This is one of eight articles in this series on The Intercept. I read all of
them last night from the Intercept, except the one that was purely visual.
Miriam
Currier writes: "'The public has a right to know who's making these
decisions, who decides who is a legitimate target, and on what basis that
decision is made,' said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American
Civil Liberties Union."
A Yemeni man looks at graffiti showing a US drone. (photo: Yahya Arhab/EPA)
The Drone Papers: The Kill Chain
By Cora Currier, The Intercept
18 October 15
Secret military documents obtained by The Intercept offer rare documentary
evidence of the process by which the Obama administration creates and acts
on its kill list of terror suspects in Yemen and Somalia. The documents
offer an unusual glimpse into the decision-making process behind the drone
strikes and other operations of the largely covert war, outlining the
selection and vetting of targets through the ranks of the military and the
White House, culminating in the president's approval of a 60-day window for
lethal action.
The documents come from a Pentagon study, circulated in early 2013,
evaluating the intelligence and surveillance technology behind the
military's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) killing campaign in Yemen
and Somalia in 2011 and 2012.
The study, carried out by the Pentagon's Intelligence, Surveillance, and
Reconnaissance Task Force, illuminates and in some cases contradicts the
administration's public description of a campaign directed at high-level
terrorists who pose an imminent threat to the United States. It admits
frankly that capturing terrorists is a rare occurrence and hints at the use
of so-called signature strikes against unknown individuals exhibiting
suspicious behavior.
The Intercept obtained two versions of the study, a longer presentation
dated February 2013, and an executive summary from May 2013, which includes
a slide showing the chain of command leading to the approval of a lethal
strike.
A slide from a May 2013 Pentagon presentation shows the chain of command for
ordering drone strikes
and other operations carried out by JSOC in Yemen and Somalia. (photo: The
intercept)
The Obama administration has been loath to declassify even the legal
rationale for drone strikes - let alone detail the bureaucratic structure
revealed in these documents. Both the CIA and JSOC conduct drone strikes in
Yemen, and very little has been officially disclosed about either the
military's or the spy agency's operations.
"The public has a right to know who's making these decisions, who decides
who is a legitimate target, and on what basis that decision is made," said
Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Both the Pentagon and the National Security Council declined to respond to
detailed questions about the study and about the drone program more
generally. The NSC would not say if the process for approving targets or
strikes had changed since the study was produced.
Two Steps to a Kill
The May 2013 slide describes a two-part process of approval for an attack:
step one, "'Developing a target' to 'Authorization of a target,'" and step
two, "'Authorizing' to 'Actioning.'" According to the slide, intelligence
personnel from JSOC's Task Force 48-4, working alongside other intelligence
agencies, would build the case for action against an individual, eventually
generating a "baseball card" on the target, which was "staffed up to higher
echelons - ultimately to the president."
The intelligence package on the person being targeted passed from the JSOC
task force tracking him to the command in charge of the region - Centcom for
Yemen, and Africom for Somalia - and then to the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
followed by the secretary of defense. It was then examined by a circle of
top advisers known as the Principals Committee of the National Security
Council, and their seconds in command, known collectively as the Deputies
Committee.
The slide detailing the kill chain indicates that while Obama approved each
target, he did not approve each individual strike, although news accounts
have previously reported that the president personally "signs off" on
strikes outside of Afghanistan or Pakistan. However, the slide does appear
to be consistent with Obama's comment in 2012 that "ultimately I'm
responsible for the process."
Political chain of command. (photo: The Intercept/Feierstein/Landov/Getty
Images)
There have been various accounts of this drone bureaucracy, and almost all
stress the role of Obama's influential counterterrorism adviser John Brennan
(who became director of the CIA in 2013) and of top administration lawyers
in deciding who could be killed. Under Brennan, the nominations process was
reportedly concentrated in the White House, replacing video conferences once
run by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and elevating the role of the National
Counterterrorism Center in organizing intelligence. Later in 2013, the White
House reportedly tightened control over individual strikes in Yemen.
