Blair Addresses the CIA, Drones, and Pakistan by Scott Horton

[Jefferson23]

December 1, 2011

On Monday, Admiral Denis Blair, former National Intelligence Director for President Obama, presented remarks concerning military readiness and potential defense budget cuts at a function hosted by the Aspen Institute. In response to a question from Fox News’s Catherine Herridge about the development of drone policy, Blair offered a surprisingly forceful critique of the CIA’s drone war in Pakistan:

Covert action that goes on for years doesn’t generally stay covert. And you need a way to make it something that is part of your overt policy. I think that the way that we know about to do that is to make it a military operation and to — therefore, when you are going to be using drones over a long period of time, I would say you ought to give strong consideration to running those as military operations.

Within the armed forces we have a set of procedures that are open, known for how you make decisions about when to use deadly force or not, levels of approval degrees of proof and so on and they are things that can be and should be openly put out. So yet another of the problems of trying to conduct long-term sustained covert operations is this secrecy, which you do for other purposes but then puts you in this position which we said. So, I argue strongly that covert action should be retained for relatively short duration operations which — no kidding — should not be talked about and should not be publicized. That if something has been going for a long period of time, somebody else ought to do it, not intelligence agencies.

The remarks can be viewed on CSPAN here, beginning at the 1:17 mark.

Blair was sharply critical of the CIA-run drone war in Pakistan in his final months in the Obama White House, and he has acknowledged that friction with the CIA led to his departure. But his critique (which is almost identical to the one I have been raising for the past three years) is firmly rooted in American national-security doctrine.

remainder: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2011/12/hbc-90008329

[Demeter]

1. Yes, well, that is all part of that Obsolete Mindset--Rule of Law

We are now all terrorists...it's just that some of us have no arms, no bombs, and no legal protections, not even in our own country.

[Jefferson23]

2. No protection for the peasants my friend. n/t