We Can't Confirm the Existence of the Program We've Been Bragging About

Does the U.S. government acknowledge the existence of its targeted killing program? It all depends on what's convenient at the moment, Glenn Greenwald reports:

Key Obama officials, including the president himself, not only make selective disclosures about this program but

openly boast about its alleged successes. Leon Panetta, then the CIA Director, publicly said all the way back in 2009 when asked about the CIA drone program: "I think it does suffice to say that these operations have been very effective because they have been very precise." In 2010, Panetta, speaking to the Washington Post, hailed the CIA drone program in Pakistan as "the most aggressive operation that CIA has been involved in in our history". This is just a partial sample of Obama official boasts about this very program (for more, see pages 15 to 28 here). Despite all that, the Obama DOJ from the start has refused not only to provide the requested documents about the CIA drone program, but they refuse to say whether such documents even exist. They do so by insisting that whether there even exists such a thing as a "CIA drone program" is itself classified, and therefore, they can neither admit nor deny whether they possess any of the documents sought by the FOIA request….

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[L]ate last week, the ACLU wrote a letter to the appellate court where its case is now pending to notify the court of [John Brennan and Mike Rogers' recent] public acknowledgments. Specifically, as the ACLU put it, Brennan and the Committee members "extensively discussed various aspects of the CIA's targeted-killing program, including the 'role' of the 'CIA director in [the] approval process' for targeted killings abroad". Moreover, Rogers openly "discusse[d] his committee's 'monthly' oversight of the CIA's targeted-killing program." Now, there is simply no way to deny in good faith that the US government has publicly and officially acknowledged the CIA drone program. But good faith is no impediment to the Obama DOJ when it comes to its abuse of secrecy powers. This morning, the DOJ sent a letter to the court replying to the ACLU. Ever after the events of last week, they have the audacity to claim that even the question of whether there is a CIA drone program must still be concealed.

#Drones #Transparency