Among the 9/11 Commission's 41 recommendations was that "lead responsibility for directing and executing paramilitary operations, whether clandestine or covert, should shift to the Defense Department" to avoid the "creation of redundant, overlapping capabilities and authorities in such sensitive work." President Bush directed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Director of Central Intelligence Porter Goss to review "to what extent implementation of the recommendation is in the interest of the United States." Goss -- himself a CIA operative in the 1960s -- told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence: "[Rumsfeld] feels that he has capabilities that are important, and I agree. And I feel I have capabilities that are important, and he agrees. There's not a lot of disagreement on this."
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Rumsfeld and Goss apparently did agree; their formal response to Bush reportedly stated: "Neither CIA nor (Defense Department) endorses the commission's recommendation on shifting the paramilitary mission or operations. We do not believe change is required in the responsibility of the CIA for foreign intelligence collection and covert action or activities, or that of the DOD for traditional military activities." An anonymous CIA official claimed that Goss "was concentrating on protecting the diminished role of the agency" from the Pentagon's expansion of paramilitary authorities and resources. Former intelligence officials also contend that as the CIA's responsibilities remained uncertain during the intelligence community's reorganizations of 2004 and 2005, Goss wanted to retain the authority for lethal operations, albeit in rare circumstances -- at the time, the CIA had conducted only three drone strikes.
Implementing the 9/11 Commission recommendation has been proposed repeatedly over the last nine years, but neither the Bush nor Obama administrations seriously considered it. Subsequently, the lead executive authority for targeted killings became divided between the CIA and Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) -- a subunified command of Special Operations Command. Since 9/11, with a few exceptions, non-battlefield targeted killings have been carried out in Pakistan by the CIA, in Somalia by JSOC, and in Yemen by both. (The CIA also conducted one drone strike in the Philippines in 2006.) Of the approximately 420 targeted killing attempts, the lead executive authority for over 90 percent has been the CIA.
Last month, Daniel Klaidman reported that three senior officials had told him that President Obama would gradually transfer targeted killings to the Pentagon during his second term. Other journalists report that this is not a certainty or that "it would most likely leave drone operations in Pakistan under the CIA," making any transition meaningless since over 80 percent of all U.S. targeted killings have occurred in Pakistan. But if Obama is serious about reforming targeted killing policies, as he has stated, then he needs to sign an executive order transferring lead executive authority for non-battlefield targeted killings from the CIA to the Defense Department. Doing this has three significant benefits for U.S. foreign policy.
First, it would increase the transparency of targeted killings, including what methods are used to prevent civilian harm. Strikes by the CIA are classified as Title 50 "covert action," which under law are "activities of the United States Government...where it is intended that the role of the United States Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly, but does not include traditional...military activities." CIA operations purportedly allow for deniability about the U.S. role, though this rationale no longer applies to the highly-publicized drone campaign in Pakistan, which Obama personally acknowledged in January 2012. Beyond adjectives in public speeches ("methodical," "deliberate," "not willy-nilly"), the government does not, and cannot, describe the procedures and rules for CIA targeted killings.
JSOC operations in Somalia and Yemen, on the other hand, fall under the Title 10 "armed forces" section of U.S. law, which the White House reports as "direct action" to Congress. The United States has also acknowledged clandestine military operations to the United Nations "against al-Qaida terrorist targets in Somalia in response to on-going threats to the United States." Moreover, JSOC operations are guided by military doctrine, available to the public in Joint Publication 3-60 (JP 3-60): Joint Targeting. (While the complete 2007 edition can be found online, only the executive summary of the most-recent version, released on January 31, is available. If the Joint Staff's J-7 Directorate for Joint Force Development posted this updated edition in its entirety -- or fulfilled my FOIA request [case number 13-F-0514] -- that would be appreciated.) JP 3-60 matters because it details each step in the targeting cycle, including the fundamentals, processes, responsibilities, legal considerations, and methods to reduce civilian casualties. This degree of transparency is impossible for CIA covert actions.
Second, it would focus the finite resources and bandwidth of the CIA on its primary responsibilities of intelligence collection, analysis, and early warning. Last year, the President's Intelligence Advisory Board -- a semi-independent executive branch body, the findings of which rarely leak -- reportedly told Obama that "U.S. spy agencies were paying inadequate attention to China, the Middle East and other national security flash points because they had become too focused on military operations and drone strikes." This is not a new charge, since every few years an independent group or congressional report determines that "the CIA has been ignoring its core mission activities." But, as Mark Mazzetti shows in his indispensable CIA history, the agency has evolved from an organization once deeply divided at senior levels about using armed drones, to one that is a fully functioning paramilitary army. As former senior CIA official Ross Newland warns, the agency's armed drones program "ends up hurting the CIA. This just is not an intelligence mission."
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