Pedo Policeman
2012-10-24 12:54:32 UTC
WE APPLAUD -- without reservation -- the expansion and constant
refinement of the "disposition matrix" and its handmaiden, the drone
program.
Especially since more than one-billion ill- and uneducated, intolerant
Muslims worldwide constitute America's most deadly threat, we view
these indispensable programs as a pest-management concern, kind of
like Orkin. Find the pests, exterminate 'em, answer questions later,
if deemed necessary.
We're certain Israel agrees.
It will be interesting to hear what a prospective Mormon U.S.
president has to say about the matrix and drones in general.
Like, a unapologetic believer in a booga-booga cult which proscribes
drinking coffee (!), and insists that a woman's place is in the home,
essentially has had the rug pulled out from his tagging Obama as "weak
on terrorism." Or U.S. security in general.
And no, we don't need more bayonets any more than we need more ships.
Go drones!
=========================
"Plan for hunting terrorists signals U.S. intends to keep adding names
to kill lists"
By Greg Miller
October 23, 2012
OVER THE PAST TWO YEARS, the Obama administration has been secretly
developing a new blueprint for pursuing terrorists, a next-generation
targeting list called the “disposition matrix.”
The matrix contains the names of terrorism suspects arrayed against an
accounting of the resources being marshaled to track them down,
including sealed indictments and clandestine operations. U.S.
officials said the database is designed to go beyond existing kill
lists, mapping plans for the “disposition” of suspects beyond the
reach of American drones.
Although the matrix is a work in progress, the effort to create it
reflects a reality setting in among the nation’s counterterrorism
ranks: The United States’ conventional wars are winding down, but the
government expects to continue adding names to kill or capture lists
for years.
Among senior Obama administration officials, there is a broad
consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least
another decade. Given the way al-Qaeda continues to metastasize, some
officials said no clear end is in sight.
“We can’t possibly kill everyone who wants to harm us,” a senior
administration official said. “It’s a necessary part of what we
do. . . . We’re not going to wind up in 10 years in a world of
everybody holding hands and saying, ‘We love America.’ ”
That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the
midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism.
Targeting lists that were regarded as finite emergency measures after
the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are now fixtures of the national
security apparatus. The rosters expand and contract with the pace of
drone strikes but never go to zero.
Meanwhile, a significant milestone looms: The number of militants and
civilians killed in the drone campaign over the past 10 years will
soon exceed 3,000 by certain estimates, surpassing the number of
people al-Qaeda killed in the Sept. 11 attacks.
The Obama administration has touted its successes against the
terrorist network, including the death of Osama bin Laden, as
signature achievements that argue for President Obama’s reelection.
The administration has taken tentative steps toward greater
transparency, formally acknowledging for the first time the United
States’ use of armed drones.
Less visible is the extent to which Obama has institutionalized the
highly classified practice of targeted killing, transforming ad-hoc
elements into a counterterrorism infrastructure capable of sustaining
a seemingly permanent war. Spokesmen for the White House, the National
Counterterrorism Center, the CIA and other agencies declined to
comment on the matrix or other counterterrorism programs.
Privately, officials acknowledge that the development of the matrix is
part of a series of moves, in Washington and overseas, to embed
counterterrorism tools into U.S. policy for the long haul.
White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan is seeking to
codify the administration’s approach to generating capture/kill lists,
part of a broader effort to guide future administrations through the
counterterrorism processes that Obama has embraced.
CIA Director David H. Petraeus is pushing for an expansion of the
agency’s fleet of armed drones, U.S. officials said. The proposal,
which would need White House approval, reflects the agency’s
transformation into a paramilitary force, and makes clear that it does
not intend to dismantle its drone program and return to its pre-Sept.
11 focus on gathering intelligence.
The U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, which carried out the raid
that killed bin Laden, has moved commando teams into suspected
terrorist hotbeds in Africa. A rugged U.S. outpost in Djibouti has
been transformed into a launching pad for counterterrorism operations
across the Horn of Africa and the Middle East.
