Maybe FBI Has Lost Track of Who the Informants Are?

Here are all the informants and undercover employees listed in the criminal complaint against Erick Hendricks, who was arrested for conspiring to materially support ISIL in relation to the Garland, TX attack:

• CHS-1: a paid informant for the last year and a half with a criminal record of fraud and forgery who has not (yet?) received sentencing benefits for his cooperation; he met with Hendricks in Baltimore.
• CHS2: a paid informant for the last 4 years with no known criminal history; he posed as someone wanting to join ISIL.
• CHS-3: a paid informant for the last 4 and a half years with no known criminal history; Hendricks instructed CHS-3 to assess UCE-1 for recruitment.
• CHS-4: a paid informant for the last 4 years with no known criminal history; Hendricks provided him with jihadist propaganda on social media. He also met with Hendricks in Baltimore, at a later date.
• UCE-1: had conversations directly with Hendricks that mirrored those Hendricks had with a cooperating witness. UCE-1 also incited and then was present for the Garland attack.

Not mentioned at all in this narrative is the role played by Joshua Goldberg, a Jewish guy who adopted many avatars online to incite all kinds of violence, including, under the name of Australi Witness, Garland. In December Goldberg was deemed incompetent to stand trial, though in June it was decided with more treatment he might become competent enough to stand trial, so they’re going to check again in four months.

So, the cell that committed the Garland attack consisted of the two now-dead perpetrators, four informants, an undercover FBI officer, a mentally ill troll, and Hendricks.

Only now, Hendricks claims he was an informant too!

Hendricks claims to have been a paid informant of the FBI since 2009 who helped the agency identify potential terrorists. Code name: “Ahkie,” a variation of the Muslim term for “brother.”

He also claims to have been an outspoken and longtime opponent of radical Islam.

“I have publicly, privately and consistently denounced Al-Qaeda, ISIS and all extremist groups,” Hendricks said in a statement that Lisa Woods says her son dictated during a Wednesday phone call from the jail.

“I am baffled as to why the FBI (is) accusing me of terrorist ties.”

[snip]

In his statement, Hendricks says the FBI first made contact with him in 2009, when as Mustafa Abu Maryam, Hendricks was the youth coordinator of the Islamic Circle of North America Center in Alexandria, Va.

[snip]

In his jail statement, Hendricks says he was recruited in 2009 by an FBI agent named David to help identify potential terrorists. In 2010, after Hendricks had moved to Columbia, he says he worked with another FBI agent named Steve. Altogether, Hendricks claims to have developed “at least a half-dozen” cases against extremists.

Has the FBI simply lost track of who are real and who are the people it is paying to play a role? Or is it possible someone from another agency, claiming to be FBI, recruited Hendricks (don’t laugh! That’s one potential explanation for Anwar al-Awlaki’s curious ties to US law enforcement, a story that wends its way through a related mosque in VA)?

Sure, maybe Hendricks is making all this up (at the very least, it may necessitate the BoP to protect him in prison since he has now publicly claimed to be a narc). But FBI’s network of informants sure is getting confusing.

 

Until at Least 2014, NSA Was Having Troubles Preventing Back Door Searches of Upstream Searches

Back on October 3, 2011, John Bates issued a FISA opinion reflecting some new practices — including back door searches on data collected under Section 702 using US person identifiers — but also reflecting his newfound understanding of upstream searches.  In the opinion, Bates required all sorts of special treatment of upstream data, among other things, requiring the NSA to segregate “multiple communication transactions” obtained from upstream Section 702 searches and prohibiting NSA from doing back door searches on upstream data.

I raise that as important background to one of the most troubling details in the Semiannual Reports on Section 702 released some weeks ago. The March 2014 report, which covers the period from December 1, 2012 through May 31, 2013, revealed that the review process could not directly monitor one of the new practices instituted with that 2011 opinion — back door searches on US person identifiers — because that information is not kept in a centralized place.

It should be noted both that NSA’s efforts to review queries are not limited to Section 702 authorities and that, at this time, content queries are not specifically identified as containing United States person identifiers. As such, and as the Government previously represented to Congress, NSD and ODNI cannot at this time directly monitor content queries using United States person identifiers because these records are not kept in a centrally located repository. While the changes described above in NSA’s super audit process have not changed this status, NSA is exploring whether future queries using United States person identifiers could be identified and centralized. In the meantime, and in accordance with NSA’s minimization procedures, NSD and ODNI review NSA’s approval of any United States person identifiers used to query unminimized Section 702- acquired communications.

