Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins

by Andrew Cockburn

  The device was still being used to drop sensors: Nalty, op. cit., p. 27.

  In December 1968, John Foster told an interviewer: John S. Foster Jr., Transcript of Oral History Interview II by Dorothy Pierce, December 12, 1968, p. 6. http://www.lbjlibrary.net/assets/documents/archives/oral_histories/foster_j/Foster2.PDF.

  Though hailed as a momentous event: David Evans, “Sorting Out the Sorties,” Chicago Tribune, February 8, 1991.

  Intimations that something new: Richard H. Van Atta et al., “Transformation and Transition: DARPA’s Role in Fostering an Emerging Revolution in Military Affairs, vol. 2: Detailed Assessments” (Washington, DC: Institute for Defense Analyses, 2003).

  Pierre Sprey, a mathematical prodigy: Interview with Pierre Sprey, Washington, DC, October 19, 2013.

  In reality, an actual Soviet invasion: Jason Vest, “The New Marshall Plan,” InTheseTimes.com, April 2, 2001. http://inthesetimes.com/issue/25/09/vest2509.html.

  Warden, deeply immersed: Interview with John Warden, Washington, DC, June 1991.

  As for targets, he had developed what he called the “five rings” theory: Colonel John A. Warden III, “The Enemy as a System,” Airpower Journal (Spring 1995).

  Saddam’s name was erased: Rick Atkinson, Crusade: The Untold Story of the Gulf War (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1993), p. 64.

  Under “Expected results”: Ibid., p. 61.

  Earlier in 1990, he had coined the air force’s new motto: Fred Kaplan, The Insurgents (New York, Simon & Schuster, 2012), p. 49.

  As Lockheed publicists reported: Report to the Ranking Minority Member, Committee on Commerce, House of Representatives, “Operation Desert Storm, Evaluation of the Air Campaign,” Washington, DC, General Accounting Office GAO/NSIAD-97-1341997, June 1997, p. 26.

  Writing soon after the war, Perry celebrated: William J. Perry, “Desert Storm and Deterrence,” Foreign Affairs 70, no. 4 (Fall 1991): pp. 66–82.

  Andrew Marshall was quick to catch the wave: Barry D. Watts, “The Maturing Revolution in Military Affairs,” Washington, DC, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2011, p. 2.

  Deptula … took to print: David A. Deptula, Firing for Effect: Change in the Nature of Warfare, Defense and Airpower Series (Arlington, VA: Aerospace Education Foundation, 1995).

  “saved my ass”: Communication from the late Colonel Robert Brown, USAF.

  a diligent three-year investigation: General Accounting Office: Operation Desert Storm, Evaluation of the Air Campaign, GSO/NSIAD-97-134.

  Catchphrases such as “system of systems”: Admiral William A. Owen, “The Emerging U.S. System-of-Systems,” Strategic Forum 63 (February 1996), Washington, DC, National Defense University. http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA394313.

  “If we are able to view a strategic battlefield: Senate Budget Committee, Hearing on National Defense Budget in the New Century, February 12, 2001.

  Other high-ranking officers talked wistfully: Pelham G. Boyer, Robert S. Wood, eds., Strategic Transformation and Naval Power in the 21st Century (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 1998), p. 229.

  The Pentium III microprocessor: Information supplied by Dr. Herb Lin, National Research Council, March 1, 2013.

  This inherent problem was apparently lost on Cebrowski: Vice-Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski and John A. Garstka, “Net-Centric Warfare, Its Origin and Future,” Proceedings Magazine, U.S. Naval Institute, January 1998.

  Two Rand Corporation researchers: John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, eds., In Athena’s Camp: Preparing for Conflict in the Information Age (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 1997).

  Their report, “Transforming Defense: National Security in the 21st Century”: Report of the National Defense Panel, “Power Projection,” December 1997. http://www.dod.gov/pubs/foi/administration_and_Management/other/902.pdf.

  Paul Van Riper, for example: Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper, Testimony before Procurement Subcommittee and Research and Development Subcommittee of the House National Security Committee, March 20, 1997.

  Nor did Van Riper think much of air power enthusiasts in general: Text of “From Douhet to Deptula,” kindly supplied to the author by Paul Van Riper.

  A Vietnam combat veteran: Interview with Paul Van Riper, Quantico, VA, March 19, 2013.

  In 1973, in his final session of congressional testimony: Testimony of John S. Foster, Hearings on Cost Escalation in Defense Procurement Contracts and Military Posture, House Armed Services Committee, April 12, 1973.

  Even so, Boeing and other defense corporations: Ehrhard, op. cit., p. 20.