JSOC also has established a secret targeting center across the Potomac
River from Washington, current and former U.S. officials said. The
elite command’s targeting cells have traditionally been located near
the front lines of its missions, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But JSOC created a “national capital region” task force that is a 15-
minute commute from the White House so it could be more directly
involved in deliberations about al-Qaeda lists.
The developments were described by current and former officials from
the White House and the Pentagon, as well as intelligence and
counterterrorism agencies. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity
because of the sensitivity of the subject.
These counterterrorism components have been affixed to a legal
foundation for targeted killing that the Obama administration has
discussed more openly over the past year. In a series of speeches,
administration officials have cited legal bases, including the
congressional authorization to use military force granted after the
Sept. 11 attacks, as well as the nation’s right to defend itself.
Critics contend that those justifications have become more tenuous as
the drone campaign has expanded far beyond the core group of al-Qaeda
operatives behind the strikes on New York and Washington. Critics note
that the administration still doesn’t confirm the CIA’s involvement or
the identities of those who are killed. Certain strikes are now under
legal challenge, including the killings last year in Yemen of U.S.-
born al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son.
Counterterrorism experts said the reliance on targeted killing is
self-
perpetuating, yielding undeniable short-term results that may obscure
long-term costs.
“The problem with the drone is it’s like your lawn mower,” said Bruce
Riedel, a former CIA analyst and Obama counterterrorism adviser.
“You’ve got to mow the lawn all the time. The minute you stop mowing,
the grass is going to grow back.”
An evolving database
The United States now operates multiple drone programs, including
acknowledged U.S. military patrols over conflict zones in Afghanistan
and Libya, and classified CIA surveillance flights over Iran.
Strikes against al-Qaeda, however, are carried out under secret lethal
programs involving the CIA and JSOC. The matrix was developed by the
NCTC, under former director Michael Leiter, to augment those
organizations’ separate but overlapping kill lists, officials said.
The result is a single, continually evolving database in which
biographies, locations, known associates and affiliated organizations
are all catalogued. So are strategies for taking targets down,
including extradition requests, capture operations and drone patrols.
Obama’s decision to shutter the CIA’s secret prisons ended a program
that had become a source of international scorn, but it also
complicated the pursuit of terrorists. Unless a suspect surfaced in
the sights of a drone in Pakistan or Yemen, the United States had to
scramble to figure out what to do.
“We had a disposition problem,” said a former U.S. counterterrorism
official involved in developing the matrix.
The database is meant to map out contingencies, creating an
operational menu that spells out each agency’s role in case a suspect
surfaces in an unexpected spot. “If he’s in Saudi Arabia, pick up with
the Saudis,” the former official said. “If traveling overseas to al-
Shabaab [in Somalia] we can pick him up by ship. If in Yemen, kill or
have the Yemenis pick him up.”
Officials declined to disclose the identities of suspects on the
matrix. They pointed, however, to the capture last year of alleged al-
Qaeda operative Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame off the coast of Yemen.
Warsame was held for two months aboard a U.S. ship before being
transferred to the custody of the Justice Department and charged in
federal court in New York.
“Warsame was a classic case of ‘What are we going to do with him?’ ”
the former counterterrorism official said. In such cases, the matrix
lays out plans, including which U.S. naval vessels are in the vicinity
and which charges the Justice Department should prepare.
“Clearly, there were people in Yemen that we had on the matrix,” as
well as others in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the former
counterterrorism official said. The matrix was a way to be ready if
they moved. “How do we deal with these guys in transit? You weren’t
going to fire a drone if they were moving through Turkey or Iran.”
Officials described the matrix as a database in development, although
its status is unclear. Some said it has not been implemented because
it is too cumbersome. Others, including officials from the White
House, Congress and intelligence agencies, described it as a blueprint
that could help the United States adapt to al-Qaeda’s morphing
structure and its efforts to exploit turmoil across North Africa and
the Middle East.
