http://www.stripes.com/news/middle-east/cia-gets-exception-in-upcoming-drone-strike-playbook-1.204571
CIA gets exception in upcoming drone strike ‘playbook’
The Washington Post
Published: January 19, 2013
The Obama administration is nearing completion of a detailed counterterrorism manual that is designed to establish clear rules for targeted-killing operations but leaves open a major exemption for the CIA’s campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan, U.S. officials said.
The carve-out would allow the CIA to continue pounding al-Qaida and Taliban targets for a year or more before the agency is forced to comply with more stringent rules spelled out in a classified document that officials have described as a counterterrorism “playbook.”
The document, which is expected to be submitted to President Barack Obama for final approval within weeks, marks the culmination of a year-long effort by the White House to codify its counterterrorism policies and create a guide for lethal operations through Obama’s second term.
A senior U.S. official involved in drafting the document said that a few issues remain unresolved but described them as minor. The senior U.S. official said the playbook “will be done shortly.”
The adoption of a formal guide to targeted killing marks a significant — and to some uncomfortable — milestone: The institutionalization of a practice that would have seemed anathema to many before the Sept. 11 , 2001, terrorist attacks.
Among the subjects covered in the playbook are the process for adding names to kill lists, the legal principles that govern when U.S. citizens can be targeted overseas and the sequence of approvals required when the CIA or U.S. military conduct drone strikes outside war zones.
U.S. officials said the effort to draft the playbook was nearly derailed late last year by disagreements between the State Department, the CIA and the Pentagon on the criteria for lethal strikes and other issues. Granting the CIA a temporary exemption for its Pakistan operations was described as a compromise that allowed officials to move forward with other parts of the playbook.
The decision to allow the CIA strikes to continue was driven in part by concern that the window for weakening al-Qaida and the Taliban in Pakistan is beginning to close, with plans to pull most U.S. troops out of neighboring Afghanistan over the next two years. CIA drones are flown out of bases in Afghanistan.
“There’s a sense that you put the pedal to the metal now, especially given the impending” withdrawal, said a former U.S. official involved in discussions of the playbook. The CIA exception is expected to be in effect for “less than two years but more than one,” the former official said, although he noted that any decision to close the carve-out “will undoubtedly be predicated on facts on the ground.”
The former official and other current and former officials interviewed for this article spoke on condition of anonymity because they were talking about ongoing sensitive matters.
Obama’s national security team agreed to the CIA compromise in late December during a meeting of “principals committee,” comprised of top national security officials, that was led by White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan, who has since been nominated to serve as CIA director.
White House officials said the committee will review the document again before it is presented to the president. They stressed that it is not in force until Obama has signed off. The CIA declined requests for comment.
The outcome reflects the administration’s struggle to resolve a fundamental conflict in its counterterrorism approach. Senior administration officials have expressed unease with the scale and autonomy of the CIA’s lethal mission in Pakistan. But they have been reluctant to alter the rules because of the drone campaign’s results.
The effort to create a playbook was initially disclosed last year by The Washington Post. Brennan’s aim in developing it, officials said at the time, was to impose more consistent and rigorous controls on counterterrorism programs that were largely ad-hoc in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Critics see the manual as a symbol of the extent to which the targeted killing program has become institutionalized, part of an apparatus being assembled by the Obama administration to sustain a seemingly permanent war.
The playbook is “a step in exactly the wrong direction, a further bureacratization of the CIA’s paramilitary killing program” over the legal and moral objections of civil liberties groups, said Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberty Union’s national security project.
Some administration officials have also voiced concern about the duration of the drone campaign, which has spread from Pakistan to Yemen and Somalia where it involves both CIA and military strikes. In a recent speech before he stepped down as Pentagon general counsel, Jeh Johnson warned that “we must not accept the current conflict, and all that it entails, as the ‘new normal.’ ”
The discussions surrounding the development of the playbook were centered on practical considerations, officials said. One of the main points of contention, they said, was the issue of “signature strikes.”
The term refers to the CIA’s practice of approving strikes in Pakistan based on patterns of suspicious behavior — moving stockpiles of weapons, for example — even when the agency does not have clear intelligence about the identities of the targets.
CIA officials have credited the approach with decimating al-Qaida’s upper ranks there, paradoxically accounting for the deaths of more senior terrorist operatives than strikes carried out when the agency knew the identity and location of a target in advance.
Signature strikes contributed to surge in the drone campaign in 2010, when the agency carried out a record 117 strikes in Pakistan. The pace had tapered off over the past two years before quickening again in recent weeks.
Despite CIA assertions about the effectiveness of signature strikes, Obama has not granted similar authority to the CIA or military in Yemen, Somalia or other countries patrolled by armed U.S. drones. The restraint has not mollified some critics, who say the secrecy surrounding the strikes in Yemen and Somalia means there is no way to assess who is being killed.
In Yemen, officials said, strikes have only been permitted in cases where intelligence indicates a specific threat to Americans. That could include “individuals who are personally involved in trying to kill Americans,” a senior administration official said, or “intelligence that . . . [for example] a truck has been configured in order to go after our embassy in Sanaa.”
The playbook has adopted that tighter standard and imposes other more stringent rules. Among them are requirements for White House approval on drone strikes and the involvement of multiple agencies — including the State Department — in nominating new names for kill lists.
None of those rules applies to the CIA drone campaign in Pakistan, which began under President George W. Bush. The agency is expected to give the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan advance notice on strikes. But in practice, officials said, the agency exercises near complete control over the names on its target list and decisions on strikes.
Imposing the playbook standards on the CIA campaign in Pakistan would likely lead to a sharp reduction in the number of strikes at a time when Obama is preparing to announce a drawdown of U.S. forces from Afghanistan that could leave as few as 2,500 troops in place after 2014.
