"Even given the significant public interest in enforcing criminal laws that protect our national security, seeking toll records associated with media organizations is undertaken only after all other reasonable alternative investigative steps have been taken," Cole wrote.

After a "comprehensive investigation" by the Justice Department, the letter continues, the DOJ decided to subpoena the records. "The subpoenas were limited to a reasonable period of time and did not seek the content of any calls," Cole continued. "In addition, these records have been closely held and reviewed solely for the purposes of this ongoing criminal investigation. The records have not been and will not be provided for use in any other investigations."

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These kind of stories will continue for one big, if unstated, reason: robotic warfare seems to hold the promise of making many things easier, cheaper and less risky, at least for the countries that operate the drones. But the operative word is "seems," for drones involve a problematic illusion that distorts our perception of the risks we face.

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Wednesday's ad hoc drone hearing, called by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, is a dim flicker of light shed against dense shadows surrounding the Obama administration's lethal drone strike program. While lawmakers including Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., have made dubious claims about the precision of drone strikes and limited civilian casualties, and while CIA Director John Brennan has vowed that reports of civilian death are seriously investigated, rarely is testimony from those who've seen the first hand plight of drone struck regions heard on Capitol Hill. Written and video testimony was released to Salon in advance of the hearing.

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In the exclusive conversation below, Al-Muslimi tells Salon about the drone strikes’ devastating toll on Yemeni civilians and how the current U.S. counterterrorism policy in Yemen is like “reading from a manual '10 Steps on How to Lose a War.'”

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“High on the Job,” Center for Investigative Reporting

Ever had one of those days at work when one little mistake sends things spiraling out of control? This happened to Michael Montgomery, a reporter for KQED (the public TV station in San Francisco) and the Center for Investigative Reporting, when he inadvertently got a little too close to the story he was covering.

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Whether the Senate hearing will yield answers to crucial questions about Obama's drone wars is unclear. Witnesses scheduled to testify include retired Gen. James Cartwright of United States Marine Corp; activist and journalist Farea Al-Muslimi of Sana’a, Yemen; Peter Bergen, director of the National Security Studies Program at the New America Foundation; and a number of legal experts. Although the Senate committee tried to have a witness appear from the Justice Department, this request was denied.

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The top-secret intelligence reports reveal, as one expert with the Council on Foreign Relations told McClatchy, that the administration is “misleading the public about the scope of who can legitimately be targeted.” It is not clear who leaked the documents to McClatchy for review.

Via McClatchy:

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According to Amnesty International, Saudi Arabia is scheduled to execute seven men on Tuesday for crimes committed when they were under 18-years-old. The men, sentenced to death in 2009 for armed robbery, have been "beaten, denied food and water, deprived of sleep, forced to remain standing for 24 hours and then forced to sign 'confessions'," according to Amnesty.

As Reuters noted, the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a 2006 report that it was "deeply alarmed" at the imposition of capital punishment by Saudi judges for crimes committed before the age of 18.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch has decried the executions in recent years in Yemen of 15 male and female offenders aged under 18 when they committed their offenses. "The New-York-based group also called on the president, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, to reverse the execution orders of three juveniles on death row, whose appeals have been exhausted," the Guardian reported.

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Consider: while four American citizens are known to have been killed by drones in the past decade, the strikes have killed anestimated total of 2,600 to 4,700 people over the same period.

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The Times told of a Muslim cleric in Yemen named Salem Ahmed bin Ali Jaber, standing in a village mosque denouncing al-Qaida. It was a brave thing to do — a respected tribal figure, arguing against terrorism. But two days later, when he and a police officer cousin agreed to meet with three al-Qaida members to continue the argument, all five men — friend and foe — were incinerated by an American drone attack. The killings infuriated the village and prompted rumors of an upwelling of support in the town for al-Qaida, because, the Times reported, “such a move is seen as the only way to retaliate against the United States.”

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Later in the hearing, Brennan rejected claims that drone strikes were provoking a backlash of anti-American sentiment. He said citizens are instead grateful to be rescued from the grip of al-Qaida. But commentators have been swift to challenge Feinstein's claims based on contradicting open-source reports and studies. As both the Washington Post and the Guardian note, civilian death numbers are difficult to tabulate with certainty (indeed, the very question of how the administration categorizes "civilian" or "enemy combatant" is in itself contentious). Suffice to say that Feinstein's "single digits" comments stands at odds with others' findings.

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"Anti-gun"? I could've brought up my own recreational gun use, or even brought out the firing range pass I carry in my wallet. But I'll admit that I've lost a little of my taste for it as our national killing spree continues unabated. What's more, that would've been disrespectful to the millions of Americans who do have an understandable aversion to guns. Personal habits should have no part in a rational policy discussion.

Now that President Obama has made his initial gun control proposals, the crazy's being ratcheted up to a new level. Rational Americans in all walks of life will be confronted with these kinds of arguments. We're going to need a playbook. Here are 12 responses you can use when you're confronted with some of the standard illogical, irrational and emotionally overheated statements that gun extremists use.

