Scahill reports: "The Intercept has obtained a cache of secret slides that
provides a window into the inner workings of the U.S. military's
kill/capture operations. The documents, which also outline the internal
views of special operations forces on the shortcomings and flaws of the
drone program, were provided by a source within the intelligence community
who worked on the types of operations and programs described in the slides."
Predator drone before its surveillance flight near the Mexican border at
Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista, Arizona. (photo: U.S. Office of Air and
Marine (OAM))
The Drone Papers: The Assassination Complex
By Jeremy Scahill, The Intercept
15 October 15
From his first days as commander in chief, the drone has been President
Barack Obama's weapon of choice, used by the military and the CIA to hunt
down and kill the people his administration has deemed - through secretive
processes, without indictment or trial - worthy of execution. There has been
intense focus on the technology of remote killing, but that often serves as
a surrogate for what should be a broader examination of the state's power
over life and death.
Drones are a tool, not a policy. The policy is assassination. While every
president since Gerald Ford has upheld an executive order banning
assassinations by U.S. personnel, Congress has avoided legislating the issue
or even defining the word "assassination." This has allowed proponents of
the drone wars to rebrand assassinations with more palatable
characterizations, such as the term du jour, "targeted killings."
When the Obama administration has discussed drone strikes publicly, it has
offered assurances that such operations are a more precise alternative to
boots on the ground and are authorized only when an "imminent" threat is
present and there is "near certainty" that the intended target will be
eliminated. Those terms, however, appear to have been bluntly redefined to
bear almost no resemblance to their commonly understood meanings.
The first drone strike outside of a declared war zone was conducted more
than 12 years ago, yet it was not until May 2013 that the White House
released a set of standards and procedures for conducting such strikes.
Those guidelines offered little specificity, asserting that the U.S. would
only conduct a lethal strike outside of an "area of active hostilities" if a
target represents a "continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons," without
providing any sense of the internal process used to determine whether a
suspect should be killed without being indicted or tried. The implicit
message on drone strikes from the Obama administration has been one of
trust, but don't verify.
The Intercept has obtained a cache of secret slides that provides a window
into the inner workings of the U.S. military's kill/capture operations at a
key time in the evolution of the drone wars - between 2011 and 2013. The
documents, which also outline the internal views of special operations
forces on the shortcomings and flaws of the drone program, were provided by
a source within the intelligence community who worked on the types of
operations and programs described in the slides. The Intercept granted the
source's request for anonymity because the materials are classified and
because the U.S. government has engaged in aggressive prosecution of
whistleblowers. The stories in this series will refer to the source as "the
source."
The source said he decided to provide these documents to The Intercept
because he believes the public has a right to understand the process by
which people are placed on kill lists and ultimately assassinated on orders
from the highest echelons of the U.S. government. "This outrageous explosion
of watchlisting - of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on
lists, assigning them numbers, assigning them 'baseball cards,' assigning
them death sentences without notice, on a worldwide battlefield - it was,
from the very first instance, wrong," the source said.
The Pentagon, White House, and Special Operations Command all declined to
comment. A Defense Department spokesperson said, "We don't comment on the
details of classified reports."
The CIA and the U.S. military's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC)
operate parallel drone-based assassination programs, and the secret
documents should be viewed in the context of an intense internal turf war
over which entity should have supremacy in those operations. Two sets of
slides focus on the military's high-value targeting campaign in Somalia and
Yemen as it existed between 2011 and 2013, specifically the operations of a
secretive unit, Task Force 48-4.
Additional documents on high-value kill/capture operations in Afghanistan
buttress previous accounts of how the Obama administration masks the true
number of civilians killed in drone strikes by categorizing unidentified
people killed in a strike as enemies, even if they were not the intended
targets. The slides also paint a picture of a campaign in Afghanistan aimed
not only at eliminating al Qaeda and Taliban operatives, but also at taking
out members of other local armed groups.
One top-secret document shows how the terror "watchlist" appears in the
terminals of personnel conducting drone operations, linking unique codes
associated with cellphone SIM cards and handsets to specific individuals in
order to geolocate them.
The costs to intelligence gathering when suspected terrorists are killed
rather than captured are outlined in the slides pertaining to Yemen and
Somalia, which are part of a 2013 study conducted by a Pentagon entity, the
Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Task Force. The ISR study
lamented the limitations of the drone program, arguing for more advanced
drones and other surveillance aircraft and the expanded use of naval vessels
to extend the reach of surveillance operations necessary for targeted
strikes. It also contemplated the establishment of new "politically
challenging" airfields and recommended capturing and interrogating more
suspected terrorists rather than killing them in drone strikes.
