The New Gitmo Memorandum of Understanding: Obama Finally Figured Out How to Close Down Gitmo!

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Yesterday, the NYT weighed in on a new practice at Gitmo: the requirement that lawyers whose clients have lost their habeas case sign new memoranda of understanding governing the terms of access to their client.

The Obama administration’s latest overuse of executive authority at Guantánamo Bay is a decision not to let lawyers visit clients in detention under terms that have been in place since 2004. Because these meetings pose little risk and would send a message about America’s adherence to the rule of law, the administration looks as if it is imperiously punishing detainees for their temerity in bringing legal challenges to their detention and losing.

[snip]

Four years after the Supreme Court ruled that “the privilege of habeas corpus entitles the prisoner to a meaningful opportunity to demonstrate that he is being held pursuant to ‘the erroneous application or interpretation’ of relevant law,” the government may be calculating that it can decide what “meaningful” means.

But if the wars where detainees were captured have been to defend American interests, surely the country has an interest in an unequivocal commitment to the rule of law, including full legal representation for detainees.

The NYT got closer to ascribing a motive and envisioning the impact of the policy than Lawfare’s several posts on the subject. But I think both are missing what I suspect is the point.

Aside from giving detainees little recourse over issues affecting their own treatment (which is most urgent, in my opinion, to monitor the mental health of the detainees), the MOU will have three effects:

  • Gutting Obama’s own promise to provide Periodic Reviews to detainees
  • Eliminating the risk that detainees will pursue justice internationally
  • Burying Obama’s biggest failed promise

Gutting the Periodic Review Boards

As Jack Goldsmith reminded back in April, a year earlier Obama had issued an executive order promising a Periodic Review Board for all detainees.

In March 2011, the Obama administration issued an Executive Order (13567) that created a process of Periodic Review of Individuals Detained at Guantánamo Bay Naval Station Pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force.”  The “review and hearing” process was designed to operate on top of the habeas review process and the other internal review processes for GTMO detainees, and to facilitate release of detainees who were not “a significant threat to the security of the United States.”     Bobby analyzed the EO here and here, as did Tom Nachbar here.

The EO states: “For each detainee, an initial review shall commence as soon as possible but no later than 1 year from the date of this order” (emphasis added).  I have heard little about these reviews since last Spring, and the deadline for their commencement passed last month.  Has the administration carried out its pledges under the EO?

Irrespective of the delay, it was crystal clear by April that Obama didn’t put much stock in his promise to tie continued detention to the risk a detainee posed. After all, the Administration was willing to gut habeas with a detainee who, on multiple occasions, under both the Bush and Obama Administration, was cleared for release. When Obama did release the PRB guidelines, the timing involved–providing for just 4 months of election season during which the PRB would function (one of which has already elapsed)–made it clear it wasn’t actually supposed to function.

But the whole thing is supposed to be driven by new information; it’s not a reconsideration of information already in the files. And not only does the PRB determine the priority in which they’ll consider cases, they get to decide whether any information from the detainee is relevant.

Any additional relevant information (as defined in the Glossary) that has become available since the later of the Reference (k) review or prior PRB review, including information discovered as a consequence of information presented by the detainee’s personal representative or private counsel.

[snip]

(1) The personal representative and private counsel, if any, shall be provided with advance notice of the PRB review, as well as a reasonable opportunity to meet or talk to the detainee to discuss the PRB process and the information the detainee may wish to submit.

(2) The personal representative and private counsel, if any, may prepare a written submission for the PRB, which may include a written statement from the detainee. The written submission shall include all factual information that the detainee intends to present in the PRB proceedings. Such submission shall only contain information relevant and material to the determination of whether continued law of war detention of the detainee is necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States. Relevance of the information is determined by the PRB.

And now the MOU warns that lawyers cannot assist their client for PRB matters under the MOU. Read more →

NCAA, Mark Emmert, Unitary Executives & The Death of Due Process

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Once you step beyond the tragedy of Aurora, the big news today centers on Penn State and the aftermath of Jerry Sandusky, Joe Paterno and Louis Freeh. There is a lot of news, and implications to come, from today’s events.