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As Salon reported last year when Emmerson first announced the U.N. project, the human rights attorney told a Harvard conference that his team would be weighing up evidence as to whether the Obama administration was guilty of war crimes. He said:

[It is] alleged that since President Obama took office at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims and more than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. [U.N. consultant, professor of human rights] Christof Heyns … has described such attacks, if they prove to have happened, as war crimes. I would endorse that view.

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But on Tuesday Yemen's human rights minister criticized drone strikes as a counterterror tactic. "I am in favor of changing the anti-terrorism strategy. I think there are more effective strategies," said cabinet minister and former anti-Saleh activist Hooria Mashhour. "We're committed to fighting terrorism but we're calling for changing the means and strategies ... These means and strategies can be applied on the ground without harming civilians and without leading to human rights violations," she told Reuters.

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It has been well-established in reports (like those from the Washington Post's Greg Miller) that the Obama administration has set up a national security apparatus ensuring, contra the president's words Monday, a perpetual war. Obama's speech may have been referring to the withdrawal of troops form Iraq or the winding down of U.S. military leadership in Afghanistan, but an increasingly militarized CIA and the perpetuation of shadow wars in Yemen and Somalia, to name just two, let alone the U.S. funds and arms sent around the world to bolster or undermine regimes as U.S. interests dictate, make talk of ending war a semantic gamble at best.

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As Kevin Gosztola pointed out, the attacks highlight how drone technology have put an end to traditional American ceasefires over Christmas:

There was no ceasefire from the Obama administration during the holiday. In fact, it appears they waited until Christmas Eve on purpose to conduct a couple strikes as there had not been action in the covert drone war in Yemen for well over a month.

In earlier wars, there may have been some kind of a truce because most of the soldiers and their families would be celebrating Christmas, however, characteristic of drone warfare, the drone pilots who carried out the order to fire upon suspected militants were nowhere near the area of the strike. They were completely detached and, depending on where they were when they directed the flying killer robot to attack, they were likely able to go home and see their family on Christmas Eve.

As Reuters noted, the Christmas strikes "were the first in almost two months by pilotless aircraft against suspected al-Qaida men in Yemen" where the U.S. has escalated its shadow war over the past year.

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10 Minutes – Length of time Adam Lanza was shooting

90 (more than) – Number of bullets shot

38 – Number of mass shootings in 2012

$50,000 – Average cost of medical treatment per homicide shooting victim

$2.3 Billion – Total lifetime medical costs for gunshot injuries (as of 1999)

$6 Million – Those medical costs per day

49 Percent – Amount of those lifetime medical costs paid by taxpayers

20 Percent – Number of gun owners with 65 percent of the firearms in the U.S.

36,000 – Number of guns thrown away each year

16,808,538 – Number of applications to purchase guns in the U.S. from January – November 2012 from legal dealers (does not include gun shows or private sales)

5X – Amount this could arm every NATO member state’s armed forces

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According to Ackerman, "It’s a sign that the U.S. is upgrading the hardware it gives the Yemeni military, and digging in for a long shadow war." The few dozen Light Observation Aircraft will be flown by Yemenis trained by U.S. forces. "The planes have to be configured so the U.S. can teach Yemenis how to be their own eyes in the sky, and they need to be in Yemen in under 24 months," reported Ackerman, noting that the aircraft will be used in Yemen alongside, not instead of, remotely operated U.S. drones to fly over areas where al-Qaida is believed to be operating.

Ackerman added:

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The proposal by CIA Director David H. Petraeus would bolster the agency’s ability to sustain its campaigns of lethal strikes in Pakistan and Yemen and enable it, if directed, to shift aircraft to emerging al-Qaeda threats in North Africa or other trouble spots, officials said.

According to the WaPo's official source, if Petraeus' request is fulfilled, the move would "extend the spy service’s decade-long transformation into a paramilitary force." Indeed, the CIA's drone program has developed extensively and controversially in recent years. As Salon noted, a recent study found that the agency's strikes in Pakistan were "counter-productive" and terrorized civilians. Meanwhile, as WaPo noted Thursday, the "campaign of U.S. airstrikes in Yemen has heated up," with 35 strikes by the spy agency this year.

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The Yemeni officials said the killing bore the hallmarks of an al-Qaida attack, but it was too early to determine if the group was behind it. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Anti-American violence in the Middle East has spiked over the past month, most of it triggered by an anti-Islam video made privately in the United States. On September 11 in the Libyan city of Benghazi, U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans - including two former Navy SEALs - were killed in what U.S. administration officials now describe as an act of terrorism. There is some debate about whether the attack was related to protests about the film or whether it was a premeditated attack unrelated to the film.

The latest attack in Yemen, however, may be more tied to domestic tensions. The assassination resembles other attacks targeting Yemeni intelligence, military and security officials in retaliation for a wide military offensive by Yemen's U.S.-backed government against al-Qaida's branch in the country.

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