The US Air Base in Ramstein, Germany, has played a key role in the CIA drone strikes that killed seven Germany citizens (Flickr/US Army)

The debate over America’s use of drones to kill its own citizens has never been as intense. Last week in an unprecedented announcement, President Barack Obama admitted that CIA drones had killed three Americans in Pakistan in January, including al Qaeda hostage and aid worker Warren Weinstein.

It is not just Americans who have been killed. As new research by the Bureau shows, Weinstein is one of at least 38 Westerners to have been killed in the US’s covert drone war on terror. Citizens of some of America’s closest allies – the UK, Germany, Australia and Canada among them – are among the dead.

The deaths of these Westerners represent a mere fraction of the total death toll for drones. Yet their killing pose troubling questions for the White House over the legality of the programme. There is also growing concern within allied countries.

On May 27 a Cologne court will begin hearing complaints from three Yemeni survivors of a US drone strike, in a case brought by Reprieve and the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights.

Complaints centre on the use of Ramstein airbase by the US. The Intercept recently published leaked top secret documents showing that all drone satellite data from Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia transits through the German military base.

That means Ramstein will inevitably have helped facilitate the drone killing of seven or more German citizens by America, actions which may give further traction to the impending lawsuit. Kat Craig, from Reprieve, told the Bureau: “The time has come for Germany and the US’s other Western allies to face the facts: they are complicit in an illegal and immoral war – one which violates their own legal framework and should see them prosecuted.” 

Could the case succeed? The track record of Europe’s courts on earlier CIA progammes, including torture and rendition, is not encouraging. 

In this exclusive extract from Chris Woods’ new book Sudden Justice: America’s Secret Drone Wars, the former Bureau reporter shows how Germany’s role in the CIA’s covert drone wars has been highly controversial for years.

In early 2011, an urgent order was issued by Germany’s Interior Ministry: intelligence agencies could no longer pass information to the United States if there was any risk this might be used to kill German citizens. Berlin’s ban was triggered by a CIA drone strike on October 4, 2010, which according to early reports had killed as many as eight German nationals (two had in fact died).

In the days prior to that bombing, there were claims of impending terror attacks against Berlin and other European cities: “Terrorists plotting to carry out a Mumbai-style mas­sacre in Western Europe have a list of high-profile targets in their sights ranging from the Eiffel Tower to a hotel near Berlin’s famed Brandenburg Gate,” ran one of many such stories, with Fox News reporting that the source was “a German-Pakistani national interrogated at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.”

Meanwhile, an anonymous US official told Reuters: “It shouldn’t surprise anyone that links between plots and those who are orchestrating them lead to decisive American action. The terrorists who are involved are, as everyone should expect, going to be targets. That’s the whole point of all of this.”

Binyamin Erdogan was talking in the courtyard of his rented home with fellow-German Shahab Dashti and three Pakistanis when a Hellfire missile detonated among them at around 7pm local time.

Erdogan’s widow, his pregnant sister-in-law, and infant nephew were just meters away, though survived unscathed. His brother Emrah was in a nearby room: “My eyes were full of earth because the houses were made of mud,” he later recalled. Staggering outside, he found Dashti mortally injured and his brother Binyamin dead.

Testimony from Emrah’s wife has described how her one-year-old son had been playing with his uncle in the courtyard only minutes before a US missile struck. She has recalled the scene imme­diately after: “The bodies of the three strangers had been cut into pieces by the attack and we could hardly find anything of them. The body of my brother-in-law lay in the soil. He was already dead and the back of his head had been blown apart… Although our friend´s [Dashti’s] hand was still trembling he was dead already as well… The whole courtyard had been turned to rubble by the attack.”

Related story: Hostage deaths mean 38 Westerners killed by US drone strikes, Bureau investigation reveals

Scared that he still risked being killed, and now on the run, the surviving brother contacted Hans-Christian Ströbele, the German Green Party MP:

Emrah contacted me via mail, apparently from Pakistan and at first anonymously. He told me what he’d experienced, that he was present during the drone strike and was indeed unbelievably lucky to survive. He also sent me photos of his dead brother and asked for my help.

Ströbele helped arrange for the return of Emrah Erdogan and his wife to Germany, where the former was ultimately imprisoned for seven years on terrorism-related charges.

It was widely assumed in media reports that those Germans bombed by the CIA in Waziristan had been involved in the “imminent terror plots” described just days beforehand.

Yet Germany’s interior minister Thomas de Maziere had insisted at the time that “there is no concrete imminent attack plan that we are aware of… We are looking at every­thing but there is no fever thermometer of danger”.

The strike on the Erdogan home again raised concerns about the extent to which Western intelligence agencies were colluding in lethal operations. Discomfort at the deaths of Germans—coupled with the later criminal trials of Emrah Erdogan and others–saw key aspects of the intelligence process exposed.

