Muhammad Idrees Ahmad writes: It was a “season of fear”, he said. Government trimming facts and evidence “to fit ideological predispositions”; making decisions based on fear rather than foresight; setting aside principles “as luxuries that we could no longer afford”. “We went off course,” he concluded.

It was a fine speech: thoughtful, bold and idealistic. The US president, Barack Obama, delivered it at the National Archives in Washington on May 21, 2009.

Last Thursday, when Mr Obama addressed the question of national security again during his National Defense University speech, he sounded equally high-minded. But where in his first speech he addressed the excesses of his predecessor, this time he had his own to consider. The most serious of these were born of Mr Obama’s inability to deliver fully on promises he made in his earlier address.

At the National Archives, Mr Obama vowed to end torture, shut CIA black sites and close Guantanamo. It was the clean break he had promised. But faced with a Republican backlash, Mr Obama caved. Torture and black sites were abolished but Guantanamo remained. Torture memos were released but torturers roamed free. To shield himself against charges of weakness, Mr Obama escalated the covert war.

The war since its inception was governed as much by security considerations as by its political logic. By eschewing large-scale military deployment in favour of drones and special forces, and through aggressive prosecution of journalists and whistle-blowers, Mr Obama has kept his actions secret, releasing himself from domestic political constraints, claiming successes where they have occurred, disowning failures. [Continue reading…]

Imran Awan writes: The US airstrike last week, which killed the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) second in command Wali ur Rehman has again raised the contentious issue about the legality of US drone strikes in Pakistan. The United States, like many of its allies across the international community were quick to hail this operation a success. Yet underneath this bravado lays a very serious question and that is” despite killing high profile figures such as Wali ur Rehman and Baitullah Mehsud in 2009, the methods used to target the Taliban may in actual fact be acting as a recruitment tool for extremist organisations in Pakistan who have an apathy towards the Taliban.

The latest airstrike came as the dust was settling from the recent Pakistani elections. At a crucial time when the TPP were willing to hold “peace talks” with the new Pakistani Nawaz Sharif administration, this US airstrike seems to again have reignited anti-US/Pak relations. The drone strikes are mainly used in the federally administered tribal areas, and whilst accurate statistics about the number of drone strikes and casualties are difficult to ascertain because of the nature of access, the Bureau of Investigative Journalists has argued that at least 2,541 to 3,540 people have been killed in drone attacks and almost 411 to 884 of those are civilians.

When Imran Khan, the cricketer turned politician and leader of the Pakistani Tehreek-e-Insaf party famously said he would shoot down a drone if elected as Pakistan’s next prime minister, many commentators viewed it as light satire appealing to the middle class vote. Yet his statement does appear to represent the majority of Pakistani’s views on drone attacks. A 2011 Pew poll of drone attacks, for example, showed that 89% of Pakistani citizens argue that drones kill innocent people. Moreover, a report published by Stanford and New York Universities in 2011 showed the scale of the psychological impact drone attacks had on Pakistani civilians who felt “terrorised” by them. [Continue reading…]

Akbar Ahmed writes: When people in Washington talk about shrinking the drone program, as President Obama promised to do last week, they are mostly concerned with placating Pakistan, where members of the newly elected government have vowed to end violations of the country’s sovereignty. But the drone war is alive and well in the remote corners of Pakistan where the strikes have caused the greatest and most lasting damage.

Drone strikes like Wednesday’s, in Waziristan, are destroying already weak tribal structures and throwing communities into disarray throughout Pakistan’s tribal belt along the border with Afghanistan. The chaos and rage they produce endangers the Pakistani government and fuels anti-Americanism. And the damage isn’t limited to Pakistan. Similar destruction is occurring in other traditional tribal societies like Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen. The tribes on the periphery of these nations have long struggled for more autonomy from the central government, first under colonial rule and later against the modern state. The global war on terror has intensified that conflict.

These tribal societies are organized into clans defined by common descent; they maintain stability through similar structures of authority; and they have defined codes of honor revolving around hospitality to guests and revenge against enemies.

In recent decades, these societies have undergone huge disruptions as the traditional leadership has come under attack by violent groups like the Taliban, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Somalia’s Al Shabab, not to mention full-scale military invasions. America has deployed drones into these power vacuums, causing ferocious backlashes against central governments while destroying any positive image of the United States that may have once existed.

