{"id":65362,"date":"2015-10-19T12:37:40","date_gmt":"2015-10-19T11:37:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=65362"},"modified":"2015-11-01T13:27:41","modified_gmt":"2015-11-01T13:27:41","slug":"the-drone-papers-the-kill-chain-3-of-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/10\/the-drone-papers-the-kill-chain-3-of-8\/","title":{"rendered":"The Drone Papers – The Kill Chain (3 of 8)"},"content":{"rendered":"

[The Intercept has obtained a cache of secret documents detailing the inner workings of the U.S. military\u2019s assassination program in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia. The documents, provided by a whistleblower, offer an unprecedented glimpse into Obama\u2019s drone wars. The source said he decided to provide these documents to <\/em>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.]<\/em><\/p>\n

The Lethal Bureaucracy behind Obama\u2019s Drone War<\/em><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The Assassination Complex<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. A Visual Glossary<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. The Kill Chain<\/a><\/li>\n
  4. Find, Fix, Finish<\/a><\/li>\n
  5. Manhunting in the Hindu Kush<\/a><\/li>\n
  6. Firing Blind<\/a><\/li>\n
  7. The Life and Death of Objective Peckham<\/a><\/li>\n
  8. Target Africa<\/a><\/li>\n
  9. The Alphabet of Assassination (Glossary of Terms)<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    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\u2019s approval of a 60-day window for lethal action.<\/em><\/p>\n

    15 Oct 2015 – <\/em>The documents come from a Pentagon study<\/a>, circulated in early 2013, evaluating the intelligence and surveillance technology behind the military\u2019s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) killing campaign in Yemen and Somalia in 2011 and 2012.<\/p>\n

    The study, carried out by the Pentagon\u2019s Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Task Force, illuminates and in some cases contradicts the administration\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

    The Intercept<\/em> obtained two versions of the study, a longer presentation<\/a> dated February 2013, and an executive summary<\/a> from May 2013, which includes a slide showing the chain of command leading to the approval of a lethal strike.<\/p>\n

    \"A<\/a>

    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. GCC = Geographic Combatant Command; SECDEF = Secretary of Defense; PDC\/PC = Principals\u2019 Deputies Committee\/Principals Committee; CoM = Chief of Mission; CoS = Chief of Station<\/p><\/div>\n

    The Obama administration has been loath to declassify even the legal rationale for drone strikes \u2014 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\u2019s or the spy agency\u2019s operations.<\/p>\n

    \u201cThe public has a right to know who\u2019s making these decisions, who decides who is a legitimate target, and on what basis that decision is made,\u201d said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.<\/p>\n

    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.<\/p>\n

    Two Steps to a Kill<\/strong><\/p>\n

    The May 2013 slide<\/a> describes a two-part process of approval for an attack: step one, \u201c\u2018Developing a target\u2019 to \u2018Authorization of a target,\u2019\u201d and step two, \u201c\u2018Authorizing\u2019 to \u2018Actioning.\u2019\u201d According to the slide, intelligence personnel from JSOC\u2019s Task Force 48-4, working alongside other intelligence agencies, would build the case for action against an individual, eventually generating a \u201cbaseball card\u201d on the target, which was \u201cstaffed up to higher echelons \u2014 ultimately to the president.\u201d<\/p>\n

    The intelligence package on the person being targeted passed from the JSOC task force tracking him to the command in charge of the region \u2014 Centcom for Yemen, and Africom for Somalia \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

    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<\/a> \u201csigns off\u201d on strikes outside of Afghanistan or Pakistan. However, the slide does appear to be consistent with Obama\u2019s comment<\/a> in 2012 that \u201cultimately I\u2019m responsible for the process.\u201d<\/p>\n

    \"Illustrations:<\/a>

    Illustrations: The Intercept – Photo: Feierstein: Landov; all other photos: Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

    There have been various accounts of this drone bureaucracy, and almost all stress the role of Obama\u2019s 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<\/a> video conferences once run by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and elevating<\/a> the role of the National Counterterrorism Center in organizing intelligence. Later in 2013, the White House reportedly<\/a> tightened control over individual strikes in Yemen.<\/p>\n