It emerged, for example, that Germany’s intelligence agencies had known of the Erdogans’ presence in Mir Ali, North Waziristan, for many weeks prior to the attack. Indeed, all phone calls made by the men were being recorded and analysed.

In a prophetic conversation in August 2010, for example, Emrah described his life in “dangerous Waziristan” to his fam­ily in Germany. Stern magazine, which obtained transcripts of the con­versations, described how Erdogan believed that “houses are marked so that airplanes can identify them and bomb them more accurately.” Only an American air raid would ever be able to reach them, he said. Other calls reportedly described a planned suicide mission in Afghanistan by Binyamin which was designed to kill “many dozens of people”.

With the Mir Ali house under direct surveillance by both US and German intelligence agencies, it is unclear why the United States had proceeded with a lethal strike when it did—particularly since women and children were in immediate proximity to the targets.

Modelling of the strike that killed Erdogan by Forensic Architecture.

Questioned by the Bundestag’s oversight committee, the German intel­ligence community admitted, according to Ströbele, that on occasion “they gave information to US [intelligence] services but explicitly not for killings or executions by Special Commando or drones, they would not do this. Then I asked, ‘Can you exclude the possibility?’ and they answered, ‘No.’” A government minister later insisted that while the intelligence ser­vices did share cellphone data with “other foreign secret services,” this was “not specific enough to pinpoint exact locations”.

“The only question for me was whether Germany’s intelligence services had the intention to kill Binyamin or oth­ers, or just gave the information and didn’t ask any questions.”

– Marc Lindemann

Critics complained that such data could still lead the CIA’s drones to the near vicinity of a German citizen, from where its own electronic eavesdropping technologies might easily locate them. Under pressure from MPs, in January 2011 prosecu­tors opened a criminal investigation into whether Germany’s intelligence agencies had been complicit in the killing of citizens.

Marc Lindemann, a former Military Intelligence officer who has made a study of the Erdogan case, believes it was “pretty likely” that Germany shared material with the Americans related to the strike: “The only question for me was whether Germany’s intelligence services had the intention to kill Binyamin or oth­ers, or just gave the information and didn’t ask any questions.”

Yet almost three years later, the inquiry concluded that there were no charges to answer, since Binyamin Erdogan had been a “civilian combatant” and was therefore “lawfully killed”. Questions relating to intelligence-sharing were sidestepped.

Even as federal investigators gathered their evidence, other Germans were still being killed by the CIA in Pakistan—regardless of any ban on intelligence sharing. On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, Mohammad al-Faateh, a 27-year-old Berliner and suspected militant, was killed by the Americans in North Waziristan along with an alleged local Haqqani Network official and a Saudi Al Qaeda operative.

Seven months later, Samir Hatour also died. According to a martyrdom video obtained by SITE, a for-profit organisation that tracks the online activity of various extremist groups, “on the morning of March 9 2012, which was a Friday, Abu Laith [Hatour] went to his family, and on the way with three other mujahidin, the car he was in was fired upon by an American drone and the brothers died as martyrs.”

In October 2012 Ahmad B was also killed, a 24-year-old man of Moroccan origin who had been born in the town of Setterich in the German state of Aachen. Announcing his death, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (which took in many European radicals), pronounced in a 13-minute German-language video: “Dear brothers and sisters, the King of Setterich is now a martyr.”

As the longest-serving member of the Bundestag oversight commit­tee for Germany’s intelligence community, Ströbele was deeply con­cerned at the issues raised by the killing of Binyamin Erdogan and other nationals: “Our intelligence agencies always deny any involvement with surveillance and the use of drones, because they know that it is a very delicate issue here. First they would be liable to prosecution and sec­ond they would be violating the constitution.”

Sitting in a Berlin office stacked from floor to ceiling with box files of investigations he has con­ducted, Ströbele admitted to being disheartened at how little true over­sight politicians in Germany, Britain, and the United States now had over their respective intelligence services: “Too often we are dependent on good investigative journalists to get hold of certain facts, which then give us the chance to follow up with the intelligence services. Without the work of Spiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung and others, our work would be far less worthy or of no worth at all.”

It was a disturbing admission from a politician whose role was to help hold to democratic account the intelligence world.

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UN members call for greater transparency (Image: Chris Woods)

Key members of the United Nations – including some of Washington’s closest allies – broke with a decade of tradition on Friday when they endorsed calls for greater transparency over drone civilian deaths.

The European Union, the United Kingdom and Switzerland were joined by the Russian Federation and China in calling for greater openness from those carrying out drone strikes. Pakistan was particularly strident, insisting that there was ‘no implicit or explicit consent’ for US drone strikes on its territory, which it insists have a ‘disastrous humanitarian impact.’ In previous debates states had refused to support similar calls for greater transparency.

