Intelligence

David Ignatius, the CIA’s favored receptacle of leaked classified information, has a piece in today’s Washington Post that criticizes the Obama administration for acknowledging the existence of “covert” drone strikes. Ignatius makes several remarkable claims that each deserve a response. First, he writes: “What troubles me about the speech is that it further politicizes this realm of national-security policy…Since the program is no longer secret, Obama’s surrogates can now brag about it all they want.” Ignatius might not have read a newspaper in the past three years, but all the Obama administration has done—albeit anonymously—is brag about drone strikes. I have a laundry list of quotes that I could repost, but they all emphasize that targeted killings (by drones or other means) are surgical, precise, deliberate, discriminate, or near-infallible. In one representative sample, a senior administration official declared in March 2010: “If there are Predator operations in Pakistan, I would argue that the collateral damage is negligible at most, and that reports of intensified damage are a myth.” The welcome distinction is that administration officials can no longer hide behind the “covert” shield when journalists ask clarifying questions about targeted killings—if they decide to do so. Second, Ignatius claims: “Open debate about drone policy is valuable. I just wish Brennan hadn’t expanded it at the very time Obama’s political advisers are preparing to run partly on his tough-minded role as “covert commander in chief.” This begs the immediate question: when would be an appropriate time to have an open debate on what the United States has done more than 350 times in four countries since the first non-battlefield targeted killing in Yemen in November 2002?  Should there be a short window after a president takes the Oath of Office in which policymakers can debate America’s expanding targeted killing program? It is precisely because Obama is going to run on a campaign featuring a “tough” foreign policy via targeted killings that they should be openly discussed. If such military operations are to be a core pillar of the president’s reelection campaign, Democrats, Republicans, and independents have the right to greater transparency. Finally, Ignatius raises a number of sound questions about domestic and international legal standards for targeted killings, “or, to use a less euphemistic term, assassinations.” Many former officials, academics, and NGOs have raised these questions (and many others) for years, and it is nice to read Ignatius joining in on the chorus. However, he writes, “Ducking these questions was easier when drone attacks were part of a covert CIA program whose existence was officially denied by the U.S. government.” This sentence speaks for itself, and should be one that causes any journalist to blush with embarrassment. I’m not a journalist, but those I know and respect don’t generally conceive of their jobs as making life easy and convenient for political operatives during campaign season or for policymakers reviewing controversial policies that involves life or death decisions. There are many unanswered questions about the Obama administration’s targeted killings, but at least now there can be a debate and a demand for answers.

"As soon as they tell me it is limited, it means they do not care whether you achieve a result or not. As soon as they tell me ’surgical,’ I head for the bunker." General Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, September 1992.   “It’s this surgical precision—the ability, with laser-like focus, to eliminate the cancerous tumor called an al-Qa’ida terrorist while limiting damage to the tissue around it—that makes [drones] so essential.” John Brennan, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, April 30, 2012.   Yesterday, Brennan acknowledged the obvious in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center: “The United States Government conducts targeted strikes against specific al-Qa’ida terrorists, sometimes using remotely piloted aircraft, often referred to publicly as drones.” For commentators and analysts, including myself, who have called for the Obama administration to abandon the eight-year absurdity of so-called “covert” targeted killings, Brennan’s comments are welcomed and long overdue. The Obama administration deserves credit for finally recognizing that its position of false secrecy was no longer defensible or sustainable, given the increase in targeted killings since President Obama entered the White House—roughly three hundred and counting—and their centrality to U.S. counterterrorism strategies. Brennan’s speech is the product of an ongoing debate within the Obama administration regarding its targeted killings policies. According to some U.S. officials, the primary concern is not revealing operational details, but that open debate over drones could lead to political pressure in the United States or host countries that could ultimately restrict the program. As a senior U.S. official noted recently: "The big mistake was the administration—I did try to warn them—that once you put [drone strikes] on the table, it will only get worse. Sure enough (Pakistan) grabbed it, and they’ve run with it and now it’s the centerpiece of their negotiations." An important indicator of the Obama administration’s commitment to transparency and accountability will be how U.S. officials address targeted killings in the near-term. Three months ago, the president “revealed” some targeted killings in a response to a question from “Evan from Brooklyn” during a Google+ “Hang Out:” “Obviously a lot of these strikes have been in the FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan] going after al-Qaeda suspects.” The next day, White House spokesperson Jay Carney spoke at length about U.S. counterterrorism uses of drones as “exceptionally precise, exceptionally surgical and exceptionally targeted.” However, when a reporter asked Carney to expand on whether the president’s statement was “purposeful,” he responded, “I’m not going to discuss broadly or specifically supposed covert programs.” And drones were swept back under the rug. As the “covert” designation persisted, U.S. officials continued to be nonresponsive or misleading when discussing targeted killings. In a few of the more egregious examples, this includes: the director of the FBI not responding to the question, “Does the federal government have the ability to kill a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil?”; the unwillingness of the attorney general to admit the existence of legal memoranda that provides the legal justification for targeting U.S. citizens; and the Senate minority leader’s professed faith in the due process involved in targeting U.S. citizens, after admitting that he was unaware of the process itself. Like previous speeches by Brennan, Attorney General Eric Holder, and the senior legal officials of the State Department, Pentagon, and CIA, which all elliptically referred to targeted killings, yesterday’s speech raised more questions than answers. Can children be targets? Since Brennan sidestepped a question on “signature strikes,” how do such anonymous attacks square with what he referred to as “individual members of al-Qa’ida?” If “it is our preference to capture suspected terrorists whenever feasible,” why are capture operations exceedingly rare and kill missions increasingly common? If “we’re not going to rest until al-Qaeda the organization is destroyed and eliminated from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Africa, and other areas,” how will targeted killings achieve that goal? Meanwhile, journalists should press policymakers to provide straight answers about targeted killings. Citizens should demand that their congressional representatives—particularly those who serve on the foreign relations or armed services committees—hold hearings with U.S. officials to explore the increasing use of armed drones. As targeted killing policies inch out of the shadows, we deserve answers that officials should now be authorized to provide.

Background Briefing on the U.S. Military Realignment in Japan, April 26, 2012. QUESTION: And then how this [US-Japan security agreement] fits into the emerging strategic view of this building that rotational, small forces are better than these colossal bases that have been historically our footprint? SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Well, as you know, one of the goals of the administration in Asia is to create a—to build a presence in the Asia-Pacific that’s more geographically distributed.  And I think this agreement is part and parcel of that.  When you look at it in combination with our plans to build a rotational presence in Australia, what you have are sort of an ongoing ability for U.S. forces to be visible and present in multiple places across the region at any given time.  And we think that that presents advantages in building relations with partner countries; helping to respond to, for example, humanitarian emergencies; and as needed, respond to contingencies. “Khar: U.S. Not Listening to Our Drone Protests,” Dawn, April 26, 2012. “On drones, the language is clear: a clear cessation of drone strikes,” Pakistani foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar said. “I maintain the position that we’d told them categorically before. But they did not listen. I hope their listening will improve,” she said during an interview. General John Michael Loh (Ret.), “Stop Terrorists With More Airpower,” Wall Street Journal, April 25, 2012. The solution now should be to change the strategy from nation-building to relying on airpower to stop terrorists. President Barack Obama now recognizes that the precision, efficiency, low cost and near-zero casualties from an airpower strategy can allow withdrawal from Afghanistan soon while still attacking al Qaeda from wherever it chooses to operate globally. That is the unmistakable lesson from successful air attacks in Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere using airpower, not thousands of ground forces. Airpower provides the capabilities and global range for success against terrorism at a small fraction of the cost without huge ground invasions and unwanted occupation forces. Reverend Franklin Graham, “Bombing Sudan’s Air Bases Only Way to Protect Innocents,” Washington Times, April 25, 2012. As a pilot with 40 years of experience, I can assure you that an airplane doesn’t do well with holes in the runway. I certainly am not asking the president to kill anyone, just to break up some concrete to prevent the bombers from taking off. I think that by destroying those runways, we can force Mr. Bashir to the negotiating table. Tony Capaccio, “Al-Qaeda Seeks Cyber-Attack Skills, U.S. Official Says,” Bloomberg News, April 25, 2012. Cox said the constant references in the media to “cyber attacks” may be immunizing the public against concern because the term doesn’t capture the different dimensions of hacking the U.S. faces. “In some respects, it’s been a little over-hyped” because “the likelihood that an adversary is going to take down the entire power grid of the U.S. or stop the Internet—there’s huge amounts of resiliency built into the system that makes that kind of catastrophic thing very difficult,” he said. “But you could do more tailored, precise-type strikes” against the U.S. financial network “that results in an uncontrolled run on U.S. banks,” Cox said. Thanassis Cambanis, “You Can Stop Being Scared Now,” Boston Globe, April 22, 2012. (3PA: This is an assessment of the piece that Michael Cohen and I coauthored in the February/March issue of Foreign Affairs.) Global Immunization Data, World Health Organization, March 2012. Nearly 17 percent of all deaths in children under five are vaccine preventable. 29 percent of deaths in children between one and fifty-nine months of age are vaccine preventable. (3PA: For a fun depiction of the lifesaving power of vaccines, watch this short animated video in the 2011 annual letter from Bill and Melinda Gates.) Douglas Jehl, “Bahrain Rulers Say They’re Determined to End Village Unrest,” New York Times, January 28, 1996. "Yes, the Western countries and the people here talk about democracy," Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa said. "We are not afraid of democracy. We are afraid of the people who would misuse it." (3PA: Sheikh Khalifa is still the prime minister of Bahrain and is still afraid of democracy. As the latest State Department Human Rights Report stated in its chapter on Bahrain, “Citizens did not have the right to change their government.”)