At the time of the study, with the president's approval, JSOC had a 60-day
window to hit a target. For the actual strike, the task force needed
approval from the Geographic Combatant Command as well as the ambassador and
CIA station chief in the country where the target was located. For a very
important target, such as al Qaeda-linked preacher Anwar al Awlaki, who was
a U.S. citizen, "it would take a high-level official to approve the strike,"
said Lt. Col. Mark McCurley, a former drone pilot who worked on operations
in Yemen and recently published a book about his experiences. "And that
includes a lot of lawyers and a lot of review at different levels to reach
that decision. We have an extensive chain of command, humans along the whole
link that monitor the entire process from start to finish on an airstrike."
The country's government was also supposed to sign off. "One Disagrees =
STOP," the slide notes, with a tiny red stop sign.
In practice, the degree of cooperation with the host nation has varied.
Somalia's minister of national security, Abdirizak Omar Mohamed, told The
Intercept that the United States alerted Somalia's president and foreign
minister of strikes "sometimes ahead of time, sometimes during the operation
. normally we get advance notice." He said he was unaware of an instance
where Somali officials had objected to a strike, but added that if they did,
he assumed the U.S. would respect Somalia's sovereignty.
By 2011, when the study's time frame began, Yemen's president Ali Abdullah
Saleh was in crisis. Facing domestic protests during the Arab Spring, he
left the country in June 2011 after being injured in a bombing. Both the CIA
and JSOC stepped up their drone campaigns, which enjoyed vocal support from
Saleh's eventual successor, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
"It was almost never coordinated with Saleh. Once Hadi became president,
March 2012, there was a big chance we'd be in the loop" before drone strikes
were conducted, said a former senior Yemeni official who worked for both the
Saleh and Hadi governments.
Today, with Yemen's capital under the control of the Houthi rebel group and
undergoing bombardment by Saudi Arabia, administration lawyers do not seem
worried about asking permission to carry out drone strikes amid the fray.
"Now, I think they don't even bother telling anyone. There is really no one
in charge to tell," said the former Yemeni official, who requested anonymity
citing current unrest and the fact that he no longer works for the
government.
Who Can Be Targeted
Both the Bush and Obama administrations have maintained that the 2001
Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF, permits the pursuit of
members of al Qaeda and its affiliates wherever they may be located.
The Pentagon study refers throughout to operations that fall under AUMF. But
it also underlines how the targeted killing campaigns differ from
traditional battlefields, noting that the region is located "Outside a
Defined Theater of Active Armed Conflict," which limits "allowable U.S.
activities."
Obama administration officials have said that in addition to being a member
of al Qaeda or an associated force, targets must also pose a significant
threat to the United States. In May 2013, facing increasing pressure to
fully admit the existence of the drone war and especially to address
allegations of civilian harm, the White House released policy guidelines for
lethal counterterrorism operations that seemed to further restrict them. In
a speech, Obama announced that action would be taken only against people who
posed a "continuing, imminent threat to the American people," and who could
not be captured. A strike would only occur with "near certainty" that no
civilians would be killed or injured.
Even with the new guidelines, legal observers, particularly human rights
lawyers, have disputed the Obama administration's position that the U.S., in
strict legal terms, is in an armed conflict with al Qaeda in Yemen or
Somalia - and therefore dispute what standards should apply to strikes.
Others question the extent to which the hundreds of people killed in drone
strikes in those countries meet the supposedly strict criteria.
"I think there can be questions raised about how stringently some of the
requirements are being applied," said Jennifer Daskal, an assistant
professor of law at American University who worked for the Department of
Justice from 2009 to 2011. "Near certainty of no civilian deaths, is that
really imposed? What does it mean for capture not to be feasible? How hard
do you have to try?"
It is not clear whether the study reflects the May policy guidance, since it
does not give an extensive description of the criteria for approving a
target, noting only that the target must be "a threat to U.S. interest or
personnel."
A spokesperson for the National Security Council would not explain why the
standards in the study differed from the guidelines laid out in May 2013,
but emphasized that "those guidelines remain in effect today."
The two-month window for striking, says Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU's
National Security Project, shows the administration's broad interpretation
of "a continuing, imminent threat."
