John Rizzo: DOD Engaged in Cyberwarfare with Limited Oversight

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I’ve done two posts on John Rizzo’s recent address to ABA’s Standing Committee on Law and National Security. But I wanted to call attention to a few more things he said in his talk.

Slightly more than halfway through his talk, he talks about how DOD gets to conduct what seem to him to be covert actions in the field of cyberwarfare without the Congressional oversight that CIA would have. (Note, this is my transcription and he’s a big mumbler, so I’m not sure of the accuracy of this transcription.)

I did want to mention–cause I find this interesting–cyberwarfare, on the issue of cyberwarfare. Again, increasing discussion there clearly is an active arena, will continue to be active. For us lawyers, certainly for the lawyers in the intelligence community, I’ve always found fascinating and personally I think it’s a key to understanding many of the legal and political complexities of so-called cyberlaw and cyberwarfare is the division between Title 10, Title 10 operations and Title 50 operations. Title 10 operations of course being undertaken by the Pentagon pursuant to its war-making authority, Title 50 operations being covert action operations conducted by CIA.

Why is that important and fascinating? Because, as many of you know being practitioners, how these cyber-operations are described will dictate how they are reviewed and approved in the executive branch, and how they will be reported to Congress, and how Congress will oversee these activities. When I say, “these activities,” I’m talking about offensive operations–computer network attacks.

This issue, this discussion, has been going on inside the executive branch for many years, actually. I mean I remember serious discussions during the Clinton Administration. So, again, this is not a post-9/11 phenomenon. Now, I’m speaking her from a CIA perspective, but I’ve always been envious of my colleagues at the Department of Defense because under the rubrik of Title 10, this rubrik of “preparing the battlefield.” They have always been able to operate with a–to my mind [?] a much greater degree of discretion and autonomy than we lawyers at CIA have been, have had to operate under, because of the various restrictions and requirements of Title 50 operations. Covert actions require Presidential Findings, fairly explicit reports to the Intelligence Oversight Committees. We have a very, our Intelligence Committees are … rigorous, rigorous and thorough in their review. I’ve never gotten the impression that the Pentagon, the military, DOD is subject to the same degree of scrutiny for their information warfare operations as CIA. I’m actually very envious of the flexibility they’ve had, but it’s critical–I mean I guess I could say interesting but critical how–I mean if there were operations that CIA was doing, they would be called covert actions, there’s no getting around that. To the extent I’ve ever understood what DOD does in this arena, they certainly sound like covert actions to me but given that I’ve had more than my hands full over the years trying to keep track of what CIA’s doing at any given time, I’ve never ventured deeply into that area. But I think it’s fascinating.

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“It’d be easier to launch a Hellfire missile at a non-citizen than a citizen”

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The whole point of Joe Lieberman’s tea-bagger bait Terrorist Expatriation Act, according to his Republican House co-sponsor Charlie Dent, is to make it easier to launch Hellfire missiles at people. And Lieberman, too, ties his citizenship-stripping measure to Obama’s targeting of an American citizen with a predator drone.

Taking on critics who say his proposal goes too far, Lieberman pointed to news reports that President Barack Obama signed an order enabling the US military to kill US citizens like radical US-Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

“If the president can authorize the killing of a United States citizen because he is fighting for a foreign terrorist organization,” he said, “we can also have a law that allows the US government to revoke Awlaki’s citizenship.”

Lieberman said his proposal would make it harder for US nationals who cast their lot in with extremists, and train overseas, to return and carry out an attack, and if they do would make it possible to try them in military court.

“They will not enjoy the rights and privileges of American citizenship in the legal proceedings against them. That, I believe, will make America safer,” he said at a press conference with three other lawmakers.

“The US military may have more options to use necessary force to neutralize the threat, such as Anwar al-Awlaki, without the concerns associated with targeting an American citizen,” said Republican Representative Charlie Dent.

“I suspect it’d be easier to launch a Hellfire missile at a non-citizen than a citizen,” said Dent, referring to a weapon sometimes fired from US aerial drones at suspected terrorists.

Now, there’s a lot to loathe about this bill. Shane Kadidal describes the many ways in which it is illegal here.

But what I find most astounding about it is that Lieberman ties this not to actual military preparations against the United States (as he claims in his comments to Andrea Mitchell) but simply to “providing material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization.” And while I’d be willing to consider the merits of deporting Congressman Peter King or former top Chiquita executives like Carl Lindner and Roderick Hills (though following the logic of Elena Kagan, we’d also have to deport Attorney General Holder), I’m also cognizant that the way the government currently uses material support charges, it is prone to ensnare people who donate socks or money, sometimes in the name of charity.