American precision-guided missiles launched into Pakistan’s Pashtun tribal areas aim to eliminate what are called, with marvelous imprecision, the “bad guys.” Several decades ago I, too, faced the problem of catching a notorious “bad guy” in Waziristan.

It was 1979. Safar Khan, a Pashtun outlaw, had over the years terrorized the region with raids and kidnappings. He was always one step ahead of the law, disappearing into the undemarcated international border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the very area where Osama bin Laden would later find shelter.

I was then the political agent of South Waziristan, a government administrator in charge of the area. When Mr. Khan kidnapped a Pakistani soldier, the commanding general threatened to launch military operations. I told him to hold off his troops, and took direct responsibility for Mr. Khan’s capture.

I mobilized tribal elders and religious leaders to persuade Mr. Khan to surrender, promising him a fair trial by jirga, a council of elders, according to tribal custom. Working through the Pashtun code of honor, Mr. Khan eventually surrendered unconditionally and the writ of the state was restored. [Continue reading…]

Micah Zenko writes: There were a series of pre- and post-speech leaks to influential national security reporters which suggested that Obama would limit drone targets. Two hours before the speech there was also an embargoed conference call with three anonymous administration officials (you can probably guess who they were), which provided some clarity. President Obama also reportedly met with foreign policy columnists after his speech, including Thomas Friedman, David Ignatius, Fred Hiatt, and Gerald Seib.

These sources told us three things:

First, the new classified presidential policy guidance contains a “preference that the United States military have the lead for the use of force…beyond Afghanistan where we are fighting against al-Qaida and its associated forces,” according to one official. “The White House plan is for the Defense Department to assume control over all drone operations in less than two years,” wrote Mark Mazzetti. In contrast, Greg Miller determined that “Obama’s New Drone Policy Leaves Room for CIA Role.” On Tuesday, White House correspondent Peter Baker contended that ending CIA drone strikes in Pakistan is not assured, but will be reviewed bi-annually “to determine if it was ready to be moved to military control.”

Second, in responding to a question about military versus CIA operations, another anonymous official said that “the targeting parameters for all lethal actions are uniform,” which I interpreted to mean that they apply no matter who is the lead executive authority. In January 2012, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper stated that the same legal principles regarding “direct actions” apply to “all components of the government involved in counterterrorism, be it military or nonmilitary.”

Third, the new guidelines indicate that targets must present a “continuing, imminent threat to Americans,” according to a U.S. official. The New York Times and the Financial Times both wrote that this indicated an end to the controversial practice of “signature strikes” against anonymous military age males whose guilt is determined, in part, by the patterns of their observable behavior. But, on Tuesday, Baker wrote: “For now, officials said, ‘signature strikes’ targeting groups of unidentified armed men presumed to be extremists will continue in the Pakistani tribal areas.” Meanwhile, Declan Walsh revealed that this year “the United States cut back on so-called signature strikes against clusters of militant suspects.” So, who knows?

The problem is that, in his speech, President Obama did not directly address any of those issues, nor are they discussed in the declassified summary of the presidential policy guidance. He also did not speak to the longstanding concern of what procedures are in place to mitigate harm to civilians, stating instead: “Before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured — the highest standard we can set.” This is merely an assertion, and it raises further questions about how the Obama administration defines “near-certainty” and what lower standard they were following previously. [Continue reading…]

Haaretz reports: Israel is the world’s largest exporter of unmanned aircraft, in terms of the number of systems sold, a study has found.

Over the last eight years Israel has exported $4.6 billion worth of unmanned aerial vehicles, according to a study by the business consulting firm Frost & Sullivan.

UAVs, or drones, constitute nearly 10 percent of Israel’s total military exports.

Unmanned equipment exports are a relatively volatile market, the report shows.

Israel had $150 million in UAV exports in 2008, a figure which increased substantially in 2009 to $650 million. Exports of the small surveillance planes peaked in 2010, a record year for drone sales, to $979 million.

Sales since dropped off: In 2011, exports of UAVs slumped to $627 million, and in 2012 they declined further to $260 million.

Frost & Sullivan notes that this last figure does not factor in a major deal signed with India for the upgrade of unmanned aircraft. If that deal were to be included, it would boost the average annual export figures in the sector by about $100 million.