Last week, while discussing U.S. military planning for the Korean Peninsula, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta warned, “No question we’re within an inch of war almost every day in that part of the world.” As a follow up, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Secretary Panetta what other issues kept him up at night. He responded: “Well, obviously Iran, Syria, the whole issue of turmoil in the Middle East, the whole issue of cyber war, the whole issue of weapons of mass destruction, rising powers—all of those things are threats that the United States faces in today’s world.” (Yesterday, Panetta inflated the worrisome geography to include “transnational threats” like “turmoil across the Middle East and North Africa” and the “threat of natural disasters.”) Panetta’s comments echoed a recent speech by General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to the Kennedy School at Harvard University, where he expanded on his earlier claim that the United States is living in the most dangerous time since 1974 by introducing the “security paradox.” According to Dempsey, trends of greater peace and stability are negated by the proliferation of lethal and destructive technologies available to state and nonstate actors: “More people have the ability to harm us or deny us the ability to act than at any point in my life.” Thus, although “we still have a lot of tricks up our sleeves, the message is that the margin of error has grown smaller.” These comments perfectly exemplify what I call the threat smorgasbord: an all-encompassing buffet of specific and generalized threats—emanating from states or nonstate actors (i.e., everyone)—which are presented in such a manner that there is always something lurking around the corner. Panetta characterizes the world as “challenging and unpredictable,” as Dempsey writes about “a more unpredictable and dangerous security environment.” The problem with exhibiting these national security threats (borrowing Panetta’s colorful description of deep defense cuts) as “blind,” “goofy,” and “across the board,” is that they are completely void of context. Threats are not prioritized by likelihood, plausible impact on U.S. national interests, or appropriate military response—if any. For example, concerns about “the whole issue of turmoil in the Middle East” have served as an organizing principle for the Pentagon since the Carter Doctrine (at least), although one would be hard-pressed to make the case that U.S. military operations and presence in the region were worth the bloated costs and loss of life. Based on Pentagon data, at least nine thousand U.S. servicemembers have died during deployments to the Middle East since 1980: Iranian hostage rescue, Iraq, Afghanistan, Beirut International Airport attack, and various air attacks against Syria and Libya. In inflation-adjusted dollars, the Iraq War (the one that started in 2003) has had greater direct costs ($810 billion)—and slightly increasing—than the Vietnam War ($738 billion). According to Harvard economist Linda Bilmes: “We can say for certain that the total cost will be at least $4 trillion. This figure could climb much higher, depending on the number of veterans who require long-term care, the cost of replacing equipment, and the full social and economic impact of the war.” Given that less than 13 percent of U.S. oil comes from the Middle East, protecting oil by spending double its worth is increasingly unjustifiable. The real target of these inflated and generalized national security threats are congressional appropriators, specifically the Senate Budget Committee chairman, Senator Kent Conrad. Last week, Senator Conrad indicated that he will attempt to revive the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (known as Bowles-Simpson) debt reduction plan, which was endorsed by eleven of the commission’s eighteen members in December 2010. Bowles-Simpson would cut projected deficits by $4 trillion through 2020. More importantly for the Pentagon, however, Bowles-Simpson “security” spending (a broad category that includes national defense, homeland security, nuclear weapons, and veterans affairs) would add an additional $450 billion to the defense spending cuts already projected ($487 billion over the next ten years) under the Budget Control Act of 2011. This is all familiar territory for Panetta. As House Budget Committee chairman, he fought with then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney over post-Cold War defense spending cuts. Not surprisingly, Panetta wanted to cut the Pentagon’s budget by up to 40 percent, while Cheney aimed for a less severe 25 percent. In one particularly contentious hearing in July 1991, Cheney fired at Panetta, “Message: We’ve already cut the living daylights out of the defense budget, Mr. Chairman.” Not surprisingly, Cheney won that round, and it is likely Panetta will fend off Senator Conrad this time as well. But, when Panetta elevates threats—such as his recent claim that Iran is expanding terrorist activities to Latin America, a nonevent—the intended effect is to scare you, and, more importantly, congressional appropriators. Consider yourself warned.

“The only valid national security reason for classifying information is that a hostile element whose goal is to damage the interests of the United States should not have use of the information.” Report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 1986 A democratic government is responsible for informing its citizens about its activities, while simultaneously protecting legitimate secrets that, if revealed, could potentially harm its national security. Nowhere has this tension been more pronounced than in America’s decade-long targeted killings campaign outside the battlefields in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. Since 9/11, the United States has attempted targeted killings in four other countries: approximately three hundred in Pakistan, thirty in Yemen, twenty in Somalia, and one in Syria. These attacks were primarily conducted by armed drones, but also by ship- and aircraft-launched cruise missiles, AC-130 gunships, and special operations raids. Although estimates vary, perhaps three thousand people were killed in these attacks, including suspected al-Qaeda members, local militants, and some unintended civilian victims. By any common-sense definition, these vast targeted killings should be characterized as America’s Third War since 9/11. Unlike Iraq and Afghanistan—where government agencies acted according to articulated strategies, congressional hearings and press conferences provided some oversight, and timelines explicitly stated when the U.S. combat role would end—the Third War is Orwellian in its lack of cogent strategy, transparency, and end date. The Bush and Obama administrations have contended that some—but not all—of their attempted targeted killings were covert actions, defined by law as “that the role of the United States Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly.” For example, President Obama acknowledged drone strikes in Pakistan in January: “Obviously a lot of these strikes have been in the FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan] going after al-Qaeda suspects.”  He added, “There’s this perception that we’re just sending a whole bunch of strikes willy-nilly,” but “this thing is kept on a very tight leash” and not managed by “a bunch of folks in a room somewhere just making decisions.” This is mere assertion. It echoes other senior administration officials’ repeated remarks about the legality, near-infallibility, effectiveness, and inevitability of targeted killings. The U.S. government has provided no information that would allow any review, scrutiny, or oversight of its 350-and-counting targeted killings. In Yemen, drone strikes target al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a terrorist organization that did not exist on 9/11 but now has “more than a thousand members,” according to John Brennan, senior White House counterterrorism adviser. Last week, CIA director David Petraeus reportedly requested permission to expand drone attacks in Yemen to include “signature strikes” against anonymous suspected members of AQAP. Since these attacks are covert, the administration will offer no public defense, although it begs Petraeus’s haunting question at the onset of the Iraq war in 2003: “Tell me how this ends?” Obviously, some operational details have not appeared in the open press and should remain classified. However, the existence of these drone strikes is no secret, and no longer justifies the thick veil of secrecy surrounding the program. When it comes to the well-documented U.S. targeted killings, there is no well-informed citizenry. The charade of the ‘covert’ nature of the Third War is indefensible.

