Author Topic: Exclusive: The CIA, Not The Pentagon, Will Keep Running Obama's Drone War  (Read 786 times)

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Offline happyg

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In May, the White House leaked word that it would start shifting drone operations from the shadows of the CIA to the relative sunlight of the Defense Department in an effort to be more transparent about the controversial targeted killing program. But six months later, the so-called migration of those operations has stalled, and it is now unlikely to happen anytime soon, Foreign Policy has learned.

The anonymous series of announcements coincided with remarks President Obama made on counterterrorism policy at National Defense University in which he called for "transparency and debate on this issue." A classified Presidential Policy Guidance on the matter, issued at the same time, caught some in government by surprise, triggering a scramble at the Pentagon and at CIA to achieve a White House objective. The transfer was never expected to happen overnight. But it is now clear the complexity of the issue, the distinct operational and cultural differences between the Pentagon and CIA and the bureaucratic politics of it all has forced officials on all sides to recognize transferring drone operations from the Agency to the Defense Department represents, for now, an unattainable goal.

"The physics of making this happen quickly are remarkably difficult," one U.S. official told FP. "The goal remains the same, but the reality has set in."

Another U.S. official emphasized that the transfer is still continuing. "This is the policy, and we're moving toward that policy, but it will take some time," the official said. "The notion that there has been some sort of policy reversal is just not accurate. I think from the moment the policy was announced it was clear it was not something that would occur overnight or immediately."

The official noted that all involved are mindful not to disrupt the drone program just for the sake of completing the transfer from the CIA to the military. "While we work jointly towards this transition, we also want to ensure that we maintain capabilities."

Officials at the CIA and the Defense Department are loathe to try and fix a program that they don't think is broken, even if it has become a political liability for Obama, who has faced constant pressure from human rights activists, his political base, and a growing chorus of libertarian Republicans to scale back the program and subject it to greater public scrutiny. But the pitfalls of transferring operations reside in more practical concerns. The U.S. official said that while the platforms and the capabilities are common to either the Agency or the Pentagon, there remain distinctly different approaches to "finding, fixing and finishing" terrorist targets. The two organizations also use different approaches to producing the "intelligence feeds" upon which drone operations rely. Perhaps more importantly, after years of conducting drone strikes, the CIA has developed an expertise and a taste for them. The DOD's appetite to take over that mission may not run very deep.

The military operates its own drones, of course, and has launched hundreds of lethal strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the CIA is more "agile," another former official said, and has a longer track record of being able to sending drones into places where U.S. combat forces cannot go.
More at link:

http://killerapps.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/11/05/cia_pentagon_drone_war_control