First, and unsurprisingly, Penn State yesterday took down the fabled statue of JoePa. Abandoning larger than life symbols, whether human or otherwise, is never easy. And it is not just the specter of human faces in this regard either, witness the difficulty (irrespective of which side of the equation you reside on) of moving beyond “Redskins” and “Seminoles” as team mascots. But Paterno’s statue at PSU, by now, was more a testament and reminder of gross and wanton failure, not success. A defeating duality if there ever was one for a supposedly inspirational piece of art. The statue had to go the way of JoePa himself, and it now has.

The second part of the news, and discussion thereof, however, will have far greater repercussions. That, of course, is the actual penalties handed down to the Penn State football program. They have just been announced and are as follows:

1) A $60 Million fine to be applied to anti-child abuse charity and organizations

2) A four year ban on bowl appearances

3) A scholarship reduction of 10 initial scholarships year one and 20 overall scholarships per year for a period of four years.* Current athletes may transfer without penalty or limitation

4) Imposition of a five year probationary period

5) Mandatory adoption of all reforms recommended in the Freeh Report

6) Vacation of all football wins from the period of 1998 through 2011. A loss of 111 wins from the record book (109 of which were from Paterno)

These are extremely harsh penalties. In some terms, competitively anyway, the scholarships are the key element. A loss of twenty per year for for four years, when prospective players know they will never see a bowl game in their career, is crippling. It will be fascinating to see how PSU survives this blow.

USC provides the best analogy, as it is just finishing up its sanction of a two year bowl ban and loss of ten scholarships per year for three years. While the Trojans will be eligible for a bowl game again this year, they still have one more year of the scholarship reduction to get through. USC has remained competitive and, in fact, is considered to be a major contender for the championship this coming year. Penn State, however, has much longer terms, especially as to the Read more →

Will the Government Finally Use a Lawsuit as an Opportunity to Explain the Anwar al-Awlaki Killing?

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When the ACLU and CCR represented Nasser al-Awlaki in a suit to prevent the government from killing Nasser’s son Anwar unless the government could prove he was an imminent threat, Judge John Bates threw the case out on standing grounds. The civil rights groups think they’ll face no such problem on the suit alleging wrongful death they just filed suing Leon Panetta, David Petraeus, SOCOM Commander William McRaven, and JSOC Commander Joseph Votel. That’s because Nasser al-Awlaki–suing on behalf of both his son and grandson, Abdulrahman–and Sarah Khan–suing on behalf of her son Samir, who was killed in the strike on Anwar–represent the estates of the dead men, so they should clearly have standing.

If that’s right, the courts will have to find some other way to punt on this issue. Alternately, for the first time, the government will have to provide evidence to a court to judge whether or not it wrongly killed three American citizens.

That’s one of the big issues behind this suit–an issue which I hope to follow up on later. As the Director of ACLU’s National Security Project, Hina Shamsi, noted, while the facts alleged against Anwar (though not against his son or Samir Khan) are very serious, none of them have been attested in court yet (the government submitted some of the facts in the Abulmutallab sentencing, but only after the trial was over).

We don’t want to minimize the seriousness of the allegations [against Anwar al-Awlaki]. It is the role of the courts to distinguish between actual evidence and mere allegations.

She describes this as an opportunity for the government. If the government has evidence Awlaki presented an imminent threat, this case is an opportunity to present the evidence so it can be tested.

Of course, the government has had that opportunity three times before: in the earlier Nasser al-Awlaki suit, the Abdulmutallab trial, and the FOIA response. The government’s efforts to avoid using that opportunity have gotten more and more ridiculous. But since they appear to have no shame on this point, I’m betting they find a way to avoid doing so now.

We Can’t Afford Another “Complicated and Quirky” Presidency

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You’ve no doubt heard about the BoGlo piece that describes 9 different legal documents on which Mitt Romney was listed as CEO of Bain after the time–in 1999–when he now claims to have left the company.