The logical endpoint of this, then, in the addled little brains of Joe Lieberman and Charlie Dent, is that we should consider drone strikes on brown people who might have a good faith belief that they’re engaging in charity. And not just that we should consider drone strikes, but we should try to make it easier to execute those drone strikes.

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“Pattern of Life” Drone Strikes

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The LAT reports that targeting for most of the drone strikes that have killed more than 500 people in Afghanistan and Pakistan has been based not on information about an individual’s ties to terrorism, but rather on “pattern of life” analysis that targets the actions of a person.

The CIA received secret permission to attack a wider range of targets, including suspected militants whose names are not known, as part of a dramatic expansion of its campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan’s border region, according to current and former counter-terrorism officials.

The expanded authority, approved two years ago by the Bush administration and continued by President Obama, permits the agency to rely on what officials describe as “pattern of life” analysis, using evidence collected by surveillance cameras on the unmanned aircraft and from other sources about individuals and locations.

Think about that: we’re potentially killing people based not on what we know about an individual, but what we have observed solely through the camera of a drone. Or, if we’ve got particularized information from someone on the grounds, it’s as likely to be someone from Blackwater or an even more disreputable contractor posing as PsyOp warriors. And this includes strikes in Pakistan, a country with which we are not at war, supposedly. And among those targeted in such a manner may be associates of Faisal Shahzad.

Remember that old Bush ditty, that we were fighting them over here so we didn’t have to fight them here? Apparently that has now been turned on its head: we are targeting them from here which may make it more likely we’ll be fighting them here.

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The Wikileaks Medic’s Soldier’s Apology

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Two of the guys in the Company depicted in the Wikileaks video–including the medic guy who pulled the girl from the van–recently wrote a letter apologizing for their role in the events depicted in the video. Here’s how it starts:

Peace be with you.

To all of those who were injured or lost loved ones during the July 2007 Baghdad shootings depicted in the “Collateral Murder” Wikileaks video:

We write to you, your family, and your community with awareness that our words and actions can never restore your losses.

We are both soldiers who occupied your neighborhood for 14 months. Ethan McCord pulled your daughter and son from the van, and when doing so, saw the faces of his own children back home. Josh Stieber was in the same company but was not there that day, though he contributed to the your pain, and the pain of your community on many other occasions.

There is no bringing back all that was lost. What we seek is to learn from our mistakes and do everything we can to tell others of our experiences and how the people of the United States need to realize we have done and are doing to you and the people of your country. We humbly ask you what we can do to begin to repair the damage we caused.

Danger Room also has a long interview with the medic guy who pulled the girl, Ethan McCord, who first saw the video again after dropping his own kids off to school.

DR: The first thing you saw was the little girl in the van. She had a stomach wound?

EM: She had a stomach wound and she had glass in her eyes and in her hair. She was crying. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I went to the van immediately, because I could hear her crying. It wasn’t like a cry of pain really. It was more of a child who was frightened out of her mind. And the next thing I saw was the boy. … He was kind of sitting on the floorboard of the van, but with his head laying on the bench seat in the front. And then the father, who I’m assuming was the father, in the driver’s seat slumped over on his side. Just from looking into the van, and the amount of blood that was on the boy and the father, I immediately figured they were dead.

So the first thing I did was grab the girl. I grabbed the medic and we went into the back. There’s houses behind where the van was. We took her in there and we’re checking to see if there were any other wounds. You can hear the medic saying on the video, “There’s nothing I can do here, she needs to be evac’d.” He runs the girl to the Bradley. I went back outside to the van, and that’s when the boy took, like, a labored, breath … That’s when I started screaming, “The boy’s alive! The boy’s alive!” And I picked him up and started running with him over to the Bradley.  He opened his eyes when I was carrying him. I just kept telling him, “Don’t die; don’t die.” He looked at me, then his eyes rolled back into this head.

Then I got yelled at by my platoon leader that I needed to stop trying to save these mf’n kids and go pull security. … I was told to go pull security on a rooftop. When we were on that roof, we were still taking fire. There were some people taking pot shots, sniper shots, at us on the rooftop. We were probably there on the roof for another four to five hours.

Both the letter and the interview are worth reading in full.