A year after Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta declared the core of
al-
Qaeda near strategic defeat, officials see an array of emerging
threats beyond Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia — the three countries where
almost all U.S. drone strikes have occurred.
The Arab spring has upended U.S. counterterrorism partnerships in
countries including Egypt where U.S. officials fear al-Qaeda could
establish new roots. The network’s affiliate in North Africa, al-Qaeda
in the Islamic Maghreb, has seized territory in northern Mali and
acquired weapons that were smuggled out of Libya.
“Egypt worries me to no end,” a high-ranking administration official
said. “Look at Libya, Algeria and Mali and then across the Sahel.
You’re talking about such wide expanses of territory, with open
borders and military, security and intelligence capabilities that are
basically nonexistent.”
Streamlining targeted killing
The creation of the matrix and the institutionalization of kill/
capture lists reflect a shift that is as psychological as it is
strategic.
Before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States recoiled at
the idea of targeted killing. The Sept. 11 commission recounted how
the Clinton administration had passed on a series of opportunities to
target bin Laden in the years before the attacks — before armed drones
existed. President Bill Clinton approved a set of cruise-missile
strikes in 1998 after al-Qaeda bombed embassies in East Africa, but
after extensive deliberation, and the group’s leader escaped harm.
Targeted killing is now so routine that the Obama administration has
spent much of the past year codifying and streamlining the processes
that sustain it.
This year, the White House scrapped a system in which the Pentagon and
the National Security Council had overlapping roles in scrutinizing
the names being added to U.S. target lists.
Now the system functions like a funnel, starting with input from half
a dozen agencies and narrowing through layers of review until proposed
revisions are laid on Brennan’s desk, and subsequently presented to
the president.
Video-conference calls that were previously convened by Adm. Mike
Mullen, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have been
discontinued. Officials said Brennan thought the process shouldn’t be
run by those who pull the trigger on strikes.
“What changed is rather than the chairman doing that, John chairs the
meeting,” said Leiter, the former head of the NCTC.
The administration has also elevated the role of the NCTC, which was
conceived as a clearinghouse for threat data and has no operational
capability. Under Brennan, who served as its founding director, the
center has emerged as a targeting hub.
Other entities have far more resources focused on al-Qaeda. The CIA,
JSOC and U.S. Central Command have hundreds of analysts devoted to the
terrorist network’s franchise in Yemen, while the NCTC has fewer than
two dozen. But the center controls a key function.
“It is the keeper of the criteria,” a former U.S. counterterrorism
official said, meaning that it is in charge of culling names from al-
Qaeda databases for targeting lists based on criteria dictated by the
White House.
The criteria are classified but center on obvious questions: Who are
the operational leaders? Who are the key facilitators? A typical White
House request will direct the NCTC to generate a list of al-Qaeda
operatives in Yemen involved in carrying out or plotting attacks
against U.S. personnel in Sanaa.
The lists are reviewed at regular three-month intervals during
meetings at the NCTC headquarters that involve analysts from other
organizations, including the CIA, the State Department and JSOC.
Officials stress that these sessions don’t equate to approval for
additions to kill lists, an authority that rests exclusively with the
White House.
With no objections — and officials said those have been rare — names
are submitted to a panel of National Security Council officials that
is chaired by Brennan and includes the deputy directors of the CIA and
the FBI, as well as top officials from the State Department, the
Pentagon and the NCTC.
Obama approves the criteria for lists and signs off on drone strikes
outside Pakistan, where decisions on when to fire are made by the
director of the CIA. But aside from Obama’s presence at “Terror
Tuesday” meetings — which generally are devoted to discussing
terrorism threats and trends rather than approving targets — the
president’s involvement is more indirect.
“The president would never come to a deputies meeting,” a senior
administration official said, although participants recalled cases in
which Brennan stepped out of the situation room to get Obama’s
direction on questions the group couldn’t resolve.
