Thank you. Thank you for your talk. It was very informative. Im curious ive always been interested in a lost cause art. Things like the famous last parting of the end of jackson. But once upon a time in the paintings and also Stonewall Jackson got many homes now what we say that i grew up in petersburg and in petersburg it was like they were still on the other side of the river waiting to attack. As if so that was different, but many people in nice homes had a sort of somber reminder of their confederate heritage. But, you know i never saw any confederate flags in the homes so im curious where you would put them in the whole panoply of lost cause art. There are a lot of lost closeparen in that battle flag. Its a good time now to make sure that i do not leave the impression that other confederate flags were forgotten but certainly the battle flag became the primary flag even in a lost cause art. Usually the first, second and third down together. What i alluded to earlier in the this use of the flags between 1865 and 1938 was sent as president today as it is today. People didnt fly from the home as a rule. I have a chapter dealing and analyzing those before world war ii. But youre quite right im not surprised to hear you say that because it corroborates with what i was finding if of common uses among people that read here the flag and the confederacy today for whatever reason, availability to some degree but as well the values were different as we get further from the confederacy and the confederate generation and they were still walking the earth in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. It was something of a taboo in the ways that were not clearly reverential in the memorial of those men and having it fly in over your home if you were in a bastion of the outpost of the confederacy simply was not appropriate and i havent been able to quite determine how that was enforced but it seems to have been very true. Time for other questions. Thank you for coming out today. [applause] former producer for the bbc talks about americas use of drones in yemen, pakistan and somalia and reaction its caused. He says the targeted groups in the countries are figuring out ways to protect themselves from attacks and working on making their own drones. We changed our name and gave people many. Its wonderful that youve come here for this great events. Event. We are excited to have chris come and present his new book sudden justice, which i think is going to be probably the book for people who are interested in this important subject and of course, the book tour coincides with the very interesting moment in the tragic death and other recent revelations about the program that have come out in the last couple of weeks. Chris is a former senior producer at the bbc. He also ran the Drone Program in the Investigative Journalism which did anything work on the subject and hes going to talk about some of the themes and stories in his book and then we will open up to discussion. Thank you very much for coming today. And its actually, for me it is a pleasure to be here with new america. I focused heavily on drones almost five years ago now. To recognize that there was an issue until it was the floods in pakistan in 2010 for those that remember. They were using it for the drone it is the first time that i thought there was something significant going on. And they were already getting that number. It was already admonishing what would happen in the shrike and we were getting the sense that they had escalated phenomenally into something quite significant was happening. I thought today i would talk about transparency because that is the debate so often. We also know what has been going on on a regular battlefield and that is something we treated them in the book is talk about how theyve changed the conventional warfare as well and i think that its a big part of the picture we have been missing. Hopefully there is a former drone pilot in the audience today and if he could please raise his hand but im hoping one of the contributors will come along today and be able to get a few insights into some of this stuff. You could argue it doesnt get more transparent than standing up and owning the responsibilities and clearly in error. President obama took that its moments like that moments of the direct accountability are put out and its about two years now since john brennan joined the hearings to go in and he said he wanted to publish the details and unfortunately the work but america does trying to understand who has been killed and how in the places like pakistan and yemen. He was the acting director between David Petraeus and john brennan and he used the term scoff when he was talking about the work of people like organizations in new america in trying to understand the number of civilians killed. The Public Record has critical list. It is actually much lower. But the Agency Officials will routinely mocks those acting in good faith trying to understand and present the public stepping up and saying what actually happened and accounting for some of those that have happened over the years of. This single event accounts for around a fifth of all of the casualties reported by the cia in pakistan and the just one of them the United States insisted no more than 60 died in pakistan and the decade of the covert bombing. The refusal to confirm may represent the highest in the entire covert drone war that illustrates the problems associated in the secret civilian Intelligence Service having been given command of the war. The un investigated that they would like this creates a situation of huge with all the while at the same time an impossibility to achieve accountability. The