Update: Sorry for the error in suggesting McCord was a medic. Some of the early commentary on it–and someone someone said to me subsequently–had made me believe he was.

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Is DOD “Losing” Videos of Its Special Ops Missions?

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I want to look at two data points about the Wikileaks video.

First, note what General Barry McCaffrey has to say about the mission depicted in the Wikileaks video (around 1:25):

Well, it’s not clear to me it was a mistake, Contessa, I mean if there were armed people on the ground, the fact that they appeared relaxed is good. It means you caught them by surprise. That apparently was a Special Operations mission. Everything about their raids is classified. [my emphasis]

McCaffrey’s a pretty (ahem) straight shooter. And he seems to suggest here that there was nothing out of the ordinary about this mission–for a Special Ops mission.

Which is why I find it so interesting that DOD now says it can’t find its own copy of the video.

The U.S. military said Tuesday it can’t find its copy of a video that shows two employees of the Reuters news agency being killed by Army helicopters in 2007, after a leaked version circulated the Internet and renewed questions about the attack.

Capt. Jack Henzlik, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said that forces in Iraq have not been able to locate the video within its files.

“We’re attempting to retrieve the video at this time,” Henzlik said.

Now, when I first read this, I grumbled, “ah jeebus, I’m going to have to start another catalog of missing evidence again.” But I’m not sure that’s what this says. Henzlik seems to suggest that CentCom did have a video in its files, but “forces in Iraq” can’t find it anymore.

But if this is a JSOC mission, would you be looking in USSOCOM, and not CentCom?

And is this so sensitive because this is precisely how Special Ops are supposed to behave?

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“Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle.”

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Warning: Very disturbing video.

Wikileaks has now posted the video that–they have suggested–is one of the reasons the US government has been surveilling them. Here’s part of Wikileaks’ description:

The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.

While there were armed men among those shot at, they were not engaging the Americans at all. At the moment the Americans started shooting, a number of the targeted men had their back to the helicopter flying overhead. And after they wound the Iraqi photo-journalist, they fly around a while waiting for an excuse to re-engage; they seem to admit he was unarmed when they hit him, and therefore can’t shoot further unless he shows a weapon.

When ground troops arrive at the site and discover two children among the wounded, they blame the Iraqis for the kids’ injuries (this is after 15:30 on the video).

“Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle.”

“That’s right.”

Of course, this wasn’t a battle at all. It was unprovoked killing, including the killing of two journalists.

The release of this video, of course, comes on the same day that the NYT details how Special Forces killed three women in Afghanistan and then tried to cover up their actions.

After initially denying involvement or any cover-up in the deaths of three Afghan women during a badly bungled American Special Operations assault in February, the American-led military command in Kabul admitted late on Sunday that its forces had, in fact, killed the women during the nighttime raid.

The admission immediately raised questions about what really happened during the Feb. 12 operation — and what falsehoods followed — including a new report that Special Operations forces dug bullets out of the bodies of the women to hide the nature of their deaths.

A NATO official also said Sunday that an Afghan-led team of investigators had found signs of evidence tampering at the scene, including the removal of bullets from walls near where the women were killed. On Monday, however, a senior NATO official denied that any tampering had occurred.

I expect we’ll be hearing a lot more about civilian killings in the days ahead.

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What Glenn Greenwald Said On American Terrorism Cowardice

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Just go read it. Because every word Glenn Greenwald wrote in his post today, entitled Nostalgia for Bush/Cheney Radicalism, is the gospel truth. It is rare that you will see a post here just pointing you somewhere else because the other source says it all. This is one of those times. Here is a taste:

How much clearer evidence can there be of how warped and extremist we’ve become on these matters? The express policies of the right-wing Ronald Reagan — “applying the rule of law to terrorists”; delegitimizing Terrorists by treating them as “criminals”; and compelling the criminal prosecution of those who authorize torture — are now considered on the Leftist fringe. Merely advocating what Reagan explicitly adopted as his policy — “to use democracy’s most potent tool, the rule of law against” Terrorists — is now the exclusive province of civil liberties extremists. In those rare cases when Obama does what Reagan’s policy demanded in all instances and what even Bush did at times — namely, trials and due process for accused Terrorists — he is attacked as being “Soft on Terror” by Democrats and Republicans alike. And the mere notion that we should prosecute torturers (as Reagan bound the U.S. to do) — or even hold them accountable in ways short of criminal proceedings — is now the hallmark of a Far Leftist Purist. That’s how far we’ve fallen, how extremist our political consensus has become.