The nations were responding to a pair of reports delivered to a busy session of the General Assembly in New York by special rapporteurs Ben Emmerson QC and Professor Christof Heyns. The studies, announced a year ago in London, are part of an ongoing UN investigation into the legal and ethical problems posed by the use of armed drones – especially in non-conventional conflicts.

The United States, one of only three nations which presently uses armed drones, also indicated that it will continue to co-operate with the UN’s inquiry. So too did the UK. Only Israel – which has suspended its involvement with the UN’s Human Rights Council – has so far failed to engage.

Heyns, as UN special rapporteur for extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, stressed that existing international law should be sufficient to provide an adequate framework for managing strikes: ‘The drone should follow the law, not the law follow the drone,’ he told member nations.

The issue was not the law but how drones were sometimes used, Heyns said: ‘Armed drones are not illegal, but as lethal weapons they may be easily abused and lead to unlawful loss of life, if used inappropriately.

‘States must be transparent about the development, acquisition and use of armed drones. They must publicly disclose the legal basis for the use of drones, operational responsibility, criteria for targeting, impact (including civilian casualties), and information about alleged violations, investigations and prosecutions,’ his report notes.

The South African professor of law also expressed concern that an increased reliance on drone strikes by nations risked a decreased emphasis on diplomacy, and on law and order operations.

Heyns once again raised the issue of possible war crimes in relation to the deliberate targeting of civilians with drones, saying there was an ‘obligation’ on member states to investigate such instances.

That appeared to be a reference to the now well-reported US practice of deliberately targeting first responders at the scene of an original drone attack. Earlier this week, Amnesty International became the latest organisation to produce evidence of so-called ‘double-tap’ strikes in Pakistan. Findings of similar attacks have been reported by the Bureau, by legal charityReprieve and by Stanford and New York university law schools.

Interim study

In his own report to the UN, British barrister Ben Emmerson –the rapporteur for counter terrorism and human rights -repeatedly emphasised what he described as the obligation of states to properly investigate credible reports of civilian deaths.

‘The single greatest obstacle to an evaluation of the civilian impact of drone strikes is lack of transparency, he said. ‘In any case in which civilians have been, or appear to have been killed, the State responsible is under an obligation to conduct a prompt, independent and impartial fact-finding inquiry and to provide a detailed public explanation.’ It was that call for transparency which other member states then endorsed.

Emmerson was also keen to stress that his study is interim. A team of legal investigators based in London has also been examining 33 problematic drone strikes carried out by the United States, Israel and the UK, which raise significant concerns regarding legality, civilian deaths or possible war crimes. As Emmerson told a later press conference: ‘The really difficult part of the process is this next stage,’ when the three countries will be asked to comment in detail on individual strikes. That final report is expected in 2014.

Responding in the General Assembly to Heyns’ report and comments, the US was careful not to imply that it accepted any definition of its own drone strikes as ‘extrajudicial killings’, actions it condemned outright. However, the US surprised some observers by indicating that it intends to continue co-operation with Emmerson’s ongoing investigation.

Constitutional rights

The two rapporteurs also spoke at a panel discussion at the UN’s Manhattan building. They were joined by a former US drone operator, along with academics and human rights investigators. A short film, prepared by Forensic Architects, showed in Emmerson’s words ‘an indication of the potential to mount investigations’ into problematic strikes. ‘With enough effort and political will it can be done,’ he insisted. ‘I refuse to give up trying to obtain that co-operation.’

In a late addition to the panel, former US Air Force drone operator Brandon Bryant also endorsed calls for drone strike transparency and accountability. He said that his own misgivings about some US actions came about after he was ‘party to the violation of the constitutional rights of a US citizen.’ This, he said, was despite his having sworn an oath to uphold the same Constitution when he joined the military.

Friday’s UN presentations came at the end of a week of reports covering aspects of the ongoing secret US drone war. After the weekend release of a major study into Yemen drone strikes by Swiss NGO Alkarama, both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch followed with their own damning reports into recent US drone axctivity in Yemen and Pakistan. In a testy response a State Department official insisted that US civilian casualties from drones were ‘much lower,’ but refused to provide either estimates or evidence to back her claims.

On Wednesday, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif also told President Obama on a visit to Washington DC that drone strikes on his country had to stop. The impact of that call was muted by a leaked story in the Washington Post later that day, insinuating that Pakistan may still give its tacit consent to US drone strikes. In contrast Emmerson’s UN report states that whilst there is ‘strong evidence’ that Pakistan previously allowed US strikes on its territory, any such consent had been removed by April 2012 at the latest.

He also insisted that any side-deals cut between the US and Pakistan’s military or intelligence services had no validity:‘The democratically elected Government is the body responsible for Pakistani international relations and the sole entity able to express the will of the State in its international affairs,’ Emmerson writes.