Israel’s average overall military exports over the past eight years have been about $6.1 billion a year. UAVs constituted about $578 million of that figure. [Continue reading…]

Richard Parker writes: This week the Navy will launch an entirely autonomous combat drone — without a pilot on a joystick anywhere — off the deck of an aircraft carrier, the George H. W. Bush. The drone will then try to land aboard the same ship, a feat only a relatively few human pilots in the world can accomplish.

This exercise is the beginning of a new chapter in military history: autonomous drone warfare. But it is also an ominous turn in a potentially dangerous military rivalry now building between the United States and China.

The X-47B, a stealth plane nicknamed “the Robot” by Navy crews, is a big bird — 38 feet long, with a 62-foot wingspan — that flies at high subsonic speeds with a range of over 2,000 miles. But it is the technology inside the Robot that makes it a game-changer in East Asia. Its entirely computerized takeoff, flight and landing raise the possibility of dozens or hundreds of its successors engaged in combat at once.

It is also capable of withstanding radiation levels that would kill a human pilot and destroy a regular jet’s electronics: in addition to conventional bombs, successors to this test plane could be equipped to carry a high-power microwave, a device that emits a burst of radiation that would fry a tech-savvy enemy’s power grids, knocking out everything connected to it, including computer networks that connect satellites, ships and precision-guided missiles.

And these, of course, are among the key things China has invested in during its crash-course military modernization. While the United States Navy is launching an autonomous drone, the Chinese Navy is playing catch-up with piloted carrier flight. Last November the Chinese Navy landed a J-15 jet fighter on the deck of the Liaoning aircraft carrier, the country’s first carrier landing.

Though China still has miles to go in developing a carrier fleet to rival America’s, the landing demonstrates its ambitions. With nearly half a million sailors and fast approaching 1,000 vessels, its navy is by some measures already the second largest in the world.

With that new navy, Beijing seeks to project its power over a series of island chains far into the Pacific: the first extends southward from the Korean Peninsula, down the eastern shore of Taiwan, encircling the South China Sea, while the second runs southeast from Japan to the Bonin and Marshall Islands, encompassing both the Northern Mariana Islands, a United States territory, and Guam — the key American base in the western Pacific. Some unofficial Chinese military literature even refers to a third chain: the Hawaiian Islands.

To project this kind of power, China must rely not only on the quantity of its ships but also on the quality of its technology. Keeping the Americans half an ocean away requires the capability for long-range precision strikes — which, in turn, require the satellite reconnaissance, cyber warfare, encrypted communications and computer networks in which China has invested nearly $100 billion over the last decade.

Ideally for both countries, China’s efforts would create a new balance of power in the region. But to offset China’s numerical advantage and technological advances, the United States Navy is betting heavily on drones — not just the X-47B and its successors, but anti-submarine reconnaissance drones, long-range communications drones, even underwater drones. [Continue reading…]

Clive Stafford Smith writes: Thursday’s landmark decision by the Pakistani high court in Peshawar is a remarkable document: Chief Justice Dost Muhammad Khan examines the US use of drones against Pakistan’s tribal areas and reaches several conclusions that, while obvious to most sensible observers, seem to have eluded American authorities for several years.

The case was filed last year by Shahzad Akbar, of the Foundation for Fundamental Rights (FFR), a legal charity based in Islamabad. The case was brought by families of victims killed in a US drone strike on 17 March 2011. The strike – one of more than 300 Obama has launched at Pakistan – is infamous: more than 50 people were killed, including many community elders who had gathered to settle a local dispute over a chromite mine. For the locals it was the equivalent of a strike on the high court itself.

The chief justice’s first finding is perhaps the most obvious: “[Drone strikes] are absolutely illegal and a blatant violation of sovereignty of the state of Pakistan.” The strikes are, he says, international war crimes, given that there is no state of war between the US and its nominal ally, Pakistan. [Continue reading…]

The Times of India reports: A Pakistani high court on Thursday declared the US drone strikes in the country’s tribal regions illegal and directed the government to use force to “protect the right to life” of its citizens. Stating that the United States strikes must be declared war crime as these kill innocent people, it also called the government to move a UN resolution against such attacks.

The high court in Pakistan’s north-western city of Peshawar announced the verdict against the CIA-driven drone strikes on four writ petitions, stating that these attacks kill innocent civilians and cause collateral damage. Time and again, Washington has said that drone attacks target al-Qaida and Taliban safe havens in Pakistan’s tribal areas, from where they carry out cross-border attacks in Afghanistan.

