Excerpt: "Barack Obama will not tighten the rules governing US drone strikes
ahead of Donald Trump's inauguration, the Guardian has learned."
The process for deploying drone strikes was codified in 2013 under Obama's
administration. (photo: Shawn Thew/EPA)
Obama Will Not Restrict Drone Strike 'Playbook' Before Trump Takes Office
By Spencer Ackerman and Patrick Wintour, Guardian UK
15 November 16
Trump administration will inherit Obama's signature counter-terrorism
tactic, known as 'targeted killing', the controversial rules of which new
book reveals
arack Obama will not tighten the rules governing US drone strikes ahead of
Donald Trump's inauguration, the Guardian has learned.
Trump will inherit the apparatus for what Obama calls "targeted killing" -
the so-called drones "playbook" formally known as the 22 May 2013
Presidential Policy Guidance or PPG - that has turned drone strikes into
Obama's signature counter-terrorism tactic.
While the White House considers its standards for drone strikes to be
scrupulous, much of the rest of the world considers them to represent an
arbitrary, secret and dangerous apparatus of secret killing that Trump will
soon have at his disposal.
"Maybe on the left no one would believe that Trump has a steady hand, but
Obama has normalized the idea that presidents get to have secret large-scale
killing programs at their disposal," said Naureen Shah of Amnesty
International USA.
Begun under George W Bush, drone strikes were vastly accelerated and
codified by Obama beyond officially declared war zones. Official estimates
claim they have killed nearly 2,600 "terrorists", though human rights
activists consider that to be an undercount.
The footprint of the drones has become increasingly widespread, situated in
airfields from Tunisia to Niger to Cameroon, they represent the outgrowth of
a legal theory which was embraced by both presidents Bush and Obama, who
considered the war on terrorism's battlefield to be global.
For Obama, the drone has been a calibrated, restrained instrument of death,
an alternative to grueling all-out war. Trump will now be the one capable of
harnessing its power.
The process Obama set for drone strikes was codified in 2013, but the PPG
was kept secret until Jameel Jaffer, formerly of the American Civil
Liberties Union, and his colleagues sued to compel its disclosure. In August
this year, the 18-page top secret document was declassified.
Jaffer, now the director of the Knight First Amendment Center at Columbia
University, has compiled the PPG and several other once-secret documents
relevant to Obama's institutionalization of targeted killing into a new
book, The Drone Memos. The Guardian is publishing three of those documents,
including the declassified PPG, as well as Jaffer's introduction to his
book.
The PPG instructs that lethal force against "an identified high-value
terrorist" shall be "as discriminating and precise as reasonably possible".
In all but "extraordinary circumstances", such force requires "near
certainty that the action can be taken without injuring or killing"
civilians.
A senior administration official said: "As the president has said, 'near
certainty' is the 'highest standard we can set'."
Yet critics of targeted killinghave pointed to several other aspects of the
document that raise alarm.
Those who implement the killings, the CIA and the military's Joint Special
Operation Command (JSOC), do not necessarily need to know who they kill.
Instead, the PPG instructs: "When using lethal action, employ all reasonably
available resources to ascertain the identity of the target."
Similarly, the document permits killing "terrorist targets other than
identified high-value individuals". Should the CIA or JSOC wish to convince
the president to do so, they must aver that they have "near certainty that
the target is present", civilians won't be harmed, "capture is not feasible"
and "no other reasonable alternatives exist".
Drone strikes and counter-terrorism raids are supposed to occur outside the
US, per the documents. But US citizens are not immune, despite the
constitution's prohibition on taking an American's life without due process
of law. The PPG entrusts the US justice department - soon to be in Trump's
hands - with performing "a legal analysis to ensure that such action may be
conducted against the individual consistent with the laws and constitution".
In 2011, the CIA executed a US citizen turned al-Qaida propagandist, Anwar
al-Awlaki; it then killed his 16-year old son in what the former attorney
general Eric Holder stated was a strike that did not "specifically" target
the teenager. The administration has confirmed killing two other Americans
overseas in drone strikes.
No court reviews these decisions. Only "the appropriate members of the
Congress", an undefined term, learn of them.
A senior official told the Guardian this week that the protections for
civilians within the PPG exceed those set by the law of armed conflict.
"We are continually working to refine, clarify and strengthen our standards
and procedures for using force to keep the nation safe from terrorist
threats," said the official, who would not be quoted by name.
It is unknown whether Trump will also rely on drone strikes. On the campaign
trail, he spoke more often about bombing "the shit" out of enemies than
performing something more akin to assassination. "I'd blow up the pipes, I'd
blow up the refineries, I'd blow up every single inch, there would be
nothing left," he told an Iowa audience in November 2015.
Observers consider use of drones less significant than the codification of
targeted killing itself, whose rules Trump is free to revise.
Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations, said: "Does he either
personally allow for lowered rules of engagement and higher numbers of
potential civilian casualties, or does he allow commanders to do that in the
field?"
Last year, Obama claimed drone strikes had killed between 64 and 116
civilians in 473 drone strikes between 2009 and 2015. Human rights groups
consider that estimate of civilian-casualty figures to be far too low. But
the secrecy that still surrounds drone strikes - both official and imposed
by the hazards of reporting from dangerous places - complicates a more
thorough independent accounting.
Speaking in London last week, a former state department official urged Obama
to place additional checks around what he called "the most awesome
assassination machine ever known to man".
Jeremy Shapiro, a senior state department official during Obama's tenure,
told an audience at the European Council on Foreign Relations that before
the 2012 election, the Obama administration expressed alarm at potentially
passing the apparatus of targeted killing to a successor.
"When people looked at it, they thought 'Christ, this is scary' - what if we
give this to the Republicans?"