Officials said concerns about the CIA carve-out were allayed to some extent by Obama’s decision to nominate Brennan, the principal author of the playbook, to run the CIA.
Brennan spent 25 years at the agency before serving as chief counterterrorism adviser to Obama for the past four years. During his White House tenure, he led efforts to impose more rigorous review of targeted killing operations. But he also presided over a major expansion in the number of strikes.
CIA officials are likely to be “quite willing, quite eager to embrace” the playbook developed by their likely future director, the former administration official said. “It’s his handiwork.”
Brennan’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee is scheduled for Feb. 7.
AND KARZAI GETS THE " HIGH HAT " TREATMENT FROM OBAMA ......
http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-2-155018-Karzai-caves-in-returns-empty-handed-from-Washington
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KABUL: President Karzai flew to US on a three-day consultative visit with the perception that world needs Afghanistan more than vice versa. Much of the ambiguity about post-2014 Afghanistan was to be removed during this visit.
Although both countries have already signed Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) in May 2012 but that does not specifically commit US to Afghanistan economically and militarily.
SPA only affirms US military presence and social and economic cooperation with Afghanistan beyond 2014. By the end 2014 - with the NATO mandate concluding - President Obama intends to bring the war to its ‘responsible end’ too - while reaffirming enduring partnership with Afghanistan. To determine the level of military and economic engagement, a new set of conditions is being negotiated between the two countries for couple of months now - following the signing of SPA.
The sticking point between the US and Afghan negotiators is a strong condition laid by President Karzai that the foreign military troops will be subject to Afghan laws after 2014. This condition is said to be used by Karzai as a bargaining chip to gain as much as possible, and secure his political and family’s interests - especially to seek protection to his family’s ill-gotten wealth which they have accumulated over the years.
Karzai, with a year left in his second and final term as president, has lost political influence and sympathies at home and internationally. In the past few years he had gained the reputation of an unreliable partner amongst his fellow men and foreigners. The in US particular has been irritated with him for blaming the American intervention for insecurity and corruption in his country. Even Pakistan has been irked with Karzai’s constant blame-game.
To Karzai’s disappointment, Obama turned the tables on Afghan president with his blunt statements that there will ‘not be any kind of’ US military presence in Afghanistan without granting them immunity. Obama also said that follow-on force of any sort past 2014 would be at the invitation of the Afghan government. His deputy national security adviser went as far as floating the zero-troop option.
Obama further dashed Karzai’s hopes by announcing early end to the US forces combat mission than what was decided at the Lisbon summit. Obama said that from Spring this year, the role of US forces will switch from combat to support; i.e. training, advising and assisting the Afghan forces. At the same time, he also said that the US forces will fight along the Afghan forces ‘when needed’ - without elaborating at what stage the American forces can be called for help.
Obama’s dramatically scaled back interest in Afghanistan compelled Karzai to cave in to US demands. To spare himself further embarrassment, Karzai on his return quickly announced convening a Loya Jirga to decide on granting immunity to the US troops. Loya Jirgas have traditionally been used to rubber-stamp the already made decisions by president and his coteries.
He has been severely criticised at home for his failure to gain substantive commitments from US to economically and militarily secure Afghanistan after 2014. Although he tried to assuage the anxious public by touting progress on other issues like complete hand over of the Bagram prison, withdrawal of US forces from villages and opening of Taliban office in Doha.
The Afghan public concerns include security and flow of funds after complete withdrawal of foreign forces. The Afghans doubt the capability of their own security forces to fight the insurgency and secure the country independently. They also fear that the gains achieved in the past eleven years will be reversed if the US leaves. They believe that troop withdrawal will be accompanied by scaling down of large development projects, which will affect the economy drastically. And with reduced foreign interest in Afghanistan, the flow of financial aid will be affected too.
According to World Bank estimates, Afghanistan needs $3.3 billion to $3.9 billion annually for non-security spending alone.Karzai’s long awaited US visit added ambiguity to Afghanistan’s relations with the US and other NATO allies beyond 2014. It must have deepened Karzai’s personal insecurities too.
IRAN VOWS TO STAY THE COURSE REGARDING ITS NUCLEAR PROGRAM......
http://www.jpost.com/IranianThreat/News/Article.aspx?id=300104
Iran: We won't stop enrichment 'for a second'
01/19/2013 12:25
Iran's IAEA envoy Ali Asghar Soltanieh Photo: Reuters
DUBAI - Iran said it had made some progress in resolving its disputes with the UN atomic watchdog, state media reported, even though the two sides' latest talks failed to seal a deal on letting inspectors visit a military site.
The Islamic state and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) met this week, but did not manage to revive an investigation into Iran's suspected nuclear arms research, the UN organization's officials said on Friday.
Iran's ambassador to the body, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, later said some progress had been made in the talks, Press TV reported.
"We had two days of intensive talks and we were able to in fact bridge the gap to some extent," Soltanieh was quoted as saying late on Friday.
"There was agreement with the agency about some issues, but no document has been signed yet ... In terms of getting views closer together and resolving some disputes the negotiations with the agency were successful," he told state news agency IRNA.
Soltanieh, however, stuck to Iran's stance that it would not stop uranium enrichment "for a second".
The West suspects Iran is working to develop the ability to make nuclear bombs - an accusation dismissed by Tehran which says its atomic work is focused on generating electricity and other peaceful projects.
Israel, a US ally, has threatened to bomb Iranian nuclear sites if it judges diplomacy and sanctions meant to curb Iran's uranium enrichment program to have failed irretrievably.
IAEA inspectors want to get into Iran's Parchin military complex where they believe explosives tests relevant to nuclear weapons development may have taken place. Iran denies the allegation.
Further talks are scheduled on February 12 between Iran and the IAEA - an organization set up to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
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