The review process is compressed but not skipped when the CIA or JSOC
has compelling intelligence and a narrow window in which to strike,
officials said. The approach also applies to the development of
criteria for “signature strikes,” which allow the CIA and JSOC to hit
targets based on patterns of activity — packing a vehicle with
explosives, for example — even when the identities of those who would
be killed is unclear.
A model approach
For an administration that is the first to embrace targeted killing on
a wide scale, officials seem confident that they have devised an
approach that is so bureaucratically, legally and morally sound that
future administrations will follow suit.
During Monday’s presidential debate, Republican nominee Mitt Romney
made it clear that he would continue the drone campaign. “We can’t
kill our way out of this,” he said, but added later that Obama was
“right to up the usage” of drone strikes and that he would do the
same.
As Obama nears the end of his term, officials said the kill list in
Pakistan has slipped to fewer than 10 al-Qaeda targets, down from as
many as two dozen. The agency now aims many of its Predator strikes at
the Haqqani network, which has been blamed for attacks on U.S. forces
in Afghanistan.
In Yemen, the number of militants on the list has ranged from 10 to
15, officials said, and is not likely to slip into the single digits
anytime soon, even though there have been 36 U.S. airstrikes this
year.
The number of targets on the lists isn’t fixed, officials said, but
fluctuates based on adjustments to criteria. Officials defended the
arrangement even while acknowledging an erosion in the caliber of
operatives placed in the drones’ cross hairs.
“Is the person currently Number 4 as good as the Number 4 seven years
ago? Probably not,” said a former senior U.S. counterterrorism
official involved in the process until earlier this year. “But it
doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous.”
In focusing on bureaucratic refinements, the administration has
largely avoided confronting more fundamental questions about the
lists. Internal doubts about the effectiveness of the drone campaign
are almost nonexistent. So are apparent alternatives.
“When you rely on a particular tactic, it starts to become the core of
your strategy — you see the puff of smoke, and he’s gone,” said Paul
Pillar, a former deputy director of the CIA’s counterterrorism center.
“When we institutionalize certain things, including targeted killing,
it does cross a threshold that makes it harder to cross back.”
For a decade, the dimensions of the drone campaign have been driven by
short-term objectives: the degradation of al-Qaeda and the prevention
of a follow-on, large-scale attack on American soil.
Side effects are more difficult to measure — including the extent to
which strikes breed more enemies of the United States — but could be
more consequential if the campaign continues for 10 more years.
“We are looking at something that is potentially indefinite,” Pillar
said. “We have to pay particular attention, maybe more than we
collectively have so far, to the longer-term pros and cons to the
methods we use.”
Obama administration officials at times have sought to trigger debate
over how long the nation might employ the kill lists. But officials
said the discussions became dead ends.
In one instance, Mullen, the former Joint Chiefs chairman, returned
from Pakistan and recounted a heated confrontation with his
counterpart, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
Mullen told White House and counterterrorism officials that the
Pakistani military chief had demanded an answer to a seemingly
reasonable question: After hundreds of drone strikes, how could the
United States possibly still be working its way through a “top 20”
list?
The issue resurfaced after the U.S. raid that killed bin Laden.
Seeking to repair a rift with Pakistan, Panetta, the CIA director,
told Kayani and others that the United States had only a handful of
targets left and would be able to wind down the drone campaign.
A senior aide to Panetta disputed this account, and said Panetta
mentioned the shrinking target list during his trip to Islamabad but
didn’t raise the prospect that drone strikes would end. Two former
U.S. officials said the White House told Panetta to avoid even hinting
at commitments the United States was not prepared to keep.
“We didn’t want to get into the business of limitless lists,” said a
former senior U.S. counterterrorism official who spent years
overseeing the lists. “There is this apparatus created to deal with
counterterrorism. It’s still useful. The question is: When will it
stop being useful? I don’t know.”