"If you have approval over a monthslong period, that sends the signal of a
presumption that someone is always targetable, regardless of whether they
are actually participating in hostilities," said Shamsi.
The slide illustrating the chain of approval makes no mention of evaluating
options for capture. It may be implied that those discussions are part of
the target development process, but the omission reflects the brute facts
beneath the Obama administration's stated preference for capture: Detention
of marked targets is incredibly rare.
A chart in the study shows that in 2011 and 2012, captures accounted for
only 25 percent of operations carried out in the Horn of Africa - and all
were apparently by foreign forces. In one of the few publicized captures of
the Obama presidency, al Shabaab commander Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame was
picked up in April 2011 by U.S. forces in the Gulf of Aden and brought to
Manhattan for trial, though he may not be reflected in the study's figures
because he was apprehended at sea.
The study does not contain an overall count of strikes or deaths, but it
does note that "relatively few high-level terrorists meet criteria for
targeting" and states that at the end of June 2012, there were 16 authorized
targets in Yemen and only four in Somalia.
Despite the small number of people on the kill list, in 2011 and 2012 there
were at least 54 U.S. drone strikes and other attacks reported in Yemen,
killing a minimum of 293 people, including 55 civilians, according to
figures compiled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. In Somalia,
there were at least three attacks, resulting in the deaths of at minimum six
people.
Some of those Yemen strikes were likely carried out by the CIA, which since
mid-2011 has flown drones to Yemen from a base in Saudi Arabia and
reportedly has its own kill list and rules for strikes. Yet it is also clear
that the military sometimes harmed multiple other people in trying to kill
one of those high-level targets. The study includes a description of the
hunt for an alleged al Qaeda member referred to as "Objective Rhodes" or
"Anjaf," who is likely Fahd Saleh al-Anjaf al-Harithi, who was reported
killed in July 2012, on the same day as Objective Rhodes. A failed strike on
Harithi that April killed two "enemies." News accounts at the time reported
three "militants" had died.
A slide from February 2013 recounts the hunt for an alleged al Qaeda member
(likely Fahd Saleh al-Anjaf al-Harithi) showing that two others died in a
botched attempt to kill him.
(photo: The Intercept)
The large number of reported strikes may also be a reflection of signature
strikes in Yemen, where people can be targeted based on patterns of suspect
behavior. In 2012, administration officials said that President Obama had
approved strikes in Yemen on unknown people, calling them TADS, or "terror
attack disruption strikes," and claiming that they were more constrained
than the CIA's signature strikes in Pakistan.
The study refers to using drones and spy planes to "conduct TADS related
network development," presumably a reference to surveilling behavior
patterns and relationships in order to carry out signature strikes. It is
unclear what authorities govern such strikes, which undermine the
administration's insistence that the U.S. kills mainly "high-value" targets.
Near Certainty
According to the White House guidelines released in May 2013, the decision
to take a strike should be based on thorough surveillance and only occur in
the absence of civilians. A strike requires "near certainty that the
terrorist target is present" and "near certainty that non-combatants will
not be injured or killed."
The study describes the rules for a strike slightly differently, stating
that there must be a "low CDE [collateral damage environment]" - meaning a
low estimate of how many innocent people might be harmed. It also states
there must be "near certainty" that the target is present, "based on two
forms of intelligence," with "no contradictory intelligence." In contrast to
the White House statement, the "near certainty" standard is not applied to
civilians.
The study cites the "need to avoiding [sic] collateral damage areas" as a
reason for "unsuccessful" missions, but it does not give numbers of civilian
casualties or examples of bad intelligence leading to a mistaken kill.
Since the first drone strike in Yemen in 2002, hundreds of people have been
killed in U.S. operations in
Yemen and Somalia, many of them innocent civilians. The tallies shown here
were compiled by the
Bureau of Investigative Journalism from reports of both CIA and JSOC drone
strikes and other operations.
(photo: The Intercept)
Yet the overall conclusion is that getting accurate positive identification
is a "critical" issue for the drone program in the region, due to
limitations in technology and the number of spy aircraft available. The
military relies heavily on signals intelligence - drawn from electronic
communications - and much of it comes from foreign governments, who may have
their own agendas.