headmaster was also a leader of the Islamist Organization founded in 1992 and a band for banned for extremism and decade later that move led to the Armed Conflict in the state but by august of 2006 paper offering a peace deal. It required they not only target the pakistani troops but the thousands of fighters in the insurgency in afghanistan. I do want her detail. Hell miss all three adults during the visit. It was a seminary. He was woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of the huge explosion. I couldnt really believe my eyes. There were many but not a single complete body. Everything was shattered. Survivors and villages helped gather up the body parts into the depths told stood but most of the reportedly children 70 and under. They had been at did two takes part. Up until this particular strike the cia as we know from what was actually had in the agreement with the Pakistan Army would step up and give cover for the operation. This event which the position remained was the work of the cia broke that arrangement and they refuse to give cover. If we think about the massacres that happened about six months ago i think 135 schoolkids committed huge impact that had on the culture and society we saw the restoration of the Death Penalty and we saw them executed over the importance of terror and the huge upset. We can kind of imagine the impact that it would have had in 2006 not only had they bombed the school and killed the cia and the u. S. Government had has spent the last nine years denying that he read what impact would that have on the relations and what impact would that have on radicalizing the programs in the trailer area and on the insurgency across the border in afghanistan and that would be the recruitment tool. They never answered the question of whether it carried out but i did get the opportunity to a former highranking u. S. Intelligence official with direct knowledge of the program. Now this would have been the first drone strike. Meeting in the attack could have been up for senior former u. S. Intelligence official told me he had no recollection of that whatsoever. I would have remembered the narrative and the whole thing. But i got nothing on this in my memory and it must therefore be responsible. The former official would only say that maybe it was then and they decided to talk someone else under the gun one of the most remarkable comments that an official could actually conceive that it might have been ours. I still think that we need the official position on this to track down staying with the governor to the province that night as we saw firsthand it was clear as the other eyewitnesses and the generals at the time but that was responsible as when the organizations like new america they are over exaggerated and the cia denied that took place. Of course we are going to get this dislocation between the public and private. Theres been a big question recently over whether the strikes should be transferred back. And i think all of this is kind of focusing on the question of oversight and accountability. Can be operations be overseen in pakistan and again in yemen i think the answer is fairly complicated when i put it to the former officials there is a is a lot of ambivalence about sending over the program. What we are talking about really is the special forces to carry out the operation in places like yemen and somalia there are two distinct issue one is the Senate Armed Services committee it doesnt have the clout of the Intelligence Commission has in congress. There is an obligation upon the cia to talk to the committees. If they choose not to tell them a great deal but it doesnt appear to be the same obligation on the example on the pentagon to help the Senate Armed Services and what theyve been up to and im told they get an awful lot less information. But its what theyve actually done in the field. We can look at those events and measure whether theres been accountability and transparency. And im sure you will recall there was a wedding strike a few years ago in yemen where the vehicles were bombed in december of 2013. Killed the other people as well. They said was targeted that phrase because there were a legitimate weapons in the group who were present. They had done two investigations into that if both of them came back and said that no civilians had died today. I guess nobody bothered to send them that particular memo. And i will review a brief strike only the terrorists had died in the attack and they were replaced within hours. A joint letter from the military commander of the government of all qaeda were the condolences of the Political Leadership did we come to you in solidarity they also offered 100 collections and 32 million in total compensation for the dead and injured. The government simply wouldnt back. They didnt kill civilians and they didnt do that accept in the situations they this wasnt something that could be dated lightly with their partners in the war on terror as well. And that the tech of consequences that went far beyond the targeting of the group of men on the dirt road on the december afternoon. It may have violated by causing the civilian loss disproportionate for the human rights watch. The two un experts noted that they cannot condemn the violation to the rightofway for the territory. And finally, the National Parliament had all u. S. Drought strikes in the similar sense from the parliament almost two years earlier. These individual strikes when they go wrong it is the absence of the accountability and transparency that has been the refusal to say we got it wrong which inflames the situations that lead syntax error and is becoming a strategic problem and to that undermines the terrorism