The Foreign Service Journal, June 2017

34 JUNE 2017 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL He instituted this prohibition after investigations by the Church Committee (the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, chaired by Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho) and the Pike Committee (its House counterpart, chaired by Rep. Otis G. Pike, D-N.Y.) had revealed the extent of the Central Intelligence Agency’s assassina- tion operations against foreign leaders in the 1960s and 1970s. With a few exceptions, the next several presidents upheld the ban. But in 1986, President Ronald Reagan ordered an attack on Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi’s home in Tripoli, in retali- ation for the bombing of a nightclub in Berlin that killed a U.S. serviceman and two German citizens and injured 229. In just 12 minutes, American planes dropped 60 tons of U.S. bombs on the house, though they failed to kill Gaddafi. Twelve years later, in 1998, President Bill Clinton ordered the firing of 80 cruise missiles on al-Qaida facilities in Afghanistan and Sudan, in retaliation for the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The Clinton administration jus- tified the action by asserting that the proscription against assassination did not cover individuals whom the U.S. government had deter- mined were connected to terrorism. Days after al-Qaida car- ried out its Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, President George W. Bush signed an intelligence “finding” allow- ing the Central Intelligence Agency to engage in “lethal covert operations” to kill Osama bin Laden and destroy his terrorist network. White House and CIA lawyers argued that this order was constitutional on two grounds. First, they embraced the Clinton administration’s position that E.O. 11905 did not preclude the United States’ taking action against terrorists. More sweepingly, they declared that the ban on political assassination did not apply during wartime. Send in the Drones The Bush administration’s wholesale rejection of the ban on targeted killing or political assassinations reversed a quarter-cen- tury of bipartisan U.S. foreign policy. It also opened the door to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to conduct targeted killings (a euphemism for assassinations). The U.S. Air Force had been flying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), since the 1960s, but only as unmanned surveillance platforms. Following 9/11, however, the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency weaponized “drones” (as they were quickly dubbed) to kill both leaders and foot soldiers of al-Qaida and the Taliban. The United States set up bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan for that purpose, but after a series of drone attacks that killed civilians, including a large group gathered for a wedding, the Pakistani government ordered in 2011 that the U.S. drones and U.S. military personnel be removed from its Shamsi Air Base. However, targeted assassinations continued to be conducted in Pakistan by drones based outside the country. In 2009, President Barack Obama picked up where his predecessor had left off. As public and congressional concern increased about the use of aircraft controlled by CIA and military operators located 10,000 miles away from the people they were ordered to kill, the White House was forced to officially acknowl- The MQ-9 Reaper, a combat drone, in flight. Inset: Members of the New York Air National Guard’s 1174th Fighter Wing Maintenance Group place chalks on a MQ-9 Reaper after it returned from a winter training mission at Wheeler Sack Army Airfield, Fort Drum, N.Y., Feb. 14, 2012. WIKIMEDIACOMMONS/RICKYBEST The Bush administration’s wholesale rejection of the ban on targeted killing opened the door to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to conduct targeted killings.