The U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) is a sprawling network of roughly 210,000 civilian and military employees across seventeen agencies as well as approximately 30,000 private contractors. With a budget of $75 billion between the national and military intelligence programs, the IC is authorized to carry out a range of activities and programs, including monitoring suspected nuclear weapons programs, killing suspected terrorists, and analyzing ongoing events for everyone from President Obama to soldiers deployed in Afghanistan. In an effort to counter some myths and misperceptions, create positive associations, and recruit future employees, eleven of the seventeen agencies of the IC have web pages dedicated to “kids,” which are equal parts informative, entertaining, creepy, and borderline inappropriate. (Beware that some of these pages have broken links, depriving American children fascinated by the National-Geospatial Intelligence Agency.) Most U.S. government agencies also have websites for children, which are intended to provide useful information in an entertaining format. For example, the Consumer Products Safety Commission features a self-described “goatboy!” named Kidd Safety: “I’m eleven years old and live in Goatlahoma. Don’t try to find it on a map. It is in the middle of nowheresville.” Kidd Safety emphasizes wearing safety gear during playtime, and gives tips on ways to make your home less dangerous. A related “Hey Kids!” page includes this daunting challenge for young children: “Find out how to help save lives and protect yourself and your family.” At first glance, the IC kids’ pages raise puzzling questions. Why are the National Security Agency (NSA) Crypto Kids and its members registered trademarks?  How many hours have NSA lawyers spent making sure nobody profits off of Cypto Cat, Decipher Dog, or CSS Sam? Why does the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) kindergarten-fifth grade website, NRO Jr., play a haunting ambient soundtrack, while the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) Kids Zone features patriotic fife and drums? Why are the NRO ringtones so lame? (Try “Epic Launch”—it sounds like every Michael Bay film.) Why does the CIA’s Memorial Wall still refuse to name some agents who were killed on active duty over fifty years ago, whereas the K-9 Hall of Fame names twenty retired CIA dogs? At the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) kids web page, there are seven “missions” with “more to come!!” listed on the “mission control panel.” When you click the link for “air combat,” a uniformed avatar announces: “You have chosen to engage in air combat, good luck.” By using arrow keys to move from side-to-side and the space bar to fire, you attempt to defend yourself from incoming fighter aircraft. (Disclaimer: it’s hard!) Another DIA game entitled, “How Quickly Can you Sort These Top Secret Documents?” asks children to drag flying pieces of paper into a binder—a particularly apt metaphor for IC over-classification. The CIA has the “Aerial Analysis Challenge” for children who dream of spying on U.S. enemies from above. At the FBI, you can disguise “Bobby Bureau” with various accessories or facial features. At the NCTC Kids Zone, you can play tic-tac-toe with Liberty, an African-American girl dressed as the Statue of Liberty. For more practical information, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) “Ready Kids” includes a readiness manual that asks fourth and fifth grade children: “Are you ready to help your family get prepared for the unexpected?...How do you get prepared for emergencies?” To help ten-year olds prepare their families for natural disasters, fires, and terrorist attacks, the manual features an extremely muscular family of bobcats in human clothing explaining the four steps of preparedness, from “Know the Facts” to “Graduate from Readiness U!” Some children’s web pages recruit more aggressively than others. For example, the NSA has a student resources section that includes a picture of Slate, who is a rabbit that wears wrap-around shades, carries a trigonometry textbook, and is “really into music.” Above Slate’s head appears a question that most children will ask themselves at some point: “How Can I Work for NSA?” There, you will learn about the High School Work Study Program, which pays high school seniors around $20,000 for twenty to thirty-two hours of business computing or office technology work. The CIA, meanwhile, doesn’t want to hire kids immediately, but they do provide tips to improve their future prospects, such as: communicate and write well, speak a foreign language, and—most importantly—“Seriously, Just Say ‘No’.” All joking aside, most of these websites are harmless, albeit awkward, attempts to expose children to the U.S. Intelligence Community. Given the relentless efforts of advertising that children encounter on a daily basis, learning about the intelligence cycle from anthropomorphic animals is relatively tame, if uncool and unpersuasive.

On February 15, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee: “I can’t impress upon you that in my personal military judgment, formed over thirty-eight years, we are living in the most dangerous time in my lifetime, right now.” Two weeks later, during a House Budget Committee hearing, when asked to expand upon his earlier statement, he replied: “There are a wide variety of nonstate actors, super-empowered individuals, terrorist groups, who have acquired capabilities that heretofore were the monopoly of nation states. And so when I said that it’s the most dangerous period in my military career, thirty-eight years, I really meant it. I wake up every morning waiting for that cyber attack or waiting for that terrorist attack or waiting for that nuclear proliferation, waiting for that proliferation of technologies that makes it an increasingly competitive security environment around the globe.” Under U.S. law, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is the “principal military adviser to the President, the National Security Council, and the Secretary of Defense” on a range of issues, including strategic planning, contingency planning and preparedness, budgets, and training. I respect General Dempsey’s responsibility to prepare the armed forces to respond to a number of scenarios and contingencies. Although the chairman cannot order troops into battle, his authority stems from the bully pulpit of the nation’s most senior military official. However, I respectfully disagree with the assessment that America is in a more dangerous position today than at any other point since 1974, when General Dempsey graduated from West Point. Take nuclear weapons. As I pointed out previously, for the past sixty-two years, the U.S. intelligence community has continuously assessed the potential for nuclear terrorist attacks on the United States. Despite the expressed interest of three terrorists groups in acquiring a bomb, there is no known instance of a nonstate actor or “super-empowered” individual possessing a nuclear weapon, or the requisite fissile material to build one. Meanwhile, nine states—the United States, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, China, Israel, Pakistan, India, and North Korea—have the bomb. Moreover, the threat of nuclear terrorism is markedly reduced from the early 1990s, when more than thirty thousand nuclear weapons and tons of fissile material were poorly secured at over two hundred facilities throughout the former Soviet Union. After twenty years of U.S.-funded cooperative threat reduction programs that removed, consolidated, and secured nuclear material, Harvard University professor and nuclear security expert Matthew Bunn wrote in April 2010: “Overall, the risk of nuclear theft in Russia has been reduced to a fraction of what it was a decade ago.” The habitual tendency to overinflate threats facing the United States was the focus of an essay I co-wrote with Michael A. Cohen in the current edition of Foreign Affairs, “Clear and Present Safety: The United States Is More Secure than Washington Thinks.” In stark contrast to the prevailing rhetoric from Washington, we argued that the world today is one with fewer violent conflicts, increased political freedom, and greater economic opportunity than at virtually any other point in human history. On average, people enjoy longer life expectancy. The United States faces no plausible existential threats and no near-term competition for the role of global hegemon. The U.S. military is indisputably the most powerful in the world, and the U.S. economy remains the largest as well as among the most vibrant and dynamic. A tremendous number of blog posts and online observations have been written about our piece—see below for a number of such responses. In addition, we’ve heard from friends and colleagues in academia, media, think tanks, and the Obama administration, and the responses have been overwhelmingly positive. Unfortunately, despite our hopes of generating a substantive debate, no serious blog post or essay has yet been written that challenges our main thesis. Ahead of what is sure to be a highly contested election season, U.S. government officials, policymakers, and pundits owe the American people an honest and realistic assessment of the threats facing the country, which can only be realized through a genuine debate that challenges what we believe to be a flawed conventional worldview. It is up to the American citizens and the media to question and contest such over-hyped threats. Our essay will be behind a paywall as of Monday, April 16, so please enjoy while it is freely available. MENTIONS “Charlie Oscar Hotel Echo November!” Line of Departure, April 12, 2012 (Q+A with Michael Cohen). “Clear and Present Safety,” Line of Departure, April 11, 2012 (Q+A with Michael Cohen). Robert Farley and Michael Cohen, "Foreign Entanglements,” Blogging Heads, April 11, 2012. “State of Security: Rethinking Safety and Danger in the 21st Century,” Digital Journal, April 10, 2012. Dan Murphy, “Fear Not! Reality isn’t as Scary as Some Would Like Us to Believe," Christian Science Monitor, April 8, 2012. Tim Ferguson, “Count the Ways Our World’s Actually Improving,” Forbes, March 18, 2012. Bernd Debusmann, “Relax, America! Not Everything Is as Dire as You Think,” Reuters, March 9, 2012. Joshua Holland, “American Has Never Been Safer—So Why Are Politicians and the Media Trying to Terrify Us?” AlterNet, March 4, 2012. Mano Singham, "Land of the Fearful,” Free Thought, March 2, 2012. Mary Kaszynski, "Consequences of the Military Option," Ploughshares Fund, March 2, 2012. Stephen Benedict Dyson and Jeremy Pressman, "Misperceptions, Foreign Policy, and Iran," The Monkey Cage, March 1, 2012. “Clear and Present Climate Blindness,” Empty Wheel, March 1, 2012. David Judson, "When Nostalgia Rivals Threat Exaggeration," Hurriyet Daily News, March 1, 2012. Russ Wellen, “Hyping Threats Is a Smokescreen that Obscures the Real Threats,” Focal Points, February 28, 2012. Paul Pillar, "Why We Exaggerate Dangers," The National Interest, February 27, 2012. James Fallows, “Chronicles of a Paranoid Nation: The Deciduous-Infrastructure Factor,” The Atlantic, February 27, 2012. Ed Kilgore, "A Nation (Relatively) Secure," Political Animal, February 24, 2012. Jerry Brito, "The United States is More Secure Than Washington Wants You to Think," Jerry Brito, February 24, 2012. "The Republican Party’s Favorite Theme: The Fear Card," Under the Mountain Bunker, February 24, 2012. Andrew Sullivan, "News of the Obvious: Americans Are Extremely Safe," Letters from a Farmer in Ohio, February 24, 2012. David Dayen, "Breaking: U.S. Not in Mortal Danger," Fire Dog Lake, February 24, 2012. Michael Cohen, "What’s the Matter with Martin Dempsey?” Blog of the Century, February 24, 2012. Stephen M. Walt, "America is Really, Really Secure," Foreign Policy, February 23, 2012. Andrew Sullivan, "Chill Out, America," The Daily Beast, February 23, 2012. "Threat Inflation," Dart-Throwing Chimp, February 23, 2012. Steve Hynd, "A 99 Percent Doctrine," The Agonist, February 23, 2012. John Glaser, "Fear, Threat Inflation, and Public Choice," Antiwar, February 23, 2012. "Fear and Present Danger," The Edge of the American West, February 22, 2012. Alan Greenblatt, "As Wars Wind Down, What Are U.S. Security Needs?" National Public Radio, February 15, 2012.

