Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is planning to use his gavel as the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee to push the administration to transition oversight of all lethal drone operations out of the Central Intelligence Agency, and put it under control of the Pentagon—a move the White House first announced two years ago, but has yet to deliver.
“They’re backing away from it. It’s very clear that they are not pursuing what they said was their objective,” Sen. McCain told the Huffington Post in a story published on Tuesday.
“We’re going to be having hearings and demanding information as to what they want to do,” he added.
Currently, both the CIA and the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) conduct lethal drone operations around the world—a tactic that’s been whole-heartedly embraced by the Obama administration. The remotely-piloted aircraft have been used by the White House to carry out attacks across countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen, killing thousands of people including a significant and, perhaps, vastly underestimated number of innocent civilians.
Although JSOC strikes are often publicized by the administration, which claims they adhere to US and international law, the CIA program is completely covert, and under fewer regulations.
Reacting to concerns about the transparency of the CIA drone assassination program, President Obama pledged in May 2013 to move the power to snuff via flying robot out of the hands of the intelligence agency and into those of Pentagon officials.
Since then, nothing has happened.
Plans to relocate the drone program were stifled at the beginning of 2014, when Congress added language to a spending bill that blocked efforts at oversight reform.
Lawmakers favorable to the CIA, like the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee—Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)—have cautioned against the move, and expressed confidence in the CIA’s drone operations. These votes of confidence have come despite the agency’s history of carrying out errant strikes that have led to civilian casualties and new strains of anti-American sentiment in volatile, war-torn countries.
Now, a number of lawmakers, led by McCain, are making a renewed push to inject transparency into drone operations by wresting control of it from the CIA. This move has come one month after the administration released formal guidelines to govern the international sale of lethal drones to allied governments.
Speaking to the Huffington Post, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said he continues to believe “it is in the best interests of the intelligence community to primarily focus on its core mission of collection and analysis.” As such, he noted he will “continue to advocate for reforms that would better permit it to do so.”
Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), frustrated by the impression that the White House is “OK with the status quo,” has introduced legislation to enact the president’s reforms and cut the CIA out of the drone program.
According to Ned Price, a spokesman for the National Security Council, the administration still plans to make the move, and “will increasingly turn to [the] military to take the lead and provide information to the public about [those] efforts.”
He added the administration continues to “work diligently toward this goal.”
JSOC’s drone program, too, has made gruesome mistakes. Most notably, a 2013 strike in Yemen hit a wedding convoy, killing 12 people. The attack prompted the president of Yemen at the time to temporarily withdraw authorization for US military drone operations in his country.
Meanwhile, the CIA is dealing with a new round of controversy on Tuesday. A report published in The Intercept alleged that the spy agency has spent enormous resources and time to hack into Apple products like iPhones and iPads.
Documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show the CIA spent roughly a decade targeting Apple devices’ encryption keys, and penetrating the company’s firmware, allowing spies to implant exploitative code that extracts personal data from users’ devices.