Identifying the correct target relates directly to the issue of civilian
casualties: If you don't have certainty about your target, it follows that
you may well be killing innocent people. In Iraq and Afghanistan, "when
collateral damage did occur, 70 percent of the time it was attributable to
failed - that is, mistaken - identification," according to a paper by
Gregory McNeal, an expert on drones and security at Pepperdine School of
Law.
Another factor is timing: If the 60-day authorization expired, analysts
would have to start all over in building the intelligence case against the
target, said a former senior special operations officer, who asked not to be
identified because he was discussing classified materials. That could lead
to pressure to take a shot while the window was open.
During the time of the study, there were multiple well-reported,
high-profile incidents in which reported JSOC strikes killed the wrong
people. Perhaps most famously, in October 2011, a 16-year-old U.S. citizen
named Abdulrahman Awlaki, the son of Anwar al Awlaki, died in a JSOC strike
while eating dinner with his cousins, two weeks after his father was killed
by a CIA drone. In press accounts, one anonymous official called
Abdulrahman's death "an outrageous mistake," while others said he was with
people believed to be members of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Publicly, the government has said only that he "was not specifically
targeted."
A September 2012 strike in Yemen, extensively investigated by Human Rights
Watch and the Open Society Foundations, killed 12 civilians, including three
children and a pregnant woman. No alleged militants died in the strike, and
the Yemeni government paid restitution for it, but the United States never
offered an explanation.
"The mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters of the people who were
killed in these drones strikes want to know why," said Amrit Singh, senior
legal officer at the Open Society Justice Initiative. "We're left with no
explanation as to why they were targeted and in most cases no compensation,
and the families are aware of no investigation."
This spring, in a rare admission of a mistake in targeting, the White House
announced that two hostages held by al Qaeda - an American and an Italian -
had been killed in a CIA drone strike in Pakistan in January. In attempting
to explain the tragedy, the White House spokesperson used the language of
the standards that had failed to prevent it: The hostages had died despite
"near certainty," after "near continuous surveillance," that they were not
present.
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A Yemeni man looks at graffiti showing a US drone. (photo: Yahya Arhab/EPA)
https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-kill-chain/https://theintercept.co
m/drone-papers/the-kill-chain/
The Drone Papers: The Kill Chain
By Cora Currier, The Intercept
18 October 15
Secret military documents obtained by The Intercept offer rare documentary
evidence of the process by which the Obama administration creates and acts
on its kill list of terror suspects in Yemen and Somalia. The documents
offer an unusual glimpse into the decision-making process behind the drone
strikes and other operations of the largely covert war, outlining the
selection and vetting of targets through the ranks of the military and the
White House, culminating in the president's approval of a 60-day window for
lethal action.
he documents come from a Pentagon study, circulated in early 2013,
evaluating the intelligence and surveillance technology behind the
military's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) killing campaign in Yemen
and Somalia in 2011 and 2012.
The study, carried out by the Pentagon's Intelligence, Surveillance, and
Reconnaissance Task Force, illuminates and in some cases contradicts the
administration's public description of a campaign directed at high-level
terrorists who pose an imminent threat to the United States. It admits
frankly that capturing terrorists is a rare occurrence and hints at the use
of so-called signature strikes against unknown individuals exhibiting
suspicious behavior.
The Intercept obtained two versions of the study, a longer presentation
dated February 2013, and an executive summary from May 2013, which includes
a slide showing the chain of command leading to the approval of a lethal
strike.
A slide from a May 2013 Pentagon presentation shows the chain of command for
ordering drone strikes
and other operations carried out by JSOC in Yemen and Somalia. (photo: The
intercept)
The Obama administration has been loath to declassify even the legal
rationale for drone strikes - let alone detail the bureaucratic structure
revealed in these documents. Both the CIA and JSOC conduct drone strikes in
Yemen, and very little has been officially disclosed about either the
military's or the spy agency's operations.