This appears to indicate that internal overseers could not audit the actual queries completed, but instead only reviewed the identifiers used to query data to make sure they were approved. Which, in turn, means the NSA’s targeting of foreigners and dissemination of reports on them got monitored more closely than NSA’s spying on Americans.

The following report — completed in October 2014 and covering the period June 1, 2013 through November 30, 2013 — reports a predictable consequence of the inability to monitor the actual queries conducted as back door searches: prohibited back door searches on upstream data.

(TS//SI//NF) The joint oversight team, however, is concerned about the increase in incidents involving improper queries using United States person identifiers, including incidents involving NSA’s querying of Section 702-acquired data in upstream data using United States Person identifiers. Specifically, although section 3(b)(5) of NSA’s Section 702 minimization procedures permits the scanning of media using United States person identifiers, this same section prohibits using United States person identifiers to query Internet communications acquired through NSA’s upstream collection techniques. NSA [redacted] incidents of non-compliance with this subsection of its minimization procedures, many of which involved analysts inadvertently searching upstream collection. For example, [redacted], the NSA analyst conducted approved querying with United States persons identifiers ([redacted]), but inadvertently forgot to exclude Section 702-acquired upstream data from his query.

While the actual number is redacted, the number is high enough to refer to to “many” improper searches of upstream content.

That explicit violation of the rules set by Bates in 2011 was part of a larger trend of back door search violations, including analysts not obtaining approval to query Americans’ identifiers.

(TS//SI//NF) In addition, section 3(b)(5) of NSA’s Section 702 minimization procedures requires that queries using United States person identifiers must be first be approved in accordance with NSA internal procedures. In this reporting period, [redacted] NSA was in non-compliance with this requirement, either because a prior authorization was not obtained or the authorization to query had expired. For example, in NSA Incidents [redacted] NSA analysts performed queries using United States person identifiers that had not been approved as query terms. These queries occurred for a variety of reasons, including because analysts continued queries on terms that they suspected (but had not confirmed) were used by United States persons, forgot to exclude Section 702 data from queries [redacted], or did not realize that [redacted] constitute a United States person identifier even if the analyst was seeking information on a non-United States person.

Among other things, the third redaction in this passage appears to suggest that analysts conduct back door searches on data generally, presumably including both EO 12333 and 702 obtained data, but have to affirmatively exclude Section 702 data to stay within the rules laid out in the minimization procedures.

Consider the timing of this: the reporting of “many” back door search and other US person query violations occurred in the first post-Snowden period. While the fact NSA did back door searches was knowable from the 2012 SSCI report on Section 702 renewal, it did not become general knowledge among members of Congress and the general public until Snowden leaked more explicit confirmation of it. And all of a sudden, as soon as people started complaining about back door searches and Congress considered regulating it, NSA’s overseers discovered that NSA wasn’t following an explicit prohibition on searching upstream data. One of several risks of back door searching upstream data is it may amount to searching data collected domestically, or even entirely domestic communications.

And while the details get even more redacted, it appears the problem did not go away in the following period, the December 1, 2013 through May 31, 2014 reviews reported in a June 2015 report. After a very long redaction on targeting, the report recommends NSA require analysts to state whether they believe they’re querying on a US person.

Additionally, but separately, the joint oversight team believes NSA should assess modifications to systems used to query raw Section 702-acquired data to require analysts to identify when they believe they are using a United States person identifier as a query term. Such an improvement, even if it cannot be adopted universally in all NSA systems, could help prevent instances of otherwise approved United States person query terms being used to query upstream Internet transactions, which is prohibited by the NSA minimization procedures.64

The footnote that modifies that discussion is entirely redacted.

The June 2015 report was the most recent one released, so it is unclear whether simply requiring analysts to confirm that they are querying Americans solved the improper back door searches of upstream data. But at least as of the most recently released report, the two most troubling aspects of Section 702 surveillance — the upstream searching on Internet streams and back door unwarranted searches on US person identifiers — were contributing to “many” violations of NSA’s rules.

