Intelligence

Today is the fourteenth anniversary of the best chance the United States had to kill Osama bin Laden before he led al-Qaeda to plan and carry out the terrorist attacks of 9/11. In addition to failing to elimate bin Laden, or any senior al-Qaeda leaders, the botched cruise missile attack of August 20, 1998, played a prominent role in accelerating efforts to arm unmanned drones. What began as highly specialized, covert tool to locate and kill one individual has developed into today’s default counterterrorism tactic. On August 7, 1998, at 10:30 a.m., a Toyota Dyna truck bomb exploded at the rear of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, killing 213 people—including 12 Americans—and injuring more than 4,000 others. Nine minutes later, a 1987 Nissan Atlas refrigeration truck bomb exploded thirty-five feet outside of the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 11 people and injuring 85 more. Both truck bombs were made in Kenya by the same man, Egyptian explosives expert Mushin Musa Matwalli Atwah, who was killed by a CIA drone in Pakistan in April 2006. The bombings were described by an CIA official as, “On a scale of 1 to 10 [with one being the highest], that’s a 1.” The following day, a “small group” within the National Security Council was formed, consisting of the principals and a handful of other senior officials. At the first meeting, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet presented unusually specific evidence that over two hundred suspected militants and al-Qaeda leaders (including bin Laden) were planning to gather at the Zhawar Kili training complex in Khost, Afghanistan. Six days later, Tenet provided the CIA’s formal determination that bin Laden and his senior Egyptian aides were responsible for the U.S. embassy bombings; “This one is a slam dunk, Mr. President,” the director unequivocally stated, using a metaphor of certainty he would repeat for President Bush regarding Saddam Hussein’s supposed-WMD programs. Military planners in U.S. Central Command and the Joint Staff developed options including a special operations raid, which was discounted due to concerns that it would take too long to assemble the complete force package, enabling logistics, and combat search and rescue capabilities. Presented with six options to attack the Zhawar Kili training complex, a senior U.S. military official later told me, the president “went right to the cruise missile option.” In addition, a range of targets in Sudan, supposedly connected to bin Laden from when he lived there until 1996, were also considered by the small group. Eventually, two targets in the capital of Khartoum were proposed: the El-Shifa Pharmaceuticals Industries Company factory and the Khartoum Tannery Company, which bin Laden had received from the Sudanese government as partial payment for building a road linking the capital to the Red Sea. In the weeks prior to the embassy bombings, the CIA had presented intelligence to the White House about al-Qaeda’s efforts to acquire WMD, including an assessment of a soil sample taken near the El-Shifa factory that contained over two times the normal trace of O-ethyl methylphosphonothioic acid (or Empta), a chemical precursor used in the production of nerve gas. Shortly before the operation, Clinton, according to his autobiography, “took the tannery off the list because it had no military value to al-Qaeda and I wanted to minimize civilian casualties.” The cruise missile strikes—codenamed Operation Infinite Reach—were the model of American limited military force. At 7:30 p.m. local time in Sudan, two U.S. Navy warships in the Red Sea fired thirteen BGM-109 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAMs) at the El-Shifa factory. Pentagon planners ran computer models to calculate the risk of the possible release of a chemical plume from the attack. To ensure that any toxins would be incinerated, extra Tomahawks were added in order to burn the factory to the ground. El-Shifa was destroyed, its night watchman was killed, and a watchman in a sugar factory next door was horribly injured. As General Anthony Zinni, commander of U.S. Central Command, sarcastically noted: “[El Shifa] was a success. We sprayed aspirin all over Khartoum.” Yet, it was a failure politically as it was later revealed that Bin Laden had no ownership stake in the factory, and it was not connected to producing WMD. At the same time as the El-Shifa strike, four Navy ships in the Arabian Sea off the coast of Pakistan launched sixty-six TLAMs against six sites within the Zhawar Kili complex at Khost. With no concern about collateral damage, the bombing of the Khost complex sought to inflict the maximum number of casualties. To accomplish this, Pentagon planners deployed cruise missiles in two waves. The first began with several C-model unitary warhead TLAMs that hit the complex to lure people outside to find out what was happening. The follow-up wave consisted of a saturation of D-model TLAMs armed with 166 soda-can-sized bomblets that burst several hundred feet above the target and blanketed an area roughly eight hundred by four hundred feet with shards of shrapnel. Reportedly, between twenty and sixty people were killed, including Pakistani ISI officers training militants to fight in Kashmir. Some later claimed that bin Laden was tipped off in advance by Pakistan, although U.S. officials argue there is no definitive evidence. For whatever reason—his bodyguard later claimed bin Laden was not at Khost at the time—bin Laden and all senior al-Qaeda members survived the cruise missiles. In December 1998, four months after Operation Infinite Reach, new intelligence emerged that bin Laden would be staying at a particular location in Kandahar for an indefinite period of time. This was crucial; the time needed to analyze the intelligence, obtain presidential authorization, program the missiles, and launch the targeted missile required a minimum of four to six hours. The collateral damage from a potential cruise missile attack against Kandahar was estimated at roughly three hundred casualties. Although the operation was never authorized, the 9/11 Commission later found: “After this episode Pentagon planners intensified efforts to find a more precise alternative to cruise missiles, such as using precision strike aircraft.” With specific guidance from the National Security Council to develop new means to locate, identify, and track bin Laden, an interagency team—led by Vice Admiral Scott Fry, the Joint Staff’s director of operations—soon settled on the most promising option: the Predator. In fifteen test flights before 9/11, unmanned surveillance drones provided live video coverage of Afghanistan. To enable the Predator to carry out lethal strikes, the Air Force mated the drone with a reconfigured Hellfire antitank missile normally used by attack helicopters. The first successful U.S. armed drone strike test took place on February 16, 2001. By November, a Predator was used to kill Mohammed Atef, a top al-Qaeda military commander in Afghanistan. Reviewing the debates among late Clinton and early Bush administration officials, one is struck by how uneasy many were with both deploying such a low-risk, low-cost lethal tool and where such a weapon would ultimately lead. Since that time, armed drones have been used some four hundred times outside of battlefield settings to kill nearly three thousand individuals. The emergence of drones as the preeminent tool in America’s undeclared Third War against suspected militants in Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, and The Philippines is one that former officials would have found hard to believe. The relative precision that drones allow, compared to less precise tools like the cruise missiles launched fourteen years ago in the immediate search for bin Laden, makes them more attractive than anyone would have anticipated or predicted.