    At the time of the study, with the president\u2019s 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, \u201cit would take a high-level official to approve the strike,\u201d said Lt. Col. Mark McCurley, a former drone pilot who worked on operations in Yemen and recently published a book about his experiences<\/a>. \u201cAnd 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.\u201d The country\u2019s government was also supposed to sign off. \u201cOne Disagrees = STOP,\u201d the slide notes, with a tiny red stop sign.<\/p>\n

    In practice, the degree of cooperation with the host nation has varied. Somalia\u2019s minister of national security, Abdirizak Omar Mohamed, told The Intercept<\/em> that the United States alerted Somalia\u2019s president and foreign minister of strikes \u201csometimes ahead of time, sometimes during the operation \u2026 normally we get advance notice.\u201d 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\u2019s sovereignty.<\/p>\n

    By 2011, when the study\u2019s time frame began, Yemen\u2019s 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<\/a> from Saleh\u2019s eventual successor, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi.<\/p>\n

    \u201cIt was almost never coordinated with Saleh. Once Hadi became president, March 2012, there was a big chance we\u2019d be in the loop\u201d before drone strikes were conducted, said a former senior Yemeni official who worked for both the Saleh and Hadi governments.<\/p>\n

    Today, with Yemen\u2019s capital under the control of the Houthi rebel group and undergoing bombardment by Saudi Arabia, administration lawyers do not seem worried<\/a> about asking permission to carry out drone strikes amid the fray.<\/p>\n

    \u201cNow, I think they don\u2019t even bother telling anyone. There is really no one in charge to tell,\u201d said the former Yemeni official, who requested anonymity citing current unrest and the fact that he no longer works for the government.<\/p>\n

    Who Can Be Targeted<\/strong><\/p>\n

    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.<\/p>\n

    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<\/a> that the region is located \u201cOutside a Defined Theater of Active Armed Conflict,\u201d which limits \u201callowable U.S. activities.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Obama administration officials have said<\/a> 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<\/a> policy guidelines for lethal counterterrorism operations that seemed to further restrict them. In a speech<\/a>, Obama announced that action would be taken only against people who posed a \u201ccontinuing, imminent threat to the American people,\u201d and who could not be captured. A strike would only occur with \u201cnear certainty\u201d that no civilians would be killed or injured.<\/p>\n

    Even with the new guidelines, legal observers<\/a>, particularly human rights lawyers<\/a>, have disputed the Obama administration\u2019s position that the U.S., in strict legal terms, is in an armed conflict with al Qaeda in Yemen or Somalia \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

    \u201cI think there can be questions raised about how stringently some of the requirements are being applied,\u201d said Jennifer Daskal, an assistant professor of law at American University who worked for the Department of Justice from 2009 to 2011. \u201cNear 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?\u201d<\/p>\n

    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 \u201ca threat to U.S. interest or personnel.\u201d<\/p>\n

    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 \u201cthose guidelines remain in effect today.\u201d<\/p>\n

    The two-month window for striking, says Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU\u2019s National Security Project, shows the administration\u2019s broad interpretation of \u201ca continuing, imminent threat.\u201d<\/p>\n

    \u201cIf 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,\u201d said Shamsi.<\/p>\n

    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\u2019s stated preference for capture: Detention of marked targets is incredibly rare.<\/p>\n

    A chart<\/a> in the study shows that in 2011 and 2012, captures accounted for only 25 percent of operations carried out in the Horn of Africa \u2014 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<\/a> by U.S. forces in the Gulf of Aden and brought to Manhattan for trial, though he may not be reflected in the study\u2019s figures because he was apprehended at sea.<\/p>\n

    \"The<\/a>

    The Pentagon study recommended more captures, rather than killings, because of the intelligence that could be gleaned from interrogations and collected materials.
    EKIA = Enemy Killed in Action; HOA = Horn of Africa<\/p><\/div>\n

    The study does not contain an overall count of strikes or deaths, but it does note that \u201crelatively few high-level terrorists meet criteria for targeting\u201d and states that at the end of June 2012, there were 16 authorized targets in Yemen and only four in Somalia.<\/p>\n

    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<\/a> by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. In Somalia, there were at least three attacks, resulting in the deaths of at minimum six people<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    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<\/a> and reportedly has its own kill list and rules<\/a> 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<\/a> of the hunt for an alleged al Qaeda member referred to as \u201cObjective Rhodes\u201d or \u201cAnjaf,\u201d 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 \u201cenemies.\u201d News accounts at the time reported<\/a> three \u201cmilitants\u201d had died.<\/p>\n

    \"A<\/a>

    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.<\/p><\/div>\n

    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<\/a> that President Obama had approved strikes in Yemen on unknown people, calling them TADS,<\/a> or \u201cterror attack disruption strikes,\u201d and claiming that they were more constrained than the CIA\u2019s signature strikes in Pakistan.<\/p>\n

    The study refers<\/a> to using drones and spy planes to \u201cconduct TADS related network development,\u201d 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\u2019s insistence that the U.S. kills mainly \u201chigh-value\u201d targets.<\/p>\n

    Near Certainty<\/strong><\/p>\n

    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 \u201cnear certainty that the terrorist target is present\u201d and \u201cnear certainty that non-combatants will not be injured or killed.\u201d<\/p>\n

    The study describes the rules for a strike slightly differently, stating that there must be a \u201clow CDE [collateral damage environment]\u201d \u2014 meaning a low estimate of how many innocent people might be harmed. It also states there must be \u201cnear certainty\u201d that the target is present, \u201cbased on two forms of intelligence,\u201d with \u201cno contradictory intelligence.\u201d In contrast to the White House statement, the \u201cnear certainty\u201d standard is not applied to civilians.<\/p>\n

    The study cites<\/a> the \u201cneed to avoiding [sic] collateral damage areas\u201d as a reason for \u201cunsuccessful\u201d missions, but it does not give numbers of civilian casualties or examples of bad intelligence leading to a mistaken kill.<\/p>\n

    \"TollOfUSattacksInYemenAndSomalia01<\/a>

    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. The large range in the estimates is due to the inherent difficulties of collecting data on airstrikes in war zones. The identities of the \u201cpeople killed\u201d were often unknown and may include civilians as well as suspected terrorists or militants. The U.S. almost never publicly acknowledges individual operations. Graphic: The Intercept<\/p><\/div>\n

    Yet the overall conclusion is that getting accurate positive identification is a \u201ccritical\u201d issue for the drone program<\/a> in the region, due to limitations in technology and the number of spy aircraft available. The military relies heavily on signals intelligence \u2014 drawn from electronic communications \u2014 and much of it comes from foreign governments, who may have their own agendas.<\/p>\n

    Identifying the correct target relates directly to the issue of civilian casualties: If you don\u2019t have certainty about your target, it follows that you may well be killing innocent people. In Iraq and Afghanistan, \u201cwhen collateral damage did occur, 70 percent of the time it was attributable to failed \u2014 that is, mistaken \u2014 identification,\u201d according to a paper<\/a> by Gregory McNeal, an expert on drones and security at Pepperdine School of Law.<\/p>\n

    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. <\/em>That could lead to pressure to take a shot while the window was open.<\/p>\n

    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<\/a> Abdulrahman\u2019s death \u201can outrageous mistake,\u201d while others said he was with people believed to be members of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Publicly, the government has said<\/a> only that he \u201cwas not specifically targeted.\u201d<\/p>\n

    A September 2012 strike in Yemen, extensively investigated by Human Rights Watch<\/a> and the Open Society Foundations<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

    \u201cThe mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters of the people who were killed in these drones strikes want to know why,\u201d said Amrit Singh, senior legal officer at the Open Society Justice Initiative. \u201cWe\u2019re left with no explanation as to why they were targeted and in most cases no compensation, and the families are aware of no investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

    This spring, in a rare admission of a mistake in targeting, the White House announced<\/a> that two hostages held by al Qaeda \u2014 an American and an Italian \u2014 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 \u201cnear certainty,\u201d after \u201cnear continuous surveillance,\u201d that they were not present.<\/p>\n

    _____________________________________<\/p>\n

    Additional reporting: Jeremy\u00a0Scahill<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

    Contact the author <\/em>Cora Currier<\/a>: cora.currier@\u200btheintercept.com<\/a><\/u><\/em><\/p>\n

    Go to Original \u2013 theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The Lethal Bureaucracy behind Obama\u2019s Drone War<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[197],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-special-feature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65362\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}