Nine days ago, I wrote a piece for Foreign Policy online, “We Can’t Drone Our Way to Victory in Afghanistan," in which I detailed a range of host-nation rules that govern the behavior of U.S. military forces stationed in foreign countries. Some governments are enthusiastic about the presence of American troops. For example, this week Australia celebrated the arrival of two hundred Marines, tasked with training and advising missions, to the port city of Darwin. Australian Defense Minister Stephen Smith declared, "One thing is absolutely sure and certain here today—you are very welcome." Other governments grow weary of U.S. military presence and place constraining rules of engagement on its operations. A prime example is the the forthcoming U.S.-Afghan memorandum of understanding on night raids. In contrast to previous raids, the new terms will reportedly require operational approval in advance from Afghan judges and detainees to be held in Afghan prisons (where U.S. personnel may have access). According to Hamid Karzai’s deputy national security adviser, "There will be some kind of support role by the United States, but we will be in charge of all dimensions of the operations.” In my piece, I raised an obvious, yet often overlooked, issue when considering and planning for the role of the U.S. military in Afghanistan beyond 2014: “The sovereign Afghan government holds the decisive veto power—and any U.S. officials who believe that President Hamid Karzai or his successor will give the United States carte blanche to use Afghanistan as a platform for CIA drone strikes or Special Forces raids into Pakistan will be sorely disappointed.” Yesterday, Al Jazeera interviewed Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmay Rasool on the prospect of U.S. drone strikes after 2014. He responded: "Afghan soil will not be used against any country in the region. The presence of the remaining forces in Afghanistan is for training, equipping and securing Afghanistan’s security. It has been mentioned, it is going to be mentioned, that this force is not for use against any neighbors in the region.” The Afghan government’s final decision on whether to permit U.S. drone strikes and/or special operations raids could change several times over the next twenty months. If Rasool’s statement becomes official Afghan policy, however, it will be extremely difficult for the United States to sustain drone strikes against suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in Pakistan in the future. This shift could have serious consequences for CIA drone operations. It is hard to envision the Pakistani government re-permitting drone strikes from its territory. Last summer, Pakistan evicted the remaining U.S. personnel from Shamsi Airbase in the Balochistan province, where drones were based since as early as 2006. In recent months, the prime minister, foreign minister, and a parliamentary committee on national security have repeatedly condemned U.S. drone strikes as violations of Pakistani sovereignty. Last week, an anonymous U.S. official stated: "If the main concern is sovereignty, the Pakistanis might want to deal with the al-Qaeda foreigners who are living within their borders and planning attacks on Pakistan, their neighbors, and the West. These are the true threats to Pakistani sovereignty.” For the past ten years, the U.S. government has attempted to tell Pakistan what should be its security threats and how to conceive of their sovereign rights. This has failed. The United States could attempt to broker an agreement with India to host a CIA drone base for strikes into Pakistan post-2014. However, it is highly unlikely that India would want to aggravate its relationship with its nuclear-armed neighbor and longstanding enemy. Moreover, it is not outside the realm of possibility that Pakistan could misinterpret a U.S. drone for an Indian cruise missile, potentially carrying a nuclear warhead. The United States could also launch drone strikes from naval platforms in the Arabian Sea. This would be a long distance to the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA), where most of the strikes have occurred, however, and again carries the risk of misinterpretation. Recall in August 1998, when the United States launched sixty-six cruise missiles from Navy ships in the Arabian Sea against al-Qaeda’s Zhawar Kili training complex in Khost, Afghanistan. Later, during interviews for my book, Between Threats and War, the head of U.S. Central Command, General Anthony Zinni, told me that when his operations staff war-gamed the attack, they thought Pakistan naval or coastal radars could mistake the U.S. cruise missiles for an Indian nuclear strike. Separately, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Ralston, revealed that the cruise missiles were actually programmed to fly over a suspected Pakistani nuclear site. To deal with this issue, on the evening of the attack, Ralston met with Pakistan’s Army Chief of Staff General Jehangir Karamat for a friendly dinner in Islambad on the evening of the attack to warn him—as the missiles flew overhead—that “we did it.” There is also the option of basing future drone operations in China. There is precedence for Chinese cooperation with the CIA against a shared adversary. In November 1979, China permitted the CIA’s Office of SIGINT Operations to build and operate two ballistic missile monitoring facilities in the Tien Shan Mountains in order to collect telemetry data from Soviet missile launches. But it is unlikely that Beijing would agree to host lethal attacks against Pakistan, its ally. And it is a long flight to the FATA region over high altitudes and poor weather, which would limit the time available for a drone to survey suspected militants and conduct attacks. Many U.S. policymakers and policy analysts assumed that the Afghan government would give the U.S. military a blank check to use its territory and airspace for indefinite counterterrorism operations. Since the CIA’s drone war began in the summer of 2004, the United States has conducted an estimated 295 strikes in Pakistan. Yet, as Afghan and Pakistan governments tire of being used as platforms for U.S. military operations, we will likely see substantially fewer drone strikes in the future.

Chris Woods and Emma Slater, “Arab spring brings steep rise in U.S. attacks in Yemen,” Bureau of Investigative Journalism, March 29, 2012. At least 26 US military and CIA strikes involving cruise missiles, aircraft, drones or naval bombardments have taken place in the volatile Gulf nation to date, killing hundreds of alleged militants linked to the regional al Qaeda franchise. But at least 54 civilians have died too, the study found. In the latest attack, US drones struck three areas of the rebel-held city of Zinjibar on March 22, killing up to 30 al Qaeda-linked militants, according to Yemen intelligence officials. Naval vessels – possibly American – also bombarded the city. The missile strike ‘targeted vehicles and bases of the al Qaeda group. A lot of people were apparently killed and their vehicles were completely destroyed at the scene,’ eyewitnesses told news agency Xinhua. At least five US attacks – some involving multiple targets – have so far taken place in Yemen this month alone, in support of a government offensive to drive militants from key locations. In comparison, Pakistan’s tribal areas, the epicenter of the CIA’s controversial drone war, have seen just three US drone strikes in March. Mark Hosenball and John Shiffman, “U.S., European officials probe Iran nuclear smuggling,” Reuters, March 28, 2012. U.S. officials said they are investigating 30 percent more cases this year than three years ago. U.S. agencies have deployed agents posing as arms brokers at more than 20 undercover companies targeting smugglers, said the officials, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity. Undercover arms smuggling investigations typically take two to four years to unfold, one of the officials said, which is why he expects an increase in indictments soon. "We’ve got some good undercover cases going," a senior U.S. official said. Craig Whitlock, “Australia may host U.S. drones at Cocos,” Sydney Morning Herald, March 28, 2012. A controversial proposal for a joint Australian-US military air base in the Indian Ocean could lead to the launch of drone spy flights across the region, according to officials quoted in Washington. The proposed base on the Australian-controlled Cocos Islands would form part of a major expansion of ties between Canberra and Washington as the Pentagon looks to shift its forces closer to south-east Asia. U.S. Department of State, Daily Press Briefing, March 28, 2012. QUESTION: But what about the whole idea that you don’t link food with political discussions? MS. NULAND: Well, we’ve talked about this before. We talked about it on the day that this initially came up. We don’t link food with the nuclear issue, but we do have to have confidence in the commitments that the government is making to us with regard to the monitoring situation before one could go forward. This is a government that turned around in a matter of weeks and undid what it had said on the nuclear side, so how can one have confidence in what they’ve said on the monitoring side? And we’re not going to send food to a country where it might be diverted to the elites. That’s not what the American taxpayers want to support. QUESTION: But that does make it sound like it’s a link. MS. NULAND: There’s a link in the sense that we don’t have confidence in the good faith of the government. QUESTION: I’m confused by that because you said that nutritional assistance, not food aid, would be done in such a way that it would be impossible to divert. You were talking about baby vitamins and things like this. MS. NULAND: But again, we have to be able to get it in in the way that we’ve agreed, we have to be able to distribute it with the groups that we’ve agreed, we have to be able to have the monitoring ourselves on it that we’ve agreed to. All of that requires the government’s cooperation. QUESTION: Well, have they said that they won’t cooperate on that particular issue? MS. NULAND: We haven’t had those conversations. We’ve simply said: Do not have your space launch here. QUESTION: So how do you know that they wouldn’t keep their word if it were a matter of -- MS. NULAND: Because we have no confidence in their good faith right now. QUESTION: But I don’t understand on it. I’m sorry. Just – I don’t understand how this is not linking your dissatisfaction with them on the nuclear and political issue and the food assistance. You don’t know whether they would make good on their commitments to allow monitors and food, on the food, because you won’t talk to them because you’re mad at them about the nuclear issue. MS. NULAND: We don’t have confidence in their good faith. If they want to restore our confidence in their good faith, they can cancel the plans to launch this satellite. QUESTION: No, but how is that not linking it, Toria? MS. NULAND: We – as I said, we have concerns about whether one can make a deal of any kind with this government. It’s a – they are separate issues, but they come together at the point of whether the government’s acting in good faith. (3PA: As I pointed out in a previous blog post, when the latest U.S.-North Korea deal was reached, the Obama administration claimed that a rigorous monitoring system was in place to assure that the 240,000 tons of nutritional assistance—delivered in monthly shipments—would not be diverted to the regime in Pyongyang. Since North Korea announced that they will launch a ballistic missile—in violation of that agreement and earlier UN Security Council resolutions—apparently that rigorous monitoring system will no longer work.) Angus Reid Public Opinion, “Support for Afghanistan Mission Plummets to All-Time Low in United States,” March 26, 2012. For the first time in three years, a majority of Americans voice opposition to the mission in Afghanistan, a new Angus Reid Public Opinion poll has found. In the online survey of a representative national sample of 1,012 American adults, 52 per cent of respondents oppose the military operation involving American soldiers in Afghanistan, while 38 per cent support it. Since February 2010, support for the mission has fallen by 16 points, while opposition has risen by 14 points. (3PA: For the full report, click here.) Vicki Divoll, “Targeted killings: Who’s checking the executive branch?” Los Angeles Times, March 25, 2012. Leahy should redirect his attention from asking for memoranda from the Justice Department to focus his committee’s energy on the real issue facing Congress: Should the president of the United States be able to order the killing of an American citizen with no review outside his own executive branch advisors? Even if Leahy trusts this president to tread cautiously with such enormous, unchecked power, what about the next one, or the one after that? “Drug Policy in Latin America: Burn-out and Battle Fatigue,” The Economist, March 17, 2012. The illegality of this successful export business means that its multi-billion-dollar profits go to criminal gangs. Their battles for market control have a high cost: according to the UN, eight of the world’s ten most violent countries are in Latin America or the Caribbean. Drugs are not the only business of organized crime, but they account for the bulk of the gangs’ income and thus their firepower. Honduras, a strategic spot on the trafficking route, has the world’s highest murder rate, about 80 times that of western Europe. Hearing of the House Armed Services Committee, “The Fiscal Year 2012: Department of Defense Budget Request,” February 16, 2012. REP. HUNTER: If you were to fully fund defense and take away a hundred percent as best as you could, a hundred percent of risk using your own threat assessment tools and analysis, what would that funding be? What would you ask for? SEC. GATES: I have only half-jokingly said in meetings in the department that if we had a trillion-dollar budget, I would still have unfunded requirements. REP. HUNTER: Yeah, that’s right. SEC. GATES: The services would still be able to come up with a list of things that they really need. I think that the budget that we’ve provided at $553 billion for FY ’12 mitigates risk to the extent that I think is reasonably possible. And I think that we have -- we are investing in new capabilities -- the $70 billion that the services are going to be able to invest from their savings in new capabilities or in added numbers I think helped mitigate that risk. You can never reach a point -- just as there is no such thing as perfect security, there is no such thing as eliminating risk. REP. HUNTER: Mr. Secretary, if I may, and I’m going to run out of time and I have one more totally separate question. If you got to that highest point that you could where you started getting diminished rate of return, what would that number be, roughly? SEC. GATES: I think that we are at a point with the 553 (billion dollars) where we can do that. REP. HUNTER: Okay. So fully funding defense and every requirement is at 553 (billion dollars)? SEC. GATES: We will never fund every request. REP. HUNTER: But if you did, sir, what I’m asking is, what’s that number, roughly? SEC. GATES:  I have no idea how much -- REP. HUNTER: You haven’t thought about what it would cost to really satisfy the requirements of all the different services? SEC. GATES: Nobody lives in that -- nobody lives in that world. REP. HUNTER: No, but what you’re supposed to do is tell us how do we – how get to zero threat, and Congress then decides what to fund. SEC. GATES: And I’m telling you you are never going to get to zero threat. REP. HUNTER: We can try. SEC. GATES: You could spend $2 trillion and you’ll never get to zero threat. REP. HUNTER: But that’s what we would like to hear from you, Mr. Secretary, is that it would cost -- SEC. GATES: I’m just telling you. REP. HUNTER: -- $2 trillion, and we could cut that by 75 percent, and here we are at the 550 (billion dollars), right? (3PA: Yesterday, Representative Paul Ryan told a forum on the defense budget: “We don’t think the generals are giving us their true advice. We don’t think the generals believe their budget is really the right budget." Ryan’s comments brought to mind this exchange between Hunter and former Secretary Gates. There are some hawks on Capitol Hill who simply do not believe that the Pentagon budget proposal process could ever contain a ‘high enough’ number.) Syria Tracker (3PA: The Syria Tracker is a map developed through crowdsourcing by individual activists and NGOs to track the violence in Syria.)  