Benny Morris, “Obama’s Last Chance Before Israel Bombs Iran,” The Daily Beast, August 16, 2012. (3PA: In this piece, Morris predicts “Israel is likely to strike [Iran] before the American elections.” In July 2008, Morris boldly predicted in the New York Times, “Israel will almost surely attack Iran’s nuclear sites in the next four to seven months.” Morris also writes of Israel’s 1981 attack on the Iraqi Osirak plutonium reactor, “That successful strike actually put paid to Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons program, which was never resurrected.” It is totally untrue that Iraq’s nuclear program was never resurrected. As Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer wrote in the journal International Security: “The attack had mixed effects: it triggered a covert nuclear weapons program that did not previously exist, while necessitating a more difficult and time-consuming technical route to developing nuclear weapons.”) Jeffrey Lewis, “The Ayatollah’s Pregnant Pause,” Foreign Policy, August 15, 2012. Luke Coffey and James Phillips, “No-Fly Zone Over Syria: The Wrong Policy at the Wrong Time,” Heritage Foundation, August 15, 2012. U.S.-led airstrikes, especially without adequate regional buy-in from Turkey and other allies, could be the first step in an incremental process that could draw the U.S. into a protracted civil war that could continue long after Assad is gone. The U.S. may be limited in what it can do, but doing nothing will almost certainly yield an outcome that is not in America’s interest… The U.S. Air Force is not for hire every time there is a popular uprising somewhere in the world. Considering how little the West knows about the Syrian opposition and how fragmented it appears to be, it is currently not worth the amount of resources and manpower required carry out robust airstrikes à la Libya. While establishing an NFZ might be a feel-good measure, under the current conditions, it would likely achieve very little. W.J. Hennigan, “Key Test Set for Sustained Hypersonic Flight,” Los Angeles Times, August 13, 2012. The Pentagon believes that hypersonic missiles are the best way to hit a target in an hour or less. The only vehicle that the military currently has in its inventory with that kind of capability is the massive, nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile. Other means of hitting a distant target, such as cruise missiles and long-range bomber planes, can take hours to reach their destination. When pressed for an example of the need, military officials often point to a 1998 attack when the U.S. military tried—and failed—to kill Osama bin Laden. Navy vessels in the Arabian Sea lobbed cruise missiles at training camps in Afghanistan, hitting their targets—80 minutes later. By then, Bin Laden was gone. But with a hypersonic missile, such as the technology being tested on the WaveRider, "the attack would have been cut to just over 12 minutes," Richard Hallion, a former Air Force senior advisor, said in an Air Force Assn. report about hypersonic technology. (3PA: There has never been any proof that Bin Laden was at the Khost, Afghanistan training camp during the cruise missile raid. In 2006, Bin Laden’s bodyguard Abu Jandal told 60 Minutes that Bin Laden left his Tarnak Farms compound after the East Africa U.S. embassy bombings, knowing the United States would retaliate militarily. According Abu Jandal: "There was a fork in the road. One road leading to Khost and training camps, and another one leading to Kabul," Abu Jandal recalls. "I was with Sheikh Osama in the same vehicle with three guards, so he turned to us and said, ’What do you think? Khost or Kabul?’ We told him, ’Let’s just visit Kabul.’ So Sheikh Osama said, ’OK, Kabul.’ " The next day, some 70 U.S. cruise missiles struck Khost. U.S. Department of State Daily Press Briefing, August 13, 2012. QUESTION: But if I could just go into that second one. The Secretary consistently says we don’t want to make it worse. We want to do something, but we don’t want to make it worse. Would a humanitarian corridor make things worse? What would be the downside of that? MS. NULAND: Well again, I don’t know what that set of words means to you, Jill – a humanitarian corridor – I mean, de facto now, as you know, the opposition forces control territory from north of Aleppo all the way up to the border. So de facto they are able to operate in a different way now, they are controlling checkpoints into Turkey, they are able to operate in a way that was more difficult when the Syrian Government controlled all of those checkpoints. So— QUESTION: Are you saying that de facto, there is a corridor? MS. NULAND: I’m saying de facto there is opposition control of territory all the way up to the border. And that changes the way they operate. It changes the way – the needs that they might have. U.S. Department of State Implementation Plan of the National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security, August 2012. Nicholas Reynolds, “Ernest Hemingway, Wartime Spy,” Studies in Intelligence, June 2012. From the archive: "Intervention, Please: the ’No-Fly Zone’ Requests You Don’t Hear About," The Atlantic, January 10, 2012. (3PA: As the Syrian rebels repeat their demands for a U.S. or UN-led no-fly zone over the territory they control, it is worth noting the many demands for similar no-fly zones in countries not in the headlines today.)

Yesterday, during a press conference, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, observed the following when asked about Israeli military capabilities to undertake unilateral strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities: DEMPSEY: Militarily, my assessment hasn’t changed. I want to make clear; I’m not privy to their planning. So what I’m telling you is based on what I know of their capabilities, and I may not know about all their capabilities, but I think that it’s a fair characterization to say that they could delay, but not destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Q: Is a two- to three-year timeframe of delay, is that still the swag that— DEMPSEY: I haven’t changed my assessment. (This refers to his earlier assertion that an Israeli strike would “delay the production or the capability of Iran to achieve a nuclear weapon status—probably for a couple of years.”) Dempsey’s emphasis on the lack of joint U.S.-Israel military planning over attacking Iran is nothing new. In a February interview with Fareed Zakaria, when asked if Israel would fly over Iraqi airspace to strike Iran, Dempsey responded: “Well, I mean, I’m not privy, obviously, to their plans. But that is the shortest distance between two points.” In May, during a public address in Washington, DC, he stated: Israel and the United States have been closely collaborating on any number of fronts, especially in the area of intel sharing, so that we can come to a common understanding of the threat and of the likely timelines that we might have to confront. I probably met with [Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Benny Gantz] more than any other of my counterparts–nearly every other month since I’ve been the chairman. That’ll continue because we have common interests in the defense of Israel as well as ensuring that –as you know, we’ve said we’re determined to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapon state. So I can assure you that we are collaborating with the Israeli military on intel sharing and on our posture. I will say it does not rise to the level of joint military planning, but we’re closely collaborating. No one in the U.S. government believes that Israel would give the United States advance warning of a unilateral attack against Iran. When the White House, and later Secretary Panetta, demanded such notice, Israel pointedly declined. When asked about an Israeli heads-up, Dempsey simply said, “I don’t know.” Meanwhile, Senators Carl Levin and John McCain, chairman and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, both agree that the Obama administration does not know what Israel will decide to do. In late March, Panetta acknowledged: “If Israel decides to go after Iran and we have to defend ourselves, we could be engaged sooner than any of us want.” The near-certainty that Tel Aviv will not warn Washington before attacking Iran—as they never have for other preemptive attacks—along with Dempsey’s repeated warnings raise three important points that are often lost in media reports and Israeli and American public opinion polls. Specifically, there are no joint plans for a strike against Iran’s nuclear program, the most senior U.S. military official is unaware of Israeli military plans, and the United States will not know in advance of a unilateral Israeli operation. In the past week, U.S. officials have reaffirmed, “there is time and space to continue to pursue a diplomatic path,” and, “we have visibility into the program, and we would know if and when Iran made what’s called a ‘breakout move’ towards acquiring a weapon.” Despite pressure from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Obama administration will not attack Iran’s nuclear program any time soon. After years of threats, there may be an Israeli military attack against Iran in the next few months, with the United States on the sidelines—at least initially. Iran’s response to an Israeli attack, however, will almost certainly draw in U.S. military forces nearby, whether they want to or not.

