Landay also writes that "the reports estimated there was a single civilian casualty, an individual killed in an April 22, 2011, strike in North Waziristan." This should finally demolish John Brennan's claim in June 2011 that "For the past year there hasn't been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the capabilities that we've been able to develop." As I noted previously, either Brennan did not receive the information in these top-secret documents (an implausible notion given his central role in managing the targeted killings program), or he was being dishonest.
It is important to note that the claim of a single civilian casualty is based on the CIA's interpretation that any military-age males who are behaving suspiciously can be lawfully targeted. No U.S. government official has ever openly acknowledged the practice of such "signature strikes" because it is so clearly at odds with the bedrock principle of distinction required for using force within the laws of armed conflict. According to the documents reviewed by Landay, even the U.S. intelligence community does not necessarily know who it has killed; it is forced to use fuzzy categories like "other militants" and "foreign fighters."
Some of the drone strikes that Landay describes, such as a May 22, 2007 attack requested by Pakistan's intelligence service to support Pakistani troops in combat, do not appear in the databases maintained by the New America Foundation, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, or Long Wars Journal. This should strengthen the concerns of many analysts about the accuracy of reporting from Pakistan's tribal areas. It also suggests that there may be a few additional targeted killing efforts of which we know nothing.
This lack of understanding further reinforces the need for a comprehensive official history of U.S. targeted killings in non-battlefield settings, comparable in scope and transparency to the government reports about other controversial counterterrorism policies. Some policymakers will question why we should care about what the United States was doing two years ago, which in Washington is considered ancient and irrelevant. Yet, for all of the historical accounts and professed concerns over the CIA's detention and extraordinary rendition program, which involved "136 known victims," it is time for an accounting of the CIA's drone strikes, which have killed between 3,000 and 4,000 people in Pakistan and Yemen.
Finally, based on the Obama administration's patterns of behavior, the Department of Justice will assuredly target Landay and his sources for leaking classified information. While the DOJ has refrained from plugging the many selective leaks by anonymous administration officials that praise the precision and efficacy of drone strikes, it has sought more criminal prosecutions of leaks in Obama's first term than during all previous presidential administrations combined. Like almost everything else we know about targeted killings, these latest revelations come from an investigative journalist who served the public interest by reporting new information on a highly controversial policy -- a policy that the government absurdly insists remain secret. Absolutely nothing in Landay's reporting reveals the CIA's sources and methods for determining who had been killed.
The hypocrisy behind U.S. targeted killings has long been apparent to casual news readers, and it is now confirmed by internal intelligence documents. The Obama administration has a fundamental choice to make if it is serious about reforming its targeted-killing program: Either target who officials claim they are targeting, or change their justifications to match the actual practice. If they are unable or unwilling to do this, then other White House efforts toward drone-strike reform or transparency will be met with skepticism.
SUBJECTS:
