting and intelligence collections operations can be likened to an undercover operation against a criminal organization in law enforcement \u2014 where we are watching and monitoring and gathering evidence and characterizing every single associate and activity in order to build the big picture of the organization and take every piece of it down versus just one guy that we found.\u201d<\/p>\n Bryant was skeptical of Gorka and his motives. \u201cI\u2019m not sure if he doesn\u2019t know better and just wants to deliver the superfluous talking point to his uneducated far right audience that \u2018Trump kills more bad guys\u2019 and is therefore keeping America safer.\u201d<\/p>\n The Intercept sought to interview Gorka through Anna Kelly, the special assistant to the president and White House principal deputy press secretary. She did not reply to that request or to questions about Gorka\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n\n