Although Friday’s UN presentations appeared to make a reasonable impact, this was not the first time that the General Assembly had debated the issue of drone strikes. In 2010 former UN special rapporteur Philip Alston also presented a report to the UN, and some of his recommendations are being repeated by Emmerson and Heyns.

There is now more acknowledgement of the need for debate and transparency, the current rapporteurs believe.

Heyns said he believed that nations are now ready to ‘take stock’ of the use of armed drones, particularly given the potential for their proliferation. And noting that the European Union and others have now explicitly lined up behind calls for transparency, Ben Emmerson said that there was a far deeper public awareness of the impact of armed drones.

He also noted that alongside Washington’s co-operation with the investigation to date, CIA director John Brennan has indicated he would like to see US civilian drone casualty data published. ‘I am optimistic, and refuse to limit my expectations,’ Emmerson told assembled journalists.

Chris Woods is a freelance investigative reporter whose work with the Bureau on US covert drone strikes recently won the prestigious Martha Gellhorn Prize. His book on the pivotal role of armed drones in the War on Terror, Sudden Justice, is published next year.

A Pakistani soldier in FATA, where there have been 370 CIA drone strikes. (Photo: Chris Woods)

US officials are claiming that an internal Pakistani assessment of civilian deaths from US drone strikes – obtained and published in full by the Bureau –  is ‘far from authoritative.’

The secret document was obtained by the Bureau from three independent sources. It provides details of more than 70 CIA drone strikes between 2006 and 2009, and was compiled by civilian officials throughout Pakistan’s tribal areas.

They noted that at least 147 of 746 people listed as killed in CIA drone strikes between 2006 and 2009 were said to be civilians. That number could be as high as 220 civilian dead, the leaked report indicates.

Related article: Exclusive – Leaked Pakistani report confirms high civilian death toll in CIA drone  

Now unnamed US officials are questioning the contents of the leaked report. A written statement has been provided to news organisations including the Bureau.

At least 147 of 746 people listed as killed in CIA drone strikes between 2006 and 2009 were said to be civilians. That number could be as high as 220 civilian dead, the leaked report indicates.’

The statement notes that the leaked document was based on ‘indirect input from a loose network of Pakistani government and tribal contacts’. As such, an official indicated, ‘the result is a report whose findings are far from authoritative’.

The same statement added: ‘The notion that the United States has undertaken operations in Pakistan that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of innocent Pakistanis is ludicrous. There is no credible information whatsoever to substantiate the report’s distorted figures.’

Voice of America also reported receiving a written statement from US officials. Its version cited one as saying that the leaked document is not credible since it relies ‘in part on erroneous media reporting’.

Pakistan estimates

There seems little gap between Pakistan’s official position on civilian casualties, and the contents of the leaked report obtained by the Bureau.

Earlier this year Ben Emmerson QC, the UN’s special rapporteur on counter-terrorism, was officially informed by Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs that CIA drones had so far killed at least 2,200 people in the country, including at least 400 civilians.

The figures were disclosed to Emmerson as he made a three-day visit to the country. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which compiled the figures, said a further 200 of the total dead were also likely to be civilians.

And reporting on leaked US intelligence documents obtained by news agency McClatchy suggests that US records privately indicate civilian deaths where publicly the administration denies them.

Those documents, which have not yet been published, are said to cover two periods: 2006 to 2008, and January 2010 to September 2011, and indicate that what US officials say publicly about drone strikes does not always match intelligence reports.

The notion that the United States has undertaken operations in Pakistan that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of innocent Pakistanis is ludicrous.’

US official

Pakistan’s government has so far refused to confirm the authenticity of the latest leaked document obtained by the Bureau – though it is not contesting the report’s claims of high civilian deaths.

‘I am not in a position to authenticate the veracity of this report, but the facts that are being revealed are something which is not new,’ Foreign Ministry spokesman Aizaz Ahmed Choudhry told Voice of America. ‘ We have always said that drone strikes cause civilian casualties.’

Lawyer Shahzad Akbar of legal charity Reprieve has brought a number of legal cases in Pakistan and Europe trying to force greater clarity on the issue of civilian deaths. He told the Bureau he found it troubling that the US appears to be claiming that only it can accurately assess civilian deaths in Pakistan.

‘How is it possible for the US to determine who has been killed, when they often do not know to start with who they are targeting?’ Akbar emailed from Islamabad.

‘Drone surveillance alone cannot determine who is militant and who is not.’

Related article: Get the Data – The Pakistan government’s secret document 

‘Poor US intelligence’

In a fresh development, a retired military figure once responsible for security in Waziristan now says that historically, poor US practice may have contributed to higher non-combatant casualties.