As the fighting between the ever-weakening regime of President Bashar al-Assad and hundreds of armed opposition groups spreads and intensifies, pundits and policymakers are increasing their calls to intervene militarily in Syria’s civil war. The primary reason given for picking sides in this conflict is to protect unarmed civilians from the brutal and often indiscriminate force waged by Assad’s security forces. In tandem with this humanitarian impulse is the notion that giving weapons, intelligence, and logistics support to a select few, carefully vetted armed rebels will rapidly lead to regime change in Syria. Above all else, intervention proponents never claim that regime change will be very difficult, or require a single U.S. boot on the ground. As Paul Wolfowitz and Mark Palmer wrote last month: “No one is arguing for military intervention on the order of Afghanistan or Iraq.” However, there are a range of other justifications that intervention proponents put forth, having nothing to do with protecting civilians or regime change in Syria. To attempt to gather support from different audiences, such proponents routinely provide a laundry list of justifications that rationalize the inherent risks and uncertain ultimate costs of military operations. For example, according to U.S. officials, the Libya intervention was necessary to repay European support for the war in Afghanistan, and send messages of resolve to other dictators, such as Assad, who it turns-out was not receptive. Consider just three other reasons that intervention proponents have offered for invading Syria: Syrians have especially long memories. Anne-Marie Slaughter wrote in a recent op-ed titled “We Will Pay a High Price if We do not Arm Syria’s Rebels”: "Sooner or later some combination of the opposition groups will indeed control Syria. And when they do, their memories of who did what during the struggle to achieve a democratic Syria are going to matter far more to the U.S. and Europe than policy makers presently calculate…The eventual winners in Syria will matter a great deal to the health, wealth and stability of what is still the most geo-strategically important region in the world. Syrians will remember those who remember them, those who cared enough to help save their lives." Though Slaughter does not hypothesize what the “eventual winners” will do to America if President Obama does not authorize arming them today, it is a remarkable rationale that makes several assumptions. First, that the post-Assad political leaders of Syria will be the same individuals who received U.S. weapons. According to Rep. Mike Rodgers, Chairman of the House Permanent Intelligence Committee, there are at least 300 rebel groups in Syria, a quarter of whom “may be inspired” by Al Qaeda. Second, any country not arming the Syrian rebels will be remembered for their lack of enthusiasm, and suffer the wrath of Damascus for some period of time. Third, Syria’s political leaders will closely align their policy preferences with the United States, because the Obama administration armed them—rather than say the preferences of the Qataris or Saudis, who are providing weapons to Syrian rebel groups. Senator Marco Rubio echoed this notion when he contended: “Empowering and supporting Syria’s opposition today will give us our best chance of influencing it tomorrow.” Consider some recent history. The United States provided battlefield intelligence, money, and weapons and ammunition (up to 65,000 tons a year by 1987) to the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s, some of whom later became members the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. Not surprisingly, once the Taliban came to power it was not willingly directed by the United States, refusing repeated requests by the Clinton administration to kick out Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda leadership. In Rwanda, the United States didn’t provide arms or intervene militarily during the genocide in 1994, yet somehow Paul Kagame’s government finds itself able to accept $200M in U.S. foreign assistance every year. Likewise, the future leaders of Syria will act in their own national interests with whoever it needs to, regardless of who is arming or funding the revolution today. Iran. In an op-ed that represents the opinion of many intervention proponents, Danielle Pletka wrote: “Ousting Tehran’s last reliable satellite regime and replacing it with a Sunni, democratic government would reassure our friends in the region that Washington is determined to stand up to Iran when necessary.” Described more vividly by James Dobbins at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last week: “There’s nothing more effective I think to put the Iranian threat in some perspective and reduce its pressure on Israel than to flip Syria.” It is doubtful that Syria’s opposition will appreciate that their revolution is used to “flip” their country’s relationship with Iran. Furthermore, to restate the point about country’s acting in their own national interests, one often repeated side-benefit of regime change in Iraq was that a non-Saddam Hussein leader in Baghdad would both cooperate closely with America and serve as a bulwark against Iran—neither happened. A transformative moment. As a Washington lobbyist hired by the Syrian opposition to drum up support on Capitol Hill admitted: "There is a window of opportunity. What we do now will affect the region for the next 20 to 30 years." This sort of grandiose thinking echoes President George H.W. Bush who kicked-off the first Gulf War in 1991 by proclaiming “We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order.” It also reflects what many neo-conservative Bush administration officials proposed would be the tremendous spill-over gains from the shock-and-awe campaign that toppled Saddam Hussein. The costs ($810 billion and counting) and horrendous human consequences of the 2003 Gulf War should dissuade anybody that Washington can channel a revolution in Syria along a course that benefits only the interests of America and its allies in the Middle East. The nine-month run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003 was a notable case of “justification fatigue,” where the intellectual arguments favoring regime change were more developed than the political-military plans to rebuild the country once Saddam fell. Whether in Syria, or elsewhere, citizens should carefully judge the merits of the many justifications offered, and decide for themselves whether it is worth the costs and consequences of intervening in another country.

Matthew Fuhrmann is assistant professor of political science at Texas A&M University and a former Stanton nuclear security fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of Atomic Assistance: How “Atoms for Peace” Programs Cause Nuclear Insecurity. Iran’s nuclear program poses a threat to many nations—particularly Israel and the United States. Yet, it is sometimes forgotten that Washington was an early supporter of Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. The United States provided peaceful nuclear assistance to Iran from 1957 to 1979, when the two states were allies. Washington exported the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR), enriched uranium to fuel it, and “hot cells,” which can be used to produce plutonium—a critical ingredient for making nuclear weapons. All of this aid was provided for civilian uses, but it ended up indirectly augmenting Iran’s nuclear weapons program. For example, from 1988 to 1992 Iran conducted covert plutonium reprocessing experiments using fuel pellets irradiated in the TRR. The Iranian experience exposes a problem known as the dual-use dilemma: because nuclear technology has both peaceful and military applications, nuclear energy aid provides a potential foundation for a bomb program. However, this danger has not deterred the United States from providing nuclear energy assistance to many countries. Today, for instance, Washington is in the midst of negotiating agreements with Jordan and Vietnam that would permit the sharing of nuclear technology, materials, and know-how. Deals such as these could be a recipe for the further spread of nuclear weapons. In a new book, I explore the relationship between peaceful nuclear assistance and nuclear proliferation. Based on an analysis of global nuclear commerce from 1945 to 2000, I show that states are much more likely to covet (and successfully build) nuclear weapons when they accumulate atomic assistance—particularly if they experience an international crisis after receiving aid. Iran is just one of several proliferators that benefited from nuclear energy assistance. India conducted a nuclear test in 1974 using plutonium that was produced in a Canadian-supplied civilian reactor. Iraq probably intended to use a French-supplied civilian facility known as “Osiraq” for military purposes before it was bombed by Israel in 1981. And scientists from North Korea and South Africa received training—from the Soviet Union and the United States, respectively—under the auspices of civilian nuclear cooperation that ultimately facilitated nuclear proliferation. The international community has instituted a variety of measures—including International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards— to limit the proliferation potential of peaceful nuclear aid. Yet, as Iran, Iraq, Libya, South Korea, and others have shown, motivated states can circumvent existing rules and regulations with relative ease. Why, then, do countries provide peaceful nuclear assistance? Suppliers typically offer aid to “buy” cooperation from the recipient country. For example, the United States assisted Iran’s nuclear program to shore up its military alliance with Tehran and to influence Iranian policies on oil pricing. Nuclear exporters hope that they can reap the political and economic benefits of nuclear assistance without contributing to nuclear proliferation. Yet, in the long run, their gambles often backfire. The United States and other suppliers should revise their nuclear trade policies to prevent history from repeating itself. Requiring customers to refrain from building indigenous uranium enrichment or plutonium reprocessing plants (these facilities can produce bomb-grade materials) after accumulating relevant knowledge through peaceful nuclear assistance would be a particularly fruitful policy. Washington has so far expressed little enthusiasm about applying this policy across the board. However, swift action is needed to help prevent future crises like the one that is ongoing in Iran.