and other policies in place. As i said earlier one of the things that i hope we try to do with the book is opened up what is happening in places like iraq and afghanistan. In those places theyve revolutionized as a story that hasnt been told that much. Drugs can be a very good thing. If we understand where they are in the battlefield we have information about that. One of the most perverse consequences in the cia progress bundled up with everything going on in the conventional battlefield as well. It shows for example that there are commissions and 29 out of 30 would be non connected in the operations. It shows that proportionately the number of foreign strikes is rising to about one in five. And it also helps to set the cia context. Literally weeks after they released that information they had a change of policy. They scrubbed all of the data from that website and reclassified the information. We did say at the time they could get that information if the freedom of information. I said yes chasing the pentagon until you cant have the state and now because we have it as being on held on the grounds of National Security much higher than the operation security but theyve been using previously. A really straightforward straightforward data that we do need to understand if it is going to make them on a regular battlefield now denied to us. If it is a National Security issue, that makes sense but the problem with that is the british. The british side by side with the americans using the germans in afghanistan. They follow americas lead, and the aim was to hide away the progress. It was a respectful move. An officer told me that they could put a screen around the protein and everybody just threw at it. They were off the battlefield. So they took it as a strategic decision to break away from the u. S. To become transparent or far more transparent. So we have a situation today where the british for example, will describe if you request to them the number of strikes that they carried out a number of civilians they killed and the british claim that is because they introduced on the battlefield with a cold for zero expectation of casualties which is a big difference from what the military was practicing in afghanistan from the understanding. We also know because while they used to use the much bigger bomb they stopped using them shortly after they killed two civilians and they had used them since when is that there is a question that the weapons that the british are using and the impact on the civilians and so on. Now all of this is in the public device and the british will release them whenever you ask them. It was introduced with weapons and the reason for this as i said earlier is because the whole program has become bundled up into this mess its difficult to disentangle by the regular military or the air combat command. When the air force talks about the patrol of the drones and in a 24 hour period simultaneously if bundles them together so that is another refusal to release information about the regular use. If you start telling one part of the story they are afraid that the whole thing will come unbundled but i think that is a disservice. One of the things in the book is having the opportunity to speak to many men and women past and present about their experiences. Very honorable men and women. Most are very proud of the work theyve done in the middle east but you might imagine. And that might be a good story to tell but its a story of the moment because of the secret drone or in the absence of accountability they cannot tell those stories and we also found the conundrums that are still there with us and we need that kind of information for the more difficult choices i guess. There was a report by doctor larry lewis in afghanistan using classified data, which suggests that the use of the drones in afghanistan by the order of the magnitude was likely to lead to more civilian deaths. Nobody i that i know can understand how that could be. If we are never going to be about to see that data on which he made his claims would hold because its going to be bundled up in the interest of the National Security. But that might really matter right now for the civilians on the ground in iraq and for example where they are striking almost every day there may be things we should be discussing. Its just that we havent had that opportunity. So maybe i will just leave it there and that gives you a sense of the subject. The question is what should be done because your book on short outlines the problems in the program. I mean, they are not going away. And in fact, it was a team using the drone in the base about three months ago and i dont think that it was manufactured and to sort of receded from iran so we are seeing an increase in the number of countries. So far the americans, british and israelis used to combat the chinese, the russians, the indians claimed that he had become but a lot of other countries are getting in the game. So looking forward what should we be thinking about in the United States or more generally as they proliferate in the ability for including perhaps nonstate actors. Cynic that is a really important point. One thing to touch on is the bug allergy. Out there that general view is the covert strikes and i have a great line from the officials who said we know we are out there and we are on our own on this and i was asking about the intelligence by the american allies. It was fascinating if they said they dont share it because of the closest allies view the strikes as unlawful. The lawfulness of the states is the primary point of engagement for the Public Discourse and for the government discourse. Within the United States is absent. Cynic just