John Brennan, the White House candidate to head the CIA, Thursday defended the use of drone strikes against terrorists around the world, saying they were the last resort to defend US security. Brennan, the chief counterterrorism advisor to President Barack Obama and architect of the drone strategy, was grilled before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that oversees the CIA and other national security agencies.
Approval by the full Senate is necessary for Brennan to take the position. He would replace retired General David Petraeus, who resigned last year in disgrace over an extramarital affair. The beginning of the hearing was disrupted by protesters who called Brennan a killer, and he answered them in his testimony.
"I think they really have a misunderstanding of what we do as a government and the care we take and the agony that we go through to make sure that we do not have any collateral injuries and deaths," Brennan said, referring to the protesters. The CIA and the Pentagon both use armed drones in foreign countries, but unlike the military, the Central Intelligence Agency does not need permission of the government involved.
In repeated strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, drones have killed innocent bystanders, provoking outrage within local communities and national governments. Critics, including retired top level US military officers and human rights advocates, say their increasing use in the Obama administration has provoked a grassroots backlash against the United States.
Estimates vary of the number of civilians killed, which have increased several fold since Obama took office in 2009. The New York Times reported that in Yemen, 80 civilians were among the 400 people killed by drones since 2009. In her opening remarks, committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein said the number of civilians killed each year has "typically been in the single digits."
Overall, counting civilians and targeted terrorists, more than 300 drone attacks killed nearly 3,000 people during Obama's first term, according to The Washington Post. Brennan denied charges that he believed killing terrorist suspects was better than capturing and interrogating them, saying "we only take such actions as a last resort to save lives." Senator Susan Collins was sceptical, and wondered if there was a direct correlation between Obama's ban on CIA torture of terrorist suspects used during the previous administration and the rising use of drones. "I can say unequivocally, senator, that there's never been occasion that I'm aware of where we had the opportunity to capture a terrorist and we didn't and we decided to take a lethal strike," Brennan said, denying a link to the end of harsh interrogation tactics.
Brennan, 57, spent 25 years in the CIA before becoming the first director of the National Counterterrorism Centre in 2004. His name was already in the running in 2009 for the CIA post, but he stepped back amid charges that he had tolerated the torture tactics and black CIA-operated prisons that became so infamous under the Bush administration. The lack of transparency in the drone programme, seen in the insistence of the White house on keeping secret its formal legal justification for it, offended and worried the senators.
They saw parallels in the Bush administration's secret detention centres and torture tactics, and were especially critical of the Obama administration's justification of killing US citizens abroad who are terrorist suspects.
Senator Ron Wyden wanted to know how much evidence the president needs "to decide that a particular American can be lawfully killed." Just hours before the hearing opened, Obama yielded to demands that he turn over a classified legal document that justifies the drone policy - a move that Feinstein said was the first time since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that the oversight committee had received such a document. Frustrated by the lack of information about programmes it must oversee, the committee in December adopted a 6,000-page classified report on its own years-long investigation into controversial interrogation techniques by the CIA during the Bush years.
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