Now go read the rest and weep for your country.

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The Poodle's Prevarications

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Tony Blair testified today at the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war, and while it sounds like he didn’t admit any huge lies, his answers were riddled with inconsistencies. As the Times points out, for example, Blair told Parliament Saddam’s WMD programs were growing.

His weapons of mass destruction programme is active, detailed and growing. The policy of containment is not working. The weapons of mass destruction programme is not shut down; it is up and running now.

But today he used the same excuse Bush has since used–that the alleged WMD programs hadn’t changed, but rather the significance of them in light of 9/11.

But as part of that analysis Mr Blair conceded that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s purported programme to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD) had not actually grown – only the understanding of that threat.

“It wasn’t that objectively he had done more,” he said of the Iraqi leader. “It was that our perception of the risk had shifted.”

Here’s how Blair tried to explain away his assertion that he would have taken Saddam out even if he had known he didn’t have WMD.

Mr Blair sought to play down his comments in a BBC interview with Fern Britton in which he said he would have thought it right to remove Saddam, even if he had known that he did not have WMD.

“Even with all my experience in dealing with interviews, it still indicates that I have got something to learn about it,” he said.

“I didn’t use the words ’regime change’ in that interview and I didn’t mean in any sense to change the basis. Obviously, all I was saying was you cannot describe the nature of the threat in the same way if we knew then what we know now.

“It was in no sense a change of position. The position was that it was the approach of UN resolutions on WMD. That was the case. It was then and it remains.”

As to the question of whether Blair agreed to go to war in April 2002? He claimed, at least, not to have gotten into specifics.

Mr Blair confirmed that he had discussed the issue of Iraq when he met Mr Bush for private, one-to-one talks at his Texas ranch at Crawford in April 2002, 11 months before the invasion, but he insisted that they did not get into “specifics”.

Of course, none of it has any credibility. But Blair might have skated through the most obvious risks of perjury at the inquiry.

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Peace on Earth Air Strike in Yemen

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What Siun dubbed our Fourth War continues to heat up, this time with air strikes that reportedly kill Anwar al-Awlaki, the cleric who communicated with Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan via email in the months leading up to the Fort Hood killings.

Backed by U.S. intelligence, Yemeni forces struck a series of suspected al-Qaida hideouts Thursday, killing more than 30 militants in its stepped-up campaign against the terror network, the government said. A radical Muslim preacher linked by U.S. intelligence to a gunman who killed 13 people at a U.S. Army base is believed to have been killed in the airstrike, a security official said on Thursday.

“Anwar al Awlaki is suspected to be dead (in the air raid),” said the Yemeni official, who asked not to be identified.

[snip]

Yemen’s Supreme Security Committee said airstrikes in the eastern Shabwa province targeted an al-Qaida leadership meeting that was organizing attacks. It said top al-Qaida officials were at the meeting, though it was unclear whether they were harmed.

Don’t get me wrong. I suspect there are far more dangerous members of al Qaeda in Yemen right now than in Afghanistan. If so, we’re at least targeting the guys we’re supposedly at war with.

Still, the convenience of killing al-Awlaki now, at  a time when we’re investigating his communication with Hasan, after we’ve been tracking him closely for seven years, along with the way this strike fits into the “30 casualties” formula, makes me a wee bit suspicious.

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Tony Blair: We Invaded Iraq to Change the Region

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The Guardian reports on the contents of an upcoming Beeb interview with Tony Blair, in which he suggests he would have invaded Iraq even if he had to offer a different reason for it, other than WMD. (h/t Steve)

Tony Blair has said he would have invaded Iraq even without evidence of weapons of mass destruction and would have found a way to justify the war to parliament and the public.

The former prime minister made the confession during an interview with Fern Britton, to be broadcast on Sunday on BBC1, in which he said he would still have thought it right to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

“If you had known then that there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?” Blair was asked. He replied: “I would still have thought it right to remove him [Saddam Hussein]”.
Significantly, Blair added: “I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat.”

What I find really interesting from this story, though, is his further admission–that he supported the invasion because without removing Saddam, it would have been hard to change the region.

“This was obviously the thing that was uppermost in my mind. The threat to the region. Also the fact of how that region was going to change and how in the end it was going to evolve as a region and whilst he was there, I thought and actually still think, it would have been very difficult to have changed it in the right way.”

I really really really hope Fern Britton went on to ask him whether he thinks the catastrophic war against Iraq has, in the end, “changed [the region] in the right way.”

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