'Drones' changing hands
What it means for oversight and accountability
The Obama administration seems poised to order that all kinetic attacks on al Qaeda or affiliated bad guys be conducted by elements of the United States military, knee-capping the Central Intelligence Agency's paramilitary capability and effectively ending its drone program in Pakistan.
Obama and his aides want to reorder a national security architecture developed on the fly after 9/11, one that made sense back then and which makes less and less sense today. They want to create a more sustainable framework for future administrations engaged in counter-terrorism activities outside warzones. And they're interested in fostering accountability, which will, in theory, reduce the number of innocents killed in these types of strikes.
What the administration is not especially interested in is Congressional oversight. They also are not concerned about law. Officials believe that their actions — with the possible exception of targeting American citizens — are well protected by modern understandings of the president's enumerated powers, of the powers that Congress granted to the president after 9/11, and under international law.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
I'm going to use the phrase "drone program" from now on because that's how these counter-terrorism initiatives are known to the public, but drones with missiles attached to them make up a small part of the programs subject to review.
In fact, depending upon who does what with the programs, fewer members of Congress are going to know about operations. Right now, the CIA's targeted killing program in Pakistan is a controlled access program chartered by the Director of National Intelligence and subject to rigorous oversight by the two Congressional intelligence committees. These committees know virtually everything there is to know about the Pakistani program.
The extra-territorial targeting by the Special Operations Command, in contrast, is something that the intelligence committees know little about. The Armed Services Committees know more, but the programs are chartered under something called a "waived SAP," — a "special access program" that requires only oral briefings be given to a small group of members of Congress. Certain sensitive activities aren't briefed at all. Special reconnaissance missions into denied areas are not considered to be significant intelligence operations, especially if they are conducted in accordance with an anticipated future overt military campaign. (True!).
The reason why Congress doesn't know a lot about the non-Pakistani elements of the drone program is that the military controls information flow. It has the right to keep operations secret. It is does not have an obligation to inform Congress unless its action crosses over a fuzzy line separating clandestine intelligence collection and covert action from "traditional military activities," a phrase which is deliberately very broad.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
If, for example, the Joint Special Operations Command secrets a team into Iran and taps into an Iranian military communications cable, the notification matrix will be small and after the fact. After all, conflict with Iran, overt conflict, is anticipated. JSOC is simply preparing the battlefield for a future war, god forbid. If the CIA does it, Congress gets notified in a finding. Syria: The Obama administration signed a covert action finding because the CIA is taking the lead in providing covert assistance. Is the military helping the Syrian rebels? If they are, Congress probably doesn't know about it. Oversight and accountability are categorically different, although this point is often lost in the secrecy wars. In the administration's view, the military chain of command is a more accountable environment for such complicated legal and technical operations. It is more flexible and easier to hold to account. Every soldier or sailor reports to someone up the chain of command; mistakes will matter more, and so targeting will be more judicious. Judge Advocate Generals are responsible not to commanding officers but to the rule of law itself; the military generates an extraordinary amount of after-action reviews and paperwork and net assessments of its failures.
The military can also be more flexible when it comes to redesigning structures to allow for more accountability. It can resource these missions more easily, and better integrate them into counter-terrorism policy. SOCOM, after all, is the executive agent for external counter-terrorism. That's what it does.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
Marc Ambinder is TheWeek.com's editor-at-large. He is the author, with D.B. Grady, of The Command and Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry. Marc is also a contributing editor for The Atlantic and GQ. Formerly, he served as White House correspondent for National Journal, chief political consultant for CBS News, and politics editor at The Atlantic. Marc is a 2001 graduate of Harvard. He is married to Michael Park, a corporate strategy consultant, and lives in Los Angeles.
-
Why Puerto Rico is starving
The Explainer Thanks to poor policy design, congressional dithering, and a hostile White House, hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable Puerto Ricans are about to go hungry
By Jeff Spross Published
-
China is now just another autocracy
The Explainer On the long-lasting consequences of Xi Jinping's power grab
By Noah Millman Published
-
Is America the main obstacle to peace in Korea?
The Explainer There's only one way Korea would unify — and the United States won't stand for it
By Noah Millman Published
-
Why on Earth does the Olympics still refer to hundreds of athletes as 'ladies'?
The Explainer Stop it. Just stop.
By Jeva Lange Last updated
-
Berlin's wall and ours
The Explainer What that signifier of the Cold War indicates about our unsettled historical moment
By Noah Millman Published
-
The catastrophe in Yemen
The Explainer A Saudi Arabian blockade has left millions of civilians starving, and without fuel or clean water. What is this conflict about?
By The Week Staff Published
-
China's strongman
The Explainer Xi Jinping is China's most powerful leader in decades. What are his plans for the country — and the world?
By The Week Staff Published
-
How to ride out the apocalypse in a big city
The Explainer So you live in a city and don't want to die a fiery death ...
By Eugene K. Chow Published