SALON

Thursday, Sep 20, 2012 6:00 PM UTC

Judges seem skeptical of CIA secrecy of drones

By

Topics: From the Wires,

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal appeals court judges Thursday questioned the CIA’s efforts to block information on the use of unmanned drones to kill suspected terrorists.

A lower court federal judge sided with the CIA last year and dismissed a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union seeking records about the use of drones. In response to an ACLU Freedom of Information Act request, the CIA had refused to confirm or deny the existence of responsive records.

At a hearing on its appeal of the lower court ruling, the ACLU told the three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Columbia that several high-ranking officials, from then-CIA Director Leon Panetta to President Barack Obama, have publicly acknowledged the use of drones.

The government has argued that such statements do not specifically refer to the CIA’s involvement in drones.

But Judge Merrick Garland cited a speech this year by President Barack Obama’s counterterrorism chief, John Brennan, in which Brennan said the government targets terrorists with drones, and uses the “full range” of the government’s intelligence capabilities.

“Isn’t that an official acknowledgment that the CIA is involved with the drone program?” asked Garland, an appointee of Democratic President Bill Clinton.

Stuart F. Delery, acting assistant attorney general, said Brennan’s statement wasn’t sufficient to tie the drone program to the CIA because the intelligence community has 17 agencies.

Garland said that the government was asking the court to say “the emperor has clothes, even when the emperor’s boss” says the emperor doesn’t have clothes.

Judge David Tatel, another Clinton appointee, asked about a 2010 comment that Panetta made to ABC News when he was CIA director: “… the more we continue to disrupt al-Qaida’s operations, and we are engaged in the most aggressive operations in the history of the CIA in that part of the world, and the result is that we are disrupting their leadership.”

Delery replied that Panetta did not specifically mention drones.

The CIA initially refused to admit or deny that it had any relevant records and said that merely confirming the existence of material would reveal classified information. That refusal to confirm even the existence of a record is a Cold War-era legal defense known as the Glomar response after the Glomar Explorer, a ship built with secret CIA financing to try to raise a Soviet submarine from the ocean floor.

But Delery told the court that the government was no longer making that claim. He pointed to a declaration made in June by John Bennett, director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, in another FOIA case pending in New York City in which the ACLU is seeking information about the targeted killings of three U.S. citizens in Yemen.

In that declaration, Bennett said that in light of speeches made by senior U.S. officials on the subject of killing al-Qaida leaders, the CIA conducted a search for records responsive to the ACLU’s request in the New York case.

“Based on that search, it has determined that it can now publicly acknowledge that it possesses records responsive to the ACLU’s FOIA request,” he said. But he said the spy agency can’t provide the number, nature or categorization of those records without disclosing information protected under FOIA exemptions.

Delery said that the question of whether the CIA has documents on drones is “not where we’re drawing the line.”

ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer said in a telephone interview that the government has “repackaged” the same argument.

“They continue to take the position that they haven’t acknowledged the CIA uses drones to carry out targeted killings,” he said.

Judges questioned Jaffer on whether a statement made by Panetta was sufficient to tie the CIA to the drone program. The ACLU cited a comment Panetta made in response to question about drones at a public event, in which he said the “operations have been very effective because they have been very precise in terms of the targeting and it involved a minimum of collateral damage.”

But Tatel noted that the questioner had asked about the “president’s strategy” in using drones, not the CIA’s.

Jaffer responded that Panetta was CIA director at the time, and spoke throughout the event about the CIA.

The ACLU’s Freedom of Information Act request seeks documents describing the legal basis for using drones as well as ones with information on civilian casualties, among other things.

The use of American drones has provoked anger abroad, particularly in Pakistan, where human rights groups say innocent people have been victims.

___

Follow Fred Frommer on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ffrommer

More Frederic J. Frommer.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Journalists file suit against Manning's trial secrecy: Plaintiffs including Glenn Greenwald and Julian Assange demand press, public access to trial and documents
154 points155 points | comment
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
141 points142 points | 95 comments
vote
Report: Nearly a quarter of Americans struggle to afford food
137 points138 points | 12 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
127 points128 points | 43 comments
vote
Ted Cruz against the world - How the Junior Senator is igniting the GOP civil war
78 points79 points | 19 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations