That decision meant that analysts who chose to specialize in
targeting for CIA drone operations were promised that they could stay
within that specialty and get promotions throughout their careers.
Thus the agency had made far-reaching commitments to its own staff in
the expectation that the drone war would grow far beyond the three
strikes a year and that it would continue indefinitely.
By 2007, the agency realized that, in order to keep those
commitments, it had to get the White House to change the rules by
relaxing existing restrictions on drone strikes.
That's when Hayden began lobbying President George W. Bush to
dispense with the constraints limiting the targeting for drone
attacks, according to the account in New York Times reporter David
Sanger's book "The Inheritance." Hayden asked for permission to carry
out strikes against houses or cars merely on the basis of behavior
that matched a "pattern of life" associated with Al-Qaeda or other
groups.
In January 2008, Bush took an unidentified first step toward the
loosening of the requirements that Hayden sought, but most of the
restrictions on drone strikes remained in place. In the first six
months of 2008, only four strikes were carried out.
In mid-2008, however, Director of National Intelligence Mike
McConnell returned from a May 2008 trip to Pakistan determined to
prove that the Pakistani military was covertly supporting Taliban
insurgents -- especially the Haqqani network -- who were gaining
momentum in Afghanistan.
A formal assessment by McConnell's staff making that case was
produced in June and sent to the White House and other top officials,
according to Sanger. That forced Bush, who had been praising
Musharraf as an ally against the Taliban, to do something to show
that he was being tough on the Pakistani military as well as on the
Afghan insurgents who enjoyed safe havens in northwest Pakistan.
Bush wanted the drone strikes to focus primarily on the Afghan
Taliban targets rather than Al-Qaeda and its Pakistani Taliban
allies. And according to Sanger's account, Bush quickly removed all
of the previous requirements for accurate intelligence on specific
high-value targets and for assurances against civilian casualties.
Released from the original constraints on the drone program, the
CIA immediately increased the level of drone strikes in the second
half of 2008 to between four and five per month on average.
As Bob Woodward's account in "Obama Wars" of internal discussions in
the early weeks of the Barack Obama White House shows, there were
serious doubts from the beginning that it could actually defeat Al-
Qaeda.
But Leon Panetta, Obama's new CIA director, was firmly committed to
the drone war. He continued to present it to the public as a strategy
to destroy Al-Qaeda, even though he knew the CIA was now striking
mainly Afghan Taliban and their allies, not Al-Qaeda.
In his first press conference on Feb. 25, 2009, Panetta, in an
indirect but obvious reference to the drone strikes, said that the
effort to destabilize Al-Qaeda and destroy its leadership "have been
successful."
Under Panetta, the rate of drone strikes continued throughout 2009 at
the same accelerated pace as in the second half of 2008. And in 2010
the number of strikes more than doubled from 53 in 2009 to 118.
The CIA finally had the major drone campaign it had originally
anticipated.
Two years ago, Petraeus appeared to take a somewhat skeptical view of
drone strikes in Pakistan. In a secret assessment as CENTCOM
commander on May 27, 2009, which was leaked to the Washington Post,
Petraeus warned that drone strikes were fueling anti-U.S. sentiments
in Pakistan.
Now, however, Petraeus's personal view of the drone war may no longer
be relevant. The CIA's institutional interests in continuing the
drone war may have become so commanding that no director could afford
to override those interests on the basis of his own analysis of how
the drone strikes affect U.S. interests.
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