The ISR Task Force at the time was under the control of Michael Vickers, the
undersecretary of defense for intelligence. Vickers, a fierce proponent of
drone strikes and a legendary paramilitary figure, had long pushed for a
significant increase in the military's use of special operations forces. The
ISR Task Force is viewed by key lawmakers as an advocate for more
surveillance platforms like drones.
The ISR study also reveals new details about the case of a British citizen,
Bilal el-Berjawi, who was stripped of his citizenship before being killed in
a U.S. drone strike in 2012. British and American intelligence had Berjawi
under surveillance for several years as he traveled back and forth between
the U.K. and East Africa, yet did not capture him. Instead, the U.S. hunted
him down and killed him in Somalia.
Taken together, the secret documents lead to the conclusion that
Washington's 14-year high-value targeting campaign suffers from an
overreliance on signals intelligence, an apparently incalculable civilian
toll, and - due to a preference for assassination rather than capture - an
inability to extract potentially valuable intelligence from terror suspects.
They also highlight the futility of the war in Afghanistan by showing how
the U.S. has poured vast resources into killing local insurgents, in the
process exacerbating the very threat the U.S. is seeking to confront.
These secret slides help provide historical context to Washington's ongoing
wars, and are especially relevant today as the U.S. military intensifies its
drone strikes and covert actions against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Those
campaigns, like the ones detailed in these documents, are unconventional
wars that employ special operations forces at the tip of the spear.
The "find, fix, finish" doctrine that has fueled America's post-9/11
borderless war is being refined and institutionalized. Whether through the
use of drones, night raids, or new platforms yet to be unleashed, these
documents lay bare the normalization of assassination as a central component
of U.S. counterterrorism policy.
While many of the documents provided to The Intercept contain explicit
internal recommendations for improving unconventional U.S. warfare, the
source said that what's implicit is even more significant. The mentality
reflected in the documents on the assassination programs is: "This process
can work. We can work out the kinks. We can excuse the mistakes. And
eventually we will get it down to the point where we don't have to
continuously come back . and explain why a bunch of innocent people got
killed."
The architects of what amounts to a global assassination campaign do not
appear concerned with either its enduring impact or its moral implications.
"All you have to do is take a look at the world and what it's become, and
the ineptitude of our Congress, the power grab of the executive branch over
the past decade," the source said. "It's never considered: Is what we're
doing going to ensure the safety of our moral integrity? Of not just our
moral integrity, but the lives and humanity of the people that are going to
have to live with this the most?"
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Predator drone before its surveillance flight near the Mexican border at
Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista, Arizona. (photo: U.S. Office of Air and
Marine (OAM))
https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-complex/https://thei
ntercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-complex/
The Drone Papers: The Assassination Complex
By Jeremy Scahill, The Intercept
15 October 15
From his first days as commander in chief, the drone has been President
Barack Obama's weapon of choice, used by the military and the CIA to hunt
down and kill the people his administration has deemed - through secretive
processes, without indictment or trial - worthy of execution. There has been
intense focus on the technology of remote killing, but that often serves as
a surrogate for what should be a broader examination of the state's power
over life and death.
rones are a tool, not a policy. The policy is assassination. While every
president since Gerald Ford has upheld an executive order banning
assassinations by U.S. personnel, Congress has avoided legislating the issue
or even defining the word "assassination." This has allowed proponents of
the drone wars to rebrand assassinations with more palatable
characterizations, such as the term du jour, "targeted killings."
When the Obama administration has discussed drone strikes publicly, it has
offered assurances that such operations are a more precise alternative to
boots on the ground and are authorized only when an "imminent" threat is
present and there is "near certainty" that the intended target will be
eliminated. Those terms, however, appear to have been bluntly redefined to
bear almost no resemblance to their commonly understood meanings.
The first drone strike outside of a declared war zone was conducted more
than 12 years ago, yet it was not until May 2013 that the White House
released a set of standards and procedures for conducting such strikes.
Those guidelines offered little specificity, asserting that the U.S. would
only conduct a lethal strike outside of an "area of active hostilities" if a
target represents a "continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons," without
providing any sense of the internal process used to determine whether a
suspect should be killed without being indicted or tried. The implicit
message on drone strikes from the Obama administration has been one of
trust, but don't verify.
The Intercept has obtained a cache of secret slides that provides a window
into the inner workings of the U.S. military's kill/capture operations at a
key time in the evolution of the drone wars - between 2011 and 2013. The
documents, which also outline the internal views of special operations
forces on the shortcomings and flaws of the drone program, were provided by
a source within the intelligence community who worked on the types of
operations and programs described in the slides. The Intercept granted the
source's request for anonymity because the materials are classified and
because the U.S. government has engaged in aggressive prosecution of
whistleblowers. The stories in this series will refer to the source as "the
source."