Report of the Pakistani Parliamentary Committee on National Security on Guidelines for Revised Terms of Engagement with USA/NATO/ISAF, March 2012. The government needs to ensure that the principles of an independent foreign policy must be grounded in strict adherence to the Principles of Policy as stated in Article 40 of the Constitution of Pakistan, the UN Charter, and observance of international law. The US must review its footprints in Pakistan. This means (i) the cessation of drone attacks inside the territorial borders of Pakistan, (ii) No hot pursuit or boots on Pakistani territory… It needs to be realized that drone attacks are counter productive, cause loss of valuable lives and property, radicalize the local population, create support for terrorists, and fuel anti-American sentiments. No overt or covert operations inside Pakistan shall be tolerated. (3PA: This report follows the assertions by several Pakistani officials that Pakistan never allowed or gave permission for drone strikes, including Prime Minister Gilani and Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, who said earlier this month: “There is nobody in Pakistan who has ever been supportive of [the drone program].”) United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, American Civil Liberties Union versus the Central Intelligence Agency, March 15, 2012. Many government officials, including the President and the then-CIA Director, have discussed specifics about the program with the press and public. They have taken credit for its putative successes, defended its legality, and dismissed concerns about civilian casualties. The government’s disclosures about the program, however, have been limited and selective. The request sought records concerning, among other things, the putative legal basis for carrying out targeted killings; any restrictions on those who may be targeted; any civilian casualties; any geographic limits on the program; the number of targeted killings that the agency has carried out; and the training, supervision, oversight, or discipline of drone operators. Sari Horwitz and Ellen Nakashima, “New counterterrorism guidelines permit data on U.S. citizens to be held longer,” Washington Post, March 22, 2012. The Obama administration has approved guidelines that allow counterterrorism officials to lengthen the period of time they retain information about U.S. residents, even if they have no known connection to terrorism. The changes allow the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), the intelligence community’s clearinghouse for terrorism data, to keep information for up to five years. Previously, the center was required to promptly destroy — generally within 180 days — any information about U.S. citizens or residents unless a connection to terrorism was evident. (3PA: If you purchase a gun, however, the government must destroy the record of your cleared gun sale that same day.) Cid Standifer, “The Fight Against Sex Crimes,” Army Times, March 26, 2012. AFP, “Russia: Iran Will Produce Nuclear Weapons if Attacked,” March 20, 2012. "This happening... around Iran are forcing a lot of Third World countries to pause and realise that if you have a nuclear bomb, no one will really bother you. "You might get some light sanctions, but people will always coddle you, they will court you and try to convince you of things," Lavrov said. David Zucchino, “Stress of Combat Reaches Drone Crews,” Los Angeles Times, March 18, 2012. The Air Force considers drone crews "deployed’’ in combat, even though most of them fly planes from U.S. bases. "The most dangerous part of their day is their commute,’’ said Peter W. Singer, a Brookings Institution scholar who studies robotics in warfare. Crews must shift repeatedly between home and combat. "A Predator pilot told me: ’I’m spending 12 hours fighting enemy combatants, and 20 minutes later I’m talking to my kids about homework,’" Singer said. WHO Global Report, Mortality Attributable to Tobacco, February 2012. Tobacco is the only legal drug that kills many of its users when used exactly as intended by manufacturers. Direct tobacco smoking is currently responsible for the death of about 5 million people across the world each year with many of these deaths occurring prematurely. An additional 600,000 people are also estimated to die from the effects of secondhand smoke. Tobacco kills more than tuberculosis, human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS), and malaria combined.

