The Wire Q&A: Scott Horton on the CIA's Secret Drone War

http://www.gq.com/blogs/the-q/2009/11/the-wire-qa-scott-horton-on-the-cias-s... The Wire Q&A: Scott Horton on the CIA's Secret Drone War On November 06, 2009 at 10:19 AM Back in May, C.I.A. Director Leon Panetta said something that high-level C.I.A. and administration officials have rarely acknowledged publicly either before or since: that controversial unmanned aerial vehiclesbor "drones," as they're commonly calledbwere the "only game in town" for taking out Al Qaeda in Pakistan. It was both a comment on strategy and a statement of fact. Since coming to office ten months ago, Panetta's boss, Barack Obama, has authorized as many aerial attacks by C.I.A.-operated drone bombers in Pakistan as George Bush did in his final three years. No one outside the C.I.A. or the White House seems to know exactly how many Pakistanis, militants or civilians, the C.I.A. has killed in such attacks. (A recent report by the New America Foundation estimates that since 2006, the U.S. has conducted 82 drone attacks in Pakistan, killing between 750 and 1,000 people, 250 to 320 of them civilian.) But the consequences of drone attacksbespecially those that cause unintended civilian deaths in Pakistanbto U.S. strategic interests are significant. In an influential report (PDF) for the Center for New American Security, counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen wrote that "Every one of these dead non-combatants represents an alienated family, a new revenge feud, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially even as drone strikes have increased." The Taliban and Al Qaeda highlight the attacks in their anti-American propaganda, and Pakistanis point to the bombings to express their overwhelming disapproval of the American-led operation in the region. At a recent press conference in Islamabad, a Pakistani reporter raised this issue to a noticeably frazzled Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. "What is actually terrorism in U.S. eyes?" the reporter asked. "Is it the killing of innocent people in, let's say, drone attacks? Or is it the killing of innocent people in different parts of Pakistan, like the bomb blast in Peshawar two days ago? Which one is terrorism, do you think?" GQ.com talked with international law and national security expert Scott Horton about the strategic, legal, and political implications of continuing drone attacksband what they mean for the balance of power in Washington. Horton is a professor at Columbia Law School and a contributing editor for Harper's Magazine, where he also blogs on national security issues. GQ What does international law say about killing innocent civilians? SH The rule has been that you have to aim at a legitimate target, and not innocent civilians, but if innocent civilians are killed, it may very well be a justifiable use of force. It's always been accepted that innocent people accept some risk by being in the vicinity of a person who is known as a legitimate target. The question is, do you drop a 2,000-pound bomb on an apartment building with 500 people in it if you're trying to kill the head of a terrorist organization you know is in the building? International law doesn't provide hard and fast rules on the question of proportionality, but I think it's pretty clear you can't do that. GQ How does that apply to these Predator drone attacks? SH You have to use the most appropriate technology at your disposal, technology that has the narrowest possible use. For example, a sniper firing a rifle at a target is preferable to a jet fighter dropping a 2,000-pound bomb on the building. In this sense, Predator drones may be an improvement, because they're more precise than a jet dropping bombs from 20,000 feet. But there are still a lot of tactical issues involved. You're engaged in a counterinsurgency campaign. Your goal is to win over hearts and minds. Do you accomplish this if you're raining down bombs on wedding parties and funerals? GQ Why hasn't this question been more actively debated? Civilian deaths from drone attacks have been in Pakistani papers almost daily for over a year now, but it seems that no one in Congress is questioning whether this policy makes sense. SH I think that's largely because of the failure of Congressional oversight. We should have hearings about this. There should have been a full-throated public discussion. I think this is in part because of a growing acquiescence in Congress to a culture of secrecy, and in part because of incompetence. Yes, of course, you don't get into the details of the capabilities of weapons systems in public hearings. But that doesn't stop you from having frank and candid discussions about the underlying legal and ethical issues. GQ Why isn't Congress stepping up more? It seems that they're still reluctant to challenge the executive branch. SH It's clear that we've seen a lot of further construction on the national security state since 9/11. Since World War II, there's been a constant struggle between the executive and Congress about oversight of national security mechanisms. Since 9/11, it's clear the upper hand is firmly with the executive, and the oversight authority of Congress has faded. GQ What did Congressional oversight of weapons technology look like before 9/11? SH If we go back the 1960s and 1970s, whenever new technological developments in warfare came, Congress insisted quite rigorously on establishing protocols and legal principles about how to use the weapons system. This included, one, that the military would develop guidelines to make sure that everything would be checked against existing law, domestic and international. Two, Congress made sure that civilian control was clearly implemented. This was a foundational principle. The military would control the weapons system, but it would be acting under the direction of the civilian leadership. GQ What's changed? SH The most aggressive use of weaponry [in the Af/Pak theater] is now in the hands of the intelligence community, not the military. This is extremely disturbing. The intelligence community does not have a well-articulated doctrine that subjects their weapons programs to legal precedent, by which I mean both U.S. domestic law and international law of war principles. And it does not have this well-articulated notion of civilian leadership and oversight like the military. The intelligence community operates in an environment of secrecy. They don't want people to know what they're up to. GQ Why isn't Congress subjecting the C.I.A. to the same review? SH There's been a very serious failure in Congressional oversight over the intelligence community. When the