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CIA Broadens Assassination Abilities
Expands Use of Drones in Terror War
By Josh Meyer
Times Staff Writer
01/29/06 "Los
Angeles Times" -- -- WASHINGTON — Despite
protests from other countries, the United States is expanding a
top-secret effort to kill suspected terrorists with drone-fired
missiles as it pursues an increasingly decentralized Al Qaeda,
U.S. officials say.
The CIA's failed Jan. 13 attempt to assassinate Al Qaeda
second-in-command Ayman Zawahiri in Pakistan was the latest
strike in the "targeted killing" program, a highly classified
initiative that officials say has broadened as the network
splintered and fled Afghanistan.
The strike against Zawahiri reportedly killed as many as 18
civilians, many of them women and children, and triggered
protests in Pakistan. Similar U.S. attacks using unmanned
Predator aircraft equipped with Hellfire missiles have angered
citizens and political leaders in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen.
Little is known about the targeted-killing program. The Bush
administration has refused to discuss how many strikes it has
made, how many people have died, or how it chooses targets. No
U.S. officials were willing to speak about it on the record
because the program is classified.
Several U.S. officials confirmed at least 19 occasions since
Sept. 11 on which Predators successfully fired Hellfire missiles
on terrorist suspects overseas, including 10 in Iraq in one
month last year. The Predator strikes have killed at least four
senior Al Qaeda leaders, but also many civilians, and it is not
known how many times they missed their targets.
Critics of the program dispute its legality under U.S. and
international law, and say it is administered by the CIA with
little oversight. U.S. intelligence officials insist it is one
of their most tightly regulated, carefully vetted programs.
Lee Strickland, a former CIA counsel who retired in 2004 from
the agency's Senior Intelligence Service, confirmed that the
Predator program had grown to keep pace with the spread of Al
Qaeda commanders. The CIA believes they are branching out to
gain recruits, financing and influence.
Many groups of Islamic militants are believed to be operating in
lawless pockets of the Middle East, Asia and Africa where it is
perilous for U.S. troops to try to capture them, and difficult
to discern the leaders.
"Paradoxically, as a result of our success the target has become
even more decentralized, even more diffused and presents a more
difficult target — no question about that," said Strickland, now
director of the Center for Information Policy at the University
of Maryland.
"It's clear that the U.S. is prepared to use and deploy these
weapons in a fairly wide theater," he said.
Current and former intelligence officials said they could not
disclose which countries could be subject to Predator strikes.
But the presence of Al Qaeda or its affiliates has been
documented in dozens of nations, including Somalia, Morocco and
Indonesia.
High-ranking U.S. and allied counter-terrorism officials said
the program's expansion was not merely geographic. They said it
had grown from targeting a small number of senior Al Qaeda
commanders after the Sept. 11 attacks to a more loosely defined
effort to kill possibly scores of suspected terrorists,
depending on where they were found and what they were doing.
"We have the plans in place to do them globally," said a former
counter-terrorism official who worked at the CIA and State
Department, which coordinates such efforts with other
governments.
"In most cases, we need the approval of the host country to do
them. However, there are a few countries where the president has
decided that we can whack someone without the approval or
knowledge of the host government."
The CIA and the Pentagon have deployed at least several dozen of
the Predator drones throughout Iraq, Afghanistan and along the
borders of Pakistan, U.S. officials confirmed. The CIA also has
sent the remote-controlled aircraft into the skies over Yemen
and some other countries believed to be Al Qaeda havens,
particularly those without a strong government or military with
which the United States can work in tandem, a current U.S.
counter-terrorism official told The Times.
Such incursions are highly sensitive because they could violate
the sovereignty of those nations and anger U.S. allies, the
official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Predator, built by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc.
of San Diego, is a slender craft, 27 feet long with a 49-foot
wingspan. It makes a clearly audible buzzing sound, and can
hover above a target for many hours and fly as low as 15,000
feet to get good reconnaissance footage. They are often operated
by CIA or Pentagon officials at computer consoles in the United
States.
The drones were designed for surveillance and have been used for
that purpose since at least the mid-1990s, beginning with the
conflict in the Balkans. After the Sept. 11 attacks, President
Bush ordered a rapid escalation of a project to arm the
Predators with missiles, an effort that had been mired in
bureaucratic squabbles and technical glitches.
Now the Predator is an integral part of the military's
counter-insurgency effort, especially in Iraq. But the CIA also
runs a more secretive — and more controversial — Predator
program that targets suspected terrorists outside combat zones.
The CIA does not even acknowledge that such a targeted-killing
program exists, and some attacks have been explained away as car
bombings or other incidents. It is not known how many militants
or bystanders have been killed by Predator strikes, but
anecdotal evidence suggests the number is significant.
In some cases, the destruction was so complete that it was
impossible to establish who was killed, or even how many people.
Among the senior Al Qaeda leaders killed in Predator strikes
were military commander Mohammed Atef in Afghanistan in November
2001 and Qaed Sinan Harithi, a suspected mastermind of the
bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Yemen, in 2002. Last year,
Predators took out two Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan: Haitham
Yemeni in May and Abu Hamza Rabia in December, one month after
another missile strike missed him.
The attack on Rabia in North Waziristan also killed his Syrian
bodyguards and the 17-year-old son and the 8-year-old nephew of
the owner of the house that was struck, according to a U.S.
official and Amnesty International, which has lodged complaints
with the Bush administration following each suspected Predator
strike.