Romney has said he left Bain in 1999 to lead the winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, ending his role in the company. But public Securities and Exchange Commission documents filed later by Bain Capital state he remained the firm’s “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president.”

[snip]

Romney did not finalize a severance agreement with Bain until 2002, a 10-year deal with undisclosed terms that was retroactive to 1999. It expired in 2009.

[snip]

The Globe found nine SEC filings submitted by four different business entities after February 1999 that describe Romney as Bain Capital’s boss; some show him with managerial control over five Bain Capital entities that were formed in January 2002, according to records in Delaware, where they were incorporated.

I’m envisioning Mitt Romney, in 2017, claiming the treaty he signed with China in 2014 doesn’t really count because he wasn’t really acting as President when he signed it, in spite of his legal status as President.

But I’m most interested in the scant response the Mitt campaign gave.

A Romney campaign official, who requested anonymity to discuss the SEC filings, acknowledged that they “do not square with common sense.” But SEC regulations are complicated and quirky, the official argued, and Romney’s signature on some documents after his exit does not indicate active involvement in the firm.

“Complicated and quirky” says a guy (or gal) now spending his time trying to get Mitt elected to an even more complicated and quirky office, the Presidency.

Frankly, though, there’s precedent for a President claiming “complicated and quirky” absolves him of responsibility for things that occurred under his presidency. After all, while Bush signed the paperwork in the first 6 years of his presidency, it wasn’t until he fired Rummy that Bush actually took over responsibility for the big decisions from Dick Cheney.

And I can’t help but harp on the “complicated and quirky” document–the “Gloves Come Off” Memorandum of Notification, effectively written by now Romney advisor Cofer Black–that has undermined the accountability Presidency more generally. Effectively, that MON pre-authorized the CIA (at least) to do whatever they wanted within certain general areas of organization. It served as Presidential authorization, but insulated the President from any provable involvement in torture and assassination and partnering with lethal regimes. When proof that the President had authorized all this torture threatened to come out via legal means, the current President went to the mat to prevent that from happening.

All the rest–the debates about what Congress authorized the day after this complicated and quirky document, the OLC memos, the repeated investigations that always end up in immunity for all (or almost all)–are just the legal facade that hides the fact that in fact even our Constitution has become “complicated and quirky.” And while Obama at least admits his involvement in these issues–while still hiding them from legal liability–he has chosen to keep the structure in place and has relied on the plausible deniability it gives.

The thing is, as damning as this revelation may prove to be for Mitt, it is in fact quite unsurprising that a man can run for President on a resumé for which–his advisors say, behind the veil of anonymity–he can simultaneously claim credit but no responsibility.

That’s the way this country increasingly works. Even–perhaps especially–the Presidency.

Our Other Assassination Program: Mafia Hitmen Hidden from Congress

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As part of my not-yet exhausted obsession with the government’s effort to obscure its drone assassination program, I re-read these two posts describing the assassination squads Dick Cheney set up but kept hidden from Congress. When Leon Panetta learned about it–and learned Congress had not been briefed–it set off a big scandal where, for once, Congress actually got pissed. The big scandal, we ultimately learned, was that the assassination squads had been outsourced in 2004 to Blackwater. And while actual approval for the program appears to have come in a September 26, 2001 directive following up on the Gloves Come Off Memorandum of Notification that authorized hit squads, its legal justification and logic parallels the drone program.

The Bush administration took the position that killing members of Al Qaeda, a terrorist group that attacked the United States and has pledged to attack it again, was no different from killing enemy soldiers in battle, and that therefore the agency was not constrained by the assassination ban.

But former intelligence officials said that employing private contractors to help hunt Qaeda operatives would pose significant legal and diplomatic risks, and they might not be protected in the same way government employees are.

[snip]

Officials said that the C.I.A. program was devised partly as an alternative to missile strikes using drone aircraft, which have accidentally killed civilians and cannot be used in urban areas where some terrorists hide.

Yet with most top Qaeda operatives believed to be hiding in the remote mountains of Pakistan, the drones have remained the C.I.A.’s weapon of choice. Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration has embraced the drone campaign because it presents a less risky option than sending paramilitary teams into Pakistan.