Yes, the Drone Rule Book Is a One-Off

Over at The New Republic, I’ve got a more formal piece on the weird hybrid document that serves as Obama’s Drone Rule Book. In addition to some formal observations I made in this working thread, it has these descriptions from both “an administration official” and from Secrecy News’ Steven Aftergood, which I found particularly interesting.

Start with the fact that a “Presidential Policy Guidance” is a previously unknown type of presidential order. Indeed, an administration official confirms it is still the only document of its type. “We have not issued any other PPGs,” the official told me. Obama’s normal practice when issuing national security orders has been to release “Presidential Policy Directives,” a set of numbered directives that occasionally get released publicly. The word “Guidance” would suggest this is a weaker kind of order than a “Directive.”

The PPG does mandate some actions, requiring that agencies “shall” develop certain assessments and so on. But in other instances, the PPG appears designed to give agencies leeway. It states that agencies “may develop a detailed operational plan” to govern their direct action. It says a top White House aide could make final decisions about who will attend an interagency meeting to approve the kill list.

Without offering an explanation for the difference between a PPG and a PPD, the same White House official nevertheless dismissed concerns about the discrepancy. “The PPG carries the same requirement of compliance, as it’s presidential guidance,” the official explained.

Nevertheless, as Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy points out, this document lacks some of the formal features you would expect from a presidential order: “As released, the Guidance is neither addressed to anyone in particular, nor signed by anyone.” Unlike PPDs, the Guidance as released to the ACLU was not printed on White House stationery (compare the PPG with this closely related PPD on the military or civilian custody of terror detainees in U.S. custody). Aftergood also noted, “It refers to the president in the third person, as if he is also subject to its requirements (‘The President will adjudicate any disagreement among or between Principals’) rather than its author.”

The administration official dismissed questions about the document’s authority and its lasting value. “The document has not changed since it was completed in 2013. The redacted document that was released last week remains the operative guidance,” the official said.

Click through to read the rest.

The Just Right Fear Industry, in 18,000 Words

Steven Brill thinks we’re not worried enough about bioterrorism and dirty bombs. He makes that argument even while acknowledging that a dirty bomb attack launched in Washington DC would result in just 50 additional cancer deaths. And curiously, his extensive discussion about germ threats (inspired by a Scooter Libby report, no less!) doesn’t mention that the Russian military is currently struggling to contain an anthrax attack launched by a thawing reindeer.

That’s the problem with Brill’s opus: anthrax attacks only matter if they’re launched by Islamic extremist reindeers, not reindeers weaponized by climate change. (And if you were wondering, no, Brill doesn’t mention that the anthrax attack, which was done with anthrax derived from a US lab, has never been solved.)

He makes a similar error when he spends 18 paragraphs focusing on what he (or his editors) dub “cyberterrorism” only to focus on OPM as proof the threat exists and includes this paragraph from Jim Comey admitting terrorists don’t have the capabilities to hurt us our Chinese and Russian adversaries do yet.

For his part, the FBI’s Comey worries more about a cyberterror onslaught directed at the private sector than one directed at the government. “These savages,” he says, “have so far only figured out how to use the internet to proselytize, not to wreak physical damage. What happens when they figure out how to use it to break into a chemical plant, or a blood bank and change the blood types? We know they are trying. And they don’t have to come here to do it.”

Biothreats and hacking are a threat. But it would be sheer idiocy to approach the problem, at this point, as primarily one of terrorism when climate change and nation-state adversaries clearly present a more urgent threat.

But it’s not just Brill who adopts some weird categorization. The article is perhaps most interesting for the really telling things he gets Comey to say, as he here suggests they drop investigations when they hear a “wing nut” making bomb threats in a restaurant.

“Think about it from our perspective,” Comey said when I asked about this. “Suppose someone is overheard in a restaurant saying that he wants to blow something up. And someone tells us about it. What should we do? Don’t we need to find out if he was serious? Or was he drunk? The way to do that is to have someone engage him in an undercover way, not show up with a badge and say, ‘What are your thoughts in regard to terrorism?’ ”

“Plenty of times it’s a wing nut or some drunk, and we drop it,” he continued.

