US releases guidelines for lethal drone strikes

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama must approve operational plans to target overseas terror suspects with drones or other weapons outside war zones, but in some cases does not sign off on specific strikes, according to newly declassified administration guidelines.

In addition to setting out the role of the president, the guidelines emphasize the importance of “verifying” the identity of high value targets, even as they outline the criteria and legality of striking unidentified others when “necessary to achieve U.S. policy objectives.”

The guidelines provide rules for targeting U.S. citizens abroad, and include lengthy guidance on what to do with captured terror suspects. “In no event,” the document says, “will additional detainees be brought to the detention facilities at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.”

The 18-page top secret document was declassified and released late Friday, with relatively minor redactions, in response to a federal court order. At the time Obama signed the guidelines, in May 2013, the administration released a brief “fact sheet” on procedures and criteria for such operations that were drawn from the classified version.

Those rules included “near certainty” that the terrorist target was present, and that no civilians would

be injured or killed; that the target posed a “continuing and imminent” threat to U.S. persons; that capture was not feasible; and all relevant domestic and international laws were obeyed.

Since then, the president has made clear that he anticipates the more detailed, newly-declassified procedures will govern future administrations. “My hope is, is that by the time I leave office, there is not only an internal structure in place that governs these standards that we’ve set, but there is also an institutionalized process” to increase transparency and oversight of lethal action outside war zones abroad.

There is no legal requirement that Obama’s successors adhere to the same rules. But administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity about internal discussions, have said that compilation of the guidelines, and making them public, will restrain other presidents.

“The president has emphasized that the U.S. government should be as transparent as possible with the American people about our counterterrorism operations, the manner in which they are conducted, and their results,” National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said of the new release.

But despite its pledges of transparency, the administration has waited until Obama’s waning months in office to release detailed information on drone and other lethal air strikes. Last month, it published aggregate numbers on how many civilians have been killed by CIA and military strikes in Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia and Libya.

The numbers — 64 to 116 civilians and 2,372 and 2,581 “combatants” in 473 strikes taken in countries where the United States is not at war — were challenged by non-government groups as discounting many more civilian deaths. The figures do not include actions in the war zones of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

The newly released document was the subject of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in the fall of 2013. The administration, on the basis of “presidential communications” privilege, had denied the ACLU’s petition for its release under the Freedom of Information Act.