The public debate on whether the United States and other countries are able to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon exhausted itself years ago. Yet, discussion about confrontation with Iran will persist until one of two things happens: Tehran provides sufficient transparency over its suspected nuclear weapons activities to meet the demands of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Tel Aviv, and Washington; or Israel and/or the United States attacks Iran’s nuclear facilities. Unless the major players are bluffing and ultimately back down—which has happened before—one of these determining actions will likely take place within the next two years. If President Obama—or any future occupant of the White House—does decide to attack Iran, there is an important prerequisite that has remained largely unexplored: How would the president sell the war to the American people? The president wouldn’t have to start from scratch. Iran has been demonized by the United States since the nascent Islamic Republic seized the U.S. embassy compound in Tehran and held fifty-two hostages from November 1979 to January 1981. Since then, polling has consistently demonstrated two strong beliefs: Americans do not like and are afraid of Iran. A recent Gallup poll found that 87 percent of Americans held an “unfavorable” opinion of Iran, a number that hasn’t changed in decades. In addition, in a September 2011 survey asking, “Which country is the greatest threat to the United States?” 63 percent of respondents listed Iran first or second. (In June 2009, 79 percent of respondents believed Iran to be a “very serious” or “moderately serious” threat to the United States.) Despite the polling numbers, Americans are largely split over a U.S. military attack on Iran (support ranges from 41 to 56 percent) and there is broad approval for stronger economic sanctions and diplomatic action. Interestingly, the action favored by most Americans (81 percent), "direct diplomatic talks between the United States and Iran," is not part of the Obama administration’s strategy. In addition to the lukewarm support among Americans for attacking Iran, President Obama or his successor would also have to tackle two problematic assessments from the U.S Intelligence Community (IC). First, as Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has repeatedly reaffirmed since late January, “we don’t believe they’ve actually made the decision to go ahead with a nuclear weapon.” Just yesterday, James Risen reported in the New York Times that the IC continues to believe (based on an assessment first made in November 2007) that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei halted his country’s nuclear weapons activities in 2003. This might be hard for many to grasp, since polling has found the American people disagree with the collective judgment of the 210,000 civilian and military employees and 30,000 private contractors comprising the IC. A recent poll found that 84 percent of Americans think Iran is developing nuclear weapons, while another from February 2010 concluded that 71 percent of Americans believe that Iran currently has nuclear weapons. Second, Lieutenant General Ronald Burgess, chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) told the Senate Armed Services Committee in February that, despite all of Iran’s threats, “it is unlikely to initiate or intentionally provoke a conflict or launch a preemptive attack.” This assessment is undoubtedly difficult for some to reconcile with the rhetorical bluster of senior Iranian officials, including repeated threats to close the Strait of Hormuz if U.S. aircraft carriers entered the waterway. In February, however, the USS Abraham Lincoln steamed through the strait without incident. In fact, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert told reporters that Iran’s naval forces have not responded with increased activity, adding: “The Iranian navy has been unto itself professional and courteous.” This confirms what U.S. Navy officials have told me in private conversations: for the past two decades, the U.S. and Iranian navies have carefully avoided direct confrontations, and routinely cooperate on a tactical level to rescue distressed ships or lost seafarers. To build up support for a preemptive attack, the U.S. president could play to the widely-held conviction that Tehran is nearing—or crossed—the nuclear threshold, but he will also need to explain why the intelligence professionals, on the receiving end of over $75 billion in taxpayer funds, are wrong. Presidents sell wars by offering a buffet of justifications in the hopes that citizens of varied beliefs and opinions will find something to sink their teeth into. If you are old enough, you may recall the multiple explications provided by senior officials for the use of military force in Iraq from 1991 to 2011, Bosnia from 1992 to 1995, Kosovo in 1999, or even in Libya last year; justifications included to protect civilians, overthrow regimes, send a “message” to other dictators, and repay European allies for support in Afghanistan. The media circus surrounding the Iranian nuclear program has distorted the underlying rationale for any use of force. The United States must not attack Iran without clearly defined strategic objectives, a clear understanding of how attacking its suspected nuclear weapons facilities will advance those objectives, and a theory of victory for how those facilities could be destroyed at an acceptable level of cost. So far, both proponents of attacking Iran and the president have avoided addressing these three concerns with any clarity.

Government Accountability Office, Further Actions Needed by U.S. Agencies to Secure Vulnerable Nuclear and Radiological Materials, March 14, 2012. Despite individual agency efforts to implement the 4-year initiative, we found that the overarching interagency strategy coordinated by NSC lacked specific details concerning how the initiative would be implemented, including the identity of, and details regarding, vulnerable foreign nuclear material sites and facilities to be addressed, agencies and programs responsible for addressing each site, planned activities at each site, potential challenges and strategies for overcoming these challenges, anticipated timelines, and cost estimates. NSC officials told us that developing a single, integrated cross-agency plan that incorporates all these elements could take years. (1) Nuclear cooperation agreements do not contain specific access rights that enable U.S. agencies to monitor and evaluate the physical security of U.S. nuclear material overseas, and the United States relies on its partners to maintain adequate security. In the absence of access rights, DOE, NRC, and State have conducted physical protection visits, when permitted, to monitor and evaluate physical security conditions of U.S. nuclear materials at overseas facilities. However, we found that the agencies have not systematically visited countries believed to be holding the most sensitive material or systematically revisited facilities not meeting international physical security standards in a timely manner. U.S. interagency teams made 55 visits from 1994 through 2010 and found that countries met IAEA security guidelines approximately half of the time. The January 1993 report that NRC produced in response to the mandate stated that it was not possible to reconcile this information from available U.S. sources of data with all foreign holders of U.S. HEU within the 90-day period specified in the act. Our analysis of other documentation associated with the report shows that NRC, in consultation with U.S. agencies, was able to verify the location of 1,160 kilograms out of 17,500 kilograms of U.S. HEU remaining overseas as of January 1993. According to DOE and NRC officials, no further update to the 1993 report was issued, and the U.S. government has not subsequently attempted to develop such a comprehensive estimate of the location and status of U.S. HEU overseas. (9) At a hospital in one state, two cesium-137 research irradiators using approximately 2,000 curies and 6,000 curies, respectively, are housed in the basement of a building that is open to the public. The hallway leading to the irradiator room has a camera, but it is pointed away from the room. (18) At a hospital in a major U.S. city, we observed that the interior door to the hospital blood bank, which had a cesium-137 blood irradiator of approximately 1,500 curies, had the combination to the lock written on the door frame. (19) At a blood center in a third state we visited, we observed a cesium-137 blood irradiator of approximately 1,400 curies in a room that was secured by a conventional key lock. The irradiator was located in the middle of the room and not secured to the floor. The room had an exterior wall with a bank of unalarmed and unsecured windows that looked out onto a loading dock. The blood center officials said that while they met the controls, they acknowledged that the center is highly vulnerable to theft or sabotage of their radiological sources. (19) SPLM North Spokesperson, “The Downing of an Iranian-Made Drone in the Nuba Mountains,” March 13, 2012. The Air Defense Units of the SPLMN and JEM forces of the SRF were able to shoot down an Iranian made drone with tail number 3-1-R031 Zagil today March 13th, 2012, at 11:00 AM in Buhirat Abyad (White Lake) area in the South Kordofan/Nuba Mountain State. The use of Iranian made Shehab rocket missiles, personnel landmines, drones and heavy military equipments prove beyond doubt that the NCP government plan and strategy is to continue its policies of genocide, ethnic cleansing against the Nuba people and the State population in general and deny them humanitarian aid.  “U.S. Ambassador: Taliban Could ‘Regenerate’ If Troops Withdraw from Afghanistan Now,” Fox News, March 12, 2012. "These are the stakes if we decide that we are tired of it, don’t want to do it anymore," [Ambassador] Crocker said. "Well, the Taliban isn’t that tired and Al Qaeda, badly damaged, would be able to regenerate if the Taliban took the country over again." Crocker called that scenario another “pre-9/11 situation." Cid Standifer, “Poll: Morale’s Up, But War Pessimism Lingers,” Army Times, March 12, 2012. The percentage of respondents who felt the Afghan military would be ready to stand on its own in 10 years or less shrank from 62 percent last year to 57 percent this year. Nearly three-fourths of respondents said al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden’s death last May was significant but had no tangible impact on the situation in the region. Hearing of the House Committee on Appropriations, March 7, 2012. GRAVES: Okay. So I guess from a historical perspective, does the federal government have the ability to kill a U.S. citizen on United States soil, or just overseas? MUELLER: And I am going to defer that to others in the Department of Justice. UNHCR Concerned at Displacement Caused by LRA Attacks in DR Congo, March 6, 2012. (3PA: According to the UNHCR, only one person was killed in all of the LRA raids in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since the beginning of 2012.) Press Release, “World Bank Sees Progress Against Extreme Poverty, But Flags Vulnerabilities,” February 29, 2012. In every region of the developing world, the percentage of people living on less than $1.25 a day and the number of poor declined between 2005-2008, according to estimates released today by the World Bank. This across-the-board reduction over a three-year monitoring cycle marks a first since the Bank began monitoring extreme poverty. (3PA: To read the report, click here.) George Washington to Henry Lee Jr., The Writings of George Washington, October 20, 1780. Dr. Sir: The plan proposd [sic] for taking Benedict Arnold, the outlines of which are communicated in your letter which was this moment put into my hands without a date, has every mark of a good one, I therefore agree to the promised rewards, and have such entire confidence in your management of the business as to give it my fullest approbation; and leave the whole to the guidance of your own judgment, with this express stipulation, and pointed injunction, that Arnold is brought to me alive. No circumstance whatever shall obtain my consent to his being put to death. The idea which would accompany such an event would be that Ruffians had been hired to assassinate him. My aim is to make a public example of him. and [sic] this should be strongly impressed upon those who are employed to bring him Note: Lee’s undated letter is filed in the Washington Papers at the end of September, 1780. "I have engaged two persons to undertake the accomplishment of your Excellencys [sic] wishes...The chief of the two persons is a sergeant in my cavalry. To him I have promised promotion, the other is an inhabitant of Newark; I have had experience of his fidelity, and his connexions [sic] with the enemy render him, with his personal qualifications very fit for the business. To this man I have engaged one hund. guineas, five hundd. [sic] acres of land and three negroes...The outlines of the scheme...are that the Sergeant should join Gen. Arnold as a deserter from us, should engage in his corps now raising, and should contrive to insinuate himself into some menial or military birth about the Genls. person. [sic] That a correspondence should be kept up with the man in Newark, by the latter’s visiting the former every two days. When the favorable moment arrives they should seize the prize in the night, gag him, and bring him across to Bergen woods...The Sergeant is a very promising youth of uncommon taciturnity, and invincible perseverance...I have instructed him not to return till he receives direction from me, but to continue his attempts, however unfavorable the prospects may appear at first. I have excited his thirst for fame by impressing on his mind the virtue and glory of the act." The sergeant, John Champe, deserted on the night of October 20--21, and, to prevent a possible suspicion, Lee requested orders to move his corps to another position. Lee wrote Washington (October 25, in the Washington Papers): "My friend got safe into New York. He was before Sir Henry Clinton and passed all the forms of the garrison. He accidentally met Col. Arnold in the street which has paved a natural way for further acquaintance. The party entertain [sic] high hopes of success...I informed Mr. Baldwin, that I was under orders to march south..."Champe’s attempt failed through no fault of his. For Lee’s account of the exploit see Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department, by Henry Lee.] off. The Sergeant must be very circumspect; too much zeal may create suspicion; and too much precipitancy may defeat the project. The most inviolable secrecy must be observed on all hands. I send you five Guineas; but I am not satisfied of the propriety of the Sergeants appearing with much Specie; this circumstance may also lead to suspicion as it is but too well known to the enemy that we do not deal much in this article. The Interviews between the Party in and out of the City, shd. be managed with much caution and seeming indifference or else the frequency of their meetings &ca. may betray the design and involve bad consequences; but I am perswaded [sic] you will place every matter in a proper point of view to rise conductors of this interesting business and therefore I shall only add that I am etc.