Brigadier Mahmood Shah claimed to Voice of America that CIA drone strikes in the early days of the campaign were based on poor US ground intelligence:

‘They [the US] gave us 28 places that here are militants, then we had full recce [reconnaissance] of the area and we visited the places and we found that 27 out of 28 were incorrect, and one was correct,’ Shah told VoA.

‘So this was the amount of accuracy and if they had the permission to shoot at that time, which we never thought would be possible, you can imagine how many people, civilian people that would have killed.’

The Bureau presently estimates that 410-928 civilians are among 2,509-3,576 people killed in CIA drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004. This is based on a two-year analysis of news reports, court documents, field investigations, leaked intelligence papers and other credible sources.

Clarity from the White House (Photo: Michael Baird/ Flickr)

Two of the most controversial aspects of the US covert drone campaign – CIA control of strikes in Pakistan, and the use of so-called signature strikes – look set to continue until at least 2014, papers released by the White House indicate.

In the wake of President Obama’s Thursday speech on counter-terrorism policy, White House national security officials have released two key documents. The first, US Policy Standards and Procedures for the Use of Force in Counterterrorism, lays out the standards now being used to decide whether to deploy ‘lethal force’ outside the battlefield.

The White House has also released the transcript of a background briefing for journalists, in which anonymous senior administration officials offer their interpretation of the new guidance.

Between them, the two documents offer significant insights into how the US targeted killing programme is governed.

Related story – Obama frames covert drone war as necessary evil

Officials have also provided the most comprehensive understanding yet of how the US government defines a civilian – or ‘non-combatant’ – in places such as Pakistan and Yemen.

But claims that the US has ended controversial ‘signature strikes’ – and will transfer all covert drones from the CIA to the Pentagon – appear to have been overstated. As one official puts it, ‘you’ll see also a lot of continuity in the way in which we approach these things that are basically being codified in the guidance that’s been issued.’

Rule BookBuilding on President Obama’s counter terrorism speech at National Defense University on Thursday, officials have laid out ‘certain key elements’ of the standards and procedures governing the US targeted killing programme.

Noting that the US has a preference where possible ‘to capture a terrorism suspect’, guidance notes then lay out the circumstances in which a lethal covert drone strike or other form of targeted killing can take place.

All proposed killings outside the conventional battlefield must have a ‘legal basis’; must not be an act of punishment; and must only be used if the target represents ‘a continuing, imminent threat to US persons’, according to the document.

You’ll see also a lot of continuity in the way in which we approach these things that are basically being codified in the guidance that’s been issued.’Senior US administration official

But it goes on to make clear: ‘It is simply not the case that all terrorists pose a continuing, imminent threat to US persons; if a terrorist does not pose such a threat, the United States will not use lethal force.’

In recent months, some senior administration figures including CIA Director John Brennan have pushed for a far looser definition of imminence. That effort appears to have failed.

The White House then presents five rules which it says must now be followed before a targeted killing can take place:

1) Near certainty that the terrorist target is present;

2) Near certainty that non-combatants will not be injured or killed;

3) An assessment that capture is not feasible at the time of the operation;

4) An assessment that the relevant governmental authorities in the country where action is contemplated cannot or will not effectively address the threat to US persons

5) An assessment that no other reasonable alternatives exist to effectively address the threat to US persons.

‘Non-combatants’

In a key move, national security officials also offer an explanation of how civilians – or ‘non-combatants’ – are being defined in the context of targeted killings outside the battlefield.

‘Non-combatants are individuals who may not be made the object of attack under applicable international law,’ the document notes.

‘The term “non-combatant” does not include an individual who is part of a belligerent party to an armed conflict, an individual who is taking a direct part in hostilities, or an individual who is targetable in the exercise of national self defense. Males of military age may be non-combatants; it is not the case that all military-aged males in the vicinity of a target are deemed to be combatants.’

That final point – that military-aged males are not automatically classed as combatants in countries such as Pakistan and Yemen, may mark a major sea-change. A story in the New York Times generated huge controversy in 2012 when it reported that the US ‘counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent’.

Non-combatants are individuals who may not be made the object of attack under applicable international law’US Policy Standards and Procedures for the Use of Force in Counterterrorism

The list of rules issued by the White House concludes with an assertion that the US ‘respects’ national sovereignty and international law:

‘Whenever the United States uses force in foreign territories, international legal principles, including respect for sovereignty and the law of armed conflict, impose important constraints on the ability of the United States to act unilaterally – and on the way in which the United States can use force. The United States respects national sovereignty and international law,’ the document notes.

Ben Emmerson QC, the UN investigator currently looking into drone strikes, said he welcomed the Obama administration’s publication of its rule book.

Describing it as ‘a significant step towards increased transparency and accountability,’ he added that ‘it also disposes of a number of myths, including the suggestion that the US is entitled to regard all military-aged males as combatants, and therefore as legitimate targets.’