Republicans ran Congress, intelligence oversight was a complete joke, and was viewed that way by the intelligence community. Since then, we've had something, but it's really not much. I really view Dianne Feinstein [chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence] as totally docile in this area. This isn't surprising to me, given the fact that her husband is a defense contractor. One can fundamentally question the nature of the relationship between defense contractors and the defense community and intelligence contractors and the intelligence community. If you watch the way they interact, you would question who is the client and who is the service provider. Look at the apportionment of our budget between human beings and "toys." There's an absolute obsession that people in the Pentagon have with the newest, the latest, and the fanciest toys. I think this is because the manufacturers of the toys control the senior echelons of the military and intelligence communities. They control it by offering employment to people at key points. So that someone knows they can be Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Development of Toys, and they're not going to make much money, but they know that having that position will allow them to go off and be Vice President for Development of Toy Manufacturing in the private sector, where they'll make loads of money. A number of people on the inside have told me this. GQ But our reliance on "toys" is driven at least in part by the desire to reduce the number of combat troops on the ground, right? They do save American lives. SH Look, it's a gest that we have civilian contractors operating these weapons systems [for the C.I.A.] in one way or another. The idea that Blackwater is loading the missiles and maintaining the equipment, and maybe doing more than that, that maybe there are contractors sitting around in control rooms in Washington or Nevada or elsewhere operating these systems... That's outrageous. That's completely outrageous. It's something that's simply never happened before. You have to ask yourself, who is pulling the trigger? GQ How would you characterize the debate in the armed services about the C.I.A. program in Pakistan? What position has General McChrystal taken on it? SH The uniformed military doesn't want to be seen as engaged in infighting with the C.I.A., but it does appear that there is concern that the problems with the C.I.A.'s use will simply spread to the military. I haven't seen or heard any particular view taken by General McChrystal on this. When he headed JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command], he worked very closely with the C.I.A. and supported them. The drone wars are focal to his entire mission. So I have no doubt that he has opinions and that in due course they'll leak out. GQ How did we find ourselves in this situation, where defense contractors run all these highly sensitive operations in our names but without any real oversight? Is this because we don't have enough troops? SH It's really a matter of planning. Donald Rumsfeld planned for a leaner, smaller armed force. He had this obsession with fighting and winning a war with small numbers of the military being committed to it. If he focused on any one thing, it was on proving that the Powell doctrinebthat you needed overwhelming military force to win--was wrong. And he planned to draw on the world of contractors to meet short-term needs. He presented it as an ideology of free market principlesbthat there's no job here that couldn't be done more efficiently and effectively by a contractor. Vast sums, tens of billions of dollars, are now in the hands of contractors that never was there before. But at the same time contract officersbwho had responsibility for managing these contracts and insuring that the United States got what it bargained forbwere being fired. Let me ask you: In the free enterprise world, when a corporation contracts out for a service, would it ever willfully neglect to supervise that contract? No. Rumsfeld was not approaching it with anything like a free enterprise model. He was simply allowing the contractors to exploit and game the system. GQ Is the drone program then a direct outgrowth of the Rumsfeld Doctrine? SH The neocons, the Rumsfeld and Cheney wing, had this tremendous faith in the power of American technology; they said all our toys would allow us to win spectacular victories without using large numbers of troops. I think the experience of Iraq and Afghanistan has shown pretty clearly that Rumsfeld and the neocons were wrong. Powell and the realistsbwho said toys are wonderful, but the reality of occupying a country requires large numbers of troops to hold the territorybare much closer to correct. But all the same, there was a very radical reworking of the whole system. That's the case today. GQ The fact that Barack Obama has increased drone attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistanbdoes that mean he agrees with the Rumsfeld doctrine? SH Broadly speaking, I think Obama rejects Rumsfeld's ideas, but I think he picked up this machine the way it's been reworked, and has continued to use it as is with just minor deviations. So he ends up using a lot of the Rumsfeld doctrine. His fundamental criticism of the Bush Cheney administration is actually a hawkish criticism. He says you people mis-assessed the conflict against Islamic terrorism, putting its core in Iraq, which is actually a conflict that you created because of your own domestic political bullshit. So he made a whole series of decisions that refocused the military effort to the Af/Pak theater. But the processes he activated and the military machine he moved to that theater was built and honed by Rumsfeld, and its operating rules were written by Rumsfeld. GQ Has Obama done anything to scale back the power of the executive, in your opinion? SH He inherited a presidency of unprecedented power, especially in the national security area, and he has shown no real compunction to surrender any of that power. Sure, he's said no torture, no black sites, no extraordinary renditionsbbut even on that, he dropped a footnote and said I'm not saying renditions are bad, just extraordinary renditions. These are quite surgical modifications. The bigger machine is still operating the way it was in the past. There was a hope that he would gradually begin this process of bringing things back to somewhat more balance. But that's really not happening. We see a president who is unwilling to give up any prerogative. To the contrary, I'm sure he feels that he's in a position to use that power for the good, so why should he give it up. b Matt Schwarzfeld