Today, we learn that the guy who took the assassination program private, then CIA CTC Operations Director Ricky Prados, was a mob hitman whose murderous ways continued after he joined the Agency.

More startling, the Miami murders allegedly continued after Prado joined the CIA. One target included a cocaine distributor in Colorado who was killed by a car bomb. Investigators believed he was killed over concerns he would talk to the police.

Years later, in 1996, Prado was a senior manager inside the CIA’s Bin Laden Issue Station, before the Al-Qaida mastermind was a well-known name. Read more →

Why Is DOJ Deliberately Hiding Information Responsive to ACLU’s Anwar al-Awlaki FOIA?

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As part of its strategy to not respond to the Anwar al-Awlaki FOIAs, the government seems to have decided to bury the NYT and ACLU under declarations. It submitted declarations and exhibits from 3 departments in DOJ, CIA, DOD, and DIA. Each attempts to appear helpful while (usually) blathering on at length but in no detail about why the President’s authority to kill an American citizen must remain hidden.

That said, the declarations can be distinguished by how convincing (or not) are their claims to have searched for relevant documents. In particular, DOJ Office of Information Policy was patently unresponsive, probably to hide the intelligence DOJ has on Anwar al-Awlaki (and possibly Samir Khan).

DOJ OLC presented by far the most convincing evidence of a real search. As described by Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Bies, the department conducted searches for the following terms: target! kill!, drones, assassinat!, extrajudicial killing, UAV, unmanned, awlaki, aulaqi, lethal force, lethal operation.

DOD primarily searched legal officers. While Lieutenant General Robert Neller didn’t provide a full list of search terms used, he claimed the search “included relevant key words,” including “Citizen,” “AG Speech,” “al-Awlaki,” and “Samir Khan.” While Neller says DOD used “multiple spellings” of al-Awlaki, it’s not clear whether they only searched hyphenated names. And there are some terms clearly missing–such as anything to do with targeted killing. And “citizen”? Really?!?!?

CIA, meanwhile, had this to say about their search:

In light of these recent speeches and the official disclosures contained therein, the CIA decided to conduct a reasonable search for records responsive to the ACLU’s request. Based on that search, it has determined that it can now publicly acknowledge that it possesses records responsive to the ACLU’s FOIA request.

The DOJ response provides this nonsensical excuse for why CIA can’t reveal how it searched for relevant documents.

Although the CIA acknowledges its possession of some records responsive to the FOIA 6 requests, information concerning the depth and breadth of that interest, including the number of documents, is classified. See infra Point II; Bennett Decl. ¶¶ 27-28. We therefore do not describe the CIA’s search on the public record; it is described in the Classified Declaration of John Bennett.

Given the CIA’s well-documented history of not searching where they know the most interesting documents are, I think it safe to assume the search was completely negligent. But I find it mighty interesting they didn’t even tell us what their search consisted of–the better to avoid contempt proceedings in the future, I guess.

Nevertheless, I think the least defensible search comes from Deputy Chief of the Initial Request Staff at Office of Information Policy Joseph Hibbard. OIP conducted the search in offices of top DOJ officials like the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, and so on. Their search terms were: “targeted killings,” “kill lists,” “lethal operation,” “lethal force,” “al-Aulaqi” and “target,” “al-Awlaki” and “target,” “Samir Khan” and “target,” and “Abdulrahman” and “target.” Read more →

The NSC’s May 2011 “Draft” Legal Analysis and the Continued Stonewalling of Ron Wyden

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I’m ultimately going to get around to arguing that the reason the government response to the ACLU targeted killing FOIA is so funky is because (mind you, this is a wildarsed guess) the CIA didn’t rely on the OLC memo authorizing Anwar al-Awlaki’s killing.

But for the moment I want to point out a far tinier but nevertheless related point.

