A recent edition of the PBS program “FRONTLINE” examined how Al Qaeda has taken over cities and rugged mountain areas of Yemen and taken advantage of civil unrest in the country brought about by the Yemen uprising that began the spring of last year. The edition followed journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad as he courageously traveled to meet with members of Ansar al-Sharia, a group that is believed to be composed of members affiliated with Al Qaeda.

Abdulelah Haider Shaye, a journalist whose reporting focused on issues of terrorism, has been in a Yemeni jail since 2010.

Shaye was picked up, detained and convicted on “terrorism-related” charges by a client regime of the United States because he was interviewing people the now-assassinated US-born Yemen cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and members of al Qaeda. He has been designated a terrorist and remains jailed because the US maintains he is working with al Qaeda. On top of that, as Scahill has pointed out, not a single media organization, like ABC or the Washington Post, which benefited from his reporting have spoken up in opposition to what the Obama administration has done.

A new study out from the UK-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) provides some of the clearest accounting yet of the United States’ covert war on terror in Yemen, including the use of drone strikes. It shows that seventy-five percent of US drone attacks there have taken place since May 2011 during the instability created by the uprising in Yemen.

President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). That means hours before 2011 came to an end, as ACLU executive director Anthony Romero stated, President Obama became “a president who will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law.”