The intrigue behind the drone strike

But the US military had been passing the Yemenis its own intelligence on Al Qaeda activities for months. In a botched raid on al-Harethi and several other Al Qaeda fighters last December, Yemen's military lost 18 of its own soldiers. Western diplomats had been concerned that Yemen would be reluctant to strike again on its own.

Despite the criticism of the US approach, President Ali Saleh's own internal political critics argued that he was reluctant to strike because he still owes a "blood debt" to Osama bin Laden's own fighters for openly assisting him to put down a separatist movement in the south in 1994.

Other official sources said that Yemeni special forces, led by the president's son, Ahmed Abdullah Saleh, did not attack al-Harethi again due to their ongoing training with US Green Berets, and the time it is taking them to sharpen their skills.

In either case, US officials, increasingly impatient with the Sana's slow moves to reign in terrorists, said they could not accept any more excuses, say Western sources here. Predator drones, based in nearby Djibouti, were transmitting real-time video images from the Yemeni hinterland.

While Yemeni officials knew that the US military had helicopters on ships in the Red Sea and could inject a "snatch and kill" squad of commandos into the country within a matter of hours, they said such an operation could ignite a guerrilla war, the sources added.

Then came Ambassador Hull's intelligence coup. Yemeni tribesmen are notorious for not being able to keep a secret and with their palms crossed with silver, they just could not resist telling the Americans what they knew about al Harethi, say sources. As they chewed on narcotic khat leaves, and filled their silver spittoons, the tribesmen also spit out the details on al-Harethi's new haunts.

Counter-intelligence officials say that global positioning coordinates given by a phone held by al-Harethi may also have helped seal his fate. But even that intelligence could be fleeting, so US officials knew they had to act swiftly. They waited until al-Harethi was in a car and clear of home and any civilian neighbors.

"They [the Americans] didn't hit a wedding party, hit their own people, or kill a large number of civilians," says one Western diplomat based on the Arabian Peninsula. "In that respect the US Hellfire strike was good, clean and clinical."

That precision has not, however, muted the anger of senior Yemeni officials like Mutawakel, who worry about domestic unrest if their government is seen as being too closely allied with the US. "We wanted a great degree of independence for our own armed forces. We tried to make it clear that we did not want the Americans to do it themselves. They are just here to get their enemies and get out."

• Staff writer Faye Bowers contributed to this report from Washington.

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