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发帖数: 29846 | 1 Former CIA leader defends drone strikes, torture
By KEN DILANIAN | May 4, 2015 | 4:35 PM EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama ordered a barrage of CIA drone
strikes in Yemen in 2013 that killed the al-Qaida operatives behind the most
serious plotting against American interests in years, a former CIA leader
says in a new memoir that broadly defends the targeted killing of terrorists.
When the U.S. closed 20 diplomatic facilities across the Middle East and
Africa in August of 2013, officials said it was in response to intercepted
communications about an unspecified plot. They said little about how and why
they later deemed the threat abated. But former CIA official Michael Morell
says the reason was that that many of the key operatives involved in the
plot were killed by U.S. air strikes.
Morell, who retired in 2013 as deputy CIA director after years in leadership
posts, offers the most detailed account of the episode to date in a book
obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its May 12 publication. Morell
says intelligence in July 2013 suggested that al-Qaida in the Arabian
Peninsula, or AQAP, was planning a series of attacks against "multiple
targets and attacks of significance."
Although "the intelligence was frustratingly lacking in details" about the
intended targets and the timing, Obama closed embassies across the region
and unleashed drone strikes on "those AQAP members the United States knew
were at the center of the attack plotting," Morell writes.
The plot, which turned out to be AQAP attacks against American diplomatic
buildings in Yemen and Yemeni military installations, was disrupted. "
Hundreds of lives were saved," he wrote.
According to the New America Foundation, which tracks drone strikes, there
were nine drone attacks in Yemen between July 27 and Aug. 10, which killed
up to 38 militants and possibly two civilians. Morell calls the embassy plot
the most serious terrorist threat to face the U.S. since another thwarted
al-Qaida plan in 2006 to bring down multiple airliners over the Atlantic
Ocean.
Morell's book, "The Great War of Our Time," recounts his 30 years as a CIA
analyst, with a particular focus on his work in counterterrorism. The book
includes significant criticisms of the CIA, accusing the agency of failing
to anticipate that the political upheaval across the Arab world could lead
to a resurgence in extremism by al-Qaida and related groups.
Morell also explores the CIA's missteps in assessing that Saddam Hussein's
Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, taking the opportunity to "publicly
apologize" to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who relied on wrong
information provided by intelligence agencies when he made the case for Iraq
WMD before the United Nations.
And Morell pointedly criticizes the National Security Agency, saying it was
conducting highly sensitive surveillance of allied leaders without fully
considering the appropriateness of its operations.
The NSA, he said, "had largely been collecting information because it could,
not necessarily in all cases because it should."
But Morell, who was traveling with President George W. Bush on 9/11 and was
involved in the intelligence behind the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in
2011, mounts a staunch defense of two controversial CIA programs: brutal
interrogations of al Qaida prisoners and targeted killing with drones.
While Morell says he is personally troubled by the harshest technique the
CIA used on detainees, water boarding, he makes a case that agency leaders
had no choice but to use what many consider torture in the years after the 9
/11 attacks. He said such techniques saved American lives.
It is difficult for CIA officers to legally talk about the agency's drone
strikes, because they are technically covert and deniable. Morell therefore
omits many details as he vigorously defends what he calls "the single most
effective tool in the last five years" for counterterrorism.
Drones strikes result in minimal civilian casualties, he says, and claims to
the contrary are "highly exaggerated," flowing from propaganda.
But Morell does not address whether the CIA has ever aimed its precision
weapons at the wrong target based on faulty intelligence. Nor does he speak
to the issue of signature strikes in Pakistan — attacks ordered against
people who fit the terrorist profile, but whose identities are not known by
the agency.
One such strike killed dozens of innocent miners in Pakistan in 2011,
Pakistani officials insist. Another resulted in the deaths of two Western
hostages last month. |
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