"The public has a right to know who's making these decisions, who decides
who is a legitimate target, and on what basis that decision is made," said
Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Both the Pentagon and the National Security Council declined to respond to
detailed questions about the study and about the drone program more
generally. The NSC would not say if the process for approving targets or
strikes had changed since the study was produced.
Two Steps to a Kill
The May 2013 slide describes a two-part process of approval for an attack:
step one, "'Developing a target' to 'Authorization of a target,'" and step
two, "'Authorizing' to 'Actioning.'" According to the slide, intelligence
personnel from JSOC's Task Force 48-4, working alongside other intelligence
agencies, would build the case for action against an individual, eventually
generating a "baseball card" on the target, which was "staffed up to higher
echelons - ultimately to the president."
The intelligence package on the person being targeted passed from the JSOC
task force tracking him to the command in charge of the region - Centcom for
Yemen, and Africom for Somalia - and then to the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
followed by the secretary of defense. It was then examined by a circle of
top advisers known as the Principals Committee of the National Security
Council, and their seconds in command, known collectively as the Deputies
Committee.
The slide detailing the kill chain indicates that while Obama approved each
target, he did not approve each individual strike, although news accounts
have previously reported that the president personally "signs off" on
strikes outside of Afghanistan or Pakistan. However, the slide does appear
to be consistent with Obama's comment in 2012 that "ultimately I'm
responsible for the process."
Political chain of command. (photo: The Intercept/Feierstein/Landov/Getty
Images)
There have been various accounts of this drone bureaucracy, and almost all
stress the role of Obama's influential counterterrorism adviser John Brennan
(who became director of the CIA in 2013) and of top administration lawyers
in deciding who could be killed. Under Brennan, the nominations process was
reportedly concentrated in the White House, replacing video conferences once
run by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and elevating the role of the National
Counterterrorism Center in organizing intelligence. Later in 2013, the White
House reportedly tightened control over individual strikes in Yemen.
At the time of the study, with the president's approval, JSOC had a 60-day
window to hit a target. For the actual strike, the task force needed
approval from the Geographic Combatant Command as well as the ambassador and
CIA station chief in the country where the target was located. For a very
important target, such as al Qaeda-linked preacher Anwar al Awlaki, who was
a U.S. citizen, "it would take a high-level official to approve the strike,"
said Lt. Col. Mark McCurley, a former drone pilot who worked on operations
in Yemen and recently published a book about his experiences. "And that
includes a lot of lawyers and a lot of review at different levels to reach
that decision. We have an extensive chain of command, humans along the whole
link that monitor the entire process from start to finish on an airstrike."
The country's government was also supposed to sign off. "One Disagrees =
STOP," the slide notes, with a tiny red stop sign.
In practice, the degree of cooperation with the host nation has varied.
Somalia's minister of national security, Abdirizak Omar Mohamed, told The
Intercept that the United States alerted Somalia's president and foreign
minister of strikes "sometimes ahead of time, sometimes during the operation
. normally we get advance notice." He said he was unaware of an instance
where Somali officials had objected to a strike, but added that if they did,
he assumed the U.S. would respect Somalia's sovereignty.
By 2011, when the study's time frame began, Yemen's president Ali Abdullah
Saleh was in crisis. Facing domestic protests during the Arab Spring, he
left the country in June 2011 after being injured in a bombing. Both the CIA
and JSOC stepped up their drone campaigns, which enjoyed vocal support from
Saleh's eventual successor, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
"It was almost never coordinated with Saleh. Once Hadi became president,
March 2012, there was a big chance we'd be in the loop" before drone strikes
were conducted, said a former senior Yemeni official who worked for both the
Saleh and Hadi governments.
Today, with Yemen's capital under the control of the Houthi rebel group and
undergoing bombardment by Saudi Arabia, administration lawyers do not seem
worried about asking permission to carry out drone strikes amid the fray.
"Now, I think they don't even bother telling anyone. There is really no one
in charge to tell," said the former Yemeni official, who requested anonymity
citing current unrest and the fact that he no longer works for the
government.
Who Can Be Targeted
Both the Bush and Obama administrations have maintained that the 2001
Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF, permits the pursuit of
members of al Qaeda and its affiliates wherever they may be located.
