Brian Williams - Predators

This new license to kill based upon mere suspicious behavior was far beyond the original parameters of the rather limited assassination strikes that had worried George Tenet back in 2001. A subsequent Los Angeles Times article revealed even more about the expanded targeting parameters granted to the CIA by the Bush administration in early 2008. According to the article, the CIA now had permission to rely on “pattern-of-life” analysis based on surveillance by overhead drones that could fly for up to forty hours. 15If suspected militants on the ground were filmed over time engaging in suspicious activities (such as, presumably, infiltrating Afghanistan with weapons, training in known al Qaeda and Taliban camps in the FATA, transporting heavy weapons or explosives used in warfare against NATO or Pakistani troops, and entering known terrorist guest houses with Arabs), then the CIA had blanket permission to kill them based on their hostile “signatures.”

Whereas previously the CIA had been limited to killing high-ranking targets who were on a kill list known as the Joint Integrated Prioritized Target List (this list included mainly Arab al Qaeda terrorists and high-ranking Taliban members who were considered “personality strikes”), they now had authorization to go after a much wider range of suspiciously acting targets, described as rank-and-file foot soldiers, via “signature strikes.” Much of the catalyst for this new policy came from the U.S. military, which was eager to see the CIA play a “force protection” role in disrupting cross-border insurgent activities in neighboring Afghanistan. While the CIA was initially agnostic about the need to go after lower-level Taliban operatives based on their pattern-of-life signatures, they soon became avid converts to this new counterinsurgency role. 16In essence, overnight the CIA became a sort of covert military force operating in Pakistan, only without the accountability and scrutiny that the U.S. military faced.

The new policy essentially meant that the CIA would spread its kill net wide and start assassinating lower-level militants whose identities were not even known. The widening of what had previously been a limited, targeted assassination campaign of confirmed HVTs to include a range of suspected targets raised the hackles of some observers. Especially since the new targeting guidelines were to be based, to a certain extent, on remote-control surveillance evidence. One Bush national security aide said, “It’s risky because you can make more mistakes—you can hit the wrong house, or misidentify the motorcade.” 17

There were also moral and ethical questions involved in relying on newly evolving technology to kill a wider range of people across the globe. One blogger worried, “Think about that: we’re potentially killing people based not on what we know about an individual, but what we have observed solely through the camera of a drone.” 18Noah Shachtman commented in the widely read Danger Room section of Wired.com, “Once upon a time, the CIA had to know a militant’s name before putting him up for a robotic targeted killing. Now, if the guy acts like a guerrilla, it’s enough to call in a drone strike.” 19

While U.S. officials cautioned that the drones would be called off if there were risks of civilian casualties from a strike, the limited assassination campaign was broadening into what could best be described as an aerial war. Clearly Bush White House officials felt that under the laws of war they had the legal right to wage an asymmetric aerial campaign against terrorists and fighters preparing terrorist acts and waging war on U.S. troops from cross-border sanctuaries and havens in the autonomous tribal regions of Pakistan.

But that was not all. The demand that the CIA seek “concurrence” from Pakistan’s government was later dropped from the agreement that made the CIA director “America’s combatant commander in the hottest covert war in the global campaign on terror.” 20Previously the Pakistanis had been allowed the right to concur with an intended strike or to veto it. When that right was dropped from the agreement, the chances of Pakistani ISI officers with mixed loyalties warning the drone targets in advance were greatly reduced. According to former CIA officer Bruce Riedel, on several occasions the Pakistanis had tipped off drone targets in advance of a strike. 21The most notable case of the Pakistanis tipping off a Taliban target, according to Matthew Aid, occurred when ISI agents warned Jalaludin Haqqani of an impending drone strike. 22

Although the expansion of the drones’ targets and the end to the right of concurrences might have bothered the Pakistanis, who were always sensitive about the issues of sovereignty, collateral damage deaths, and their close ties to the Afghan Taliban (as opposed to their war with the Pakistani Taliban), larger events on the ground in the FATA at this time actually favored the widening of the campaign. In mid-December of the previous year five disparate jihadi organizations had officially organized themselves in the FATA as the TTP. They chose as their head the soon-to-be-notorious leader Baitullah Mehsud, whose assassination was outlined in chapter 1. This loose umbrella organization was created in part as a response to the drone strikes and Pakistani military incursions into the militants’ de facto secessionist state.

At this time the militants also went on the offensive and conquered the last remaining free zones in Swat Valley. The suicide bombings and the invasion of Swat infuriated the Pakistani military and civilian leadership and came to be seen as a major threat, not just to the U.S. and Afghan governments, but to Pakistan itself. Many Pakistani leaders felt that the previously tolerated militants had gone too far. For this reason, the Pakistani authorities were willing to turn a blind eye to a stepped-up drone campaign against the newly aggressive Pakistani Taliban.

For its part, the CIA was better prepared than ever to take advantage of the growing hostility between the Pakistani military-government and the Pakistani Taliban thanks to the development of a deadly new drone model known as the MQ-9 Reaper. Whereas the original MQ-1 Predator was a surveillance craft that had been retroactively jerry-rigged to carry two missiles, the much larger Reaper was specifically designed as a killing platform. The $20 million Reaper could carry eight times the payload of its smaller Predator predecessor (that is, the same number of missiles as an Apache Longbow attack helicopter), was not limited to Hellfire missiles, and could deliver two five-hundred-pound Paveway laser-guided bombs or JDAMs. 23The Reaper carried the same payload as an F-16 manned fighter jet (1.5 tons) but could stay aloft ten times longer. 24As one military expert put it, with the Reaper “you have a lot of ammo circling overhead on call for short notice strikes.” 25The Reaper could also fly to a target three times faster than the Predator and loiter for slightly longer periods of time (up to forty-two hours). The Reaper was a Predator on steroids, and it gave the CIA what the military called “deadly persistence” in the hunt for al Qaeda. The Reaper had already made its debut on the Afghan battlefield with great effect in the fall of 2007, and it soon began making kills in Pakistan’s tribal zone as well (although there were fewer of these new aircraft in operation than there were Predators). 26

On May 14 a drone struck again, this time in the infamous Damadola region of Bajaur, a major hotbed for cross-border insurgency activity into Kunar. According to Pakistani sources, this strike took place on a compound in the hamlet of Khaza, where “militants had gathered for dinner.” 27The initial strike set off a chain of blasts from explosives collected in the targeted house. Between six and twelve people were killed in the strike and resulting explosions, which, interestingly, did not cause any uproar in the region—primarily because the compound was owned by an Afghan who was a former Taliban defense minister named Maulvi Obaidullah.