[Peace-discuss] TBIJ: No evidence Congressional committee does ‘utmost’ to follow up drone civilian death claims

[Robert Naiman]

Feinstein: "lawmakers have closely monitored the intelligence
community’s management of the drone program."
- "White House move to let Pentagon take over CIA armed drones sparks
concern," Carlo Muñoz, The Hill, 03/24/13

Really?

http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2013/02/27/no-evidence-congressional-committee-does-utmost-to-follow-up-drone-civilian-death-claims/

No evidence Congressional committee does ‘utmost’ to follow up drone
civilian death claims
February 27th, 2013 | by Chris Woods

Claims by a powerful Senate oversight committee that it is doing its
‘utmost’ to verify claims of civilian casualties from covert US drone
strikes have been undermined by the discovery that it has made no
contact with any group conducting field studies into civilian deaths
in Pakistan.

On February 7 the CIA’s director-designate John Brennan was questioned
by members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

In her opening remarks, chair Dianne Feinstein insisted that civilian
deaths from US covert strikes ‘each year has typically been in the
single digits’.

Feinstein also said that ‘for the past several years, this committee
has done significant oversight of the government’s conduct of targeted
strikes’ and had done its ‘utmost to confirm’ civilian casualty data
provided by the executive branch.

However, the Bureau can find no indication that either the House or
Senate intelligence committees have sought evidence from beyond the US
intelligence community, when following up claims of civilian deaths.
[...]
Professor Sarah Knuckey, who co-led the recent field investigation by
New York and Stanford universities into the Pakistan strikes,
confirmed that her team has never been contacted by any US government
official, or Congressional oversight committee member or aide.

‘US officials have stated that they have done their utmost to verify
civilian casualty numbers, and that they investigate and take
seriously reports of civilian harm. These public commitments are
welcome,’ Knuckey told the Bureau.

‘But if the commitments are serious, why haven’t officials followed up
with the organizations and journalists who investigated strikes and
collected information relevant to determining any civilian harm?’

Those concerns were echoed by Sarah Holewinski, executive director of
the Center for Civilians in Conflict. Thirty months after it issued
its ground-breaking report into civilian deaths, Holewinski said this
week that ‘we have never been contacted by Administration officials
about our research and analysis on the covert drone program.’

Lawyer Shahzad Akhbar, who heads Reprieve’s team in Pakistan, again
confirmed that no contact had been made, though he recalled a meeting
in late 2012 with then-acting US ambassador Richard Hoagland:
‘I give him further details of some other strikes that killed
civilians, and without looking at what I was giving him Hoagland
insisted that he checked the figure that morning and it was still in
single digits,’ said Akhbar.

Associated Press, which interviewed more than 80 civilian eyewitnesses
in the tribal areas for a major report in early 2012, confirmed that
no US officials had ever sought follow -up.

The Bureau’s managing editor Christopher Hird also noted that ‘We have
always been happy to share and discuss our findings with others
researching this subject, but in the two years of our work we have
never heard from either of these committees, or their staff.”
[...]
Sarah Holewinski of the Center for Civilians in Conflict is now urging
the Congressional oversight committees to be far more pro-active in
their approach – and far less dependent solely on the word of the CIA.

She noted that unlike in Afghanistan, investigations into reported
civilian deaths in US covert drone operations ‘are limited to overhead
surveillance, not collecting witness statements and digging in the
dirt for evidence of what happened or who exactly was killed.’

And Holewinski pointed to the risk of reliance on the Agency’s own
definitions of those it is killing which may not accord with
international law. Noting the CIA’s use of so-called signature strikes
against alleged militants, whose identity is unknown and who appear to
fit certain patterns of behaviour, Holewinski told the Bureau:
’There’s every reason to want to believe claims of such low civilian
casualties caused by drone strikes.’

‘But given obstacles to knowing precisely who was killed on the ground
and without real evidence to back up the claims, to believe officials’
claims would be an act of blind faith that isn’t fair to the civilians
suffering losses.’
[...]

-- 
Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org