[Karen DeYoung, Craig Whitlock and Julie Tate contributed to this
report.]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/plan-for-huntin...
refinement of the "disposition matrix" and its handmaiden, the drone
program.
Especially since more than one-billion ill- and uneducated, intolerant
Muslims worldwide constitute America's most deadly threat, we view
these indispensable programs as a pest-management concern, kind of
like Orkin. Find the pests, exterminate 'em, answer questions later,
if deemed necessary.
We're certain Israel agrees.
It will be interesting to hear what a prospective Mormon U.S.
president has to say about the matrix and drones in general.
Like, a unapologetic believer in a booga-booga cult which proscribes
drinking coffee (!), and insists that a woman's place is in the home,
essentially has had the rug pulled out from his tagging Obama as "weak
on terrorism." Or U.S. security in general.
And no, we don't need more bayonets any more than we need more ships.
Go drones!
=========================
"Plan for hunting terrorists signals U.S. intends to keep adding names
to kill lists"
By Greg Miller
October 23, 2012
OVER THE PAST TWO YEARS, the Obama administration has been secretly
developing a new blueprint for pursuing terrorists, a next-generation
targeting list called the “disposition matrix.”
The matrix contains the names of terrorism suspects arrayed against an
accounting of the resources being marshaled to track them down,
including sealed indictments and clandestine operations. U.S.
officials said the database is designed to go beyond existing kill
lists, mapping plans for the “disposition” of suspects beyond the
reach of American drones.
Although the matrix is a work in progress, the effort to create it
reflects a reality setting in among the nation’s counterterrorism
ranks: The United States’ conventional wars are winding down, but the
government expects to continue adding names to kill or capture lists
for years.
Among senior Obama administration officials, there is a broad
consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least
another decade. Given the way al-Qaeda continues to metastasize, some
officials said no clear end is in sight.
“We can’t possibly kill everyone who wants to harm us,” a senior
administration official said. “It’s a necessary part of what we
do. . . . We’re not going to wind up in 10 years in a world of
everybody holding hands and saying, ‘We love America.’ ”
That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the
midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism.
Targeting lists that were regarded as finite emergency measures after
the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are now fixtures of the national
security apparatus. The rosters expand and contract with the pace of
drone strikes but never go to zero.
Meanwhile, a significant milestone looms: The number of militants and
civilians killed in the drone campaign over the past 10 years will
soon exceed 3,000 by certain estimates, surpassing the number of
people al-Qaeda killed in the Sept. 11 attacks.
The Obama administration has touted its successes against the
terrorist network, including the death of Osama bin Laden, as
signature achievements that argue for President Obama’s reelection.
The administration has taken tentative steps toward greater
transparency, formally acknowledging for the first time the United
States’ use of armed drones.
Less visible is the extent to which Obama has institutionalized the
highly classified practice of targeted killing, transforming ad-hoc
elements into a counterterrorism infrastructure capable of sustaining
a seemingly permanent war. Spokesmen for the White House, the National
Counterterrorism Center, the CIA and other agencies declined to
comment on the matrix or other counterterrorism programs.
Privately, officials acknowledge that the development of the matrix is
part of a series of moves, in Washington and overseas, to embed
counterterrorism tools into U.S. policy for the long haul.
White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan is seeking to
codify the administration’s approach to generating capture/kill lists,
part of a broader effort to guide future administrations through the
counterterrorism processes that Obama has embraced.
CIA Director David H. Petraeus is pushing for an expansion of the
agency’s fleet of armed drones, U.S. officials said. The proposal,
which would need White House approval, reflects the agency’s
transformation into a paramilitary force, and makes clear that it does
not intend to dismantle its drone program and return to its pre-Sept.
11 focus on gathering intelligence.
The U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, which carried out the raid
that killed bin Laden, has moved commando teams into suspected
terrorist hotbeds in Africa. A rugged U.S. outpost in Djibouti has
been transformed into a launching pad for counterterrorism operations
across the Horn of Africa and the Middle East.
