Under Obama, an
emerging global apparatus for drone killing
By Greg Miller,
Published: December 27, 2011
The Obama
administration’s counterterrorism accomplishments are most apparent in what it
has been able to dismantle, including CIA prisons and entire tiers of
al-Qaeda’s leadership. But what the administration has assembled, hidden from
public view, may be equally consequential.
In the space of three
years, the administration has built an extensive apparatus for using drones to
carry out targeted killings of suspected terrorists and stealth
surveillance of other adversaries. The apparatus involves dozens of secret
facilities, including two operational hubs on the East Coast, virtual Air Force
cockpits in the Southwest and clandestine
bases in at least six countries on two continents.
Other commanders in
chief have presided over wars with far higher casualty counts. But no president
has ever relied so extensively on the secret killing of individuals to advance
the nation’s security goals.
The rapid expansion of
the drone program has blurred long-standing boundaries between the CIA and
the military. Lethal operations are increasingly assembled a la carte,
piecing together personnel and equipment in ways that allow the White House
to toggle between separate legal authorities that govern the use of
lethal force.
In Yemen, for
instance, the CIA and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command pursue
the same adversary with nearly identical aircraft. But they alternate taking
the lead on strikes to exploit their separate authorities, and they maintain separate
kill lists that overlap but don’t match. CIA
and military strikes this fall killed three U.S. citizens, two of whom
were suspected al-Qaeda operatives.
The convergence of
military and intelligence resources has created blind spots in congressional
oversight. Intelligence committees are briefed on CIA operations, and JSOC
reports to armed services panels. As a result, no committee has a complete,
unobstructed view.
With a year to go in
President Obama’s first term, his administration can point to undeniable
results: Osama bin Laden is dead, the core al-Qaeda network is near defeat, and
members of its regional affiliates scan the sky for metallic glints.
Those results,
delivered with unprecedented precision from aircraft that put no American
pilots at risk, may help explain why the drone campaign has never attracted as
much scrutiny as the detention or interrogation programs of the George W. Bush
era. Although human rights advocates and others are increasingly critical of
the drone program, the level of public debate remains muted.
Senior Democrats
barely blink at the idea that a president from their party has assembled such a
highly efficient machine for the targeted killing of suspected terrorists. It
is a measure of the extent to which the drone campaign has become an awkward
open secret in Washington that even those inclined to express misgivings can
only allude to a program that, officially, they are not allowed to discuss.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein
(D-Calif.), chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, described the
program with a mixture of awe and concern. Its expansion under Obama was almost
inevitable, she said, because of the technology’s growing sophistication.
But the pace of its development, she said, makes it hard to predict how it
might come to be used.
“What this does is it
takes a lot of Americans out of harm’s way . . . without having to send in a special
ops team or drop a 500-pound bomb,” Feinstein said in an interview in which she
was careful to avoid explicit confirmation that the programs exist. “But I
worry about how this develops. I’m worried because of what increased technology
will make it capable of doing.”
Another reason for the
lack of extensive debate is secrecy. The
White House has refused to divulge details about the structure of the
drone program or, with rare exceptions, who has been killed. White House and
CIA officials declined to speak for attribution for this article.
Drone war’s evolution
Inside the White
House, according to officials who would discuss the drone program only on the
condition of anonymity, the drone is seen as a critical tool whose evolution
was accelerating even before Obama was elected. Senior administration officials
said the escalating number of strikes has created a perception that
the drone is driving counterterrorism policy, when the reverse is true.
“People think we start
with the drone and go from there, but that’s not it at all,” said a senior
administration official involved with the program. “We’re not constructing a
campaign around the drone. We’re not seeking to create some worldwide basing
network so we have drone capabilities in every corner of the globe.”
Nevertheless, for a
president who campaigned against the alleged counterterrorism excesses of his
predecessor, Obama has emphatically embraced the post-Sept. 11 era’s signature
counterterrorism tool.
When Obama was sworn
into office in 2009, the nation’s clandestine drone war was confined to a
single country, Pakistan, where 44 strikes over five years had left about 400
people dead, according
to the New America Foundation. The number of strikes has since soared to
nearly 240, and the number of those killed, according to conservative
estimates, has more than quadrupled.
The number of strikes
in Pakistan has declined this year, partly because the CIA has occasionally suspended them to
ease tensions at moments of crisis. One lull followed the arrest of an American
agency contractor who killed two Pakistani men; another came after the U.S.
commando raid that killed bin Laden. The CIA’s most recent period of restraint
followed U.S. military airstrikes last month that inadvertently killed 24
Pakistani soldiers along the Afghan border. At the same time, U.S. officials
have said that the number of “high-value” al-Qaeda
targets in Pakistan has dwindled to two.
