The Assassination Complex

Inside the Government's Secret Drone Warfare Program

Jeremy Scahill, The Staff of The Intercept

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781501144158
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Terrorism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

"A searing, facts-driven indictment of America's drone wars and their implications for US democracy and foreign policy. A must-read for concerned citizens" ( Library Journal, starred review) from bestselling author Jeremy Scahill and his colleagues at the investigative website The Intercept. Drones are a tool, not a policy. The policy is assassination. But drone strikes often kill people other than the intended target. These deaths, which have included women and children, dwarf the number of actual combatants who have been assassinated by drones. They have generated anger toward the United States among foreign populations and have even become a recruiting tool for jihadists.The first drone strike outside a declared war zone was conducted more than twelve years ago, but it was not until May 2013 that the White House released a set of standards and procedures for conducting such strikes. However, there was no explanation of the internal process used to determine whether a suspect should be killed without being indicted or tried, even if that suspect is an American citizen. The implicit message of the Obama administration has been: Trust, but don't verify. The Assassination Complex reveals stunning details of the government's secretive drone warfare program based on documents supplied by a confidential source in the intelligence community. These documents make it possible to begin the long-overdue debate about the policy of drone warfare and how it is conducted. The Assassination Complex allows us to understand at last the circumstances under which the US government grants itself the right to sentence individuals to death without the established checks and balances of arrest, trial, and appeal—"readers will be left in no doubt that drone warfare affronts morality and the Constitution" ( Kirkus Reviews ).

INDEX

A note about the index: The pages referenced in this index refer to the page numbers in the print edition. Clicking on a page number will take you to the ebook location that corresponds to the beginning of that page in the print edition. For a comprehensive list of locations of any word or phrase, use your reading system’s search function.

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations.

ABC News, 185

Abizaid, John, 115

advance force operations (AFOs), 49, 50

Afghanistan, 4

civilian casualties in, 9, 65, 98, 156–57, 168–69, 170–71, 174–75, 174

as declared war zone, 10

killing of local insurgents in, 5

Obama’s policies on, 4, 42, 60, 182

objectives in, 172–73

and USAID vetting, 24

use of cell-site simulators in, 126

war logs and, xi

see also Operation Haymaker

Africa:

drone and surveillance network in, 44, 86–93, 88–89, 121

see also Camp Lemonnier; Djibouti; Ethiopia; Somalia

Africa Command, U.S. (Africom), 60, 82, 86–87, 90

Agadez, Niger, 87

Agency for International Development, U.S. (USAID), 24

Air Force, U.S.:

initiative to explore arming drones launched by, 79

major satellite provider awarded contract by, 82

Operation Haymaker and, 165

Ramstein satellite station and, 71–72

Airhandler (collection platform), 81, 126

airstrikes, 175

effects of, on Taliban, 169, 170

Karzai ban on, 170

al Qaeda:

and Abdulrahman Awlaki, 47, 67

Anwar al Awlaki linked to, 60

in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), 27, 30, 43, 44, 67, 101, 102

and Berjawi, 136, 138, 139, 142, 143, 145–46

in “conference call of doom” story, xiii

hostages killed ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Preface
• Foreword: Elected by Circumstance
• The Drone Legacy
• Death and the Watchlist
• Why I Leaked the Watchlist Documents
• Find, Fix, Finish
• The Kill Chain
• The Heart of the Drone Maze
• Target Africa
• Death by Metadata
• Firing Blind
• Stingrays at Home
• The Life and Death of Objective Peckham
• Manhunting in the Hindu Kush
• Afterword: War Without End
• Acknowledgments
• The Documents
• Contributors
• About the Intercept and First Look Media
• Notes
• Glossary
• Image Credits
• Index
• Copyright