  Perry helped speed the process along: Ibid., p. 20.

  4 | Predator Politics

  The Predator drone was originally designed: Thomas Ehrhard, op. cit., fn. 170, p. 67.

  After falling out with his employer: Richard Whittle, “The Man Who Invented the Predator,” Air & Space Magazine, April 2013.

  Code-named Amber: Ehrhard, op. cit., p. 20.

  However, just as Karem’s company: David Axe, Shadow Wars: Chasing Conflict in an Era of Peace (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2013), p. 5.

  Coincidentally, its initial project: Triga History, http://triga-world.net/history.html.

  After parting company with parent General Dynamics: Matt Potter, “General Atomics—Color It Blue,” San Diego Reader, July 12, 2001.

  As Neal later told an interviewer: Di Freeze, “Linden Blue: From Disease-Resistant Bananas to UAVs,” Airport Journals, Englewood, CO, October 2005. http://airportjournals.com/2005/10/page/4/.

  Furious residents blocked the scheme: Mick O’Malley and Ben Cubby, “Digging Dirt with a Sledgehammer,” Sidney Morning Herald, July 31, 2009.

  The brothers also bought the decrepit Sequoyah uranium-processing facility: Chris Kraul, “GA Tech to Buy Kerr-McGee’s Uranium Plant,” Los Angeles Times, November 21, 1987.

  Undeterred, General Atomics kept operating the leaky facility: Keith Schneider, “Troubled Factory Is to Be Shut in Oklahoma,” New York Times, November 25, 1992.

  An investigation found: Ibid.

  To that end they set up a defense programs group: Dan Berger, “Haig, Vessey, to Help Guide New GA,” San Diego Union–Tribune, February 13, 1986.

  Cassidy, described by subordinates as “not beloved, but admired”: Alan Richman, “Now Hear This: An Admiral Goes Down with His Ashtray,” People Magazine, June 17, 1985. http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20091015,00.html.

  But the Predator, as the device was called, repeatedly crashed: Steve LaRue, “S.D. Firm’s Unmanned Plane Tested,” San Diego Union–Tribune, December 2, 1988.

  Karem’s design suddenly became a CIA program: Ehrhart, op. cit., p. 67, note 178.

  Almost half the 268 Predators: Craig Whitlock, “When Drones Fall from the Sky,” Washington Post, June 20, 2014.

  “The problem is that nobody is comfortable with predator”: Ibid.

  Familiar to anyone with a smartphone: Daniel Parry, “Father of GPS and Pioneer of Satellite Telemetry and Timing Inducted into National Inventors Hall of Fame,” Naval Research Laboratory News, March 31, 2010.

  Thanks mainly to exponential increases in the amount of data: “Global Bandwidth, Feast or Famine?” Network, October 1, 2000. http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/bandwidth.htm.

  Two of these prototypes disappeared during the 1995 missions: Ehrhart, op. cit., p. 50.

  In October 1994, when General Ronald Fogleman: Ehrhart, op. cit., p. 51.

  In April 1996, William Perry, by now defense secretary: Richard Whittle, Predator’s Big Safari (Washington, DC: Mitchell Institute Press, 2011), p. 10.

  As Neal Blue, who contributed $100,000: Barry M. Horstman, “Some Knew Where George Was and Sent Lots of Money for Him,” Los Angeles Times, January 25, 1988.

  “For our size, we possess”: Gopal Ratnam, “Predator Maker Spreads Wings: General Atomics Expands into Sensors, Lasers, Launchers,” Defense News, May 2, 2005.

  As originally written: Melvin Goodman, National Insecurity (San Francisco
, City Lights Books, 2013), p. 31.

  “We must provide the resources”: Dan Morgan, “House Approves $289 Billion for Defense in 367 to 58 Vote,” Washington Post, July 20, 2000.

  In 2005 Lewis took command of the full appropriations committee and in 2006 was nominated: Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, “Beyond Delay, The 20 Most Corrupt Members of Congress (and Five to Watch),” Washington, DC, 2006, p. 67. http://www.crewsmostcorrupt.org/mostcorrupt/entry/most-corrupt-2006.

  “The chairman [Lewis] is too modest”: Hearing of the Defense Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee on U.S. Army Posture and Acquisition Programs, March 12, 2003.

  Thus it was that Lewis, in his capacity as vice chairman: Whittle, op. cit., p. 11.

  The three-month war on behalf of the insurgency: “Fellow Military Leaders May Prove to be Clark’s Toughest Hurdle,” InsideDefense.com, September 13, 2003.