one exception to that. It became a matter of public debate in the country when we killed an american citizen, and are also lucky. They should have been hastert been very parochial about the deaths of american. This is a good example of it. That. So what did become the work of giving the kind of interesting idea about where you get the unlikely coalitions into this is an example where they basically said what do you do without the due process about the due process and the last was already opposed to this. So you write about this in the book. Is it a good thing or bad thing in the country or i think it is very new when you talk about i think ten americans have been killed so far. Only one is led to believe and i dont believe that for a moment. I think the only one that was accidentally targeted and the other night when you actually look at the evidence of the domain i would challenge this idea that they were not. What they often said they were not deliberately. Without any structure wasnt a deliberate target. Cynic. They actually put him in his early 20s and i think maybe they got it wrong. But that would be different if they delivered at the targeted but they didnt know his age. That is a distinct possibility that i think actually the polls just published this morning showing that even when theres a risk of killing americans in peace covert strikes, 47 defense of the public is in favor of them. The risk of civilians being killed in these clandestine strikes almost half would appear to be in favor of the strikes nevertheless. So, i am aware that whatever the question for the locality there is a huge support. It is whether they can send this off. There was one years ago called the gatekeeper about israel, which the interviews with the Israeli Security and one of the interviews in the former Intelligence Service said the difficult thing about the targeted killings is that this is easier to determine more and we ended up in the conveyor that problem of israel is that we no longer have to turn it off. And i think that is the challenge. The gatekeepers related to another kind of place that you make. So the big take away from the film is every one of them basically says we are winning every battle but we are losing the war one of the Big Questions is we are obviously winning every battle with the drones in a sense, but we seem to have lost the war in pakistan where the favorable views rf 9 . So that is very close to zero down from an average of about 20 . So come and yemen fighting to the jury as it is more out. There are people that object to the strikes but i havent seen the polling data may be because this doesnt exist. I know you did have been coming to the un and embracing the program. It was much more open and had a much more transparent approach and acknowledged the program and if you were going to pakistan again you would probably want to do it in the way. But unfortunately it is now a basket case. I think that there is a big question over the Strategic Effects of the drones. I think that they can be effective, they need to be part of a Broader Program and one of the things i keep coming back to in the book is too often in these strikes, the issues and the countries are reflected through a very narrow prism of u. S. Domestic counterterrorism issues which are very important and there is an organization that what he loses the nationbuilding. Its helping hoping the nations rebuild and reform themselves. I speak to diplomats and they say they were completely marginalized. He described them as being pushed aside by the cia. Of a his drama for those like pakistan. So im agreeing with you completely there is a famous kind of discussion where there was a disagreement between Hillary Clinton and leon panetta on basically who is in charge and it became very clear it wasnt in charge with whatever they thought. They thought they carry carried out the strike very next day. It was the day after he was released. Speculative giant sort of middle finger. So, going back to the question is looks like the program initially was to take out the leaders of al qaeda and it evolved into a sort of counterinsurgency overtime. And the administration tried to unscrew this to a degree with an average of a couple of dozen a year now. They gave the big speech. So has the administration gotten better and they they recognized a case which is obviously a mistake and it is indicative certainly but overall, you and i follow the strikes carefully and we both kind of agree it is close to zero now with some exceptions. But also characterize for us the Obama Administration and if it has changed why. You are absolutely right. As far as we know the number of civilian casualties has dropped. The reporting has reached that point now. There is a great thing going on. Afghanistan the regular war that happened according to the United Nations which looks at this very carefully for example, they could never get the civilian casualty just like everything they tried. So we should be expecting around 5 with all the things youre doing and that is good for air power. If you can get to the civilian casualties down that is probably a good thing and that is what we should be expecting in places like yemen and pakistan. The reporting probably puts it around something at the moment. But, what has the Obama Administration then thats different . It certainly improved the way that it carried the targeting. Theyve introduced to the effect of the similar lines of the british which are now here expectations of the casualties but not far off of that which is a good thing thing and its hoped neutralize a lot of criticism. But there are the client killings. I had an Interesting Exchange with an official