According to a report submitted by political authorities of North Waziristan Agency, 896 Pakistani civilians living there were killed in the last five years until December 2012 while 209 were seriously injured. “In these drone attacks only 47 foreigners were killed and six injured. Many houses and vehicles and cattle heads worth millions of dollars were destroyed in these attacks. Similarly, in South Waziristan Agency, 70 drone strikes were carried out in the last five years until June 2012 in which 553 people were killed and 126 injured,” the report said.

“In view of the established facts, undeniable in nature, under the UN Charter & Conventions, the people of Pakistan have every right to ask the security forces either to prevent such strikes by force or to shoot down intruding drones,” the court verdict said.

“The government of Pakistan must ensure that no drone strike takes place in the future,” it added and also asked the ministry of foreign affairs to table a resolution in the UN against the US attacks.

When graduate student Pakpong Chirarattananon at the Harvard robotics laboratory successfully launched RoboBee on its first flight, the project might have looked like an innocuous and ingenious exercise in miniaturized robotics. But the Pentagon has had its eyes on such technology for several years, with “Micro Air Vehicles” which could be launched in swarms and used for surveillance and even killing.

M.A.V. – Micro Air Vehicles — U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory:

Glenn Greenwald writes: In the mid-1970s, an investigation by the US Senate, conducted by the Church Committee, uncovered decades of serious, systemic abuse by the US government of its eavesdropping powers: listening in on the telephone calls of civil rights leaders, reading the mail of political opponents, spying on anti-war groups. The supposed lesson learned from this was that political leaders will inevitably abuse their surveillance powers if they are permitted to exercise them in the dark and without meaningful oversight. The “solution” was the enactment of a law – the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) – that made it a criminal offense for government officials to eavesdrop on the electronic communications of Americans without first obtaining a warrant from the newly created Fisa court.

From the start, the Fisa court was a radical perversion of the judicial process. It convened in total secrecy and its rulings were classified. The standard the government had to meet was not the traditional “probable cause” burden imposed by the Fourth Amendment but a significantly diluted standard. There was nothing adversarial about the proceeding: only the Justice Department (DOJ) was permitted to be present, but not any lawyers for the targets of the eavesdropping request, who were not notified. Reflecting its utter lack of real independence, the court itself was housed in the DOJ.

And, and was totally predictable, the court barely ever rejected a government request for eavesdropping. From its inception, it was the ultimate rubber-stamp court, having rejected a total of zero government applications – zero – in its first 24 years of existence, while approving many thousands. In its total 34 year history – from 1978 through 2012 – the Fisa court has rejected a grand total of 11 government applications, while approving more than 20,000. [Continue reading…]

Steve Coll writes: In the summer of 1960, Sidney Gottlieb, a C.I.A. chemist, flew to Congo with a carry-on bag containing vials of poison and a hypodermic syringe. It was an era of relative subtlety among C.I.A. assassins. The toxins were intended for the food, drink, or toothpaste of Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s Prime Minister, who, in the judgment of the Eisenhower Administration, had gone soft on Communism. Upon his arrival, as Tim Weiner recounts in his history of the C.I.A., Gottlieb handed his kit to Larry Devlin, the senior C.I.A. officer in Léopoldville. Devlin asked who had ordered the hit. “The President,” Gottlieb assured him. In later testimony, Devlin said that he felt ashamed of the command. He buried the poisons in a riverbank, but helped find an indirect way to eliminate Lumumba, by bankrolling and arming political enemies. The following January, Lumumba was executed by the Belgian military.

For Eisenhower, who had witnessed the carnage of the Normandy landings and the Battle of the Bulge, and later claimed to “hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can,” political assassinations represented an alluring alternative to conventional military action. Through the execution or overthrow of undesirable foreign leaders, the thinking went, it might be possible to orchestrate the global struggle against Communism from a distance, and avoid the misery — and the risks of nuclear war — that out-and-out combat would bring. Assassination was seen not only as precise and efficient but also as ultimately humane. Putting such theory into practice was the role of the C.I.A., and the agency’s tally of toppled leftists, nationalists, or otherwise unreliable leaders is well known, from Mohammad Mosadegh, of Iran, in 1953, and Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, of Guatemala, in 1954, to Ngo Dinh Diem, of South Vietnam, in 1963, and Salvador Allende, of Chile, in 1973. Not all the schemes went according to plan; a few seemed inspired by Wile E. Coyote. The C.I.A. once planned to bump off Fidel Castro by passing him an exploding cigar.

