The ISR study lamented the limitations of the drone program, arguing for more advanced drones and other surveillance aircraft and the expanded use of naval vessels to extend the reach of surveillance operations necessary for targeted strikes. The costs to intelligence gathering when suspected terrorists are killed rather than captured are outlined in the slides pertaining to Yemen and Somalia, which are part of a 2013 study conducted by a Pentagon entity, the Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Task Force. One top-secret document shows how the terror “watchlist” appears in the terminals of personnel conducting drone operations, linking unique codes associated with cellphone SIM cards and handsets to specific individuals in order to geolocate them. The slides also paint a picture of a campaign in Afghanistan aimed not only at eliminating al Qaeda and Taliban operatives, but also at taking out members of other local armed groups. Two sets of slides focus on the military’s high-value targeting campaign in Somalia and Yemen as it existed between 20, specifically the operations of a secretive unit, Task Force 48-4.Īdditional documents on high-value kill/capture operations in Afghanistan buttress previous accounts of how the Obama administration masks the true number of civilians killed in drone strikes by categorizing unidentified people killed in a strike as enemies, even if they were not the intended targets. military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) operate parallel drone-based assassination programs, and the secret documents should be viewed in the context of an intense internal turf war over which entity should have supremacy in those operations. A Defense Department spokesperson said, “We don’t comment on the details of classified reports.” The Pentagon, White House, and Special Operations Command all declined to comment. “This outrageous explosion of watchlisting - of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on lists, assigning them numbers, assigning them ‘baseball cards,’ assigning them death sentences without notice, on a worldwide battlefield - it was, from the very first instance, wrong,” the source said. The source said he decided to provide these documents to The Intercept because he believes the public has a right to understand the process by which people are placed on kill lists and ultimately assassinated on orders from the highest echelons of the U.S.
#Spec ops 35 task list series#
The stories in this series will refer to the source as “the source.” government has engaged in aggressive prosecution of whistleblowers. The Intercept granted the source’s request for anonymity because the materials are classified and because the U.S.
The documents, which also outline the internal views of special operations forces on the shortcomings and flaws of the drone program, were provided by a source within the intelligence community who worked on the types of operations and programs described in the slides. military’s kill/capture operations at a key time in the evolution of the drone wars - between 20. Geolocation-Watchlist The Intercept has obtained a cache of secret slides that provides a window into the inner workings of the U.S. The implicit message on drone strikes from the Obama administration has been one of trust, but don’t verify. persons,” without providing any sense of the internal process used to determine whether a suspect should be killed without being indicted or tried. would only conduct a lethal strike outside of an “area of active hostilities” if a target represents a “continuing, imminent threat to U.S. Those guidelines offered little specificity, asserting that the U.S. The first drone strike outside of a declared war zone was conducted more than 12 years ago, yet it was not until May 2013 that the White House released a set of standards and procedures for conducting such strikes. Those terms, however, appear to have been bluntly redefined to bear almost no resemblance to their commonly understood meanings. When the Obama administration has discussed drone strikes publicly, it has offered assurances that such operations are a more precise alternative to boots on the ground and are authorized only when an “imminent” threat is present and there is “near certainty” that the intended target will be eliminated. personnel, Congress has avoided legislating the issue or even defining the word “assassination.” This has allowed proponents of the drone wars to rebrand assassinations with more palatable characterizations, such as the term du jour, “targeted killings.” While every president since Gerald Ford has upheld an executive order banning assassinations by U.S.
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