convore.json/groups/socal-martial-law-alerts/cia-lawyer-how-i-issued-drone-death-warrants/messages.json

[{"user_id": 11626, "stars": [], "topic_id": 6723, "date_created": 1297912752.916373, "message": "You can expect to see at least two people inside the secret bunkers in Virginia where the CIA pilots its lethal drones over Pakistan. One controls the distant drone, his hand on a joystick, ready to fire off a missile at a target below. Another is a CIA lawyer, watching to ensure that the operator is within his rights to attack his target. Call it a \u201cpunctilious\u201d method to avoid civilian casualties and legal hot water, as one of those lawyers recently did \u2014 or call it the bureaucratization of a shadow war.\r\n\r\nTara Mckelvey gets a very rare peek inside the processes that go into the drone strikes, an undeclared air war that peaked last year at 118 missile firings, up from 33 in 2008. Her conclusion, published today in Newsweek, is that the operations ordering them are \u201cmultilayered and methodical, run by a corps of civil servants who carry out their duties in a professional manner.\u201d But even the CIA\u2019s former top lawyer, John Rizzo, is blunt about his involvement in what he calls \u201cmurder.\u201d\r\n\r\nRizzo told Mckelvey that the process works roughly like this: the CIA\u2019s Counterterrorist Center maintains a team of ten lawyers, who compile evidence that a prospective target constitutes a threat to the U.S. If Rizzo outlined the threshold that the lawyers have to meet, Mckelvey doesn\u2019t report what it is, nor does she explain who asks the lawyers to compile a case on a particular target. But the CIA\u2019s general counsel vets the case before issuing what Rizzo, who held the job during the Bush and early Obama administrations, calls a \u201cdeath warrant.\u201d The president doesn\u2019t review the targeting list.\r\n\r\nAlthough at least some cases don\u2019t make the cut \u2014 either by CIA lawyers or senior officials, it\u2019s unclear \u2014 Mckelvey writes that \u201cgovernment officials have to go through a more extensive process in order to obtain permission to wiretap someone in this country than to make someone the target of a lethal operation overseas.\u201d It\u2019s also worth mentioning that the Democratic-controlled Senate in 2007 refused to confirm Rizzo for the permanent general counsel job because of his legal involvement in the CIA\u2019s torture program.\r\n\r\nWhat the CIA lawyers are reviewing the drone program for is a mystery. Some law professors contend that the very involvement of CIA civilians or contractors in an inherently military program like the drone strikes make their pilots \u201cunlawful combatants,\u201d as Georgetown\u2019s Gary Solis tells Mckelvey. All the administration has said about its legal rationale for the strikes is that they must be \u201cproportionate\u201d to the threat and are \u201climited to military objectives,\u201d i.e., they don\u2019t intentionally target civilians. But as Mckelvey documents, there\u2019s an awful lot of lawyers to review what is a murky legal standard, at least in public, for a shadow war.\r\n\r\nhttp://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/02/behind-the-drones-lots-of-bureaucracy", "group_id": 3920, "id": 129127}]