Drone Strikes Filing Today: Appealing the CIA's Attempt to Hide the Worst-Kept Secret in the World

[The Northerner]

Today the ACLU filed its appeal brief in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking records about the CIA's use of drones to carry out targeted killings around the world. Like in our separate FOIA case seeking information about the legal and factual basis for the targeted killing of U.S. citizens, the CIA takes the position in this lawsuit that it can neither confirm nor deny whether it has a drone strike program at all. This is despite the fact that the Departments of Defense, State, and Justice all responded that they do in fact have documents on the program. As we told the court today, the CIA's position is simply untenable.

In speeches and statements to the press, numerous senior government officials, including President Obama and Defense Secretary (and former CIA Director) Leon Panetta, have repeatedly discussed the agency's use of drones to carry out targeted killings. Most recently, Attorney General Eric Holder publicly defended the government's authority to target and kill suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens, far from any battlefield and without judicial oversight. Many news reports have also quoted unnamed officials discussing the drone program.

The broad power to kill claimed by the government requires informed public debate and judicial oversight. But, despite these extensive public disclosures, the government continues to tell the courts that its drone program is so secret it can't even admit to its existence. You can read the sworn statement from the CIA's representative here, in which she says, "An official CIA acknowledgment that confirms or denies the existence or nonexistence of records responsive to Plaintiffs' FOIA request would reveal, among other things, whether or not the CIA is involved in drone strikes or at least has an intelligence interest in drone strikes." (This is known as a "Glomar" response.)

The CIA hides behind this response to avoid disclosing the legal standards it uses or basic facts about who can be targeted and why. The government thinks it can protect itself from scrutiny by simply calling its targeted killing program a "secret" in court. But the CIA's program isn't just the worst-kept secret in the world, it's no longer any secret at all, and the agency must say in court what it has already admitted in public.

Read more: http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/drone-strikes-filing-today-appealing-cias-attempt-hide-worst-kept-secret

[Vincardog]

1. Are the officials prepared for other nations to have drones ready to fire at US targets?

[sad sally]

3. Both China and Iran have drone programs for their own use and to sell to other countries

They'll only sell to friends of ours, of course.

Peter Singer, a Brookings Institution senior fellow and author of Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century, said that "Mexican drug cartels and Hezbollah have all tried to acquire or have acquired unmanned systems to use in the endeavors."

Below is from the Atlantic Wire last year:

Eventually, the United States will face a military adversary or terrorist group armed with drones, military analysts say. But what the short-run hazard experts foresee is not an attack on the United States, which faces no enemies with significant combat drone capabilities, but the political and legal challenges posed when another country follows the American example. The Bush administration, and even more aggressively the Obama administration, embraced an extraordinary principle: that the United States can send this robotic weapon over borders to kill perceived enemies, even American citizens, who are viewed as a threat.

“Is this the world we want to live in?” asks Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Because we’re creating it.”

The challenge could be faced along any number of restive borders (in Kashmir, or in northern Mexico) or against breakaway elements within a country (the Uighurs in Xinjiang Province, in China, perhaps, or in Chechnya). And the United States won't be able to say much in protest without sounding hypocritical. “The problem is that we’re creating an international norm,” Dennis M. Gormley, a senior research fellow at the University of Pittsburgh tells Shane. The U.S. position is that it can strike across borders to kill terrorists — Anwar al-Awlaki, for instance — when they are even suspected of planning attacks. How could this country now tell other military powers they can't do the same. So far, the only other country to have made a strike outside the Afghanistan war zone, where British drones are active, is Israel, which used an unmanned vehicle to attack suspected militants in Gaza.

As the Obama administration has dramatically ramped up drone attacks, the country may face a new arms race. It may also eventually have to debate the underlying question that is now being avoided: does this type of warfare really work? At 10 civilians killed for every terrorist, as the Brookings Institution estimates, the attacks may be undermining any effort to win over the proverbial hearts and minds. But for the U.S., to kill an al-Awlaki, that may prove to be worth the cost. How will we respond when another country starts making similar, cold calculations?

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2011/10/what-happens-when-everyone-else-starts-using-drones/43492/

[woo me with science]

2. K&R

Thank you for keeping the updates on this front and center.

[gratuitous]

4. These cute little "secret" games have to stop

This anti-constitutional bullshit should be actionable. I'm so old, I remember when the United States used to be the bulwark against this kind of totalitarian government nonsense. Now, we're one of the world's leading practitioners, playing little sophistic games while we snuff people with apparent impunity.

I wonder when some journalist will infiltrate the Fourth Estate and dare to ask the administration point-blank about this?

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. This important article really deserves more recs.

This is a HUGE issue, which will be with us for a long long time.

[Wilms]

6. ^

[RobertEarl]

7. War is a racket

And it kills innocent people day in and day out.
Exposing the racket and reporting how many innocents are killed is the best way to end this racket.

[saras]

8. Drones aren't hard to make. They don't have to be as good as ours to work.

Sooner or later, probably sooner, someone will quietly start distributing them.

[woo me with science]

9. K&R

[Solly Mack]

10. K&R