Background briefingIn advance of President Obama’s major speech, journalists also took part in a background briefing with anonymous senior administration officials on Thursday, which has now been published.

Much of that briefing focused on the proposed closure of Guantanamo, and whether the War on Terror is drawing down. But officials also offered their interpretation of the new targeted killing guidelines.

Claims by some that all US covert drone strikes will pass from the CIA to the Pentagon appear overstated, based on the comments of two officials.

One notes that there is an ‘expressed preference’ for the US military to have the lead in carrying out targeted killings, ‘given their traditional role and given the transparency [that] can be associated with actions by the United States military’. But he added that the US continues to ‘pursue a range of counter-terrorism operations around the world,’ indicating that the CIA might retain a role.

The New York Times has since cited US officials who indicate  that the CIA will not transfer control of drone strikes in Pakistan to the US military until ‘the withdrawal of combat units from Afghanistan at the end of 2014’.

In another exchange with journalists, officials at Thursday’s briefing addressed whether the three US citizens killed in covert drone strikes who had not been intentionally targeted were being classed by the Administration ‘as collateral damage or guilty by association?’

‘There are times when there are individuals who are present at al Qaeda and associated forces facilities, and in that regard they are subject to the lethal action that we take,’ a senior official responded. ‘There are other instances when there are tragic cases of civilian casualties and people that the United States does not in any way intend to target.’

There are times when there are individuals who are present at al Qaeda and associated forces facilities, and in that regard they are subject to the lethal action that we take.’Senior US administration official

Signature strikes

There was further confusion on the question of whether signature strikes have now ended.

An editorial in today’s The New York Times claims that ‘From now on, the Central Intelligence Agency and the military will no longer target individuals or groups of people in countries like Pakistan based merely on the suspicion that their location or actions link them to al Qaeda or other groups allied with the terrorist network.’

Yet when asked, ‘Will signature strikes explicitly be prohibited now?’, an official at the briefing framed his response in the context of the war in Afghanistan, noting the need to ‘take action against forces that are massing to support attacks on our troops and on coalition forces in Afghanistan.’

The official then noted that ‘by the end of 2014, as we wind down the war in Afghanistan, we will not have the same need for force protection and those types of strikes that are designed to protect our forces in Afghanistan. Furthermore, we believe that the core of al Qaeda has been greatly diminished so, therefore, that will reduce the need for unmanned strikes against the core of al Qaeda as well.’

In short, officials appear to be indicating that signature strikes, along with CIA control of strikes inside Pakistan, will remain a reality at least until troops withdraw from Afghanistan next year.

// US Policy Standards and Procedures for the Use of Force in Counterterrorism Operations Outside the United States and Areas of Active Hostilities (PDF)  US Policy Standards and Procedures for the Use of Force in Counterterrorism Operations Outside the United States and Areas of Active Hostilities (Text)

 Barack Obama at a recent meeting of the National Security Council. (Pete Souza/ White House)

Barack Obama has made it clear that the US will continue with its controversial targeted killing programme.

In a major speech the US president also announced that he has signed into force a new – and secret – rule book for lethal action that provides ‘clear guidelines, oversight and accountability’ for covert drone strikes.

Counter-terrorism officials indicated that control of covert drone strikes will progressively pass from the Central Intelligence Agency to the Pentagon.

The rules will also ‘impose the same standard for strikes on foreign enemies now used only for American citizens deemed to be terrorists’.

Related story – White House briefings lay out new drone rulebook – but questions remain

There was some dispute about whether the Presidential Policy Guidance would prevent much-criticised attacks on groups of men based on their patterns of behaviour – so-called ‘signature strikes.’ The New York Times insisted that this was the case. But other major US media were more cautious.

Impassioned defenceSpeaking for an hour in front of an invited audience at the National Defense University in Washington DC, Obama made an impassioned defence of the US targeted killing programme, insisting that it was both effective and legal. But he admitted that this may not be enough:

‘To say a military tactic is legal, or even effective, is not to say it is wise or moral in every instance.  For the same human progress that gives us the technology to strike half a world away also demands the discipline to constrain that power — or risk abusing it,’ he said.

He addressed head-on controversies surrounding civilian casualties. Acknowledging that there was a ‘wide gap’ between US and non-governmental assessments, he bluntly conceded that civilians have died in US strikes. Obama said that for himself and ‘those in my chain of command, these deaths will haunt us as long as we live’.

He declared: ‘before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured – the highest standard we can set.’

But he also insisted that civilian deaths were sometimes a necessary risk. ‘As Commander-in-Chief, I must weigh these heartbreaking tragedies against the alternatives. To do nothing in the face of terrorist networks would invite far more civilian casualties – not just in our cities at home and facilities abroad, but also in the very places –like Sana’a and Kabul and Mogadishu – where terrorists seek a foothold.’