through the campaign particularly in pakistan. There are certain people government once killed that are not really that much interest to the United States but the u. S. Has killed them anyway effectively. An example would be for example, you could say the successor was killed and the successor there was a brief talk in the u. S. They stopped fighting each other and every now and then we have these individual skill and i cannot seek that they are more opposed but theres an awful and vicious characters but i dont view them as enemies of the u. S. To u. S. To be killed anyway, and i think that we do get these acts. So i think a lot has changed but some of it has changed for the worst. Much to 2008. Was that a factor of the technology were the factor of i think that obama comes in and takes this there was no Legal Framework. They come in and create this Legal Framework and they clarify it and they make it hard to form and that is to be more problematic and i go back to `how do that quote how do you turn it off now when you are so used to doing the grasp of whether strategically this is actually achieved in the United States which is an end to these terrorist groups but that is a whole other question. If you look at the documents in these massive than those that have been reduced publicly, that he was very concerned about the program and was devastated and again there is no controversy that so how would you deal with that . Cynic you are absolutely right. There is an extraordinary problem saying get out of fatah. To one of the safest places in the world. To the richest country in the world. He was telling him because of the drones he fundamentally changed the ability to operate. It forced them when it started happening in 2004. It really doesnt exist anymore. And interesting that strikes were not aimed at al qaeda central they were aimed in the subcontinent which has been decimated. It didnt exist for more than three months. So, there is an efficacy particularly in pakistan. It is more of a problem because it is such a complex world in which we tend to frame al qaeda as an International Terrorist organization which they are in yemen. But they are also a faction within the present day so its very different from targeting al qaeda. Did you consider them in the book because thereve been drumsticks as well. I did. I was talking to. Com this morning. You may have the answer to this. Every time, i dont know what is different. I went through and every single telling they have done is pretty much on record with the record with press releases, so you can have transparency maybe they should have the drug strikes to thats an interesting question. So maybe they do control the strikes in the area. That would be the explanation. There is a big part of that. Under the first intervention in 2000 2009 we know that David Petraeus went to sit down with them. I have no affiliation. Do you know of or do you have contact with people in the branches of the American Government who are as knowledgeable as you whos on top of everything that is being done in all of the agencys . Are at their knowledgeable people that you recognize and can identify . I think that there is a high knowledge base. This is a form of warfare that is now in its 14th year. Back in october of 2001 they failed at its a very interesting story about the command and nobody knew what was going on. I tell the story of the general in charge. The one aircraft he didnt have control over was the single cia drone over kandahar and outside of his command chain it was ordered to attack not himself the building he was in the vehicle next to the building he escaped and fled and they couldnt get them in and time it was one of the disasters. And he told me that he basically threw a tantrum and decided he didnt get said that he didnt get control of it at that moment he was calling all of the aircraft come. There are lots of knowledgeable people within the different agencies and theres a realistic view of how they are used. I think that theres also quite a strong counter narrative within the cia and within the pentagon and special forces the final chapter is the critiques and its partly about how al qaeda is mostly failed but the critiques are every single voice is a form of business diplomats intelligence officials and the official politicians i wanted to do it that way to show that when we are critiqued it is a criticism from the fringes of the left but you will notice is that really fundamental strategic debate in the big agencies of government about what we should be doing and i think that we deserve to kind of focusing on that much more and realized the issues at stake are not peripheral areas until in a lot of the officials to recognize that. I am a recovering governing lawyer and ive been involved in oversight investigations of National Security and excessive secrecy so i salute the work that your book represents especially your efforts to be balanced and realistic. Ive got two questions related. One from a small empirical question any policy question. I have recalled i saw somewhere a highlevel official on or off the record being quoted in the press a couple of years ago saying that that weve that we would now be no longer do signature strikes and i gathered the strike at least as described as substantially affect nature so i was wondering if you could comment on that. The larger policy raised is the question of cia versus Defense Department control. I started to congressional oversight and for jimmy carter council for oversight of the community and help set up the two committees. I think that Intelligence Committee may be a little optimistic about their oversight is a little like gandhi asked if the civilization