The CIA appears to be getting out of the drone business, said Dashiell Bennett in TheAtlantic.com. Senior U.S. officials last week indicated that the White House plans to shift control of the CIA’s lethal unmanned aircraft to the Department of Defense. That would add much-needed “transparency and accountability to what has become one of the government’s most controversial operations.” The CIA now operates the drones that target and kill suspected terrorists in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and other countries where the U.S. is not officially at war. Because those missions are deemed “covert,” the administration can deny their existence to Congress, shielding those responsible from accountability when a drone strike goes wrong and incinerates civilians. Under the Pentagon, however, the drone war would be subject to international military law and congressional oversight. “This is a good thing” all around, said Michael Leiter in MSNBC.com. Freed from paramilitary activities, the CIA can return to its “traditional role of strategic intelligence collection and analysis.”
But as with “everything involving drone policy, there are complications,” said Bloomberg.com in an editorial. When the military wants a drone strike on foreign soil, it first has toget the approval of that nation’s government. How will the White House respond “if al Qaida forces take harbor in a country with an anti-American government?” The president has an easy way out of that bind, said Fred Kaplan in Slate.com. It seems likely that the drone fleet will be placed under the Joint Special Operations Command, which runs theSEALs, Delta Force, and other clandestine units. Although JSOC is part of the armed forces, an executive order signed by President George W. Bush gives it “authority to conduct secret operations against al Qaida and affiliated terrorist networks worldwide.” So drone strikes could remain as frequent and far-flung as ever under the Pentagon—and “maybe even more so,” since Bush’s executive order allows JSOC to conduct its covert missions without reporting to congressional intelligence committees, as the CIA must do.
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