Last Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder gave a policy speech at Northwestern University Law School, reportedly intended to “reveal publicly the legal reasoning behind [the Obama administration’s] decision to kill the American-born leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Anwar al-Awlaki.” Holder’s speech was the latest in a series of attempts to defend and justify the government’s targeted killing policies, following similar efforts by senior State Department, White House, and Pentagon officials. The speeches all reflected the same core argument: the Obama administration has the executive authority to maintain a secret process to secretly place suspected terrorists (including U.S. citizens) on kill-capture lists, with no judicial oversight. One positive outcome of Holder’s speech is that the subsequent media coverage included a number of revealing comments on targeted killing policies from government officials. Unfortunately, the biggest takeaway from these off-the-record statements is that the majority of U.S. officials remain as in the dark as everyone else. Consider four statements from the past week: Hearing Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Relations Agencies (March 7, 2012) REPRESENTATIVE TOM GRAVES: So I guess from a historical perspective, does the federal government have the ability to kill a U.S. citizen on United States soil, or just overseas? FBI DIRECTOR ROBERT MUELLER: I am going to defer that to others in the Department of Justice. The FBI’s mission is “to protect and defend the United States against terrorist and foreign intelligence threats, to uphold and enforce the criminal laws of the United States, and to provide leadership and criminal justice services to federal, state, municipal, and international agencies and partners.” Mueller has held his position since the week before 9/11 and has been intimately involved in virtually every significant counterterrorism decision of the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. If the director of the FBI does not know—or is unwilling to testify under oath—where the U.S. government has the authority to kill its citizens, then who does? It is worth noting that Holder argued that there are no limits to the “geographic scope of our ability to use force.” Senate Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (March 8, 2012) SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY: I would reiterate what I had told you when we chatted earlier this week when I was in Vermont about your speech earlier this week regarding drones and targeting of U.S. citizens. I still want to see the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memorandum [which offered the legal opinion that al-Awlaki could be killed]. And I would urge you to keep working on that. I realize it’s a matter of some debate within the administration but... ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER:  That would be true. According to Washington Post reporter Dana Priest, al-Awlaki was placed on both the CIA and Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) kill-capture lists at some point in late 2009; New York Times reporter Scott Shane argued that it happened in early 2010. Either way, the OLC memo referenced by Leahy was completed by June 2010, which means that President Obama authorized the targeted killing of a U.S. citizen several months before its legal justification existed. The New York Times reported that Holder was “nodding and chuckling” as he responded to Leahy, implying that there is debate within the Obama administration on whether to declassify the OLC memo. A Justice Department spokesperson skirted the issue: “We do not confirm or deny that such a memorandum exists.” In summary, although we know the memo exists, roughly what it contains, and that senior lawyers across government agencies unanimously endorsed its findings, the Obama administration still cannot acknowledge the legal underpinnings for its policy of targeted killings of U.S. citizens. CNN, “State of the Union with Candy Crowley” (March 11, 2012) CROWLEY: [The attorney general] said, you know, people are arguing that for some reason the president needs to get permission from a federal court before taking action against a U.S. citizen overseas who’s an operational leader in al Qaeda. He says that’s just not accurate. That due process and judicial process are not one and the same. Do you have -- and this is creating quite a stir. Do you have any problem with that? Do you understand what that means exactly? SENATOR HARRY REID: No, I don’t. But I do know this. The American citizens who have been killed overseas who are terrorists, and, frankly, if anyone in the world deserved to be killed, those three did deserve to be killed. CROWLEY: Are you slightly uncomfortable with the idea that the United States president, whoever it may be, can decide that this or that U.S. citizen living abroad is a threat to national security and kill them? REID: Well, I don’t know what the attorney general meant by saying that. I’d have to study it a little bit. I’ve never heard that term before. But I think the process is in play. I think it’s one that I think we can live with. And I think with the international war on terror that’s going on now, we’re going to have to make sure that we have the tools to get some of these people who are very bad and comply with American law. CROWLEY: And you think that the president should be able to make that decision in conjunction with the folks in the administration without going to a court, without going to you all, anything? REID: There is a war going on. There’s no question about that. He’s the commander in chief. And there have been guidelines set. And if he follows those, I think he should be able to do it. Even though the Senate minority leader cannot distinguish between “due process” and “judicial process,” and their respective applications, he is comfortable with the “guidelines.” Moreover, “those three” refer to Anwar al-Awlaki, Samir Khan, and Abdulrahman al-Awlaki (the sixteen year-old son of Anwar al-Awlaki). After the son’s death by a JSOC aircraft in October, U.S. officials fudged the details, saying that he was in his mid-twenties and of “military age.” (In response, the al-Awlaki family released his birth certificate, which shows he was born on August 26, 1995.) The State Department continues to maintain that it has “not received confirmation of his death from the government of Yemen,” although that has never stopped U.S. officials before from discussing militant deaths. Anonymous U.S. officials have stated that the younger al-Awlaki "was in the wrong place at the wrong time," and, more definitively: “The U.S. government did not know that Mr. Awlaki’s son was there.” Therefore, according to official statements, he was an unintended victim of the war on terrorism, and did not “deserve to be killed,” unless Senator Reid is withholding additional evidence. Further, can children be knowingly targeted? ABC News, “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” (March 11, 2012) SENATOR CHARLES SCHUMER: "[The President’s] done an amazing job with the drones and Al Qaeda. Not just in getting rid of Bin Laden, but unlike President Bush, he said the drones could go across the border into Pakistan." The CIA’s drone war against suspected terrorist operatives and militants in Pakistan began on June 18, 2004, when a missile killed a local Taliban commander, Nek Mohammed Wazir, his two brothers, and two bodyguards. Under President Bush, an estimated forty-three drone strikes were carried out in Pakistan. According to Juan Zarate, a counterterrorism adviser in the George W. Bush administration, President Obama kept “virtually all the key personnel” in the drone program. Since he took the oath of office, President Obama has authorized 250 additional drone strikes in Pakistan, and counting.