On March 30 of this year, just before the government started scrambling for extensions on this FOIA, AUSA Sarah Normand called ACLU Attorney Eric Ruzicka to ask if ACLU would “limit the first prong of its FOIA requests” to DOJ and DOD. The first prong asked for,

All records created after September 11, 2001, pertaining to the legal basis in domestic, foreign and international law upon which U.S. citizens can be subjected to targeted killings, whether using unmanned aerial vehicles (“UAVs” or “drones”) or by other means.

Normand asked Ruzicka to agree to exclude any draft legal analyses, emails, and internal communication. Ruzicka agreed to waive draft analyses, but not emails and internal communications.

Most of the internal communications from the DOD and DOJ that would have been excluded which are described in the Vaughn indices aren’t all that interesting–almost all pertain to discussions leading up to the Situation Room debate over how transparent to be on these killings or to Jeh Johnson and Eric Holder’s speeches on targeted killing.

But there is a series of three email chains I find particularly interesting.

On May 18-19, 2011 attorneys at OLC and the National Security Council deliberated discussing “draft legal analysis regarding the application of domestic and international law to the use of lethal force in a foreign country against U.S. citizens.” Then, on May 19, lawyers at OLC, DOJ’s Civil and National Security Divisions, and at the Offices of the Associate and Deputy Attorney General discussed the same thing. Finally, on May 20, the DOJ lawyers and the National Security Council lawyers continued the discussion, this time including DOJ’s Office of Legislative Affairs.

This says, at a minimum, two things. First, the White House and DOJ were discussing what they called “draft” legal analysis as late as May 2011, 11 months after OLC finalized an opinion supposedly authorizing Anwar al-Awlaki’s killing but 4 months before the US killed him. And, that the discussion of that “draft” legal analysis pertained, in part, to some issue raised by Congress.

That, by itself, is interesting. Why was this legal analysis still considered draft analysis in May 2011? (And for what it’s worth, they were having similar deliberations in November 2011, after they had already killed Awlaki.)

But then there’s the likelihood that this discussion relates to persistent requests from Ron Wyden to get basic questions about targeted killing answered.

In a letter to Eric Holder on February 8, 2012  (so before DOJ tried to get ACLU to waive precisely this information) complaining about continued stonewalling of his questions about targeted killing, Wyden made it clear he called Holder in April 2011 to get these questions answered. Read more →

Is There a Pre-2001 OLC Opinion Authorizing Targeted Killing of US Citizen Terrorists?

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Update: I realize now this can’t be the explanation. I’ve just referred back to the original request and the ACLU actually did time-limit their general requests to records created after September 11, 2001. So maybe the issue relates to non-al Qaeda terrorists?

I’m still working through all the declarations submitted in the government’s response to the drone targeting FOIAs; I will have far, far more to say about what they suggest.

But for now I wanted to point to a detail in OLC Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Bies’ declaration that suggests OLC has a pre-2001 memo authorizing the targeted killing of US citizen terrorists.

As Bies’ declaration lays out, the three FOIAs at issue in this suit ask for OLC memos relating to the targeted killing of US citizens. To summarize:

  • Scott Shane asked for OLC memos since 2001 on the targeted killing of people suspected of ties to Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups
  • Charlie Savage asked for OLC memos on the targeted killing of a United States citizen who is deemed to be a terrorist
  • ACLU asked for all records on the legal basis under which US citizens can be subjected for targeted killings

That is, Shane put a start date on his FOIA–post 2001–and limited it to terrorist groups. Savage put no start date on it and didn’t specify which terrorist groups he was addressing. ACLU didn’t limit it with either a start date or ties to terrorist groups. Note, too, ACLU was looking for info on the killing of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki as well as his father and Samir Khan; Savage used language suggesting an interest in Anwar al-Awlaki, though he did not limit his request to the older Awlaki. Shane used no such limiting language.

As I’ve analyzed and will show at more length, the government gave inconsistent responses to these three FOIAs, even though on the surface they appeared to ask for the same information.

More interesting still is Bies’ claim in his declaration that the responses to Savage and the ACLU were limited to the recent spate of targeted killings of US citizens. Bies wrote,

By letter dated October 27, 2011, [OLC Special Counsel] Colburn responded to the Savage Request on behalf of the OLC. … Interpreting the request as seeking OLC opinions pertaining to al-Aulaqi, OLC neither confirmed nor denied the existence of such documents, pursuant to FOIA Exemptions One, Three, and Five.