On June 1, 2012, the New York Times featured a remarkable work of journalism by David Sanger that opened with the following revelation: “From his first months in office, President Obama ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program.” In his 2009 book The Inheritance, Sanger revealed details about the National Security Agency’s (NSA) penetration of Iranian government computers—also known as cyber exploitation—that helped inform the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which judged “with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” Sanger also offered clues about activities covered in a spring 2008 presidential finding that authorized covert action in Iran, including “efforts to interfere with the power supply to nuclear facilities—something that can sometimes be accomplished by tampering with computer code, and getting power sources to blow up.” While there were leaks about suspected U.S. covert activities targeting the Iranian nuclear program, no confirming evidence about the offensive cyber attacks had been published before last month. Many members of Congress and Obama administration officials reacted with the rote condemnation that has followed national security leaks throughout history. These most recent leaks, however, prompted a new and surprising response: freed from the normative constraints against offensive cyber attacks, other states and nonstate actors will now target the United States with unrelenting cyber attacks against its critical infrastructures. In an interview in the National Journal, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Representative Mike Rogers warned: “Other nations, or even terrorists or hackers, might now believe they have justification for their own cyberattacks.” Senator Diane Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, argued that the leak could “to some extent” provide justification for similar cyber attacks against the United States. During a recent hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, former CIA director Michael Hayden and Senator John McCain had the following exchange: HAYDEN: Going to cyber, whether the story was true or false, a publication that the United States was responsible for that activity is almost taunting the Iranians to respond at a time and in a manner of their own choosing. MCCAIN: I was just going to say if I were the head of Iranian intelligence, I’d have been in the supreme leader’s office the next day. HAYDEN: I would have gone in with something. Mr. Khamenei, remember that briefing I gave you about a year ago and you told me to put it on the back-burner? Well, I’ve brought it forward. And in the absence of any Obama administration scapegoat, Sanger has often been targeted in the outcry against the leaks. In a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, Colonel Kenneth Allard (ret.) declared, “If all of a sudden, utilities stop operating, you have [Sanger] to thank for it.” (In a truly revealing anecdote about the lack of congressional oversight over such high-risk covert operations, Representative Dan Lungren wondered aloud at the same hearing: “Would it bother you to know that the detail that was described in the New York Times, if true, is a level of detail not presented to members of Congress, such as the chairman of the Cybersecurity Subcommittee on Homeland Security, that is, happens to be me.”) Beyond the cyber attacks against Iran, Representative Louie Gohmert added, “You have the Taliban target a helicopter with nearly two dozen of SEAL Team Six members…when the vice president, the president outed SEAL Team Six?” If the Taliban successfully penetrated U.S. battlefield communications to the extent that, out of the one hundred thousand U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, they can identify who is on each helicopter, Gohmert should initiate a hearing on the subject as soon as possible. The argument that the leaks describing U.S. (and Israeli) offensive cyber attacks against Iran’s nuclear facilities will compel a commensurate response rests on three assumptions: Iran is a rational actor previously constrained by international norms. If this is true, congressional members should hold hearings to investigate the Obama administration’s breach of prohibitory norms. As Ward Thomas noted in his excellent book, The Ethics of Destruction: Norms and Force in International Relations, such “power-maintenance” norms work by banning “weapons or practices that have the potential to close the gap between strong and weak states in international society.” As President Obama wrote in a recent op-ed, “It’s time to strengthen our defenses against this growing danger.” If you believe in the power of norms as do House Republicans, then U.S. cyber attacks against Iran only served to amplify retaliatory threats. Iran was unaware that America was engaged in covert operations—cyber exploitation or attack—against its nuclear program. Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported, “The U.S. military is accelerating its cyberwarfare training programs in an aggressive expansion of its preparations for conflict on an emerging battlefield.” The Air Force lieutenant colonel who oversees one of the cyber courses noted, "Our curriculum is based on attack, exploit and defense of the cyber domain.” If Iranian officials subscribe to the Journal or read anything about the NSA, they would be well aware that preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon is the highest national security priority for the United States. And that the United States would utilize its well-publicized, unmatched cyber capabilities to achieve this goal. Leaks about U.S. covert actions against weak and distant states lead to a retaliation against America using similar means. In April 1984—after a few cocktails—Senator Barry Goldwater spontaneously read a classified memo on the Senate floor that detailed the direct role of the CIA in mining three Nicaraguan harbors. The next day, the Wall Street Journal ran the headline, “U.S. Role in Mining Nicaraguan Harbors Reportedly Is Larger than First Thought.” Did the Sandista government respond by mining American harbors, or retaliate directly? Unauthorized leaks by government officials are a routine, if at times unfortunate, occurrence in Washington, DC—no matter who occupies the White House. However, it is ridiculous to believe that these particular revelations from David Sanger would now untie Tehran’s cyber warriors to target U.S. critical infrastructure. The Iranian regime is assuredly exploring this capability as well, and its decision to attack will not hinge on a New York Times headline.

In his memoir My American Journey, Colin Powell recollects his tours in Vietnam, first as a U.S. Army captain in 1962 and 1963, and later as a major in 1968 and 1969. Due to the length of the war, Powell notes that many officers and noncommissioned officers deployed to Vietnam were wholly unprepared, leading to a “breakdown in morale, discipline, and professional judgment.” I recall a phrase we used in the field, MAM, for military-age male. If a helo spotted a peasant in black pajamas who looked remotely suspicious, a possible MAM, the pilot would circle and fire in front of him. If he moved, his movement was judged evidence of hostile intent, and the next burst was not in front but at him. Brutal? Maybe so. The term “military-age male” is not defined in military doctrine, though it is routinely used by military officials in counterinsurgency operations to describe individuals who are deemed guilty not based on evidence, but rather on their demography. For example, in unsecured areas of Afghanistan all “fighting-age males,” which comprise any male between the ages of fifteen and seventy, may be required to undergo a biometric scan by U.S. soldiers or Afghan security forces. More recently, military-age male reentered the lexicon of American warfare with a New York Times passage describing the Obama administration’s methodology for “signature strikes” by drones against unnamed individuals: It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent. Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good. As I have noted elsewhere, “signature strikes” against military-age males did not begin under Obama, but originated in early 2008 under Bush. As first revealed in a February 2008 New York Times article: Instead of having to confirm the identity of a suspected militant leader before attacking, this shift allowed American operators to strike convoys of vehicles that bear the characteristics of Qaeda or Taliban leaders on the run, for instance, so long as the risk of civilian casualties is judged to be low. In the summer of 2008, President Bush lowered the threshold even further for who could be targeted in Pakistan. According to a Bush administration official: “We got down to a sort of ‘reasonable man’ standard. If it seemed reasonable, you could hit it.” One of the more disturbing recent revelations into White House foreign policy decision-making is that President Obama authorized targeted drone strikes while unaware that he had actually authorized signature strikes. According to Daniel Klaidman, when Obama was first made aware of signature strikes, the CIA’s deputy director clarified: “Mr. President, we can see that there are a lot of military-age males down there, men associated with terrorist activity, but we don’t necessarily know who they are.” Obama reacted sharply, “That’s not good enough for me.” According to one adviser describing the president’s unease: “‘He would squirm…he didn’t like the idea of kill ‘em and sort it out later.’” Like other controversial counterterrorism policies inherited by Obama, it did end up “good enough,” since he allowed the practice to stand in Pakistan, and in April authorized the CIA and JSOC to conduct signature strikes in Yemen as well. Although signature strikes have been known as a U.S. counterterrorism tactic for over four years, no administration official has acknowledged or defended them on-the-record. Instead, officials emphasize that targeted killings with drones (the official term is “targeted strikes”) are only carried out against specific individuals, which are usually lumped with terms like “senior” and “al-Qaeda.” Harold Koh: “The United States has the authority under international law, and the responsibility to its citizens, to use force, including lethal force, to defend itself, including by targeting persons such as high-level al-Qaeda leaders who are planning attacks.” John Brennan: “This Administration’s counterterrorism efforts outside of Afghanistan and Iraq are focused on those individuals who are a threat to the United States.” Jeh Johnson: “In an armed conflict, lethal force against known, individual members of the enemy is a long-standing and long-legal practice.” Eric Holder: “Target specific senior operational leaders of al Qaeda and associated forces.” In April, Brennan was asked, “If you could address the issue of signature strikes, which I guess aren’t necessarily targeted against specific individuals?” He replied: “You make reference to signature strikes that are frequently reported in the press. I was speaking here specifically about targeted strikes against individuals who are involved.” Shortly thereafter, when the White House spokesperson was asked about drone strikes, he simply stated: “I am not going to get into the specifics of the process by which these decisions are made.” It should be noted that while no government official will acknowledge or defend the practice, anonymous officials claim that the criteria for signature strikes is “tighter” today than when Obama entered office. The only known alteration to the practice is that the CIA changed its name. As Klaidman revealed: Signature strike has gotten to be sort of a pejorative term. They sometimes call it crowd killing. And it makes a lot of people uncomfortable. If you don’t have positive ID on the people you’re targeting with these drone strikes. So the CIA actually changed the name of signature strikes to something called TADS. I had the acronym but I didn’t know what it stood for. I had a couple of words. I kind of figured it out. Terrorist, T for terrorist, S for strike and I was trying to find out what does the A-D stand for. Eventually I figured it out. It was Terrorist attack disruption strike. And I was going to put it in Newsweek. And actually it was the excerpt from my book. And various agencies from the government were very unhappy about that. I sort of could not understand why. They said, well, it’s a classified term. And I said, well, why would it be classified? It doesn’t make any sense. It’s just a term to describe a particular kind of activity that we know takes place. They asked me not to print it. You know, I printed it anyway. No matter how U.S. officials (secretly) refer to the practice, signature strikes against military-age men have been part of U.S. targeted killings outside of battlefields from their beginning. In fact, the very first targeted killing was a signature strike. After a year-long manhunt and several missed opportunities by Yemeni soldiers, on November 3, 2002, a fusion of human intelligence assets and signals intercepts pinpointed Abu Ali al-Harithi—an operational planner in the al-Qaeda cell that bombed the USS Cole in 2002—and his bodyguards living in the Marib region near the border with Saudi Arabia. Yemeni and U.S. forces on the ground, supported by a Predator drone circling above, were monitoring al-Harithi’s group when they left a compound in two Toyota SUVs. All of the men were in one vehicle and the women in the other. According to an unnamed U.S. official, “If the women hadn’t gotten into another car, we wouldn’t have fired.” (A member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence later wondered, “What do we do, next time, if the women get into the car?”) Reportedly, the National Security Agency (NSA) intercepted a satellite phone call coming from the SUV filled with men. After an NSA analyst—who had listened to tapes of al-Harithi’s voice for years—heard confirming evidence, he shouted: “He’s in the backseat, and he’s giving the driver directions!” With that confirmation, a CIA-controlled Predator drone was authorized to fire a single Hellfire missile, which destroyed the SUV and killed al-Harithi, four unknown Yemenis, and Ahmed Hijazi (otherwise known as Kemal Derwish)—a naturalized U.S. citizen who recruited six men from Lackawanna, New York, to briefly attend an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. Ultimately, the Lackawanna Six pled guilty to providing material support to al-Qaeda and received sentences ranging from seven to nine years in federal prison. As the Los Angeles Times reported the drone strike: “Even though the CIA wasn’t sure who else was in the car, the customary rules of armed conflict say that anyone sitting next to a legitimate target such as Harithi was, in effect, accepting the risk of imminent death.” (Many international legal scholars would dispute this interpretation.) At the same time, U.S. officials acknowledged that the CIA did not know Hijazi was in the vehicle before the CIA launched the missile, although one later claimed his death was justifiable “collateral damage” since “he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.” It is plausible that the military-age males who happened to get into al-Harithi’s SUV that day were involved with the suspected al-Qaeda operative in planning terrorist plots. However, there is no way to know this with any certainty, and the Bush administration never presented any supporting evidence to this effect. Moreover, we will never know what specific evidence was used to target al-Harithi, because some of it came from suspected al-Qaeda operative Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri. In 2008, CIA director Hayden testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that Nashiri was one of three detainees that the CIA waterboarded, and information obtained by torture is not admissible in a military commission trial. Whether they are called signature strikes, crowd killing, or Terrorist Attack Disruption Strikes, all have been part of U.S. targeted killings from the start, and continue with the CIA’s tactic of staggered drone strikes to kill rescuers of initial victims. The Obama administration makes the false choice that kinetic counterterrorism options are either “large, intrusive military deployments” or drone strikes (although some signature strikes have been conducted with cruise missiles). Or, as former CIA official Henry Crumpton—who, according to his memoir, authorized the first U.S. drone strike on October 20, 2001, in Afghanistan—crudely described the dichotomy: “Look at the firebombing of Dresden, and compare what we’re doing today.” However, people have the right to disagree with the ethical and moral tradeoffs of how drone strikes are currently conducted, and the unwillingness of the Obama administration to discuss them, as well as Congress’ reticence to question them. After ten years of signature strikes, isn’t this a debate worth having?