JSOC also has established a secret targeting center across the Potomac
River from Washington, current and former U.S. officials said. The
elite command’s targeting cells have traditionally been located near
the front lines of its missions, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But JSOC created a “national capital region” task force that is a 15-
minute commute from the White House so it could be more directly
involved in deliberations about al-Qaeda lists.
The developments were described by current and former officials from
the White House and the Pentagon, as well as intelligence and
counterterrorism agencies. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity
because of the sensitivity of the subject.
These counterterrorism components have been affixed to a legal
foundation for targeted killing that the Obama administration has
discussed more openly over the past year. In a series of speeches,
administration officials have cited legal bases, including the
congressional authorization to use military force granted after the
Sept. 11 attacks, as well as the nation’s right to defend itself.
Critics contend that those justifications have become more tenuous as
the drone campaign has expanded far beyond the core group of al-Qaeda
operatives behind the strikes on New York and Washington. Critics note
that the administration still doesn’t confirm the CIA’s involvement or
the identities of those who are killed. Certain strikes are now under
legal challenge, including the killings last year in Yemen of U.S.-
born al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son.
Counterterrorism experts said the reliance on targeted killing is
self-
perpetuating, yielding undeniable short-term results that may obscure
long-term costs.
“The problem with the drone is it’s like your lawn mower,” said Bruce
Riedel, a former CIA analyst and Obama counterterrorism adviser.
“You’ve got to mow the lawn all the time. The minute you stop mowing,
the grass is going to grow back.”
An evolving database
The United States now operates multiple drone programs, including
acknowledged U.S. military patrols over conflict zones in Afghanistan
and Libya, and classified CIA surveillance flights over Iran.
Strikes against al-Qaeda, however, are carried out under secret lethal
programs involving the CIA and JSOC. The matrix was developed by the
NCTC, under former director Michael Leiter, to augment those
organizations’ separate but overlapping kill lists, officials said.
The result is a single, continually evolving database in which
biographies, locations, known associates and affiliated organizations
are all catalogued. So are strategies for taking targets down,
including extradition requests, capture operations and drone patrols.
Obama’s decision to shutter the CIA’s secret prisons ended a program
that had become a source of international scorn, but it also
complicated the pursuit of terrorists. Unless a suspect surfaced in
the sights of a drone in Pakistan or Yemen, the United States had to
scramble to figure out what to do.
“We had a disposition problem,” said a former U.S. counterterrorism
official involved in developing the matrix.
The database is meant to map out contingencies, creating an
operational menu that spells out each agency’s role in case a suspect
surfaces in an unexpected spot. “If he’s in Saudi Arabia, pick up with
the Saudis,” the former official said. “If traveling overseas to al-
Shabaab [in Somalia] we can pick him up by ship. If in Yemen, kill or
have the Yemenis pick him up.”
Officials declined to disclose the identities of suspects on the
matrix. They pointed, however, to the capture last year of alleged al-
Qaeda operative Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame off the coast of Yemen.
Warsame was held for two months aboard a U.S. ship before being
transferred to the custody of the Justice Department and charged in
federal court in New York.
“Warsame was a classic case of ‘What are we going to do with him?’ ”
the former counterterrorism official said. In such cases, the matrix
lays out plans, including which U.S. naval vessels are in the vicinity
and which charges the Justice Department should prepare.
“Clearly, there were people in Yemen that we had on the matrix,” as
well as others in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the former
counterterrorism official said. The matrix was a way to be ready if
they moved. “How do we deal with these guys in transit? You weren’t
going to fire a drone if they were moving through Turkey or Iran.”
Officials described the matrix as a database in development, although
its status is unclear. Some said it has not been implemented because
it is too cumbersome. Others, including officials from the White
House, Congress and intelligence agencies, described it as a blueprint
that could help the United States adapt to al-Qaeda’s morphing
structure and its efforts to exploit turmoil across North Africa and
the Middle East.