I actually think the FBI, as an institution, is better than this. But to have the FBI Director suggest his bureau wouldn’t follow up if someone making bomb threats was deemed a radical but would if they were deemed a Muslim is really telling.

Which gets to the core of the piece. Over the course of the 18,000+ words, Brill admits — and quotes both President Obama and Comey admitting — that what makes terrorism different from the equally lethal attacks by other mentally unstable or “wing nut” types is the fear such attacks elicit.

President Obama described the difference to me this way: “If the perpetrator is a young white male, for instance—as in Tucson, Aurora, and Newtown—it’s widely seen as yet another tragic example of an angry or disturbed person who decided to lash out against his classmates, co-workers, or community. And even as the nation is shaken and mourns, these kinds of shootings don’t typically generate widespread fear. I’d point out that when the shooter or victims are African American, it is often dismissed with a shrug of indifference—as if such violence is somehow endemic to certain communities. In contrast, when the perpetrators are Muslim and seem influenced by terrorist ideologies—as at Fort Hood, the Boston Marathon bombing, San Bernardino, and Orlando—the outrage and fear is much more palpable. And yet, the fact is that Americans are far more likely to be injured or killed by gun violence than a terrorist attack.”

The FBI’s Comey agrees. “That the shooter in San Bernardino said he was doing it in the name of isil changed everything,” he told me. “It generates anxiety that another shooting incident, where the shooter isn’t a terrorist, doesn’t. That may be irrational, but it’s real.”

Nevertheless, all three — even Brill, in a piece where he takes Obama to task for not publicizing his change in dirty bomb response, refers to “deranged people and terrorists” obtaining assault weapons as if they are mutually exclusive categories — seem utterly unaware that part of the solution needs to be to stop capitulating to this fear. Stop treating terrorism as the unique, greatest threat when you know it isn’t. Channel the money being spent on providing tanks to local police departments to replacing lead pipes instead (an idea Brill entertains but never embraces). Start treating threats to our infrastructure — both physical and digital — including those caused by weaponized reindeer as the threat they are.

And for chrissakes, don’t waste 18,000 words on a piece that at once scolds for fearmongering even while perpetuating that fear.

Just Another Misogynist Monday

[What’s her name? How hard is it to print her name? Isn’t this Journalism 101 — get the subject’s name?]

I’m not watching the Olympics on NBC. I see more than enough of the events in my social media feed that I don’t need to turn on the television. This post is based on the observations and media content shared online, an indicator of just how much content there is about the Olympics, both corporate and personal.

And I am SO glad I haven’t bothered to watch based on the persistent anger in my timeline. NBC’s coverage has been a bunch of sexist and racist nonsense, framing female athletes not by their performance but by the men or white family members in their lives.

Like noting a particular athlete became a mother since her last competition — gee, how many of the male athletes became fathers? The narrative NBC built around each woman competitor sounds more like an observation of their performing femininity. “She’s turned in the best time and look, she can still clean house and wear a dress!” Obnoxious.

Or in the case of Simone Biles, a woman of color, about whom NBC’s Al Trautwig feels compelled to note she’s adopted. He cannot simply talk about Biles’ gymnastic performance or the family who came for her as her parents.

Other U.S. media covering the Olympics don’t do any better, like this ridiculous bullshit from The Chicago Tribune and USAToday. First this internationally-recognized athlete is not named but identified as the spouse of non-Olympic male athlete — then half-assed corrections revealing her name still ensure she’s pegged as a man’s wife. Are you kidding me with this?

[Because the Chicago Bears figure largely to the Olympics…]

The Washington Post criticized NBC’s coverage this weekend, but the columnist made her own sexist dig in doing so by calling it “paperback romance novel approach.” Can you say “internalized oppression”? This merely reinforces the marginalizing pink ghetto-ization of genre literature which for women offers subversive escape.