Administration
officials said the expansion of the program under Obama has largely been driven
by the timeline of the drone’s development. Remotely piloted aircraft were used
during the Clinton and Bush administrations, but only in recent years have they
become advanced and abundant enough to be deployed on such a large scale.
The number of drone
aircraft has exploded in the past three years. A recent study by the
Congressional Budget Office counted 775 Predators, Reapers and other
medium- and long-range drones in the U.S. inventory, with hundreds more in the
pipeline.
About 30 of those
aircraft have been allocated to the CIA, officials said. But the agency has a
separate category that doesn’t show up in any public accounting, a fleet of
stealth drones that were developed and acquired under a highly
compartmentalized CIA program created after the Sept. 11 attacks. The RQ-170
model that recently crashed in Iran exposed the agency’s use of stealth drones
to spy on that country’s nuclear program, but the planes have also been used in
other countries.
The escalation of the
lethal drone campaign under Obama was driven to an extent by early
counterterrorism decisions. Shuttering the CIA’s detention program and
halting transfers to Guantanamo Bay left few options beyond
drone strikes or detention by often unreliable allies.
Key members of Obama’s
national security team came into office more inclined to endorse drone strikes
than were their counterparts under Bush, current and former officials said.
Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton, former CIA director and current Defense Secretary Leon
E. Panetta, and counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan seemed always ready to
step on the accelerator, said a former official who served in both administrations and was
supportive of the program. Current administration officials did not dispute the
former official’s characterization of the internal dynamics.
The only member
of Obama’s team known to have formally raised objections to the expanding
drone campaign is Dennis Blair, who served as director of national
intelligence.
During a National
Security Council meeting in November 2009, Blair sought to override the agenda
and force a debate on the use of drones, according to two participants.
Blair has since
articulated his concerns publicly, calling for a suspension of unilateral drone
strikes in Pakistan, which he argues damage relations with that country and
kill mainly mid-level militants. But he now speaks as a private citizen. His
opinion contributed to his isolation from Obama’s inner circle,
and he was fired last year.
Obama himself was
“oddly passive in this world,” the former official said, tending to defer on
drone policy to senior aides whose instincts often dovetailed with the
institutional agendas of the CIA and JSOC.
The senior
administration official disputed that characterization, saying that Obama
doesn’t weigh in on every operation but has been deeply involved in setting
the criteria for strikes and emphasizing the need to minimize collateral
damage.
“Everything about our
counterterrorism operations is about carrying out the guidance that he’s
given,” the official said. “I don’t think you could have the president any more
involved.”
Yemen convergence
Yemen has emerged as a
crucible of convergence, the only country where both the CIA and JSOC
are known to fly armed drones and carry out strikes. The attacks are
aimed at al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a Yemen-based affiliate that has
eclipsed the terrorist network’s core as the most worrisome security threat.
From separate “ops
centers” at Langley and Fort Bragg, N.C., the agency and JSOC share
intelligence and coordinate attacks, even as operations unfold. U.S.
officials said the CIA recently intervened in a planned JSOC strike in Yemen,
urging its military counterpart to hold its fire because the intended target
was not where the missile was aimed. Subsequent intelligence confirmed the
agency’s concerns, officials said.
But seams in the
collaboration still show.
After locating Anwar
al-Awlaki in Yemen this fall, the CIA quickly assembled a fleet of armed drones
to track the alleged al-Qaeda leader until it could take a shot.
The agency moved armed
Predators from Pakistan to Yemen temporarily, and assumed control of others
from JSOC’s arsenal, to expand surveillance of Awlaki, a U.S.-born cleric
connected to terrorism plots, including the attempted bombing of a
Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day 2009.
The choreography of
the strike, which involved four drones, was intricate. Two Predators
pointed lasers at Awlaki’s vehicle, and a third circled to make sure that no
civilians wandered into the cross hairs. Reaper drones, which are larger than
Predators and can carry more missiles, have become the main shooters in most
strikes.
On Sept. 30, Awlaki
was killed in a missile strike carried out by the CIA under Title 50
authorities — which govern covert intelligence operations — even though
officials said it was initially unclear whether an agency or JSOC drone had
delivered the fatal blow. A second U.S. citizen, an al-Qaeda propagandist who
had lived in North Carolina, was among those killed.
The execution was
nearly flawless, officials said. Nevertheless, when a similar strike was
conducted just two weeks later, the entire protocol had changed. The
second attack, which killed Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, was carried out by
JSOC under Title 10 authorities that apply to the use of military
force.
When pressed on why
the CIA had not pulled the trigger, U.S. officials said it was because the main
target of the Oct. 14 attack, an Egyptian named Ibrahim al-Banna, was not on
the agency’s kill list. The Awlaki teenager, a
U.S. citizen with no history of involvement with al-Qaeda, was an
unintended casualty.
