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The Obama administration released a redacted version of President Barack Obama's once-secret policy on drone strikes Saturday that provides the clearest-ever picture of how the National Security Council, a body protected from scrutiny, approves strikes and detentions, following a freedom of information lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The release of the 18-page Presidential Policy Guidance document, as well as other Department of Defense papers, follows an order by a U.S. District Court judge in February requiring the Justice Department to disclose the document, also known as "the Playbook."
It sets out the law and rules the government must follow when carrying out targeted killings and the capture of terrorist suspects abroad. The NSC provides a legal review of “all operational plans,” decided by the CIA and the Pentagon, and can nominate people to the “kill list.”
“One of the really striking things about this document is the central role that the NSC is apparently playing, both in programmatic decisions about the drone campaign and in the so-called nominating process,” said Jameel Jaffer, who lead the ACLU lawsuit, to The Guardian.
The nearly 400-staff NSC is not approved by the Senate, is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act and from testifying before Congress, according to The Guardian.
The NSC cabinet body also advises on how to conduct surveillance, who can be targeted other than “high value targets” and how those strikes would impact “regional or international political interests.” Sections describing the process behind these so-called “signature strikes” against those deemed to be targets based off of surveillance intelligence is largely redacted.
"The Obama administration's disclosures are welcome but they only tell part of the story and obscure disturbing practices,” said Naureen Shah, Amnesty International's U.S. director for security and human rights. “We still know extremely little about the standards that would govern signature strikes and so-called rescuer strikes, which have involved potentially unlawful killings."
The administration has defended its use of drones as essential in fighting al-Qaida and other militants in countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen. Following intense pressure, Obama released a count of how many civilians died from drone strikes—between 64 and 116—a figure argued by human rights groups to be deceptively low.
In an ACLU press release, Jaffer said the documents are telling of a process that will be handed down to the next president, but the statement goes on to say that, ”questions remain about where the PPG applies, whether the president has waived its requirements in particular instances, and how the PPG’s relatively stringent standards can be reconciled with the accounts of eye witnesses, journalists, and human rights researches who have documented large numbers of bystander casualties.”
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