Latest in Covert Action
The estimable Mark Mazzetti---the New York Times national security reporter who wrote the story over the weekend that prompted the outing-CIA-officers flap---writes in with the following note in response to
This morning, Jack published an interview he conducted yesterday with New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet about the paper's decision the other day to publish the names of three covert CIA officers.
On April 25, two days after President Obama announced that a U.S. drone strike accidentally killed two innocent hostages, Mark Mazzetti and Matt Apuzzo published a story in the New York Times about congressional and White House support for the CIA’s “targeted killing program.” A major point in the story was that some of the CIA officers who built the CIA’s drone program also led the CIA’s detention and interrogation program.
Director of National Intelligence General Counsel Bob Litt says the NYT “disgraced itself” by “publishing an article in which it purported to name three covert CIA officers.” The article in question identified the “chief of operations during the birth of the agency’s detention and interrogation program [who] then, as head of the C.I.A.
[Update: Ryan Goodman has an excellent post here noting that a January 2013 WaPo article anticipated that CIA would get a waiver for Pakistan ops, albeit not necessarily a waiver specific only to the imminent-threat-to-US-persons rule.]
Yesterday the President acknowledged that the United States inadvertently killed an American citizen and an Italian citizen held hostage by al-Qaida. The killings, he said, took place during “a U.S.
Breaking news from the New York Times:
Published by University of Texas Press (2013)
Reviewed by Julius Taranto
For the past couple of weeks, a Saudi-led coalition has been engaged in a substantial air campaign against Houthi forces in Yemen.
The Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI) has released a new report that documents civilian casualties caused by U.S. drone strikes in Yemen.