Rebecca Hamilton, “Special Report: The Wonks Who Sold Washington on South Sudan,” Reuters, July 11, 2012. They called themselves the Council and gave each other clannish nicknames: the Emperor, the Deputy Emperor, the Spear Carrier. The unlikely fellowship included an Ethiopian refugee to America, an English-lit professor and a former Carter administration official who once sported a ponytail. The Council is little known in Washington or in Africa itself. But its quiet cajoling over nearly three decades helped South Sudan win its independence one year ago this week. Across successive U.S. administrations, they smoothed the path of southern Sudanese rebels in Washington, influenced legislation in Congress, and used their positions to shape foreign policy in favor of Sudan’s southern rebels, often with scant regard for U.S. government protocol. Paul West, “Romney, Echoing Senator Rubio, Sees Venezuelan Threat to U.S. Security,” Los Angeles Times, July 11, 2012. “The idea that this nation, that this president, doesn’t pose a national security threat to this country is simply naïve. It’s an extraordinary admission on the part of this president to be completely out of touch with what is happening in Latin America… This is a very misguided and misdirected thought,” he said. (3PA: According to the Congressional Budget Office, the United States spends $699 billion on defense annually, whereas Venezuela spends $3.3 billion. For more on Romney’s history of threat inflation, click here.) Sara Sorcher, “Insiders: Drones Strikes Right Approach in Current Phase of War on Terror,” National Journal, July 9, 2012. Two-thirds of National Journal’s National Security Insiders believe that the Obama administration’s increasing use of drone strikes to kill terrorism suspects overseas is the right approach—but many cautioned that Washington should not overuse the tactic. “The drone strike tactic…cuts both ways. Kills terrorists and infrastructure but reinforces view of some that U.S. is at war with Islam,” said one Insider who supports the accelerated use of drone strikes targeting militants in countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. “[We] need to develop local allies to fight and control territory." Another added: “It is right but insufficient. Whack-a-mole only goes so far." Tom Junod, “The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama,” Esquire, July 9, 2012. Paul Schemm, “Officials: Feared Al-Qaida Offshoot Neutralized,” Associated Press, July 9, 2012. Six years after joining the Osama bin Laden franchise, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb — known by its acronym AQIM — appears to have been neutralized in the nation where it originated and made its name, officials and experts say, corralled into a remote mountain area and reduced to occasional pinprick shootings against soldiers. Most experts agree there remain just a few hundred combatants holed up in Algeria’s Kabylie mountains. Steve Chapman, “The Arms Race That Won’t Happen,” Chicago Tribune, July 8, 2012. Nuclear proliferation is always said to be on the verge of suddenly accelerating, and somehow it never does. In 1981, there were five declared nuclear powers — the U.S., the Soviet Union, China, Britain and France — as well as Israel, which was (and is) undeclared. And today? The number of members added since then is not 15 but three: India, Pakistan and North Korea. Most of the other countries on the list of likely proliferators never came close — including Argentina, Chile, Morocco and Tunisia. Iraq tried and failed. Libya made an effort and then chose to give up. The peril was greatly overblown. It probably is again. But our leaders are not about to let mere history debunk the apocalyptic scenarios. They are committed to a policy based on fear rather than experience. Kelly McEvers, “Yemen Airstrikes Punish Militants and Civilians,” National Public Radio, July 6, 2012. In the escalating air war in Yemen, it’s extremely difficult to figure out who is responsible for any given strike. There are four possibilities: It could be a manned plane from the Yemeni Air Force or the U.S. military. Or it could be an unmanned drone flown by the U.S. military or the CIA. All are being used in the fight against al-Qaida and other militant groups in Yemen. But no matter who launches a particular strike, Yemenis are likely to blame it on the Americans. What’s more, we found that many more civilians are being killed than officials acknowledge. Neither the Yemeni government nor the U.S. military will say much about the strikes. When asked about this story, a Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Jack Miller, said, "While we acknowledge that the U.S. conducts targeted strikes against al-Qaida terrorists, we cannot confirm specific counterterrorism operations. We take great care to avoid civilian casualties. Our counterterrorism operations are precise, lawful and effective." The Yemeni government does acknowledge its role in airstrikes, though it typically provides only limited and piecemeal information. The casualty figures given by the government are often lower than those that residents or journalists find at the scene of attacks, particularly when it comes to civilian casualties. Carlo Munoz, “Report: Pakistan Pushes for Control of U.S. Drone Strikes,” The Hill, July 6, 2012. Specifically, Pakistan is asking for control over the human intelligence assets inside the country that pinpoint locations and targets for American drones, according to the official. Granting Pakistani officials that kind of authority would essentially allow Islamabad to dictate which targets U.S. military and intelligence forces can hit inside the country. Department of Defense, Annual Report on Military Power of Iran (PDF), April 2012.

Today, the Pew Research Center released its latest Pew Global Attitudes Project public opinion survey, conducted in twenty-one countries in March and April of this year through phone or in-person interviews. The results lead with the headline (which shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone following U.S. targeted killing policies) “Drone Strikes Widely Opposed.” Of the twenty-one countries that were polled, only Pakistanis’ opinions were not released in this poll—according to a footnote, “A different question about drone strikes was asked in Pakistan and will be released in a subsequent report.” Participants in the other twenty countries were asked the following question: “Do you approve or disapprove of the United States conducting missile strikes from pilotless aircraft called drones to target extremists in countries such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia?” The only country in which a majority of respondents (62 percent) approved of U.S. drone strikes was the United States. Interestingly, this marks a significant decline from a February Washington Post poll that found 83 percent of Americans supported the use of drones “against terrorist suspects overseas.” Outside of the United States, however, the overwhelming majority of respondents oppose drone strikes in seventeen of the twenty countries, including among U.S. allies or partners: Greece (90 percent), Egypt (89 percent), Jordan (85 percent), Turkey (81 percent), Spain (76 percent), Brazil (76 percent), Japan (75 percent), and Mexico (73 percent). The only two outliers were Great Britain, where only 47 percent oppose drone strikes, and India, where 47 percent did not answer the question at all. Another notable finding was the gender gap of support for U.S. drone strikes. In the ten countries for which a male to female breakdown was provided, markedly more men approved of the attacks than women: Brazil (26 to 12 percent), Germany (54 to 24 percent), and Japan (32 to 11 percent), and the United States (74 to 51 percent). Despite the seemingly pervasive opposition by their citizens, the leaders in these countries have either explicitly supported U.S. drone strikes by hosting them on their air bases, or implicitly by refusing to raise the issue in international forums where the U.S. human rights record could be debated, such as the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review. Faced with escalating drone missions in an increasing set of countries, most governments are simply silent. If the United States has learned anything from the Arab Spring, it is that the voices of disaffected citizens must be accounted for when planning and conducting foreign policy. In many countries—most notably Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen—CIA and Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) drone strikes are the face of U.S. foreign policy. This recent poll should serve as an impetus for the relevant House and Senate foreign relations committees, which currently have zero oversight over U.S. targeted killing policies, to bring these issues to light and debate how they fit into broader, long-term foreign policy objectives.

This morning, the headline of a New York Times article read: “Senators to Open Inquiry Into ‘Kill List’ and Iran Security Leaks.” The article quotes Senator John McCain on the Senate floor yesterday decrying the release of classified information on U.S. drone and cyber operations: “Such disclosures can only undermine similar ongoing or future operations and, in this sense, compromise national security. For this reason, regardless of how politically useful these leaks may be to the president, they have to stop.” The article spurred a flurry of statements from across the U.S. government. This morning, when asked whether the White House should be allowed to confirm al-Qaeda officials killed by CIA drone strikes, McCain replied: “I think for example the elimination of these individuals is perfectly unclassified information and is important information.” The Pentagon spokesperson meanwhile refused to acknowledge whether a drone strike took place at all: “As you know, we don’t talk about the specifics the counterterrorism operations, so I’m not going to be able to confirm those press reports.” Elsewhere, Secretary of Defense Panetta acknowledged: “We are fighting a war in the FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas], we are fighting a war against terrorism.” The Senate hearings spearheaded by Senator McCain will reportedly investigate, in part, the CIA and U.S. military “kill lists” of suspected terrorists and militants. Like other recently-published “revelations” about U.S. targeted killings policies, these disclosures are nothing new. An article by Barton Gellman in the Washington Post on December 19, 2001, revealed—for the first time—the existence of a kill list. In his overview of the Clinton administration’s counterterrorism strategies in response to the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa, Gellman wrote the following: Immediately after the embassy bombings, he issued a "finding" under the 1974 Hughes-Ryan Amendment enabling intelligence agencies to fund covert operations against bin Laden. The finding’s primary directive was to track and capture the al Qaeda leader, though it authorized use of lethal force in the attempt. Within months Clinton amended the finding three times, using a form of presidential authority known as a Memorandum of Notification. Each was classified as sensitive compartmented information, Top Secret/Codeword… The first change, almost immediate, was to broaden the authority of U.S. officers or their recruited agents to use lethal force, enabling them to engage bin Laden and the fighters around him without any prospect of taking him into custody…. Clinton’s second Memorandum of Notification expanded the target of the covert campaign. It named a handful of close lieutenants -- sources said fewer than 10 -- to be captured or killed if found separately from bin Laden…. Berger and Tenet brought Clinton a third Memorandum of Notification. Clinton signed off on direct authority to shoot down private aircraft in which bin Laden traveled. Because such a flight would probably be deemed civil aviation in international law, and people unconnected to bin Laden might die, this was regarded in the White House as a significant step. Additional information about these three memos appear in the 2004 9/11 Commission Report (pp. 131-133); Steve Coll’s 2004 masterpiece, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (pp. 423-428); President Clinton’s My Life (p. 804); Richard Clarke’s 2004, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror (pp. 203-204); and Phillip Shennon’s 2008, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation (pp. 357-360). Elsewhere, I’ve written about where four other kill lists were first openly reported. If the Senate is serious about getting to the bottom of this most recent “leak,” it would do well to hire some historians and interview former Clinton administration officials. More broadly, the recent uproar calls into question U.S. government officials who seemingly cherry-pick among information to publicly disclose, blurring the lines between what is deemed classified and unclassified. It is impossible for the Obama administration to continue to sidestep disclosure, transparency, and oversight by claiming that U.S. drone operations in Pakistan and Yemen are “covert.” At the end of the day, however, it is long past time for Congress to exercise their constitutional authority and investigate America’s surgical, lethal approach to fighting suspected terrorists.