The Pentagon study refers throughout to operations that fall under AUMF. But
it also underlines how the targeted killing campaigns differ from
traditional battlefields, noting that the region is located "Outside a
Defined Theater of Active Armed Conflict," which limits "allowable U.S.
activities."
Obama administration officials have said that in addition to being a member
of al Qaeda or an associated force, targets must also pose a significant
threat to the United States. In May 2013, facing increasing pressure to
fully admit the existence of the drone war and especially to address
allegations of civilian harm, the White House released policy guidelines for
lethal counterterrorism operations that seemed to further restrict them. In
a speech, Obama announced that action would be taken only against people who
posed a "continuing, imminent threat to the American people," and who could
not be captured. A strike would only occur with "near certainty" that no
civilians would be killed or injured.
Even with the new guidelines, legal observers, particularly human rights
lawyers, have disputed the Obama administration's position that the U.S., in
strict legal terms, is in an armed conflict with al Qaeda in Yemen or
Somalia - and therefore dispute what standards should apply to strikes.
Others question the extent to which the hundreds of people killed in drone
strikes in those countries meet the supposedly strict criteria.
"I think there can be questions raised about how stringently some of the
requirements are being applied," said Jennifer Daskal, an assistant
professor of law at American University who worked for the Department of
Justice from 2009 to 2011. "Near certainty of no civilian deaths, is that
really imposed? What does it mean for capture not to be feasible? How hard
do you have to try?"
It is not clear whether the study reflects the May policy guidance, since it
does not give an extensive description of the criteria for approving a
target, noting only that the target must be "a threat to U.S. interest or
personnel."
A spokesperson for the National Security Council would not explain why the
standards in the study differed from the guidelines laid out in May 2013,
but emphasized that "those guidelines remain in effect today."
The two-month window for striking, says Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU's
National Security Project, shows the administration's broad interpretation
of "a continuing, imminent threat."
"If you have approval over a monthslong period, that sends the signal of a
presumption that someone is always targetable, regardless of whether they
are actually participating in hostilities," said Shamsi.
The slide illustrating the chain of approval makes no mention of evaluating
options for capture. It may be implied that those discussions are part of
the target development process, but the omission reflects the brute facts
beneath the Obama administration's stated preference for capture: Detention
of marked targets is incredibly rare.
A chart in the study shows that in 2011 and 2012, captures accounted for
only 25 percent of operations carried out in the Horn of Africa - and all
were apparently by foreign forces. In one of the few publicized captures of
the Obama presidency, al Shabaab commander Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame was
picked up in April 2011 by U.S. forces in the Gulf of Aden and brought to
Manhattan for trial, though he may not be reflected in the study's figures
because he was apprehended at sea.
The study does not contain an overall count of strikes or deaths, but it
does note that "relatively few high-level terrorists meet criteria for
targeting" and states that at the end of June 2012, there were 16 authorized
targets in Yemen and only four in Somalia.
Despite the small number of people on the kill list, in 2011 and 2012 there
were at least 54 U.S. drone strikes and other attacks reported in Yemen,
killing a minimum of 293 people, including 55 civilians, according to
figures compiled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. In Somalia,
there were at least three attacks, resulting in the deaths of at minimum six
people.
Some of those Yemen strikes were likely carried out by the CIA, which since
mid-2011 has flown drones to Yemen from a base in Saudi Arabia and
reportedly has its own kill list and rules for strikes. Yet it is also clear
that the military sometimes harmed multiple other people in trying to kill
one of those high-level targets. The study includes a description of the
hunt for an alleged al Qaeda member referred to as "Objective Rhodes" or
"Anjaf," who is likely Fahd Saleh al-Anjaf al-Harithi, who was reported
killed in July 2012, on the same day as Objective Rhodes. A failed strike on
Harithi that April killed two "enemies." News accounts at the time reported
three "militants" had died.
A slide from February 2013 recounts the hunt for an alleged al Qaeda member
(likely Fahd Saleh al-Anjaf al-Harithi) showing that two others died in a
botched attempt to kill him.