A year after Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta declared the core of
al-
Qaeda near strategic defeat, officials see an array of emerging
threats beyond Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia — the three countries where
almost all U.S. drone strikes have occurred.
The Arab spring has upended U.S. counterterrorism partnerships in
countries including Egypt where U.S. officials fear al-Qaeda could
establish new roots. The network’s affiliate in North Africa, al-Qaeda
in the Islamic Maghreb, has seized territory in northern Mali and
acquired weapons that were smuggled out of Libya.
“Egypt worries me to no end,” a high-ranking administration official
said. “Look at Libya, Algeria and Mali and then across the Sahel.
You’re talking about such wide expanses of territory, with open
borders and military, security and intelligence capabilities that are
basically nonexistent.”
Streamlining targeted killing
The creation of the matrix and the institutionalization of kill/
capture lists reflect a shift that is as psychological as it is
strategic.
Before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States recoiled at
the idea of targeted killing. The Sept. 11 commission recounted how
the Clinton administration had passed on a series of opportunities to
target bin Laden in the years before the attacks — before armed drones
existed. President Bill Clinton approved a set of cruise-missile
strikes in 1998 after al-Qaeda bombed embassies in East Africa, but
after extensive deliberation, and the group’s leader escaped harm.
Targeted killing is now so routine that the Obama administration has
spent much of the past year codifying and streamlining the processes
that sustain it.
This year, the White House scrapped a system in which the Pentagon and
the National Security Council had overlapping roles in scrutinizing
the names being added to U.S. target lists.
Now the system functions like a funnel, starting with input from half
a dozen agencies and narrowing through layers of review until proposed
revisions are laid on Brennan’s desk, and subsequently presented to
the president.
Video-conference calls that were previously convened by Adm. Mike
Mullen, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have been
discontinued. Officials said Brennan thought the process shouldn’t be
run by those who pull the trigger on strikes.
“What changed is rather than the chairman doing that, John chairs the
meeting,” said Leiter, the former head of the NCTC.
The administration has also elevated the role of the NCTC, which was
conceived as a clearinghouse for threat data and has no operational
capability. Under Brennan, who served as its founding director, the
center has emerged as a targeting hub.
Other entities have far more resources focused on al-Qaeda. The CIA,
JSOC and U.S. Central Command have hundreds of analysts devoted to the
terrorist network’s franchise in Yemen, while the NCTC has fewer than
two dozen. But the center controls a key function.
“It is the keeper of the criteria,” a former U.S. counterterrorism
official said, meaning that it is in charge of culling names from al-
Qaeda databases for targeting lists based on criteria dictated by the
White House.
The criteria are classified but center on obvious questions: Who are
the operational leaders? Who are the key facilitators? A typical White
House request will direct the NCTC to generate a list of al-Qaeda
operatives in Yemen involved in carrying out or plotting attacks
against U.S. personnel in Sanaa.
The lists are reviewed at regular three-month intervals during
meetings at the NCTC headquarters that involve analysts from other
organizations, including the CIA, the State Department and JSOC.
Officials stress that these sessions don’t equate to approval for
additions to kill lists, an authority that rests exclusively with the
White House.
With no objections — and officials said those have been rare — names
are submitted to a panel of National Security Council officials that
is chaired by Brennan and includes the deputy directors of the CIA and
the FBI, as well as top officials from the State Department, the
Pentagon and the NCTC.
Obama approves the criteria for lists and signs off on drone strikes
outside Pakistan, where decisions on when to fire are made by the
director of the CIA. But aside from Obama’s presence at “Terror
Tuesday” meetings — which generally are devoted to discussing
terrorism threats and trends rather than approving targets — the
president’s involvement is more indirect.
“The president would never come to a deputies meeting,” a senior
administration official said, although participants recalled cases in
which Brennan stepped out of the situation room to get Obama’s
direction on questions the group couldn’t resolve.