[snip]

By letter dated November 14, 2011, Mr. Colburn responded to [ACLU lawyer Nate] Wessler on behalf of OLC, interpreting the request as seeking OLC opinions pertaining to those three individuals [Anwar al-Awlaki, Samir Khan, and Abdulrahman al-Awlaki] and informing him that, pursuant to FOIA Exemptions One, Three, and Five, OLC “neither confirms nor denies the existence of the documents in your request” because the very fact of the existence of nonexistence of such documents is itself classified, protected from disclosure by statute, and privileged.” [my emphasis]

Bies’ declaration had no language about Colburn “interpreting” Shane’s FOIA to pertain only to these killings in Yemen. In addition, as you can see from the letters Colburn sent (linked above), Colburn actually didn’t note his interpretation in his response letters to Savage and ACLU. I guess they were just supposed to guess.

And while this is just a wildarsed guess, the totality of these three requests and the caveats Bies made about the responses suggests that Colburn had to make such interpretations because of the open timeframe of the requests. That is, what is common to the Savage and ACLU requests but not the Shane one is the way they set no start point for their request.

Which suggests there may be OLC documents pertaining to the targeted killing of Americans (potentially as terrorists) dating back before the 2001 start point of Shane’s request. Who knows? Maybe there’s an OLC opinion authorizing the assassination of Black Panther Fred Hampton, for example (though the FBI would only fall under Savage’s request if considered “intelligence community assets”). If that’s correct, then is that OLC memo still on the books?

There are, I suspect, a number of other reasons why the government is so squirrely about this FOIA. But one of them may relate to documents lying around OLC’s archives from before the time 9/11 changed everything … or returned an earlier state of targeted killing.

SCOTUS Reviews the “Military Age Male” Standard on Thursday

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One of the most consistent statements of outrage I’ve seen from people just coming to the horrors of the drone program is the military aged male criterion: the Administration’s assumption that all military age males killed in a drone strike must be combatants.

Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.

Justin Elliott even got the Administration to reiterate the claim, albeit anonymously.

I gave the White House a chance to respond, and it declined to comment on the record. But speaking on condition of anonymity, an administration official acknowledged that the administration does not always know the names or identities of everyone in a location marked for a drone strike.

“As a general matter, it [the Times report] is not wrong that if a group of fighting age males are in a home where we know they are constructing explosives or plotting an attack, it’s assumed that all of them are in on that effort,” the official said. “We’re talking about some of the most remote places in the world, and some of the most paranoid organizations on the planet. If you’re there with them, they know you, they trust you, there’s a reason [you’re] there.” [brackets original]

What no one seems to get, however, is that between them, the Bush and Obama Administrations have been using that standard to detain people for over a decade. Indeed, there are probably over 30 men (I suspect the number is closer to 50) still at Gitmo being held on that standard, most of them for over a decade.

More importantly, SCOTUS will decide whether to uphold that standard on Thursday (or whenever they get around to accepting or denying cert on the 7 Gitmo cases they’ve been agonizing over for weeks).

The case is question is Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman’s habeas petition. Here’s how his cert petition describes the issues presented by his case.

Whether the Authorization of Use of Military Force, Pub. L. No. 107-40, 115 Stat. 224 (2001) (‘‘AUMF”), authorizes the President to detain, indefinitely and possibly for the rest of his life, an individual who was not shown to have fought for al Qaeda, trained to fight for al Qaeda, or received or executed orders from al Qaeda, and was not claimed to have provided material support to al Qaeda.

The government has always yoked its detention authority closely to its targeted killing authority (see, for example, the reported justification for the Awlaki killing). And here you can replace “detain, indefinitely and possibly for the rest of his life” with “kill with a drone strike” and you’ve got precisely the authority that Obama (and Bush before him) claims to kill all men in the vicinity of suspected al Qaeda figures, even absent any claim they were al Qaeda fighters.