In interviews, senior
U.S. officials acknowledged that the two kill lists don’t match, but
offered conflicting explanations as to why.
Three senior U.S.
officials said the lists vary because of the divergent legal authorities. JSOC’s list is longer, the officials
said, because the post-Sept. 11, 2001, Authorization for Use of Military Force,
as well as a separate executive order, gave JSOC latitude to hunt broadly
defined groups of al-Qaeda fighters, even outside conventional war zones. The
CIA’s lethal-action authorities, based in a presidential “finding” that has
been modified since Sept. 11, were described as more narrow.
But others directly
involved in the drone campaign offered a simpler explanation: Because the CIA
had only recently resumed armed drone flights over Yemen, the agency hadn’t had
as much time as JSOC to compile its kill list. Over time, officials said, the
agency would catch up.
The administration
official who discussed the drone program declined to address the discrepancies
in the kill lists, except to say: “We are aiming and striving for alignment.
That is an ideal to be achieved.”
Divided oversight
Such disparities often
elude Congress, where the structure of oversight committees has failed
to keep pace with the way military and intelligence operations have
converged.
Within 24 hours of
every CIA drone strike, a classified fax machine lights up in the secure spaces
of the Senate intelligence committee, spitting out a report on the
location, target and result.
The outdated procedure
reflects the agency’s effort to comply with Title 50 requirements that
Congress be provided with timely, written notification of covert action
overseas. There is no comparable requirement in Title 10, and the Senate
Armed Services Committee can go days before learning the details of JSOC
strikes.
Neither panel is in a
position to compare the CIA and JSOC kill lists or even arrive at a
comprehensive understanding of the rules by which each is assembled.
The senior
administration official said the gap is inadvertent. “It’s certainly not
something where the goal is to evade oversight,” the official said. A senior
Senate aide involved in reviewing military drone strikes said that the blind
spot reflects a failure by Congress to adapt but that “we will eventually catch
up.”
The disclosure of
these operations is generally limited to relevant committees in the House and
Senate and sometimes only to their leaders. Those briefed must abide by
restrictions that prevent them from discussing what they have learned with
those who lack the requisite security clearances. The vast majority of
lawmakers receive scant information about the administration’s drone program.
The Senate
intelligence committee, which is wrapping up a years-long investigation of the
Bush-era interrogation program, has not initiated such an examination of armed
drones. But officials said their oversight of the program has been augmented
significantly in the past couple of years, with senior staff members now making
frequent and sometimes unannounced visits to the CIA “ops center,” reviewing
the intelligence involved in errant strikes, and visiting counterterrorism
operations sites overseas.
Feinstein acknowledged
concern with emerging blind spots.
“Whenever this is
used, particularly in a lethal manner, there ought to be careful oversight, and
that ought to be by civilians,” Feinstein said. “What we have is a very unique
battlefield weapon. You can’t stop the technology from improving, so you better
start thinking about how you monitor it.”
Increasing reach
The return of armed
CIA Predators to Yemen — after carrying out a single strike there in 2002 — was
part of a significant expansion of the drones’ geographic reach.
Over the past year,
the agency has erected a secret drone base on the Arabian Peninsula. The
U.S. military began flying Predators and Reapers from bases in Seychelles and
Ethiopia, in addition to JSOC’s long-standing drone base in Djibouti.
Senior administration
officials said the sprawling program comprises distinct campaigns, each
calibrated according to where and against whom the aircraft and other
counterterrorism weapons are used.
In Pakistan,
the CIA has carried out 239 strikes since Obama was sworn in, and the agency
continues to have wide latitude to launch attacks.
In Yemen, there
have been about 15 strikes since Obama took office, although it is not clear
how many were carried out by drones because the U.S. military has also used
conventional aircraft and cruise missiles.
Somalia, where the militant group al-Shabab is
based, is surrounded by American drone installations. And officials said that
JSOC has repeatedly lobbied for authority to strike al-Shabab training camps
that have attracted some Somali Americans.
But the administration
has allowed only a handful of strikes, out of concern that a broader campaign
could turn al-Shabab from a regional menace into an adversary determined to
carry out attacks on U.S. soil.
The plans are
constantly being adjusted, officials said, with the White House holding
strategy sessions on Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia two or three times a month.
Administration officials point to the varied approach as evidence of its
restraint.
“Somalia would be the
easiest place to go in in an undiscriminating way and do drone strikes because
there’s no host government to get” angry, the senior administration official
said. “But that’s certainly not the way we’re approaching it.”
Drone strikes could
resume, however, if factions of al-Shabab’s leadership succeed in expanding the
group’s agenda.
“That’s an ongoing
calculation because there’s an ongoing debate inside the senior leadership of
al-Shabab,” the senior administration official said. “It certainly would not
bother us if potential terrorists took note of the fact that we tend to go
after those who go after us.”
