Intelligence
panel votes 13 to two in favour of bill which would force the public disclosure
of civilian drone-strike deaths
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| Drone strikes have claimed an unknown number of civilian lives. Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex Features |
A new
Senate bill authorizing the next year’s worth of intelligence operations would
force the public disclosure of civilian deaths in drone strikes and add protections
for spy-sector whistleblowers that are being hailed by advocates.
The bill,
which was approved in the Senate intelligence committee on Thursday by 13 votes
to two, would require the president to provide greater visibility than ever
before into the controversial drones programme.
Each year,
the president would have to “make public” a report listing “the total number of
combatants killed or injured during the preceding year by the use of targeted
lethal force outside the United States by remotely piloted aircraft”. The drone
casualties so listed would not include those from declared war zones – putting
a focus on civilians killed and injured in so-called “shadow battlefields” in
places like Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
Estimating
the number of civilians killed in drone strikes is as difficult as it is
contentious. Most observers are hard-pressed to enter places like the tribal
regions of Pakistan. Drone strikes are most often reported by anonymous
security officials, who have an interest in describing the dead as combatants.
Various non-governmental organizations keep estimates of civilian drone
casualties – usually in the hundreds, stretching back to the early 2000s – but
there is no consensus on a figure, let alone an official statement.
In
February, during his nomination hearing to run the CIA, which conducts the
majority of US drone strikes, John Brennan signaled an openness to issue a public estimate.
“I believe
that, to the extent that US national security interests can be protected, the
US government should make public the overall numbers of civilian deaths
resulting from US strikes targeting al-Qaida,” Brennan said in responses to
prepared questions from the same Senate committee that passed the bill.
The CIA declined
to comment on the proposal. Representatives for Dianne Feinstein, the
California Democrat who chairs the Senate committee, did not reply to requests
for comment by deadline.
The bill
also includes an unlikely proposal relating to the most controversial aspect of
drone strikes as far as a US audience is concerned: taking steps to avert
mistakes in targeting US persons in such strikes.
The bill
would require the director of national intelligence to conduct an alternative
assessment, known as a “red team analysis”, of the intelligence underlying a
determination by any intelligence agency that a US person – a citizen or
resident alien – is being considered for “the use of targeted lethal force”.
The director would have to notify his inspector general and the congressional
intelligence committees that such a determination was made, and would have 15
days to compile the red team analysis.
That
analysis would not appear to have the power to override a decision to kill a US
person. “Nothing in this section shall be construed to impede the ability of
the United States Government to conduct any operation consistent with otherwise
applicable law,” the bill reads, although a later section adds: “Nothing in
this section may be construed to authorize the use of targeted lethal force
against a United States person.”
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| CIA director John Brennan has signalled an openness to a public estimate of civilian drone-strike deaths. Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images |
The US has
acknowledged killing four Americans in drone strikes, including the al-Qaida
propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year old son, Abdulrahman. Only the
elder Awlaki was an intentional target, officials have said, although as yet
there has been no restitution made for the apparently accidental deaths.
A different
provision of the bill would for the first time extend whistleblower protections
to members of the intelligence community, comparable to those enjoyed by other
federal employees.
The effort
would incentivize future Edward Snowdens to take their concerns about waste,
fraud, abuse or illegality inside the 16 intelligence agencies to “the
appropriate inspector general of the employing agency, a congressional
intelligence committee, or a member of a congressional intelligence committee”,
according to the bill text.
Currently,
would-be whistleblowers inside the intelligence agencies do not enjoy
protections from retaliation. Snowden, the ex-NSA contractor who leaked a trove
of documents about the NSA to the Guardian and the Washington Post, has said he
had no confidence that internal whistleblower rules within the intelligence
community protected him from reprisal.
The
proposal still would not do so: it does not apply to contractors. It also
mandates internal agency hearings to adjudicate whistleblower disputes, rather
than an outside or judicial body. According to Tom Devine, legal director of
the Government Accountability Project, this “locks in an institutional conflict
of interest”.
But Devine,
whose organization advocates for whistleblower rights, hailed the proposal as a
“landmark breakthrough”. Previous congressional attempts to extend
whistleblower protections to intelligence agency employees have foundered.
“This is
not a final solution, but its passage would be a breakthrough paradigm shift
for free-speech rights, to challenge abuses of power and corruption in
intelligence agencies without risking threats to national security in the
process,” Devine said.
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