Over the past few years, I have been fortunate to speak with a number of dedicated and thoughtful officials in the executive branch about U.S. targeted killing policies. Due to the highly-classified nature of these policies and operations that involve intelligence collection and analysis, these officials are appropriately limited in what they can reveal about the rationale, process, and scope of who the U.S. government can kill. Nevertheless, over the course of these informal discussions and interviews, two common threads emerged. First, “There are terrorists plotting to kill Americans, and those threats must be dealt with.” Second, “I can’t get into anything operational, but I can assure you that there is a careful and deliberate process by which individuals are deemed to be threats based on strict criteria.” Without a security clearance to corroborate and verify these statements, the defense of U.S. targeted killing policies boils down to “trust me.” Yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder gave a policy speech at Northwestern University Law School, in which he echoed what I have heard one-on-one. Once a government publicly acknowledges and defends—albeit in a very limited manner—an intelligence or military program, it creates architecture of justification and precedence for which it can be held accountable. Let’s break down some of the arguments put forth by the attorney general: HOLDER: “It is preferable to capture suspected terrorists where feasible—among other reasons, so that we can gather valuable intelligence from them.” Of course, this statement begs the question: if that is true, why has the United States largely stopped capturing and detaining terrorist suspects? In Pakistan after 9/11, the U.S. counterterrorism strategy focused primarily on law enforcement and intelligence exploitation through arrest and interrogation (including torture). According to the State Department’s report, Patterns of Global Terrorism: 2002: “The Government of Pakistan arrested and transferred to U.S. custody nearly 500 suspected al-Qaida and Taliban terrorists.” By 2004, however, the United States virtually discontinued this practice, and instead began killing terrorists with armed Predator drones. Part of the reason that the Bush and Obama administrations have nearly halted the extraordinary rendition program is because the White House and the Congress cannot reach an agreement on the legal process by which terrorist suspects will be detained and tried. In his recent book Intel Wars: The Secret History of the Fight Against Terror, Matthew Aid quotes a senior U.S. intelligence official in 2009: “Capturing al-Qaeda officials is a bother. It is so much easier to just kill ‘em when you can find them.” HOLDER: “The use of force in foreign territory would be consistent with these international legal principles if conducted, for example, with the consent of the nation involved—or after a determination that the nation is unable or unwilling to deal effectively with a threat to the United States.” What happens in the case of a state for which there is no government? In Somalia, for instance, where the U.S. military has conducted drone operations, the CIA’s Chiefs of State and Cabinet Members of Foreign Governments listing states: “Somalia has lacked any internationally recognized central government since the fall of the Siad Barre regime in 1991.” In May 2011, a nominal “prime minister” of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government said he would welcome U.S. special operations raids, but his writ does not extend beyond the capital of Mogadishu or whatever territory the AMISOM troops hold. Second, what are the criteria by which the executive branch determines that another country is “unable or unwilling” to take measures against suspected terrorist threats? There are a vast range of threats posed by transnational organized crime that could technically fall under this designation. In an extreme example, in 2009 the Government Accountability Office found that 87 percent of traceable arms seized in Mexico originated in the United States; between 2005 and 2010, the homicide rate in Mexico increased by nearly 65 percent, peaking at 20,500 murders in 2010. Would the Mexican government be justified in conducting military operations in the United States to limit the trafficking of weapons, since the U.S. government has failed to prevent it thus far? HOLDER: “An individual’s interest in making sure that the government does not target him erroneously could not be more significant.” This incredible assertion speaks for itself, but Holder could have provided some tips for how an individual—who most likely does not know that he’s been targeted—corrects the error. HOLDER: “In keeping with the law and our constitutional system of checks and balances, the executive branch regularly informs the appropriate members of Congress about our counterterrorism activities.” Here he is primarily referring to the Senate and House intelligence committees, to which Title 50 “covert” operations must be reported. However, according to former committee chairs such as Senator Bob Graham and Representative Jane Harmon, the level of information that the executive branch provides to these committee is insufficient. Moreover, as reported in the Washington Post yesterday, “A committee staff member works full time to review covert action plans, and the whole committee meets once a quarter for a closed hearing on this most sensitive topic.” In essence: one staffer reviews U.S. covert operations, and twenty members of the committee meet every four months? Other committees play an oversight role, including for Title 10 military operations conducted by Joint Special Operations Command. These can include waived Special Access Programs that are only reported to the chairman and ranking minority member of the House and Senate Committees of the Armed Services and Appropriations, and Defense Subcommittee on Appropriations. In total, six members of Congress. Beyond these are the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and House Foreign Affairs Committee, which are supposed to provide oversight of all U.S. foreign policy activities. However, some members and staffers have repeatedly stated that, due to the lack of proper security clearances, they have very little knowledge of the U.S. policies for targeted killings, or how such policies are integrated into a more comprehensive strategy. In June 2008, Eric Holder gave the keynote address to annual convention of the progressive-leaning American Constitution Society for Law and Policy. In his speech, Holder strongly criticized several aspects of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policies, including the claim that the executive branch had the right to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens without judicial review: “To those in the Executive branch who say ‘just trust us’ when it comes to secret and warrantless surveillance of domestic communications I say remember your history.” Many Americans didn’t trust the Bush administration reading their emails, and they should be even more skeptical of the current administration and the targeted killings of citizens and non-citizens.

During an interview with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in March 2011, Piers Morgan posed a serious question: MORGAN: Do you have nuclear weapons? NETANYAHU: Well, we have a longstanding policy that we won’t be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East, and that hasn’t changed. MORGAN: So you don’t have any? NETANYAHU: That’s our policy. Not to be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East. Despite the word games, it is well known that Israel has been a nuclear weapons power for forty-five years. As several Israeli historians and journalists have revealed, Israel crossed the nuclear threshold on the eve of the Six Day War in May 1967. Summarized by Patrick Tyler in his book, A World of Trouble: The White House and the Middle East—from the Cold War to the War on Terror: “[Prime Minister Levi] Eshkol, according to a number of Israeli sources, secretly ordered the Dimona [nuclear reactor] scientists to assemble two crude nuclear devices. He placed them under the command of Brigadier General Yitzhak Yaakov, the chief of research and development in Israel’s Defense Ministry. One official said the operation was referred to as Spider because the nuclear devices were inelegant contraptions with appendages sticking out. The crude atomic bombs were readied for deployment on trucks that could race to the Egyptian border for detonation in the event Arab forces overwhelmed Israeli defenses.” It took years, however, for the United States to verify that Israel had developed a nuclear weapon. This uncertainty persisted despite numerous U.S. inspections of the Dimona reactor—carefully stage-managed by the Israeli government to deceive the Kennedy and Johnson administrations—and assurances that Israel would not “introduce” nuclear weapons into the region. On May 1, 1967, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach wrote to President Johnson under the heading, “The Arab-Israeli Arms Race and Status of U.S. Arms Control Efforts:" “Nuclear Weapons. Concerned that over the long run the Arabs will achieve superiority in conventional forces, Israel is carefully preserving its option to acquire sophisticated weapons, including, we believe, nuclear weapons. We have no evidence that Israel is actually making a bomb, but we believe Israel intends to keep itself in a position to do so at reasonably short notice should the need arise. The Israeli reactor at Dimona is capable of producing enough plutonium to make one or two bombs a year, but thus far our periodic inspections of this facility (most recently on April 22, 1967) have uncovered no evidence of weapons activity.” If you replaced the words “Israel” with “Iran,” it would largely echo the recent findings of the U.S. intelligence community on the suspected Iranian nuclear weapons program. In a twist of historical irony, Iran’s contemporary playbook mirrors the one used by Israel to acquire a nuclear weapon in the 1950s and 1960s. As Tehran worries about an Israeli attack on its nuclear program today, Israeli officials in the 1960s were also deeply paranoid that Egypt would initiate a preventive attack on the Dimona reactor. In 1965, the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Yitzhak Rabin, warned, “If Egypt bombs Dimona, and we want to wage a war, we could be issued an ultimatum from the entire world.” While Israel assembled its first nuclear weapon in May 1967, Egypt conducted high-altitude reconnaissance flights of Dimona. After sifting through the evidence, historian Avner Cohen concluded, “Egypt may have been very close to launching an aerial attack on Dimona on May 26 or May 27, but it was called off by [Egyptian Prime Minister Gamal Abdel] Nasser on a few hours’ notice.” In 1974, the CIA revealed in a special national intelligence estimate (SNIE), “we believe that Israel already has produced nuclear weapons,” but, “we do not expect the Israelis to provide confirmation of widespread suspicions of their capability, either by nuclear testing or by threats of use.” [That same SNIE assessed: “[Iran] is a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and all its reactors and other facilities will be safeguarded. Although withdrawal from the NPT or abrogation of safeguards is possible, no Iranian leader is going to take that step while a nuclear energy program is in the middle of implementation.” Of course, we now know this was wrong, because by April 1984 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had already decided to restart the Iranian nuclear program to defend the Islamic Revolution from external threats.] Today, Israel’s nuclear arsenal is estimated to include up to two hundred nuclear warheads that can be delivered by F-16 fighter-bombers, Jericho missiles, and Diesel-powered Dolphin-class submarines supplied by Germany. The existence of this vast destructive power—with secure second-strike capability—has never been acknowledged by Israeli officials, and is rarely vocalized by U.S. policymakers. In his recent interview with The Atlantic last Thursday, echoed before the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual conference, President Obama warned that if Iran had a bomb, “It is almost certain that others in the region would feel compelled to get their own nuclear weapon, triggering an arms race in one of the world’s most volatile regions.” Concerns regarding a cascade of proliferation instigated by an Iranian nuclear weapon are as likely today as when Israel built the bomb forty-five years ago. It is no coincidence that nuclear weapons were introduced to the region primarily by adversaries of Iran: the United States via its nuclear-weapons capable submarines; the Soviet Union’s vast arsenal that included deployments in countries bordering Iran; Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities that emerged in the mid-1980s; and the 60-70 B-61 bombs that still remain in Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. Excluded from this list are Iraq’s dual-track covert uranium enrichment efforts in the 1980s, which were eliminated by the Gulf War in 1991. Israel gains nothing by sacrificing its moral and political authority to maintain the farce of "nuclear opacity" that no one believes. As I’ve written elsewhere, Israel should come out of the nuclear closet by following three concrete steps:                   Provide transparency about the size, command and control, nuclear security features and nonproliferation objectives of its nuclear arsenal as other non-NPT nuclear powers do. Sign a safeguards agreement with the IAEA covering all existing or future civilian nuclear facilities Participate in legitimate international forums where the issue of a WMD-free Middle East is debated.