{"id":123051,"date":"2015-10-17T09:46:33","date_gmt":"2015-10-17T09:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=123051"},"modified":"2015-10-20T07:12:18","modified_gmt":"2015-10-20T07:12:18","slug":"find-fix-and-finish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=123051","title":{"rendered":"Find, Fix and Finish"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jeremy Scahill — The Drone Papers, The Intercept<\/a> Oct 15, 2015<\/h1>\n

\"obama_drone-550x366\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Soon after he was elected president, Barack Obama was strongly urged by Michael Hayden, the outgoing CIA director, and his new top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, to adopt the way of the scalpel \u2014 small footprint counterterrorism operations and drone strikes. In one briefing, Hayden bluntly told Obama that covert action was the only way to confront al Qaeda and other terrorist groups plotting attacks against the U.S.<\/span><\/p>\n

The view among Obama\u2019s inner circle was that Iraq and Afghanistan had served as useful laboratories for such tactics, but deploying them outside conventional war zones meant different legal and diplomatic considerations would apply. An all-star team of special operations commanders, war planners, and Pentagon officials pressed the new president to dramatically ramp up the shadow wars in Yemen and Somalia to fight the emerging threats in those countries. They called for sweeping away bureaucratic obstacles and streamlining lethal operations.<\/span><\/p>\n

In short, a new global architecture of assassination was called for, and that meant navigating an increasingly tense turf war between the CIA and the Pentagon over these activities.<\/span><\/p>\n

The CIA had long dominated the covert war in Pakistan, and in 2009 Obama expanded<\/a><\/strong><\/span> the agency\u2019s drone resources there and in Afghanistan to regularly pound al Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban, and other targets. The military, tasked with prosecuting the broader war in Afghanistan, was largely sidelined in the Pakistan theater, save for the occasional<\/a><\/strong><\/span> cross-border raid and the Air Force personnel who operated <\/a><\/strong><\/span>the CIA\u2019s drones. But the Pentagon was not content to play a peripheral role in the global drone war, and aggressively positioned itself to lead the developing drone campaigns in Yemen and Somalia.<\/span><\/p>\n

In September 2009, then-Centcom Commander Gen. David Petraeus issued<\/a><\/strong><\/span> a Joint Unconventional Warfare Task Force Execute Order that would lay the groundwork for military forces to conduct expanded clandestine actions in Yemen and other countries. It allowed for U.S. special operations forces to enter friendly and unfriendly countries \u201cto build networks that could \u2018penetrate, disrupt, defeat or destroy\u2019 al Qaeda and other militant groups, as well as to \u2018prepare the environment\u2019 for future attacks by American or local military forces.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

At the same time, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and al Shabaab both began to escalate their rhetoric \u2014 and, in AQAP\u2019s case, to plot terror attacks on U.S. soil. After the failed Christmas Day \u201cunderwear\u201d bomb plot over Detroit, the Obama administration responded<\/a><\/strong><\/span> by greenlighting\u00a0special operations commanders\u2019 plans for direct action.<\/span><\/p>\n

In December 2009, the Obama administration signed off on its first<\/a> covert airstrike in Yemen \u2014 a cruise missile attack that killed more than 40 people<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, most of them women and children. After that strike, as with the CIA\u2019s program in Pakistan, drones would fuel the Joint Special Operations Command\u2019s high-value targeting campaign in the region.<\/span><\/p>\n

When Obama took office, there had been only one<\/a><\/strong><\/span> U.S. drone strike in Yemen \u2014 in November 2002. By 2012, there was a drone strike reported<\/a><\/strong><\/span> in Yemen every six days. As of August 2015, more than 490 people had been killed<\/a> in drone strikes in Yemen alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe drone campaign right now really is only about killing. When you hear the phrase \u2018capture\/kill,\u2019 capture is actually a misnomer. In the drone strategy that we have, \u2018capture\u2019 is a lower case \u2018c.\u2019 We don\u2019t capture people anymore,\u201d Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told The Intercept<\/em>. \u201cOur entire Middle East policy seems to be based on firing drones. That\u2019s what this administration decided to do in its counterterrorism campaign. They\u2019re enamored by the ability of special operations and the CIA to find a guy in the middle of the desert in some shitty little village and drop a bomb on his head and kill him.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The tip of the spear in the Obama administration\u2019s escalated wars in East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula was a special operations task force known as TF 48-4<\/a>,<\/strong><\/span> according to secret documents<\/a><\/strong><\/span> provided to The Intercept<\/em>. In response to a series of detailed questions, a Defense Department spokesperson said, \u201cWe don\u2019t comment on the details of classified reports.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The task force\u2019s primary command center was at the former French Army outpost at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, a small African nation nestled between Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, and the Gulf of Aden. With its strategic location, Lemonnier served as the hub for launching actions from military facilities scattered across the region. The task force also utilized a maritime drone platform and a surveillance apparatus positioned in the Arabian Sea, used for intercepting data. TF 48-4 had sites in Nairobi and Sanaa and a drone base in Arba Minch, Ethiopia. A small base in Manda Bay, Kenya \u2014 a stone\u2019s throw from Somalia \u2014 housed special operations commandos and manned aircraft.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A slide from a classified Pentagon study outlines the air and naval assets of the secret task force charged with hunting down, killing, and capturing high-value individuals in Somalia and Yemen. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