The rationalization for NBC’s craptastic framing as offered to WaPo:

Women don’t watch the Olympics for the live results; they watch it for the narrative. Or that’s the reasoning of NBC, anyway. As the network’s chief marketing officer John Miller explained:

“The people who watch the Olympics are not particularly sports fans,” he told Philly.com recently. “More women watch the games than men, and for the women, they’re less interested in the result and more interested in the journey. It’s sort of like the ultimate reality show and miniseries wrapped into one.”Women don’t watch the Olympics for the live results; they watch it for the narrative. Or that’s the reasoning of NBC, anyway. As the network’s chief marketing officer John Miller explained:

“The people who watch the Olympics are not particularly sports fans,” he told Philly.com recently. “More women watch the games than men, and for the women, they’re less interested in the result and more interested in the journey. It’s sort of like the ultimate reality show and miniseries wrapped into one.”

“Less interested in the result” — yeah, that’s why so many women in my timeline were holding their breath as they waited for gymnasts’ scores, or flailing on keyboards as swimmers sped toward the end of the pool. They do care, deeply and intensely, about the results of each sport.

But they don’t care for propping up men — oh, look, this swimmer co-parents with his med student wife, and wow, this guy was responsible for this woman’s swimming medal — at the expense of women.

We are not things. We are not your wallpaper or props. We are not accessories to men’s or white people’s lives. We don’t need your white and/or male validation to affirm our existence. We are competitors who work fucking hard to meet others as committed to sports as we are. We are viewers who appreciate the competitors’ respect and commitment to sport and want to see the field strive hard and the best win.

The fact that we have been born with a vagina or different skin color should be irrelevant to corporate content.

I’ll do a daily roundup later today. Get your sports talk out here in thread. ~R

The Classified Appendix Fifth Bullet on “Certain Counterterrorism Matters”

I want to make a really minor point about one of the documents produced to ACLU with the Drone Rule Book — which the White House calls a Presidential Policy Guidance — last week (here’s my working thread on the Rule Book). The Rule Book itself has a section that “requires” Congressional notification (but may be more important for the requirement that the White House must learn about information sharing before it happens, which might end up in less notification).

As part of its implementation of the Rule Book, DOD released a Report on Congressional Notification of Sensitive Military Operations and Counterterrorism Operational Briefings (DOD released several related documents; CIA released nothing). Throughout the short document, it says the 2014 Defense Authorization (which was introduced after the Rule Book was signed but before DOD issued its Drone Rule Book implementation procedures and signed into law on December 23, 2013) and the PPG require Congress be informed of sensitive military operations. That’s the Executive Branch’s way of saying, “Congress has required we tell it what we’re doing but so has the President” as if they came up with the idea to do that additional reporting in the first place.

Its last section looks like this:

Those bullets don’t come from the Rule Book (its notice requirement is far less detailed than that). Rather, they come from this section of the Defense Authorization.

As you can see, that section mandates answers to bullets 1 through 4 (the unredacted ones), and then includes a conforming amendment that repeals this section from 2013’s Defense Authorization.

The only difference in the unclassified portion of the 2014 Defense Authorization that replaced the 2013’s version is the deletion of the phrase “involving special operations forces.”

Of course, we can tell from the Report there’s a fifth, Top Secret bullet. It may well be that’s why they eliminated the prior year’s requirement and added a new almost identical one: to provide an opportunity to put that fifth bullet into the Defense Authorization’s classified appendix. That’s a wildarse guess, of course, but also a logical explanation for that fifth bullet: at a time when the White House was releasing fluffy documents pretending to be more open and orderly, Congress was secretly mandating additional reporting they weren’t getting.

There are a number of things that might be in that fifth bullet. Perhaps the least controversial of those would be a requirement that DOD tell Congress — actually just a tiny handful of members — which countries the US engages in lethal force in, and which groups we partner with to do it (this would be consistent with a number of items that are redacted in the Rule Book itself). You could imagine why, in 2013 and 2014, members of Congress might want to be told if the US was partnering with al Qaeda affiliates on lethal operations anywhere in the world, seeing as how we are ostensibly at war with al Qaeda.

As a reminder, Senate Intelligence Committee member Ron Wyden spent part of 2012 and 2013 unsuccessfully trying to get a list of all the places the government was engaging in lethal operations.

As I said, this is a fairly minor point. But it also suggests that even while the Executive was leaking wildly to get good press about this Drone Rule book, Congress was at the same time mandating specifically some of the things the Rule Book only nodded to in theory.