  Also hit were businesses belonging to President Milošević’s friends: Julian H. Tolbert, Major, USAF, “Crony Attack Strategic Attack’s Silver Bullet?” Thesis presented to the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, Air University Press, November 2006.

  As Deptula, by now a brigadier general: Abe Jackson, “America’s Airman, David Deptula and the Airpower Moment,” School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Air University Press, June 2011.

  As General Michael Jackson, commander of the British contingent, said afterward: Andrew Gilligan, “‘Russia, Not Bombs, Brought End to War in Kosovo’ Says Jackson,” Daily Telegraph, August 1, 1999.

  Nevertheless General Henry Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: John Barry, “The Kosovo Cover-up,” Newsweek, May 15, 2000.

  As U.S. Army Colonel Douglas MacGregor: Email to author, April 14, 2012.

  They had put dummy tanks on display: Associated Press, “NATO Attack on Yugoslavia Gave Iraq Good Lessons,” Toronto Globe and Mail, November 20, 2002.

  Richard Armitage … wrote the speech: Eric Schmidt, “A Longtime Friend of Powell’s Is Tapped to Be His Deputy,” New York Times, February 13, 2001.

  “Our forces in the next century must be agile, lethal, readily deployable”: George W. Bush, “A Period of Consequences,” Speech delivered at The Citadel, Charleston, SC, September 23, 1999. http://www3.citadel.edu/pao/addresses/pres_bush.html.

  So Slobodan Milošević’s personal residence was duly destroyed: BBC News, “Milosevic House Destroyed by NATO,” April 22, 1999.

  As one officer told a reporter: James W. Canan, “Seeing More, and Risking Less, with UAVs,” Aerospace America, Aerospace Industries Association, Washington, DC, October 1999, p. 26.

  Jumper himself excitedly reported to Congress: General John Jumper, Testimony to House Armed Services Military Readiness Subcommittee, October 26, 1999.

  Apart from that one incident hailed by Jumper: Interview with James G. “Snake” Clark, Director, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Innovation, Deputy Chief of Staff for ISR, U.S. Air Force Headquarters, Washington, DC, October 13, 2013.

  In a significant step along the road to remotely controlling the battle: Department of Defense, Report to Congress, “Kosovo/Operation Allied Force After-Action Report,” January 2000, p. 124.

  Meanwhile, thanks to the same expansion in communications bandwidth: Ibid., p. 26.

  The general and his micromanaging habits: Interview with former senior U.S. Air Force officer, Washington, DC, February 2013.

  Even as the smoke of the Balkan battlefields cleared: Interview with Tom Christie, Washington, DC, May 8, 2013.

  The tests, carried out over nine days: Director, Operational Test & Evaluation, “Report on the Predator Medium Altitude Endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle,” Department of Defense, Washington, DC, October 3, 2001.

  Overall, Predator could find less than a third of its targets: Ibid., p. 20.

  National Imagery Interpretation Rating Scale: Ibid., p. 3.

  29 percent: Ibid., p. 20.

  The infrared camera: Ibid., p. 18.

  One or another component: Ibid., p. 40.

  In Vietnam, troops fighting on the ground: Harrison, op. cit., p. 109.

  “The air force had had this idea…”: Interview, Pentagon official, Washington, DC, April 19, 2013.

  Just as the muddy pictures from Kosovo: Interview with “Snake” Clark, op. cit.

  Yet, the closer one looks at those pictures: “Missed Opportunities,” NBC Nightly News, March 17, 2004. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/4540958/ns/nbc_nightly_news_with_brian_williams/t/osama-bin-laden-missed-opportunities/#.Uf7BSmR-xU4.

  As George Tenet later told the 9/11 commission: “CIA Director Says Terrorist Threat Warnings Made in 1997; Tenet Says His Warnings, Intelligence Reports Heard,” U.S. State Department, Washington File, March 24, 2004.

  The cover letter of Christie’s report: Accessible at pogoarchives.org/m/dp/dp-predator.pdf.

  Three years later she would be sentenced: Leslie Wayne, “Ex-Pentagon Official Gets 9 Months for Conspiring to Favor Boeing,” New York Times, October 2, 2004.

  “What the fuck is this?”: Interview with Tom Christie, Washington, DC, May 8, 2013.

  In December 2001, President Bush returned to the Citadel: “President Bush Addresses the Corps,” Speech delivered at The Citadel, Charleston, SC, December 11, 2001. http://www3.citadel.edu/pao/addresses/presbush01.html.

  5 | It’s Not Assassination If We Do It

  “As long as Hitler continues”: Dennis Rigden, Kill the Fuhrer: Section X and Operation Foxley (Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: The History Press, 1999), Kindle ed., 2011, location 1196.