and said that would be nice. Is but my question is do either of you think of any strategic tactical operational reason why they should remain with the cia rather than the Defense Department other than the obvious of being easier for the government to keep things secret. Theyve gotten very good at killing. One of the problems we have when they go into yemen i spoke with plenty of special forces in the book and they all told me very rarely if ever when they were flying drones and operating this is fascinating to me is almost always intelligence they would even take them off to give them extra surveillance. In the and this in turn terms of information and operational parts over by changing their employment and then potentially we had these missions and they have kept getting it wrong in the killings and i just think they did and have constructors the network, the intelligence that the cia spent more than a decade building up so that is a uncomfortable inside of one argument would be simply cleaner at killing you might that you might want to consider that. But i go back to my plaintiff the idea that handing over will make a shred of difference to transparency or accountability is balancing its simply not going to make any difference. It can be worse because the command is a covert organization in theory it seemed like a good idea for that reason that is outlined and the fact that it might not make any difference in terms of the ability for the committees to review whats going on. Of anything in the Operations Director that is a very good point. The uri to you are right to pick up on that. There is a redefinition going on in the signature strikes. Nothing about the weinstein operation. Its any definition of the signature strikes that we have been running by for the last years. Signature strikes are understood to be targets of opportunity with the targeted operation with al qaeda and the continent and ive been really surprised to see it described as a signature strikes. It doesnt fit any modeling that weve seen around there. I dont know if you he would agree with that. By impression is that they had stopped and yes it is a little bit of a puzzle. This gentleman here. As an interested citizen much American Foreign policy in my lifetime has been legal. What would make this specifically illegal if we hadnt declared war but if you are at war you are trying to kill people so who is this illegal and some of the other operations have been considered legal . I was never from him and say my own view by the way is that they need to engage on this integer three is out until they do get to see the paperwork and get to rule on it but of course they have been blocked for. Time. But not all strikes of course are and you have the right to selfdefense. There is the issue. I truly cannot get my head around this. It was taken out of the operations. When president obama laid down his rules that strikes me as bizarre given that its one of your claims to legality. Can i suggest a possible answer to that . Because you get to the question of the Forest Protection of the troops and thats the reason that it became a lowlevel counterinsurgency air force because under the rules of engagement about the force protection, basically it is loose so its not about attacks on the United States coming out of al qaeda central. Thats where we have seen the targets of the drone strikes read so many of them come and that is the explanation because as you said they are not really a threat to the United States, so that explains that kind of question. But i dont think that they would argue that you have that have that right across the border. I mean i would agree with those on pakistan. Im not saying that its correct im saying that is the argument that is made. Spinnaker i am a lawyer and i represent several victims. I just want to drill down a little bit more if you dont mind on the cia versus the dod handling on this because again as a lawyer we have pushed for the handover of the locality ground and it sounds like its the only ground to push for that and it seems a bit of a grim picture because i dont want to push for that if its going to send results in more civilian deaths. So i mean is there as a practical matter if there isnt going to be a long oversight and if there isnt going to be more transparency, what would you suggest we push for . What should we be advocating for at this point . I am stumped by that question and i mentioned before because outside of the same subject, the gulf and i am not sure i mean one thing that wouldve made a huge difference is a shakeup of oversight whether it is in the Armed Services or the senate Intelligence Committee they have to stop being cheerleaders which is clearly what would come. There was a report last week describing. It was a few years back when she led the senate intelligence. She said the committee had done its utmost to check the Single Digits each year. I contacted every single Monitoring Organization and every Single International agency with the conducted studies in pakistan and civilian deaths and not one of them had ever been contacted by the oversight committee. So, whatever the utmost meant to the senate it didnt involve talking to the practitioners and experts to give them some oversight. It is an inward looking self inferential oversight system. [laughter] lets just step back for one second. This was the First Official to acknowledge that the program existed and now lots of american officials. So, i mean, there is a discussion in the public hearings about everything you said is true but there also had been a shift in 2011. No american official acknowledged it was even happening. About what death caused by International Forces