These deaths will haunt us as long as we live.’President Obama

Bureau estimates indicate that since 2002, at least 2,800 people have died in 420 covert drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Of those killed, more than 400 are likely to have been civilians.

Obama has so far carried out seven times more covert drone strikes than his predecessor, George W Bush. However, the number of reported strikes has declined steeply over the past year, along with reported civilian casualties.

‘Boots on the ground’

Insisting that his administration had ‘a strong preference for the detention and prosecution of terrorists’, Obama said there were occasions when only lethal drone strikes would suffice.

At times ‘putting US boots on the ground may trigger a major international crisis’ and inflame local civilian populations, he said. Suspects may also ‘hide in caves and walled compounds’ in areas where there was little or no governance.

But he acknowledged that the use of drones was not without constitutional risk: ‘The very precision of drones strikes, and the necessary secrecy involved in such actions can end up shielding our government from the public scrutiny that a troop deployment invites. It can also lead a President and his team to view drone strikes as a cure-all for terrorism.’

Before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured – the highest standard we can set.President Obama

President Obama announced that he would work with Congress towards greater oversight of the targeted killing campaign. And he said he would be seeking to ‘refine, and ultimately repeal’ the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress in 2001, which the US asserts is the legal bedrock for its covert drone campaign.

Unlocking GuantanamoThe president also used the speech to challenge Congress to aid him in closing the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, calling on members to end the ban on detainee transfers to prisons on the US mainland. ‘I know the politics are hard. But history will cast a harsh judgment on this aspect of our fight against terrorism, and those of us who fail to end it,’ he said, adding that nobody had ever escaped a US supermax jail.

Obama announced the end of a moratorium on transferring detainees to Yemen: instead, transfers will be examined on a case-by-case basis. At least 84 current Guantanamo inmates are Yemeni.

The speech was repeatedly interrupted at one point by Code Pink protester Medea Benjamin. Obama was forced to pause and wait three times for Benjamin to finish comments including references to the death of Anwar al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son in a drone strike in Yemen. As Benjamin was escorted out, he recovered his poise – joking that he was being forced to depart from his script, but saying she raised ‘tough issues’.

Obama administration admits killing four US citizens 

In a related move, US attorney general Eric Holder released a letter on Wednesday evening admitting that four US citizens had been killed in US drone strikes since 2009. The Bureau’s own data suggests that  seven or more US citizens have been killed in US drone strikes since 2002.

One of those named by the attorney general – Jude Kenan Mohammed – was until now only rumoured to have been killed. The New York Times reports that Mohammed died in a CIA attack in South Waziristan, Pakistan on November 16 2011.

According to an open US indictment dated September 2009, Mohammed ‘departed the United States to travel to Pakistan to engage in violent jihad’. He was also accused of engaging in ‘planning and perpetrating a Federal crime of terrorism against the United States, citizens and residents of the United States, and their property.’

The other three US citizens named by Holder were radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16 year old son Abdalrahman al-Awalaki; and Samir Khan, a propagandist for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula – all killed in Yemen in autumn 2011. According to the attorney general, only Anwar al Awlaki was ‘specifically targeted by the United States’.

In his speech, Obama insisted that it was right to target and kill Anwar al-Awlaki, stating that the citizenship of such an alleged threat ‘should no more serve as a shield than a sniper shooting down on an innocent crowd should be protected from a Swat team.’

At least three additional US citizens have been killed in US drone attacks. In the first ever drone strike outside a battlefield, US citizen Kamal Darwish was among six men killed by the CIA in Yemen in 2002. The Bush administration insisted at the time that the intended targets were alleged al Qaeda suspects accompanying Darwish in the vehicle.

And veteran Washington reporter Bob Woodward has revealed that on November 7 2008, ‘many Westerners, including some US passport holders’ died in an attack near Miranshah in North Waziristan.

As Woodward noted in his book Obama’s Wars, in a subsequent meeting with Pakistan’s President Zardari ‘The CIA would not reveal the particulars due to the implications under American law. A top secret CIA map detailing the attacks had been given to the Pakistanis. Missing from it was the alarming fact about the American deaths … The CIA was not going to elaborate.’

Addressing the fact that three of the four US citizens named by Holder were not the intended targets, New York University law professor Sarah Knuckey told the Bureau: ‘Does it mean that the three were killed as intentional but lawful collateral damage in a strike on some other legitimate target? Or that they were accidental collateral? Or does it mean that they were killed in signature strikes?  We just don’t know what it is intended to mean. In a letter that touts throughout the government’s commitment to transparency and “unprecedented disclosure”, the government has introduced new vague language, and thus new concerns about its targeting policies and practices.’

This article was amended on May 24 to take note of ambiguities regarding the possible abandonment of ‘signature strikes.’

