Drone Strikes: Despite Administration Promises, Few Signs of Change in Drone Wars

By MARK MAZZETTI and MARK LANDLER

There were more drone strikes in Pakistan last month than any month since January. Three missile strikes were carried out in Yemen in the last week alone. And after Secretary of State John Kerry told Pakistanis on Thursday that the United States was winding down the drone wars there, officials back in Washington quickly contradicted him.

More than two months after President Obama signaled a sharp shift in America’s targeted-killing operations, there is little public evidence of change in a strategy that has come to define the administration’s approach to combating terrorism. Most elements of the drone program remain in place, including a base in the southern desert of Saudi Arabia that the Central Intelligence Agency continues to use to carry out drone strikes in Yemen. In late May, administration officials said that the bulk of drone operations would shift to the Pentagon from the C.I.A. But the C.I.A. continues to run America’s secret air war in Pakistan, where Mr. Kerry’s comments underscored the administration’s haphazard approach to discussing these issues publicly. During a television interview in Pakistan on Thursday, Mr. Kerry said the United States had a “timeline” to end drone strikes in that country’s western mountains, adding, “We hope it’s going to be very, very soon.”

But the Obama administration is expected to carry out drone strikes in Pakistan well into the future. Hours after Mr. Kerry’s interview, the State Department issued a statement saying there was no definite timetable to end the targeted killing program in Pakistan, and a department spokeswoman, Marie Harf, said, “In no way would we ever deprive ourselves of a tool to fight a threat if it arises.” Micah Zenko, a fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, who closely follows American drone operations, said Mr. Kerry seemed to have been out of sync with the rest of the Obama administration in talking about the drone program. “There’s nothing that indicates this administration is going to unilaterally end drone strikes in Pakistan,” Mr. Zenko said, “or Yemen for that matter.” The mixed messages of the past week reveal a deep-seated ambivalence inside the administration about just how much light ought to shine on America’s shadow wars. Even though Mr. Obama pledged a greater transparency and public accountability for drone operations, he and other officials still refuse to discuss specific strikes in public, relying instead on vague statements about “ongoing counterterrorism operations.” Some of those operations originate from a C.I.A. drone base in the southern desert of Saudi Arabia — the continued existence of which encapsulates the hurdles to changing how the United States carries out targeted-killing operations. The Saudi government allowed the C.I.A. to build the base on the condition that the Obama administration not acknowledge that it was in Saudi Arabia. The base was completed in 2011, and it was first used for the operation that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical preacher based in Yemen who was an American citizen. Given longstanding sensitivities about American troops operating from Saudi Arabia, American and Middle Eastern officials say that the Saudi government is unlikely to allow the Pentagon to take over operations at the base — or for the United States to speak openly about the base. Spokesmen for the White House and the C.I.A. declined to comment. Similarly, military and intelligence officials in Pakistan initially consented to American drone strikes on the condition that Washington not discuss them publicly — a bargain that became ever harder to honor when the United States significantly expanded American drone operations in the country. There were three drone strikes in Pakistan last month, the most since January, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which monitors such strikes. At the same time, the number of strikes has declined in each of the last four years, so in that sense Mr. Kerry’s broader characterization of the program was accurate. But because the drone program remains classified, administration officials are loath to discuss it in any detail, even when it is at the center of policy discussions, as it was during Mr. Obama’s meeting in the Oval Office on Thursday with President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi of Yemen. After their meeting, Mr. Obama and Mr. Hadi heaped praise on each other for cooperating on counterterrorism, though neither described the nature of that cooperation. Mr. Obama credited the setbacks of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or A.Q.A.P., the terrorist network’s affiliate in Yemen, not to the drone strikes, but to reforms of the Yemeni military that Mr. Hadi undertook after he took office in February 2012. And Mr. Hadi twice stressed that Yemen was acting in its own interests in working with the United States to root out Al Qaeda, since the group’s terrorist attacks had badly damaged Yemen’s economy. “Yemen’s development basically came to a halt whereby there is no tourism, and the oil companies, the oil-exploring companies, had to leave the country as a result of the presence of Al Qaeda,” Mr. Hadi said. Asked specifically about the recent increase in drone strikes in Yemen, the White House spokesman, Jay Carney, said: “I can tell you that we do cooperate with Yemen in our counterterrorism efforts. And it is an important relationship, an important connection, given what we know about A.Q.A.P. and the danger it represents to the United States and our allies.” Analysts said the administration was still grappling with the fact that drones remained the crucial instrument for going after terrorists in Yemen and Pakistan — yet speaking about them publicly could generate a backlash in those countries because of issues like civilian casualties. That fear is especially pronounced in Pakistan, where C.I.A. drones have become a toxic issue domestically and have provoked anti-American fervor. Mr. Kerry’s remarks seemed to reflect those sensitivities. “Pakistan’s leaders often say things for public consumption which they don’t mean,” said Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United States. “It seems that this was one of those moments where Secretary Kerry got influenced by his Pakistani hosts.” Congressional pressure for a public accounting of the drone wars has largely receded, another factor allowing the Obama administration to carry out operations from behind a veil of secrecy. This year, several senators held up the nomination of John O. Brennan as C.I.A. director to get access to Justice Department legal opinions justifying drone operations. During that session, Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, delivered a nearly 13-hour filibuster, railing against the Obama administration for killing American citizens overseas without trial. For all that, though, the White House was able to get Mr. Brennan confirmed by the Senate without having to give lawmakers all the legal memos. And, in the months since, there has been little public debate on Capitol Hill about drones, targeted killing and the new American way of war.