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

[Eugen Leitl]

http://www.gq.com/blogs/the-q/2009/11/the-wire-qa-scott-horton-on-the-cias-secret-drone-war.html

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