one of the primary reasons was president picked up the fight every time civilians were killed and said this has to stop. One of the problems we had with pakistan was the government was complicit with the cia. It was in cahoots with the cia and it never picked up the phone because it was too busy covering up civilian deaths. That deep change for period and pakistanis are much more nuanced and tend to engage more so perhaps its only Public Opinion where you get to exert that pressure on the administrations but i still think the legal arguments will make a comeback. I think really someday the u. S. Is going to have to take on the legality of around the strikes otherwise it would be accepted that its setting a principle International Law that all nations are free to act like this. I dont believe that someone in the u. S. Would want to go there. Host heather. Thanks peter. Heather at america. To follow directly on from that the political argument you hear now quietly is well, maybe they dont work at a strategic level and maybe they are illegal. They keep the problem and if you really care about that International Law stuff that they keep the problem at a manageable level for an American Government so we can go ahead and do the other things we want to do in the world. And that is in some ways a breathtakingly cynical argument that if casualty numbers are really coming down its a much better argument and because its very very hard to point to concrete consequences of the legal gulf that you were describing and al qaeda is just one of many groups that have tried very hard to say look if we dont stop doing this its going to hurt in the world but you cant point so what in your reporting have you seen that leads you to think theres any legitimate argument you could make for that changing over time and it becoming less possible for the u. S. To sit on both sides of this . I mean that idea and that argument all the time that he keeps his suppressed when president obama was starting day air war in syria as im sure you will recall the use yemen as the model. This is the problem. Yemen has catastrophic consequences as is libya. We have gone in and no followup and not hitting the states directly on that but im simply saying none of the other stuff that should have should have been bubbled around that is going in. David cole colon was one of the architects of the surge in iraq. And david has described drone strikes for the Obama Administration as as addictive as cap net. In davids view and many counterinsurgency experts is there is this easy option. We are not taking the hard options. And we are storing up more and more to ourselves longterm. But also to go back to the battlefield of the cia conduct did back in 2002 killed an american and i say in the book theres a lot of evidence on the table suggesting that he was knowingly targeted terry at andy go back and you look at darwish at that time it was darwish that was on the fbis most wanted. It was not a rarity. The guardian read a story a few weeks ago in Yemen Special forces about to go in. I got a u. S. Marine stationed in djibouti to going in to special forces and dana priest Washington Post in 2010 ran a story saying the cia knew along along all along the darwish was there me kill them because they primary target was a career he. I think we do need to go back and look at that but the other thing and this is utterly fascinating. There was a the seventh person in the vehicle that day who survived and he was put on trial and a yemen court. It was a military court and he was found not guilty of terrorism charges. We are actually keeping individuals on the battlefield without due process, and we are not challenging them and we are not indicting. Theyre not going through the criminal justice system. We always assume their guilt. I do understand the arguments that this is war and not policing but then there was a time before targeted assassination before drone strikes will be had terrorism, what did we do . Again in the book i talk about the fbi was rolling up al qaeda in yemen in 2002. They were never informed that the cia was at that strike and an pakistan al qaeda have been destroyed in the cities and thats why they were in the tribal areas and the pakistanis couldnt get to them. So we tend to think of this very binary way back as always it doesnt have to be targeted killing but that is probably the liberal in me talking. Have you looked at the israeli Drone Program in any detail . The israelis are fascinating and i got grade engagement from a fairly senior, very senior legal official who drew out the framework of the israeli program. Theres a Supreme Court case in israel. A it would to the Supreme Court in 2006 at and israel pushed the idea and the ruling that they got in israel was interesting. It said targeted killings were neither lawful nor unlawful. Each had to be judged on its own merit. Thats a very solemn and neck neck. Thats actually good response response. You have to judge every single killing on its merit and judge according to the laws of war. Thats the israeli position. One of the best comments i got is the israelis are five or six killings into their targeted program in the second intifada when a general came and spoke and said is it legal which i thought was quite telling yet the israelis on paper have a much stronger position and they are astonished that the u. S. Has locked off the legal engagement on the issue of targeted killings. They are very surprised. There is new evidence of british abused our drones outside of the conventional war zone. The birds have been careful to stay away from targeted killings but having said that i think ultimately our drones are an assassination tool and fro