Aside from the moral ugliness of violent covert action, its record as a national-security strategy isn’t encouraging. On occasion, interventions have delivered short-term advantages to Washington, but in the long run they have usually sown deeper troubles. Lumumba’s successor, the dictator Joseph Mobutu, may have been an ally of the United States until his death, in 1997, but his brutal rule prepared the way for Congo’s recent descent into chaos. Memory of the C.I.A.’s hand in Mosadegh’s overthrow stoked the anti-American fury of the Iranian Revolution, which confounds the United States to this day. Foreign policy is not a game of Risk. Great nations achieve lasting influence and security not by bloody gambits but through economic growth, scientific innovation, military deterrence, and the power of ideas. [Continue reading…]

Jeremy Scahill writes: Anwar al-Awlaki’s youngest brother, Ammar, was nothing like him. While Anwar embraced a radical interpretation of Islam and preached jihad against the United States, Ammar was pursuing a career at an oil company in Yemen. Ammar was Canadian-educated and politically well connected. He dressed in blue jeans, wore hip Armani eyeglasses and sported a goatee. His hair was slicked back, and he had the latest iPhone. In February 2011, Ammar told me, he was in Vienna on a business trip. He had just returned to his hotel after sampling some of the local cuisine with an Austrian colleague when the phone in his room rang. “Hello, Ammar?” said a man with an American accent. “My wife knows your wife, and I have a gift for her.”

Ammar went down to the lobby and saw a tall, thin white man in a crisp blue suit. They shook hands. “Can we talk a bit?” the man asked, and the two sat down in the lobby. “I don’t actually have a gift for your wife. I came from the States, and I need to talk to you about your brother.”

“I’m guessing you’re either FBI or CIA,” Ammar said. The man smiled. Ammar asked him for identification.

“Come on, we’re not FBI, we don’t have badges to identify us,” the man said. “The best I can do is, I can show you my diplomatic passport…. Call me Chris,” the American added.

“Was that your name yesterday?” Ammar replied.

Chris made it clear that he worked for the CIA. He told Ammar that the United States had a task force dedicated to “killing or capturing your brother”—and that while everyone preferred to bring Anwar in alive, time was running out. “He’s going to be killed, so why don’t you help in saving his life by helping us capture him?” Chris said. Then he added, “You know, there’s a $5 million bounty on your brother’s head. You won’t be helping us for free.”

Ammar told Chris that he didn’t want the money, that he hadn’t seen Anwar since 2004 and had no idea where he was. The American countered, “That $5 million would help raise [Anwar’s] kids.”

“I don’t think there’s any need for me to meet you again,” Ammar told Chris. Even so, the American told Ammar to think it over, perhaps discuss it with his family. “We can meet when you go to Dubai in two weeks,” he said. Ammar was stunned: his tickets for that trip had not yet been purchased, and the details were still being worked out. Chris gave Ammar an e-mail address and said he’d be in touch. [Continue reading…]

McClatchy reports: The Obama administration does not intend to send a witness to testify at a Senate hearing next week on the legality of the U.S. targeted killing program, the White House said Wednesday.

The decision illustrates the limits of President Barack Obama’s pledge in his State of the Union speech on Feb. 12 to provide greater transparency into top-secret drone operations that have killed thousands of suspected terrorists in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s Constitution subcommittee was to have held a hearing Tuesday on the legality of targeted killings, those who can be targeted and the creation of a “transparent legal framework for the use of drones.” The session, however, was postponed until April 23 to allow more time for the White House to agree to send a witness.

That effort, however, appeared to have fallen through.

“We do not currently plan to send a witness to this hearing and have remained in close contact with the committee about how we can best provide them the information they require,” Caitlin Hayden, a National Security Council spokeswoman, wrote in an email to McClatchy.

She added that the White House would continue working with lawmakers “to ensure not only that our targeting, detention and prosecution of terrorists remains consistent with our laws and system of checks and balances, but that our efforts are even more transparent to the American people and the world.”