Today, the National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC) released its 2011 Report on Terrorism. The report offers the U.S. government’s best statistical analysis of terrorism trends through its Worldwide Incidents Tracking System (WITS), which compiles and vets open-source information about terrorism—defined by U.S. law as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.” Although I invite you to read the entire thirty-one page report, there are a few points worth highlighting that notably contrast with the conventional narrative of the terrorist threat: “The total number of worldwide attacks in 2011, however, dropped by almost 12 percent from 2010 and nearly 29 percent from 2007.” (9) “Attacks by AQ and its affiliates increased by 8 percent from 2010 to 2011. A significant increase in attacks by al-Shabaab, from 401 in 2010 to 544 in 2011, offset a sharp decline in attacks by al-Qa‘ida in Iraq (AQI) and a smaller decline in attacks by al-Qa‘ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and al-Qa‘ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).” (11) “In cases where the religious affiliation of terrorism casualties could be determined, Muslims suffered between 82 and 97 percent of terrorism-related fatalities over the past five years.” (14) Of 978 terrorism-related kidnapping last year, only three hostages were private U.S. citizens, or .3 percent. A private citizen is defined as ‘any U.S. citizen not acting in an official capacity on behalf of the U.S. government.’ (13, 17) Of the 13,288 people killed by terrorist attacks last year, seventeen were private U.S. citizens, or .1 percent. (17) According to the report, the number of U.S. citizens who died in terrorist attacks increased by two between 2010 and 2011; overall, a comparable number of Americans are crushed to death by their televisions or furniture each year. This is not to diminish the real—albeit shrinking—threat of terrorism, or to minimize the loss and suffering of the 13,000 killed and over 45,000 injured around the world. For Americans, however, it should emphasize that an irrational fear of terrorism is both unwarranted and a poor basis for public policy decisions.

Alexandra Gibb and Cameron Tulk, “A Drone Field Guide,” Canadian International Council, May 31, 2012. Ashton B. Carter, Speech to the American Enterprise Institute, May 30, 2012. Q: Since 9/11, as you talk about this transition, there’s been a lot of money poured into ISR resources, for obvious reason. Can you walk us through what the Pentagon’s plan is for reconciling the ISR forces of the future, given the fact that we’ve fielded so many quick- reaction systems that are maintenance-needy and unique and whatnot? And also, at what point, if you haven’t already, will you start shifting funds from the current ISR programs we know of today toward new sensors and/or new platforms maybe that can penetrate and such that we need for the future? CARTER: What you’re calling a shift, has begun; actually began a couple years ago. And I’m limited in what we say about our future ISR capabilities, but trust me that we’re investing in the future. With respect to the ones -- you’re so right -- that we put together quickly, under the pressure of combat, and which have been so amazingly successful, they do pose a managerial issue for us after the war because they were not essentially designed to last; they don’t necessarily have all the features that we wanted in a force that will be an enduring part of the force. So, for the Predator/Reapers -- the MQ-1s and MQ-9s, for example -- the Air Force has had to work through a very complicated process. We do intend to make them an enduring part of the Air Force’s force structure, but we had to figure out where -- how to do that. It wasn’t just the airframes; it’s how to crew them over time, how to train the crews, where to put the crews and so forth. Likewise for the Liberty fleet. Liberty fleet also a very much of a quick reaction-type of fleet. These are the little turbo props with a lot of ISR SIGINT and so forth on them, also essential, and we are going to keep a portion of that fleet. There will be things that we built up for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that are not worth keeping in the force structure because they’ll be outdated or they’re not suited to more contested air environments. Afghanistan is obviously not a contested air environment. You can just fly around and do what you want. And that won’t be the case everywhere in the world. So that’s an example of a big transition in the Air Force. And by the way, it has the manned to unmanned transition aspect to it also. So there are a lot of difficult adjustments going on here at the same time. Sudarsan Raghavan, “In Yemen, U.S. airstrikes breed anger and sympathy for al-Qaeda,” Washington Post, May 30, 2012. “Every time the American attacks increase, they increase the rage of the Yemeni people, especially in al-Qaeda-controlled areas,” said Mohammed al-Ahmadi, legal coordinator for Karama, a local human rights group. “The drones are killing al-Qaeda leaders, but they are also turning them into heroes.” PBS Frontline, “Understanding Yemen’s al-Qaeda Threat,” Map 29, 2012. Department of Defense News Briefing, May 29, 2012. Q: George, has the Pentagon been given authorization to conduct drone strikes on suspected terrorists even if they don’t have an actual name, as they have been in Yemen? Have they been given that authorization in other parts of the world? And if not, what is so specific about Yemen to have that authorization there? LITTLE: The use of these weapons is something I’m not going to get into the particulars on. But I can tell you that they’re extremely precise, they’re lawful, and they’re extremely effective. And that is something that we’re going to continue to try to make sure we ensure happens; that they are precise, that they operate within the confines of American law and policy and that they are effective. When it comes to Yemen, I wouldn’t get into the particulars of our CT operations. But we’re working closely with the Yemenis to pursue the CT (sic) threat and to try to thwart it, especially from AQAP. Q: Can I follow up on that? What’s the justification -- you say they’re precise, but there seems to be absolutely no question that civilians do get killed in these strikes. So what’s the justification in the department’s mind, in the administration’s mind for this type of killing of civilians? LITTLE: Well, again, I have to operate within certain parameters here, Barbara. But I would take very strong issue with any suggestion that these systems result in widespread civilian casualties. Q: Well, I didn’t use the word widespread, of course. But the point is now it -- I mean, it’s out in the open from many, many government officials, including Mr. Brennan at the White House that these strikes occur. And yet the administration continues to say that the number of civilian casualties are small, if at all. But it doesn’t seem to hold water. So -- LITTLE: I don’t know what you’re comparing, but I can assure you that the number of civilian casualties is very, very low. Q: (Inaudible) -- can you describe what you mean by that? Or you’re -- in Pakistan and Yemen, where these strikes are now -- and Afghanistan, where these strikes are now public knowledge, acknowledged by the White House, can you describe what the level of civilian casualties is, especially in Yemen? LITTLE: The specifics I can’t get into. But I can provide you and the American public assurances that we take every step possible to avoid civilian casualties in all of our operations, military and counterterrorism alike.  Q: But you don’t have boots on the ground, though, in Yemen. How -- many people might wonder -- (off mic) -- that the level of civilian casualties -- people might just be curious how the government can come to that statement. LITTLE: Again, without getting into particulars about sources or methods or intelligence operations, we have very good means of assessing the extent to which our weapons platforms for military or CT operations result in civilian casualties. And we’re very confident that the number is very low.  Daniel Klaidman, “Drones: How Obama Learned to Kill,” Newsweek, May 28, 2012. ABC News, “’This Week’ Transcript: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta,” May 27, 2012. TAPPER: President Obama recently said that -- recently told John Brennan, his counterterrorism adviser at the White House that he wanted a little bit more transparency when it comes to drones, which are the - is one of the approaches that you’re alluding to in Yemen. And "The Times of London" reported last week that the civilian casualties in Yemen as a result of drone strikes have, quote, "emboldened Al Qaeda." Is there not a serious risk that this approach to counterterrorism, because of its imprecision, because of its civilian casualties, is creating more enemy than it is killing? PANETTA: First and foremost, I think this is one of the most precise weapons that we have in our arsenal. Number two, what is our responsibility here? Our responsibility is to defend and protect the United States of America. And using the operations that we have, using the systems that we have, using the weapons that we have, is absolutely essential to our ability to defend Americans. That’s what counts, and that’s what we’re doing. (3PA: You will note that the secretary of defense in no way answers the question posed.) Ken Dilanian and Rebecca Keegan, “Hollywood a Longtime Friend of the CIA,” Los Angeles Times, May 26, 2012. "These are smart people," said Michael Frost Beckner, who wrote and produced "The Agency." "They have their agenda in mind, and if you’re serving their agenda, they play ball with you." One episode in the series, which aired for two seasons, featured the CIA firing a Hellfire missile from a Predator drone at a terrorist in Pakistan, a relative rarity at the time. A few weeks later, Beckner recalled, a CIA drone strike occurred and made headlines. "The Hellfire missile thing, they suggested that," Beckner said. "I didn’t come up with this stuff. I think they were doing a public opinion poll by virtue of giving me some good ideas."

