Top secret documents published on Thursday provide fresh insight into US security forces’ long-running drone assassination program.
The information, which came in the form of PowerPoint slides, was provided to The Intercept by an anonymous source. It details details the CIA and Pentagon’s use of unmanned aerial vehicles for targeted strikes that occurred between 2011 and 2013, and sheds light on the inner-working of the program.
“Taken together, the secret documents lead to the conclusion that Washington’s 14-year high-value targeting campaign suffers from an overreliance on signals intelligence, an apparently incalculable civilian toll, and — due to a preference for assassination rather than capture — an inability to extract potentially valuable intelligence from terror suspects,” investigative reporter and Intercept co-founding editor Jeremy Scahill stated.
One documents tells the story of British citizen, Bilal el-Berjawi, who was under surveillance for several years by the United States, but was never captured. Instead, he was killed in Somalia by a drone strike.
Scahill added that the documents “also highlight the futility of the war in Afghanistan by showing how the US has poured vast resources into killing local insurgents, in the process exacerbating the very threat the US is seeking to confront.”
The report was released on the same day it was announced that the White House has abandoned its Afghanistan withdrawal timetable.
Read more of the report here.
Full Disclosure: Sam Knight and Sam Sacks have a working relationship with The Intercept, as freelancers.