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The process for deploying drone strikes was codified in 2013 under Obama's
administration. (photo: Shawn Thew/EPA)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/15/obama-administration-drone-str
ikes-donald-trumphttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/15/obama-adminis
tration-drone-strikes-donald-trump
Obama Will Not Restrict Drone Strike 'Playbook' Before Trump Takes Office
By Spencer Ackerman and Patrick Wintour, Guardian UK
15 November 16
Trump administration will inherit Obama's signature counter-terrorism
tactic, known as 'targeted killing', the controversial rules of which new
book reveals
arack Obama will not tighten the rules governing US drone strikes ahead of
Donald Trump's inauguration, the Guardian has learned.
Trump will inherit the apparatus for what Obama calls "targeted killing" -
the so-called drones "playbook" formally known as the 22 May 2013
Presidential Policy Guidance or PPG - that has turned drone strikes into
Obama's signature counter-terrorism tactic.
While the White House considers its standards for drone strikes to be
scrupulous, much of the rest of the world considers them to represent an
arbitrary, secret and dangerous apparatus of secret killing that Trump will
soon have at his disposal.
"Maybe on the left no one would believe that Trump has a steady hand, but
Obama has normalized the idea that presidents get to have secret large-scale
killing programs at their disposal," said Naureen Shah of Amnesty
International USA.
Begun under George W Bush, drone strikes were vastly accelerated and
codified by Obama beyond officially declared war zones. Official estimates
claim they have killed nearly 2,600 "terrorists", though human rights
activists consider that to be an undercount.
The footprint of the drones has become increasingly widespread, situated in
airfields from Tunisia to Niger to Cameroon, they represent the outgrowth of
a legal theory which was embraced by both presidents Bush and Obama, who
considered the war on terrorism's battlefield to be global.
For Obama, the drone has been a calibrated, restrained instrument of death,
an alternative to grueling all-out war. Trump will now be the one capable of
harnessing its power.
The process Obama set for drone strikes was codified in 2013, but the PPG
was kept secret until Jameel Jaffer, formerly of the American Civil
Liberties Union, and his colleagues sued to compel its disclosure. In August
this year, the 18-page top secret document was declassified.
Jaffer, now the director of the Knight First Amendment Center at Columbia
University, has compiled the PPG and several other once-secret documents
relevant to Obama's institutionalization of targeted killing into a new
book, The Drone Memos. The Guardian is publishing three of those documents,
including the declassified PPG, as well as Jaffer's introduction to his
book.
The PPG instructs that lethal force against "an identified high-value
terrorist" shall be "as discriminating and precise as reasonably possible".
In all but "extraordinary circumstances", such force requires "near
certainty that the action can be taken without injuring or killing"
civilians.
A senior administration official said: "As the president has said, 'near
certainty' is the 'highest standard we can set'."
Yet critics of targeted killinghave pointed to several other aspects of the
document that raise alarm.
Those who implement the killings, the CIA and the military's Joint Special
Operation Command (JSOC), do not necessarily need to know who they kill.
Instead, the PPG instructs: "When using lethal action, employ all reasonably
available resources to ascertain the identity of the target."
Similarly, the document permits killing "terrorist targets other than
identified high-value individuals". Should the CIA or JSOC wish to convince
the president to do so, they must aver that they have "near certainty that
the target is present", civilians won't be harmed, "capture is not feasible"
and "no other reasonable alternatives exist".
Drone strikes and counter-terrorism raids are supposed to occur outside the
US, per the documents. But US citizens are not immune, despite the
constitution's prohibition on taking an American's life without due process
of law. The PPG entrusts the US justice department - soon to be in Trump's
hands - with performing "a legal analysis to ensure that such action may be
conducted against the individual consistent with the laws and constitution".
In 2011, the CIA executed a US citizen turned al-Qaida propagandist, Anwar
al-Awlaki; it then killed his 16-year old son in what the former attorney
general Eric Holder stated was a strike that did not "specifically" target
the teenager. The administration has confirmed killing two other Americans
overseas in drone strikes.
No court reviews these decisions. Only "the appropriate members of the
Congress", an undefined term, learn of them.
A senior official told the Guardian this week that the protections for
civilians within the PPG exceed those set by the law of armed conflict.
"We are continually working to refine, clarify and strengthen our standards
and procedures for using force to keep the nation safe from terrorist
threats," said the official, who would not be quoted by name.
It is unknown whether Trump will also rely on drone strikes. On the campaign
trail, he spoke more often about bombing "the shit" out of enemies than
performing something more akin to assassination. "I'd blow up the pipes, I'd
blow up the refineries, I'd blow up every single inch, there would be
nothing left," he told an Iowa audience in November 2015.
Observers consider use of drones less significant than the codification of
targeted killing itself, whose rules Trump is free to revise.
Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations, said: "Does he either
personally allow for lowered rules of engagement and higher numbers of
potential civilian casualties, or does he allow commanders to do that in the
field?"
Last year, Obama claimed drone strikes had killed between 64 and 116
civilians in 473 drone strikes between 2009 and 2015. Human rights groups
consider that estimate of civilian-casualty figures to be far too low. But
the secrecy that still surrounds drone strikes - both official and imposed
by the hazards of reporting from dangerous places - complicates a more
thorough independent accounting.
Speaking in London last week, a former state department official urged Obama
to place additional checks around what he called "the most awesome
assassination machine ever known to man".
Jeremy Shapiro, a senior state department official during Obama's tenure,
told an audience at the European Council on Foreign Relations that before
the 2012 election, the Obama administration expressed alarm at potentially
passing the apparatus of targeted killing to a successor.
"When people looked at it, they thought 'Christ, this is scary' - what if we
give this to the Republicans?"
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