Today—eighty-nine days past its legal deadline—the State Department released its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2011. The new, user-friendly interface allows you to find and read individual country chapters much more quickly and easily (and might explain the delay). For all its flaws, the report remains a must-read for its reporting and candor. It serves as a generally honest counter to the rosier assessments of U.S. partners and allies’ human rights practices. From my vantage point of trying to understand the Obama administration’s policies and practices of target killings, the report is also notable for what it does not include; namely, any mention of U.S. involvement in or responsibility for such operations. The chapter on Yemen, for instance, has an entire section dedicated to “killings:” The government also employed air strikes against AQAP and affiliated insurgents in Abyan, with some strikes hitting civilian areas. Although some accused the government of intentionally striking civilians in Abyan, most if not all noncombatant casualties from these bombardments were attributed to a lack of air force training and technical capability. First, because U.S. targeted killings in Yemen are “covert,” the State Department cannot acknowledge American complicity or collusion. But it stands to reason that some, if not a majority, of these air strikes were carried out by CIA or Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) drones, or even U.S. Navy assets offshore. Even the most careful, discriminate, and “surgical” uses of force can unintentionally kill civilians. According to three Yemeni officials, for instance, two drone strikes earlier this month killed seven suspected AQAP militants and eight civilians. Second, given the CIA’s request to “broaden the aperature” by conducting “signature strikes” against anonymous AQAP militants based on “patterns of suspicious behavior,” the number of civilian casualties will only continue to increase. Today, Iona Craig reported meeting a farmer in Abyan, Yemen, who witnessed two separate air attacks that killed twenty-six people. According to the farmer, “They were all local people, many of them friends of mine." Third, although some of these strikes could have been carried out by Yemeni forces, civilians on the ground are hardly able to distinguish among Yemeni, CIA, and JSOC missiles. It would be difficult to devise a counterterrorism strategy that did a better job at creating a common enemy among victims or neutral third parties. Fourth, the State Department report implies that additional “air force training and technical capability” (presumably funded by U.S. taxpayers) would prevent civilian casualties in the future. The United States gave $326 million in (overt) security assistance to Yemen between 2007 and 2011, which has had negligible impact on the government’s ability to combat AQAP. In that same time period, AQAP has tripled in size and expanded its geographic reach and influence. According to Air Force General Ali Abdullah Saleh Al Haymi, “U.S. assistance was used to kill Yemeni people, not to kill al-Qaeda.” Beyond Yemen, the chapter on Turkey includes the section “Arbitrary or Unlawful Deprivation of Life,” which notes two unfortunate incidents: On December 28, military aircraft killed 34 civilians near the town of Uludere in an airstrike intended to kill members of the PKK. The government’s investigation was underway at year’s end… On several occasions throughout the year, the government used military aircraft to attack areas where the PKK terrorist organization was active in northern Iraq. According to press reports, fire from Turkish aircraft killed seven civilians in Iraq on August 21. Since November 2007, when the combined intelligence fusion cell opened in Ankara, the United States provides targeting information from manned and (more recently) unmanned aircraft to guide Turkish air strikes against suspected PKK members. Reportedly, a U.S. Predator drone provided the initial video imagery that led to a Turkish airstrike against a caravan of men, who turned out not to be PKK militants, but civilians. Every single State Department Human Rights report—2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010—since the U.S.-Turkey cell targeting opened warned of civilians killed in counterterrorism operations where the PKK was the intended target. Does the United States have a role in or responsibility for these unintentional civilian deaths that have persisted year after year? But the most remarkable and hypocritical aspect of U.S. unwillingness to acknowledge its role in civilians killed during counterterrorism operations, is that it reports other air strikes with collateral damage. The chapter on Somalia, for example, contains this finding: On October 30, a Kenyan military airstrike in the town of Jilib, Middle Juba, reportedly hit an IDP camp. According to Doctors Without Borders, its clinic received five dead and 45 wounded, mostly women and children, from the incident. The Kenyan military spokesperson dismissed reports of civilian casualties and instead claimed the aerial bombs had hit al-Shabaab targets who used the IDPs as human shields. Finally, the Pakistan chapter reveals, “During the year there were reports of civilian casualties and extrajudicial killings committed by government security forces during operations against militants.” There were also at least seventy CIA drone strikes in Pakistan over the same time period, at least some of which accidentally killed civilians and tribal police members. But you won’t read about that in this report.

An “urban legend” widely believed in Nigeria is that the United States government predicts that the country will breakup in 2015. Tokunbo Adedoja in a May 15 article in ThisDay, a widely circulated daily, puts this legend to rest. He has taken another look at the March 5, 2005, discussion paper issued by the National Intelligence council titled “Mapping Sub-Saharan Africa’s Future,” (PDF) from which this rumor emanated. The paper did include a discussion of a possible scenario in which there might be a military coup in Nigeria, which appears to be the basis for the claim that the U.S. government predicts the breakup of Nigeria. But, as Adedoja points out, the first page of the discussion paper carries a disclaimer saying “the views expressed are those of individuals and do not represent official US intelligence or policy positions. The National Intelligence Council routinely sponsors such unclassified conferences with outside experts to gain knowledge and insight to sharpen the level of debate on critical issues.” The document was made public and posted on the internet. Then president Obasanjo sent copies of the document to members of the Nigerian senate, thereby calling attention to it. However, that the publication did not represent official U.S. policy was a point I made at the time as ambassador during Obasanjo’s tenure, and others have made it since. I personally have been accused of predicting the breakup of Nigeria. I am innocent of the charge. I have never predicted the breakup of Nigeria because I have never thought it would happen. But, were it to do so, the likely consequence would be a humanitarian disaster. U.S. policy has always been to support a united Nigeria, governed by the rule of law and through democratic institutions.