Hayden declined to say why the administration doesn’t plan to provide a witness for the hearing. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: In a letter sent to President Obama this week, the nation’s leading human rights organizations questioned the legal basis for targeted killing and called for an end to the secrecy surrounding the use of drones.

The “statement of shared concern” said the administration should “publicly disclose key targeted killing standards and criteria; ensure that U.S. lethal force operations abroad comply with international law; enable meaningful Congressional oversight and judicial review; and ensure effective investigations, tracking and response to civilian harm.”

The nine-page letter, signed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, the Open Society Foundations and several other groups, is the most significant critique to date by advocacy groups of what has become the centerpiece of the United States’ counterterrorism efforts.

While not directly calling the strikes illegal under international law, the letter lists what it calls troubling reports of the criteria used by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command to select targets and assess results. The reported policies raise “serious questions about whether the U.S. is operating in accordance with international law,” the letter says. It is also signed by the Center for Civilians in Conflict and units of the New York University and Columbia Law Schools. [Continue reading…]

Micah Zenko writes: It turns out that the Obama administration has not been honest about who the CIA has been targeting with drones in Pakistan. Jonathan Landay, national security reporter at McClatchy Newspapers, has provided the first analysis of drone-strike victims that is based upon internal, top-secret U.S. intelligence reports. It is the most important reporting on U.S. drone strikes to date because Landay, using U.S. government assessments, plainly demonstrates that the claim repeatedly made by President Obama and his senior aides — that targeted killings are limited only to officials, members, and affiliates of al Qaeda who pose an imminent threat of attack on the U.S. homeland — is false.

Senior officials and agencies have emphasized this point over and over because it is essential to the legal foundations on which the strikes are ultimately based: the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force and the U.N. Charter’s right to self-defense. A Department of Justice white paper said that the United States can target a “senior operational leader of al-Qa’ida or an associated force” who “poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States.” Attorney General Eric Holder said the administration targets “specific senior operational leaders of al-Qaeda and associated forces,” and Harold Koh, the senior State Department legal adviser dubbed them “high-level al-Qaeda leaders who are planning attacks.” Obama said during a Google+ Hangout in January 2012: “These strikes have been in the FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas] and going after al-Qaeda suspects.” Finally, Obama claimed in September: “Our goal has been to focus on al Qaeda and to focus narrowly on those who would pose an imminent threat to the United States of America.”

As the Obama administration unveils its promised and overdue targeted-killing reforms over the next few months, citizens, policymakers, and the media should keep in mind this disconnect between who the United States claimed it was killing and who it was actually killing. [Continue reading…]

McClatchy reports: Contrary to assurances it has deployed U.S. drones only against known senior leaders of al Qaida and allied groups, the Obama administration has targeted and killed hundreds of suspected lower-level Afghan, Pakistani and unidentified “other” militants in scores of strikes in Pakistan’s rugged tribal area, classified U.S. intelligence reports show.

The administration has said that strikes by the CIA’s missile-firing Predator and Reaper drones are authorized only against “specific senior operational leaders of al Qaida and associated forces” involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks who are plotting “imminent” violent attacks on Americans.

“It has to be a threat that is serious and not speculative,” President Barack Obama said in a Sept. 6, 2012, interview with CNN. “It has to be a situation in which we can’t capture the individual before they move forward on some sort of operational plot against the United States.”

Copies of the top-secret U.S. intelligence reports reviewed by McClatchy, however, show that drone strikes in Pakistan over a four-year period didn’t adhere to those standards.

The intelligence reports list killings of alleged Afghan insurgents whose organization wasn’t on the U.S. list of terrorist groups at the time of the 9/11 strikes; of suspected members of a Pakistani extremist group that didn’t exist at the time of 9/11; and of unidentified individuals described as “other militants” and “foreign fighters.”

In a response to questions from McClatchy, the White House defended its targeting policies, pointing to previous public statements by senior administration officials that the missile strikes are aimed at al Qaida and associated forces.

Micah Zenko, an expert with the Council on Foreign Relations, a bipartisan foreign policy think tank, who closely follows the target killing program, said McClatchy’s findings indicate that the administration is “misleading the public about the scope of who can legitimately be targeted.”

The documents also show that drone operators weren’t always certain who they were killing despite the administration’s guarantees of the accuracy of the CIA’s targeting intelligence and its assertions that civilian casualties have been “exceedingly rare.” [Continue reading…]