Brian Williams - Predators

Once again, these unfounded claims were not limited to Pakistan. A widely cited American article on civilian drone deaths by Daniel Byman of the Brookings Institution (without any sourcing or database to support his findings) claimed, “Critics correctly find many problems with this program, most of all the number of civilian casualties the strikes have incurred. Sourcing on civilian deaths is weak and the numbers are often exaggerated, but more than 600 civilians are likely to have died from the attacks. That number suggests that for every militant killed, 10 or so civilians also died.” 166

Among other Westerners who joined the antidrone frenzy was antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan (to be discussed in a later chapter), who raised the number of civilian deaths even higher: “The drone bombings… are killing at least a hundred or more innocent civilians for every so-called terrorist that they get. We think that this is morally reprehensible.” 167Likening drones to land mines and cluster bombs, one of Britain’s most senior judges opined, “Unmanned drones that fall on a house full of civilians is a weapon the international community should decide should not be used.” 168Ted Rall, a writer for Commondreams.org, similarly wrote in an article titled “US Drone Planes Have a Nearly Perfect Record of Failure,” “Civilized nations should band together to renounce and outlaw these sloppy and obscene aerial assassination attempts, which send the terrifying message that killing civilians is acceptable in the pursuit of justice.” 169A U.S.-based website that was used to rally protestors to a march against drone strikes at CIA Headquarters in Langley claimed, “The primary and proven case against drone attacks is that they pose a public danger that can only be deemed as indiscriminate bombing.” 170

It is easy to find antidrone comments from politicians, journalists, lawyers, bloggers, and activists who focus on the supposed mayhem being wreaked by drones on “thousands” of innocent Pakistani men, women, and children. The notion that robotic drones fly over Pakistani houses indiscriminately unleashing bombs on civilians has become familiar fodder for antiwar voices, as much a part of their discourse as CIA black sites, rendition, water boarding, and the Guantánamo Bay detention center.

There are many myths related to the drone campaign, but the greatest seems to be the notion that drones “invade” Pakistan and hover over the country’s civilians, slaughtering them indiscriminately while avoiding striking their actual terrorist targets with their state-of-the-art technology. An exploration of some of the other stories related to the drones found in the subsequent chapter will help shed some light on the CIA’s murky assassination campaign and expose some of the other myths related to it.

Many stories associated with the CIA’s extraordinary drone assassination campaign in Pakistan shed light on this murky war. Following are only a few of them that bring to life some of the more interesting episodes.

THE SHAMSI AIR BASE EXPOSURE

One of the earliest myths about the drone campaign was that the CIA drones were flying from bases in Afghanistan to carry out their deadly missions. The Pakistani media and politicians frequently made references to “intrusions” or “violations” of Pakistani airspace by “Afghan-based” drones. In actuality, the majority of drones were flying from a remote airfield in Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province, known as Shamsi, that had been given to the Americans after 9/11. This remote airstrip, which is 350 miles south of Waziristan, had originally been built by Arab sheikhs from the gulf states who used to fly to the region to hunt local birds. Its remoteness, proximity to the FATA, and distance from Taliban insurgents made it a perfect location for launching drone strikes with the Pakistanis’ “don’t ask, don’t tell” agreement.

Although many in Pakistan suspected that the government was covertly supporting the drone strikes “from Afghanistan,” even as it publicly condemned them, there seemed to be little official evidence of this until early 2009. The Pakistani government’s double game was finally exposed on February 12, 2009, when Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, dropped a bombshell in a conference when she said, “As I understand it, these [drones] are flown out of a Pakistani base.” 1

American journalists treated the incident as if Feinstein had revealed a state secret, but media sources such as the BBC, the New York Times , and CNN had long before reported that the drones were based in Pakistan. 2Even though Western media had previously reported on the Pakistani bases, Feinstein’s public acknowledgment brought them to the attention of the Pakistani public for the first time.

In response, the Pakistani embassy in Washington announced, “There are no foreign bases in Pakistan.” 3Pakistani defense minister Ahmad Mukhtar similarly rebutted Feinstein’s incautious remark and added, “We do have the facilities from where they can fly, but they are not being flown from Pakistani territory. They are being flown from Afghanistan.” 4

But the truth came out five days later, when London’s Times published an article that featured satellite images obtained from Google Earth that clearly showed Predator drones on a runway in Shamsi. 5Pakistan’s Dawn subsequently reported the news and claimed, “The existence of drone bases inside Pakistan suggests a much deeper relationship with the United States on counter-terrorism than has been publicly acknowledged.” 6Shireen Mazari of the Pakistani News went even further and published a scathing opinion piece on the Shamsi revelation:

What many of us had suspected seems to have now been revealed by no less a person than the Chairperson of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein—that US drones operating in Pakistan are in fact flown from an airbase in Pakistan….

Official sources have lost all credibility. After all, we have been officially briefed on more than one occasion that no drone flew without the knowledge of the Pakistani military….

The brazenness with which the government has chosen to lie not only to its people but to Parliament shows how little it cares for either…. In retrospect it is a sick mind that will continue to harp publicly on how the drone attacks are encouraging extremism and must be stopped while covertly there has always been a Pakistani acquiescence to these drone violations of our sovereignty. 7

Tempers were soothed somewhat when it was revealed that the United States had created a base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, near the Pakistani border, to fly drones into the FATA. Many drones were shifted to Jalalabad, where they were said to take off almost hourly. The issue of the secret CIA drone base at Shamsi was, however, brought up again in 2009, when the New York Times reported that the CIA had hired contractors from the firm Xe Services (formerly known as Blackwater) to guard the base’s perimeter and load bombs and missiles onto the drones. 8Xe/Blackwater had gained great international notoriety after several of its armed contractors in Baghdad gunned down seventeen civilians in 2007. News of the massacre made its way to Pakistan and other Muslim countries in the region. When Pakistanis heard that contractors from the notorious company were operating in their country at Shamsi, there were howls of rage, and the CIA was forced to end its contract with Xe in 2009.