  Although Heydrich, one of the cruelest of the Nazi bosses, did die from wounds: Robert Gerwarth, Hitler’s Hangman: The Life of Heydrich (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), pp. 280–87.

  “grave divergence of views”: Rigden, op. cit., location 1287.

  “It would be disastrous if the world…”: Rigden, op. cit., location 1170.

  In any event, SOE was in reality a surprisingly ineffective operation: Jean Overton Fuller, The German Penetration of SOE: France 1941–44 (London, UK: William Kimber, 1975), passim.

  The biographer of OSS Director William Donovan summarized: Anthony Cave-Brown, William Donovan, The Last Hero (New York: Times Books, 1982), p. 236.

  Sadly, the intelligence turned out to be entirely bogus: Cave-Brown, op. cit., p. 701.

  Clarke’s colorful style and views: Forrest Pogue, interview with Carter Clarke, July 6, 1959, tape 99. Transcript kindly supplied by the George C. Marshall Foundation, 1600 VMI Parade, Lexington, VA.

  So McCormack was asked to come down from New York: Memorandum by McCormack to Clarke on problems, origins, and functions of the Special Branch M.I.S., April 15, 1943, Records of the National Security Agency, National Archives Record Group 457.

  Thus in 1944 Clarke was dispatched: “Carter W. Clarke Dies at 90; An Army Intelligence Officer,” New York Times, September 7, 1987.

  Dewey had learned of this: Telephone interview with Carter Clarke, September 1983.

  American commanders saw an opportunity for revenge: Don Davis, Lightning Strike, The Secret Mission to Kill Admiral Yamamoto and Avenge Pearl Harbor (New York, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2006), pp. 53, 232.

  “I remember when we got the news of Hiroshima”: Interview with Edward Huddleston, San Francisco, December 1984.

  Donovan and others assumed that the leaker: Jennet Conant, “Swashbuckling Spymaster,” New York Times, February 11, 2011.

  Even when the agency did take a successful technical intelligence initiative: Dino Brugioni, Eyes in the Sky: Eisenhower, the CIA, and Cold War Aerial Espionage (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2010), p. 101.

  Even more secretly, and dangerously: Fred Kaplan, Wizards of Armageddon (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), p. 134.

  “following in the footsteps of the OSS”: Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes (New York: Doubleday, 2007), p. 55.

&
nbsp; Yet in both cases, as one historian: Ibid., p. 80.

  Starting in 1952, according to internal agency documents: Kate Doyle and Peter Kornbluh, eds., “CIA and Assassination, The Guatemala Documents,” The National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book, no. 4, doc. 1. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/.

  To aid in training the specialists: Ibid., doc. 2.

  On the other hand, human rights groups estimate: Ibid., introduction.

  According to Castro’s longtime bodyguard: Duncan Campbell, “638 Ways to Kill Castro,” The Guardian, August 3, 2006.

  As Richard Bissell, the CIA’s deputy director for plans later testified: Weiner, op. cit., p. 215.

  “I want him destroyed, don’t you understand?”: Stephen Dorrill, MI6, Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service (New York: The Free Press, 2002), p. 613.

  In Laos, for example: Leslie and Andrew Cockburn, producers, “Guns, Drugs and the CIA,” PBS Frontline, WGBH Boston, transmitted May 17, 1988.

  “So I sent them a head-count”: Interview with Tony Po, Udorn Thani, Thailand, November 1987.

  Officially termed the Viet Cong Infrastructure Information System: Doug Valentine, The Phoenix Program (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2000), p. 258.

  Before long the list had grown to 6,000: William Rousseau and Austin Long, The Phoenix Program and Contemporary Counterinsurgency (Santa Monica, CA: The Rand Corp., 2009), p. 9.

  In August of the following year, Robert “Blowtorch” Komer: Valentine, op. cit., p. 250.

  “Sure we got involved in assassinations”: Valentine, op. cit., p. 311.

  Thus in 1969 the New York Times: Terence Smith, “C.I.A.-Planned Drive on Officials of Vietcong Is Said to Be Failing; U.S. Sources Say Suspects Are Often Freed by Local Vietnamese Authorities,” New York Times, August 19, 1969.

  By 1971 euphemism had been cast aside: Felix Belair Jr., “U.S. Aide Defends Pacification Program in Vietnam Despite Killings of Civilians,” New York Times, July 20, 1971.

  “a program for the assassination of civilian leaders”: Valentine, op. cit., p. 321.

  Alternatively, the program met with wholehearted approval: Mark Moyar, Phoenix and the Birds of Prey, Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism in Vietnam (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997), p. 167.