(photo: The Intercept)
The large number of reported strikes may also be a reflection of signature
strikes in Yemen, where people can be targeted based on patterns of suspect
behavior. In 2012, administration officials said that President Obama had
approved strikes in Yemen on unknown people, calling them TADS, or "terror
attack disruption strikes," and claiming that they were more constrained
than the CIA's signature strikes in Pakistan.
The study refers to using drones and spy planes to "conduct TADS related
network development," presumably a reference to surveilling behavior
patterns and relationships in order to carry out signature strikes. It is
unclear what authorities govern such strikes, which undermine the
administration's insistence that the U.S. kills mainly "high-value" targets.
Near Certainty
According to the White House guidelines released in May 2013, the decision
to take a strike should be based on thorough surveillance and only occur in
the absence of civilians. A strike requires "near certainty that the
terrorist target is present" and "near certainty that non-combatants will
not be injured or killed."
The study describes the rules for a strike slightly differently, stating
that there must be a "low CDE [collateral damage environment]" - meaning a
low estimate of how many innocent people might be harmed. It also states
there must be "near certainty" that the target is present, "based on two
forms of intelligence," with "no contradictory intelligence." In contrast to
the White House statement, the "near certainty" standard is not applied to
civilians.
The study cites the "need to avoiding [sic] collateral damage areas" as a
reason for "unsuccessful" missions, but it does not give numbers of civilian
casualties or examples of bad intelligence leading to a mistaken kill.
Since the first drone strike in Yemen in 2002, hundreds of people have been
killed in U.S. operations in
Yemen and Somalia, many of them innocent civilians. The tallies shown here
were compiled by the
Bureau of Investigative Journalism from reports of both CIA and JSOC drone
strikes and other operations.
(photo: The Intercept)
Yet the overall conclusion is that getting accurate positive identification
is a "critical" issue for the drone program in the region, due to
limitations in technology and the number of spy aircraft available. The
military relies heavily on signals intelligence - drawn from electronic
communications - and much of it comes from foreign governments, who may have
their own agendas.
Identifying the correct target relates directly to the issue of civilian
casualties: If you don't have certainty about your target, it follows that
you may well be killing innocent people. In Iraq and Afghanistan, "when
collateral damage did occur, 70 percent of the time it was attributable to
failed - that is, mistaken - identification," according to a paper by
Gregory McNeal, an expert on drones and security at Pepperdine School of
Law.
Another factor is timing: If the 60-day authorization expired, analysts
would have to start all over in building the intelligence case against the
target, said a former senior special operations officer, who asked not to be
identified because he was discussing classified materials. That could lead
to pressure to take a shot while the window was open.
During the time of the study, there were multiple well-reported,
high-profile incidents in which reported JSOC strikes killed the wrong
people. Perhaps most famously, in October 2011, a 16-year-old U.S. citizen
named Abdulrahman Awlaki, the son of Anwar al Awlaki, died in a JSOC strike
while eating dinner with his cousins, two weeks after his father was killed
by a CIA drone. In press accounts, one anonymous official called
Abdulrahman's death "an outrageous mistake," while others said he was with
people believed to be members of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Publicly, the government has said only that he "was not specifically
targeted."
A September 2012 strike in Yemen, extensively investigated by Human Rights
Watch and the Open Society Foundations, killed 12 civilians, including three
children and a pregnant woman. No alleged militants died in the strike, and
the Yemeni government paid restitution for it, but the United States never
offered an explanation.
"The mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters of the people who were
killed in these drones strikes want to know why," said Amrit Singh, senior
legal officer at the Open Society Justice Initiative. "We're left with no
explanation as to why they were targeted and in most cases no compensation,
and the families are aware of no investigation."
This spring, in a rare admission of a mistake in targeting, the White House
announced that two hostages held by al Qaeda - an American and an Italian -
had been killed in a CIA drone strike in Pakistan in January. In attempting
to explain the tragedy, the White House spokesperson used the language of
the standards that had failed to prevent it: The hostages had died despite
"near certainty," after "near continuous surveillance," that they were not
present.
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