The source said he decided to provide these documents to The Intercept
because he believes the public has a right to understand the process by
which people are placed on kill lists and ultimately assassinated on orders
from the highest echelons of the U.S. government. "This outrageous explosion
of watchlisting - of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on
lists, assigning them numbers, assigning them 'baseball cards,' assigning
them death sentences without notice, on a worldwide battlefield - it was,
from the very first instance, wrong," the source said.
The Pentagon, White House, and Special Operations Command all declined to
comment. A Defense Department spokesperson said, "We don't comment on the
details of classified reports."
The CIA and the U.S. military's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC)
operate parallel drone-based assassination programs, and the secret
documents should be viewed in the context of an intense internal turf war
over which entity should have supremacy in those operations. Two sets of
slides focus on the military's high-value targeting campaign in Somalia and
Yemen as it existed between 2011 and 2013, specifically the operations of a
secretive unit, Task Force 48-4.
Additional documents on high-value kill/capture operations in Afghanistan
buttress previous accounts of how the Obama administration masks the true
number of civilians killed in drone strikes by categorizing unidentified
people killed in a strike as enemies, even if they were not the intended
targets. The slides also paint a picture of a campaign in Afghanistan aimed
not only at eliminating al Qaeda and Taliban operatives, but also at taking
out members of other local armed groups.
One top-secret document shows how the terror "watchlist" appears in the
terminals of personnel conducting drone operations, linking unique codes
associated with cellphone SIM cards and handsets to specific individuals in
order to geolocate them.
The costs to intelligence gathering when suspected terrorists are killed
rather than captured are outlined in the slides pertaining to Yemen and
Somalia, which are part of a 2013 study conducted by a Pentagon entity, the
Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Task Force. The ISR study
lamented the limitations of the drone program, arguing for more advanced
drones and other surveillance aircraft and the expanded use of naval vessels
to extend the reach of surveillance operations necessary for targeted
strikes. It also contemplated the establishment of new "politically
challenging" airfields and recommended capturing and interrogating more
suspected terrorists rather than killing them in drone strikes.
The ISR Task Force at the time was under the control of Michael Vickers, the
undersecretary of defense for intelligence. Vickers, a fierce proponent of
drone strikes and a legendary paramilitary figure, had long pushed for a
significant increase in the military's use of special operations forces. The
ISR Task Force is viewed by key lawmakers as an advocate for more
surveillance platforms like drones.
The ISR study also reveals new details about the case of a British citizen,
Bilal el-Berjawi, who was stripped of his citizenship before being killed in
a U.S. drone strike in 2012. British and American intelligence had Berjawi
under surveillance for several years as he traveled back and forth between
the U.K. and East Africa, yet did not capture him. Instead, the U.S. hunted
him down and killed him in Somalia.
Taken together, the secret documents lead to the conclusion that
Washington's 14-year high-value targeting campaign suffers from an
overreliance on signals intelligence, an apparently incalculable civilian
toll, and - due to a preference for assassination rather than capture - an
inability to extract potentially valuable intelligence from terror suspects.
They also highlight the futility of the war in Afghanistan by showing how
the U.S. has poured vast resources into killing local insurgents, in the
process exacerbating the very threat the U.S. is seeking to confront.
These secret slides help provide historical context to Washington's ongoing
wars, and are especially relevant today as the U.S. military intensifies its
drone strikes and covert actions against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Those
campaigns, like the ones detailed in these documents, are unconventional
wars that employ special operations forces at the tip of the spear.
The "find, fix, finish" doctrine that has fueled America's post-9/11
borderless war is being refined and institutionalized. Whether through the
use of drones, night raids, or new platforms yet to be unleashed, these
documents lay bare the normalization of assassination as a central component
of U.S. counterterrorism policy.
While many of the documents provided to The Intercept contain explicit
internal recommendations for improving unconventional U.S. warfare, the
source said that what's implicit is even more significant. The mentality
reflected in the documents on the assassination programs is: "This process
can work. We can work out the kinks. We can excuse the mistakes. And
eventually we will get it down to the point where we don't have to
continuously come back . and explain why a bunch of innocent people got
killed."
The architects of what amounts to a global assassination campaign do not
appear concerned with either its enduring impact or its moral implications.
"All you have to do is take a look at the world and what it's become, and
the ineptitude of our Congress, the power grab of the executive branch over
the past decade," the source said. "It's never considered: Is what we're
doing going to ensure the safety of our moral integrity? Of not just our
moral integrity, but the lives and humanity of the people that are going to
have to live with this the most?"
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