Another apparent Predator missile strike killed a former Taliban
commander, Nek Mohammed, in South Waziristan in June 2004, along
with five others. A local observer said the strike was so
precise that it didn't damage any of the buildings around the
lawn where Mohammed was seated. At the time, the Pakistani army
said Mohammed had been killed in clashes with its soldiers.
Michael Scheuer, the former chief of the CIA's special unit
hunting Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, said he was aware of at
least four successful targeted-killing strikes in Afghanistan
alone by November 2004, when he left the agency.
In the attack on Zawahiri, word spread quickly that a U.S. plane
had been buzzing above the target beforehand. Afterward,
villagers reportedly found evidence of U.S. involvement.
The missiles intended for Bin Laden's chief deputy incinerated
several houses in Damadola, a village near Pakistan's
northwestern border with Afghanistan. But Zawahiri was not
there, U.S. officials now believe. Pakistan said it was
investigating whether the strikes killed other high-ranking
militants.
There were some well-publicized failures before the Zawahiri
strike. In February 2002, a Predator tracked and killed a tall
man in flowing robes along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The
CIA believed it was firing at Bin Laden, but the victim turned
out to be someone else.
Before the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. government had targeted
Bin Laden in at least one Cruise missile strike. But the CIA was
reluctant to engage in targeted killings because it said the
laws regarding assassinations were too vague and the agency
could face criminal charges.
Even today, documents and interviews suggest that the U.S.
policy on targeted killings is still evolving.
Some critics, including a U.N. human rights watchdog group and
Amnesty International, have urged the Bush administration to be
more open about how it decides whom to kill and under what
circumstances.
A U.N. report in the wake of the 2002 strike in Yemen called it
"an alarming precedent [and] a clear case of extrajudicial
killing" in violation of international laws and treaties. The
Bush administration, which did not return calls seeking comment
for this story, has said it does not recognize the mandate of
the U.N. special body in connection with its military actions
against Al Qaeda, according to Amnesty International.
"Zawahiri is an easy case. No one is going to question us going
after him," said Juliette N. Kayyem, a former U.S. government
counter-terrorism consultant and Justice Department lawyer. "But
where can you do it and who can you do it against? Who
authorizes it? All of these are totally unregulated areas of
presidential authority."
"Paris, it's easy to say we won't do it there," said Kayyem, now
a Harvard University law professor specializing in
terrorism-related legal issues. "But what about Lebanon?"
Paul Pillar, a former CIA deputy counter-terrorism chief, said
the authority claimed by the Bush administration was murky.
"I don't think anyone is dealing with solid footing here. There
is legal as well as operational doctrine that is being developed
as we go along," Pillar said. "We are pretty much in uncharted
territory here."
Pillar, who was also the CIA's National Intelligence Officer for
the Near East and South Asia before retiring in mid-2005, said
there had long been disagreement within the intelligence
community over whether targeted killings were legally
permissible, or even a good idea.
Before Sept. 11, Pillar said, CIA officers were issued vaguely
worded guidelines that seemed to give them authority to kill Bin
Laden, but only during an attempt to capture him.
The 9/11 commission investigating the attacks in New York and
Washington concluded that such vaguely worded laws and policies
gave little reassurance to those who might be pulling the
trigger that they would not face disciplinary action — or even
criminal charges.
Although presidents Ford and Reagan issued executive orders in
1976 and 1981 prohibiting U.S. intelligence agents from engaging
in assassinations, the Bush administration claimed the right to
kill suspected terrorists under war powers given to the
president by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks.
It is the same justification Bush has used for a recently
disclosed domestic spying program that has the National Security
Agency eavesdropping on American citizens without warrants, and
a CIA "extraordinary rendition" program to seize suspected
terrorists overseas and transport them to other countries with
reputations for torture.
Strickland, like some other officials, said the Predator program
served as a deterrent to foreign governments, militias and other
groups that might be harboring Al Qaeda cells.
"You give shelter to Al Qaeda figures, you may well get your
village blown up," Strickland said. "Conversely, you have to
note that this can also create local animosity and instability."
The CIA's lawyers play a central role in deciding when a strike
is justified, current and former U.S. officials said. The
lawyers analyze the credibility of the evidence, how many
bystanders might be killed, and whether the target is enough of
a threat to warrant the strike.
Other agencies, including the Justice Department, are sometimes
consulted, Strickland said. "The legal input is broad and
extensive," he said.
Scheuer said he believed the process was too cumbersome, and
that the agency had lost precious opportunities to slay
terrorists because it was afraid of killing civilians.
But others said they had urged the Bush administration to adopt
a multi-agency system of checks and balances similar to that
used by Israel, which for decades has convened informal
tribunals to assess each proposed targeted killing before
carrying it out.
Amos N. Guiora, a senior Israeli military judge advocate who
participated in such tribunals, said that although the failed
Zawahiri strike itself appeared to be justifiable, the result
suggested a lack of adequate deliberations on the quality of the
intelligence.
"I think [the] attack was a major screw-up, because so many kids
died. It raises questions about the entire process," said Guiora,
who now a professor at Case Western Law School and director of
its Institute for Global Security Law and Policy.
"It shows the absolute need to have a well-thought-through and
developed process that examines the action from a legal
perspective, an intelligence perspective and an operational
perspective. Because the price you pay here is that you are
going to have to be hesitant the next time you pull the
trigger."
Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times
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