Read more →

When Did the “Signature Strikes” Start in Yemen?

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Last week, I argued that the focus on the drone vetting process–the “Kill List”–is a shiny object, distracting us from signature strikes targeted at patterns, not people, in Yemen. Today, I’m going to push that further and suggest the focus on drones is also a shiny object distracting from the degree to which we’ve gone to war against Yemeni insurgents, using a variety of tactics including but not limited to drones.

I’ve long accepted, based on the public reporting, that Obama approved signature strikes in Yemen–and John Brennan took over the targeting process–just a day or two after the Saudis delivered up UndieBomb 2.0 around April 20. That’s based largely on the fact that when Greg Miller first reported on the issue on April 18, he spoke prospectively. When the WSJ reported that Obama had approved signature strikes, it said the decision had been made “this month” (meaning some time in April), and it pointed to an April 22 drone strike that seemed likely to be a signature strike.

The frequency of U.S. strikes in Yemen is expected to increase with the changes. On Sunday, a CIA-piloted drone hit a vehicle believed to be carrying AQAP militants. Intelligence analysts are working to identify those killed.

[snip]

The White House’s decision this month stopped short of giving CIA and JSOC the Pakistan-style blanket powers that had been sought—opting instead for what one defense official termed “signature lite.”

Interestingly, that WSJ report pointed to “several direct threats to the US” that surely included the UndieBomb sting that had already reportedly been delivered up to the Administration.

U.S. counterterrorism officials said they are currently tracking several direct threats to the U.S. connected to AQAP. The officials wouldn’t provide further details because that information is classified.

So one way or another, Administration sources seemed to time this to the UndieBomb plot.

But I want to consider the likelihood that Obama embraced “signature strikes”–or rather, expanded drone targeting–earlier than that (though remember that the Administration reportedly knew the UndieBomb plot was coming up to a month before April 20, when it was reportedly delivered up).

Based on TBIJ’s reports of drone strikes in Yemen, it’s fairly clear what have been treated as drone strikes started getting out of control in March, after Abed Rabu Mansour Hadi took over as President in February, not just in April. There are the strikes in three days in early March, which TBIJ estimates killed upwards of 50 people.

The latest strike involved at least five U.S. drones and took place in the Jabal Khanfar region of Jaar, located in southern Abyan province, two senior Yemeni security officials said. At least six suspected al Qaeda militants were killed, Yemeni officials said.

A member of the military committee — Yemen’s highest security authority — confirmed that strike, and said the Yemeni government was given no advance warning of it.

“The United States did not inform us on the attacks. We only knew about this after the U.S. attacked,” the committee member told CNN.

The strike was the third such attack on suspected al Qaeda targets in less than three days, according to Yemeni officials.

The United States was also involved in two other major attacks on Friday and Saturday, which killed at least 58 suspected al Qaeda insurgents, two senior Yemeni defense ministry officials said.

The Friday airstrikes occurred in the Yemen province of al-Baitha in areas used as launching pads for militant attacks. The second attack took place in the towns of Jaar and Zinjibar in Abyan province.

One of the strikes–in Bayda–reportedly killed a significant number of civilians.

It’s not just the civilian casualties, the high numbers of dead, or the reported Yemeni ignorance of the strikes that suggest these might be signature strikes (or something even broader) rather than personality strikes. They also accompany other military action–including reported naval bombardment–that suggests they’re part of the coordinated assault on insurgents. While there have certainly been a number of lower level AQAP members named as those killed in the strikes, the focus seems to be on militarily significant targets, not individuals.

Also note, on some of these strikes, there has been confusion whether a drone or manned planes carried out the attack (partly based on the mistaken assumption–now largely put to rest–that only Yemen, rather than the US, would be using manned aircraft in Yemen).

Finally, note that all of these strikes came in the wake of AQAP claims to have killed a CIA officer earlier in March, though the US denied it. Provide AQAP targets to hit, they’ll hit those targets, and you’ve got a reason to retaliate 100 times.

With all that in mind, re-read this April 2 LAT article. Read more →