The review process is compressed but not skipped when the CIA or JSOC
has compelling intelligence and a narrow window in which to strike,
officials said. The approach also applies to the development of
criteria for “signature strikes,” which allow the CIA and JSOC to hit
targets based on patterns of activity — packing a vehicle with
explosives, for example — even when the identities of those who would
be killed is unclear.
A model approach
For an administration that is the first to embrace targeted killing on
a wide scale, officials seem confident that they have devised an
approach that is so bureaucratically, legally and morally sound that
future administrations will follow suit.
During Monday’s presidential debate, Republican nominee Mitt Romney
made it clear that he would continue the drone campaign. “We can’t
kill our way out of this,” he said, but added later that Obama was
“right to up the usage” of drone strikes and that he would do the
same.
As Obama nears the end of his term, officials said the kill list in
Pakistan has slipped to fewer than 10 al-Qaeda targets, down from as
many as two dozen. The agency now aims many of its Predator strikes at
the Haqqani network, which has been blamed for attacks on U.S. forces
in Afghanistan.
In Yemen, the number of militants on the list has ranged from 10 to
15, officials said, and is not likely to slip into the single digits
anytime soon, even though there have been 36 U.S. airstrikes this
year.
The number of targets on the lists isn’t fixed, officials said, but
fluctuates based on adjustments to criteria. Officials defended the
arrangement even while acknowledging an erosion in the caliber of
operatives placed in the drones’ cross hairs.
“Is the person currently Number 4 as good as the Number 4 seven years
ago? Probably not,” said a former senior U.S. counterterrorism
official involved in the process until earlier this year. “But it
doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous.”
In focusing on bureaucratic refinements, the administration has
largely avoided confronting more fundamental questions about the
lists. Internal doubts about the effectiveness of the drone campaign
are almost nonexistent. So are apparent alternatives.
“When you rely on a particular tactic, it starts to become the core of
your strategy — you see the puff of smoke, and he’s gone,” said Paul
Pillar, a former deputy director of the CIA’s counterterrorism center.
“When we institutionalize certain things, including targeted killing,
it does cross a threshold that makes it harder to cross back.”
For a decade, the dimensions of the drone campaign have been driven by
short-term objectives: the degradation of al-Qaeda and the prevention
of a follow-on, large-scale attack on American soil.
Side effects are more difficult to measure — including the extent to
which strikes breed more enemies of the United States — but could be
more consequential if the campaign continues for 10 more years.
“We are looking at something that is potentially indefinite,” Pillar
said. “We have to pay particular attention, maybe more than we
collectively have so far, to the longer-term pros and cons to the
methods we use.”
Obama administration officials at times have sought to trigger debate
over how long the nation might employ the kill lists. But officials
said the discussions became dead ends.
In one instance, Mullen, the former Joint Chiefs chairman, returned
from Pakistan and recounted a heated confrontation with his
counterpart, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
Mullen told White House and counterterrorism officials that the
Pakistani military chief had demanded an answer to a seemingly
reasonable question: After hundreds of drone strikes, how could the
United States possibly still be working its way through a “top 20”
list?
The issue resurfaced after the U.S. raid that killed bin Laden.
Seeking to repair a rift with Pakistan, Panetta, the CIA director,
told Kayani and others that the United States had only a handful of
targets left and would be able to wind down the drone campaign.
A senior aide to Panetta disputed this account, and said Panetta
mentioned the shrinking target list during his trip to Islamabad but
didn’t raise the prospect that drone strikes would end. Two former
U.S. officials said the White House told Panetta to avoid even hinting
at commitments the United States was not prepared to keep.
“We didn’t want to get into the business of limitless lists,” said a
former senior U.S. counterterrorism official who spent years
overseeing the lists. “There is this apparatus created to deal with
counterterrorism. It’s still useful. The question is: When will it
stop being useful? I don’t know.”
[Karen DeYoung, Craig Whitlock and Julie Tate contributed to this
report.]
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