Are Congressional oversight bodies really doing their ‘utmost’? (Photo L’ennnui/ Flickr)

Claims by a powerful Senate oversight committee that it is doing its ‘utmost’ to verify claims of civilian casualties from covert US drone strikes have been undermined by the discovery that it has made no contact with any group conducting field studies into civilian deaths in Pakistan.

On February 7 the CIA’s director-designate John Brennan was questioned by members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

In her opening remarks, chair Dianne Feinstein insisted that civilian deaths from US covert strikes ‘each year has typically been in the single digits’.

Feinstein also said that ‘for the past several years, this committee has done significant oversight of the government’s conduct of targeted strikes’ and had done its ‘utmost to confirm’ civilian casualty data provided by the executive branch.

However, the Bureau can find no indication that either the House or Senate intelligence committees have sought evidence from beyond the US intelligence community, when following up claims of civilian deaths.

While public estimates of civilian deaths vary, all monitoring groups report higher than ‘single digit’ fatalities for most years. The Bureau presently estimates that at least 411 civilians have been killed by the CIA in Pakistan since 2004, for example.

‘Never contacted’

Professor Sarah Knuckey, who co-led the recent field investigation by New York and Stanford universities into the Pakistan strikes, confirmed that her team has never been contacted by any US government official, or Congressional oversight committee member or aide.

‘US officials have stated that they have done their utmost to verify civilian casualty numbers, and that they investigate and take seriously reports of civilian harm. These public commitments are welcome,’ Knuckey told the Bureau.

‘But if the commitments are serious, why haven’t officials followed up with the organizations and journalists who investigated strikes and collected information relevant to determining any civilian harm?’

Those concerns were echoed by Sarah Holewinski, executive director of the Center for Civilians in Conflict. Thirty months after it issued its ground-breaking report into civilian deaths, Holewinski said this week that ‘we have never been contacted by Administration officials about our research and analysis on the covert drone program.’

Why haven’t officials followed up with the organizations and journalists who investigated strikes and collected information relevant to determining any civilian harm?Professor Sarah Knuckey, New York University

‘I give him further details of some other strikes that killed civilians, and without looking at what I was giving him Hoagland insisted that he checked the figure that morning and it was still in single digits,’ said Akhbar.

Associated Press, which interviewed more than 80 civilian eyewitnesses in the tribal areas for a major report in early 2012, confirmed that no US officials had ever sought follow -up.

The Bureau’s managing editor Christopher Hird also noted that ‘We have always been happy to share and discuss our findings with others researching this subject, but in the two years of our work we have never heard from either of these committees, or their staff.”

Secure RoomBoth the House of Representatives and the Senate have committees tasked with overseeing the vast US intelligence community – including the CIA, which carries out the majority of covert drone strikes.

Most oversight is carried out in secret. However, some details have recently emerged of how the two committees seek to hold the CIA to account on the drone programme.

Senator Feinstein first revealed the process in a letter to the Los Angeles Times in May 2012.

She implied that monthly oversight had begun in January 2010, a year after Obama took office, noting that her committee ‘receive notification with key details shortly after every strike’. She added that her staff  ‘has held 28 monthly in-depth oversight meetings to review strike records and question every aspect of the program including legality, effectiveness, precision, foreign policy implications and the care taken to minimize noncombatant casualties.’

Most oversight is carried out in secret. However, some details have recently emerged of how the two committees seek to hold the CIA to account on the drone programme.

more details

According to a Los Angeles Times report on the process, oversight committee staffers gathered in a secure room at CIA headquarters ‘also sometimes examine telephone intercepts and after-the-fact evidence, such as the CIA’s assessment of who was hit.’

One senior staffer told the paper: ‘I don’t know that we’ve ever seen anything that we thought was inappropriate.’

‘Blind faith’

Sarah Holewinski of the Center for Civilians in Conflict is now urging the Congressional oversight committees to be far more pro-active in their approach – and far less dependent solely on the word of the CIA.

She noted that unlike in Afghanistan, investigations into reported civilian deaths in US covert drone operations ‘are limited to overhead surveillance, not collecting witness statements and digging in the dirt for evidence of what happened or who exactly was killed.’

And Holewinski pointed to the risk of reliance on the Agency’s own definitions of those it is killing which may not accord with international law. Noting the CIA’s use of so-called signature strikes against alleged militants, whose identity is unknown and who appear to fit certain patterns of behaviour, Holewinski told the Bureau: ‘There’s every reason to want to believe claims of such low civilian casualties caused by drone strikes.’

‘But given obstacles to knowing precisely who was killed on the ground and without real evidence to back up the claims, to believe officials’ claims would be an act of blind faith that isn’t fair to the civilians suffering losses.’

At the time of writing, Senator Feinstein’s office had not responded to requests for comment. 

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