The task force\u2019s operations, aimed at hunting down and killing or capturing members of AQAP and al Shabaab, were largely conducted with drones and fixed-wing aircraft. On occasion, small teams of special operators mounted ground operations<\/a><\/strong><\/span> inside Somalia and Yemen, or interdicted<\/a><\/strong><\/span> ships, snatching suspected terrorists. But drones were the administration\u2019s preferred weapon.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is the politically advantageous thing to do \u2014 low cost, no U.S. casualties, gives the appearance of toughness,\u201d said<\/a><\/strong><\/span> Adm. Dennis Blair, Obama\u2019s former director of national intelligence, explaining how the administration viewed its policy at the time. \u201cIt plays well domestically, and it is unpopular only in other countries. Any damage it does to the national interest only shows up over the long term.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As Yemen\u2019s status began to rise to the top of U.S. counterterrorism priorities, the long-simmering turf war between the Pentagon and the CIA flared up. In 2011, the CIA began using a newly constructed drone base in Saudi Arabia, giving it easier access to targets in Yemen than the military\u2019s bases in East Africa. There were parallel, and competing, target lists and infighting over who should run the drone war in Yemen. At times, this drama played out on the pages of the New York Times<\/em> and the Washington Post <\/em>\u2014 with leaks coming from both sides in an effort to influence policy. The CIA\u2019s backers in Congress argued that the agency showed more \u201cpatience and discretion<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u201d in its drone strikes, while some prominent military advocates portrayed the agency as ill-equipped to conduct military-style operations and less accountable to Congress.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the peak of this bureaucratic civil war, in 2012, an influential<\/a><\/strong><\/span> and well-funded Defense Department entity, the Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Task Force, began preparing a classified brief on challenges faced by special operations forces conducting counterterrorism operations in East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, such as those operating under TF 48-4. The ISR Task Force fell under the control of Michael Vickers, a powerful veteran of CIA paramilitary operations. Obama had promoted Vickers in 2010 to undersecretary of defense for intelligence, and as the Pentagon\u2019s top intelligence official he exerted great influence over matters of covert operations.<\/span><\/p>\n

The task force had been established<\/a><\/strong><\/span> in 2008 to study the intelligence and surveillance needs of war fighters in Afghanistan and Iraq. By 2012, it had evolved into a multibillion-dollar advocacy wing pushing for the purchase of new surveillance technologies to support the military\u2019s black ops forces in waging unconventional wars.<\/span><\/p>\n

The purpose of the ISR study, in outlining the challenges faced by special operations units tasked with disrupting and destroying terrorist networks, was to press for more tools and to collect data that would guide future operations.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Intercept<\/em> obtained two versions of the study, both titled \u201cISR Support to Small Footprint CT Operations \u2014 Somalia\/Yemen.\u201d One<\/strong> slide deck<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, a detailed report, was distributed in February 2013, and another, an executive summary<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, was circulated in May 2013, the month President Obama gave the first major address of his presidency on drones and targeted killings. The timing of the reports is interesting, because it was during this period that the Obama administration began to publicly advance the idea of handing control of the drone program to the military.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe United States has taken lethal, targeted action against al Qaeda and its associated forces, including with remotely piloted aircraft commonly referred to as drones,\u201d Obama said<\/a><\/strong><\/span> in front of a military audience. \u201cAs was true in previous armed conflicts, this new technology raises profound questions \u2014 about who is targeted, and why; about civilian casualties, and the risk of creating new enemies; about the legality of such strikes under U.S. and international law; about accountability and morality.\u201d Drone strikes, he asserted, are \u201ceffective\u201d and legal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Obama did not mention TF 48-4 in his speech, but it was the actions of the special operations task force \u2014 and those of the CIA\u2019s parallel program \u2014 that he was discussing.<\/span><\/p>\n

During the period covered in the ISR study \u2014 January 2011 through June 2012 \u2014 three U.S. citizens were killed in drone strikes in Yemen. Only one, the radical preacher Anwar al Awlaki, was labeled the intended target of the strike. The U.S. claimed it did not intend to kill Samir Khan, who was traveling with Awlaki when a Hellfire hit their vehicle. The third \u2014 and most controversial \u2014 killing of a U.S. citizen was that of Awlaki\u2019s son, 16-year-old Abdulrahman Awlaki. He was killed two weeks after his father, while having dinner with his cousin and some friends. Immediately after the strike, anonymous U.S. officials asserted that the younger Awlaki was connected to al Qaeda and was 21 years old. After the family produced his birth certificate, the U.S. changed its position, with an anonymous official calling the killing of the teenager an \u201coutrageous mistake<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A former senior official in the Obama administration, who worked on the high-value targeting program and asked not to be identified because he was discussing classified material, told me<\/a><\/strong><\/span> in 2013 that after the Abdulrahman strike, the president was \u201csurprised and upset and wanted an explanation.\u201d \u201cWe had no idea the kid was there,\u201d the official said. The White House did not officially acknowledge the strikes until nearly two years later. \u201cWe killed three U.S. citizens in a very short period,\u201d he told me. \u201cTwo of them weren\u2019t even targets: Samir Khan and Abdulrahman Awlaki. That doesn\u2019t look good. It\u2019s embarrassing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The former senior official said that John Brennan, President Obama\u2019s top counterterrorism adviser, \u201csuspected that the kid had been killed intentionally and ordered a review. I don\u2019t know what happened with the review.\u201d When asked about the review, a spokesperson for the National Security Council told me, \u201cWe cannot discuss the sensitive details of specific operations.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n