Drone Rule Book, Working Thread

What ever happened to the inclusions of headers and footers in documents? It used to be, documents would ID what document you were reading on every page, which is really useful if one page walks or gets replaced with a new one. Now even life-and-death documents like the Drone Rule Book liberated by the ACLU lack real headers.

This will be a working thread on that.

(0) Seriously, there’s something funky about the production of this document. Perhaps it’s a reprint of the actual drone rule book with interesting stuff removed. But it’s not even clear the classification description on the front page (to include an original classification authority, a reason for classification, and a date for declassification) is complete. Nor are specific redactions cited by exemption. Given that drones were part of the 2001 Finding which was itself classified by NSC, not CIA, that raises interesting questions about how long they maintained that claim.

Also note the green line on the first page, which seems to suggest some digital alteration, either at the White House or ACLU. For a variety of reasons, I also wonder whether this has been updated, with no record, which the informal structure of it would seem to invite.

(1) It’s really crazy for a POTUS to be setting what claim to be “procedures,” as opposed to policy. These are mostly policies. But tied to implementing bureaucratic tools. I’ll write later how this hybrid purpose makes the PPG far less valuable than it pretends to be.

(1) Note the applicability: “for when the United Staes takes direct action, which refers to lethal and non-lethal uses of force, including capture operations, against terrorist targets outside the United States.” Obviously, that’s not what this covers. There are a slew of examples where “the US” takes direct action outside the US. Implicitly, this is about amending or replacing the 9/17/01 Finding (and given the timing, and the declassification of the Finding’s role in torture, it could be the latter). But this does raise questions about whether there’s an underlying (perhaps modified) Finding that undergirds this.

(1) They redact the kind of plan they use to make sure it can’t be FOIAed. I bet there are numerous drone strikes that didn’t have them; remember, at about this process, CIA didn’t play by same rules as DOD.

(1) “based on the legal authorities of the nominating department” Interesting relation with covert authorities.

(1) The capture feasibility assessment seems targeted to Congress. I wonder how broadly this was circulated there.

(1) Note the PPG just assumes everyone knows this is about HVTs without saying so. But the PPG as a whole distinguishes between targeting HVTs and others, with incidental death being envisioned in the latter case (see footnote 1 on 2).

(2) First redaction must relate to the “unable or willing to act” formula; that it is redacted suggests it has nothing to do with established intl law (later incidences of it are unredacted use of the unable willing formula).

(2) second redaction may be a caveat about the circumstances in which expert agencies (such as State) get to review.

(2) “when considering potential direct action against a U.S. person under this PPG, there are additional questions that must be answered.” That’s rather weak.

(2) The named plan is 3 words long.

(2) Note the redaction modifying what kind of “direct action operations” this covers. That may be the same redaction as the last one on the page.

(3) Redaction in bullet 3 is interesting.

(3) Does bullet 5 reference foreign partners?

(3) Bullet 7 permits variations from this PPG, which essentially eats up the rule book.

(3) Note that the 3 assessments required before using lethal force all make up subbullets to bullet 8. That implies a logical structure whereby the decision making process happens after the fact.

(4) 1F treats identity here as primarily relating to HVTs.

(5) 1H2 suggests the President may impose her own conditions on such approval. This is a crazy level of involvement from the President, not necessarily all in a good way.

(5) Footnote 1 seems to permit us getting exclusive shot at a detainee before we dump them onto foreign governments.

(5) Footnote 2 seems to give NSS a way to veto DOJ indictment. (Which is of particular interest with Awlaki.)

(6) Note the acknowledgement that the US “provides training, funds, or equipment to enable a foreign government to capture a suspect,” which does not count as us doing so.

(6) Note the nominating agency seems to get to suggest what to do with the detainee long term. That seems problematic.

(7) The redaction of things that must be included in a baseball card doesn’t say much for the due process involved. Note the emphasis, too, on gaps in intelligence/differences in opinion. But DOD or CIA gets to pull this together.

(8) No discussion of difference between Interagency Disposition Planning Group and Restricted Counterterrorism Security Group (though the latter appears to be the analysts and the former appears to be the policy people). If the same people are on both it would have a garbage in garbage out effect.

(9) I’m guessing bullet 2 pertains to foreign partner custody. That’s important because bullet 4 presumes certain things might happen in detention, like torture, that would make prosecution impossible.

(9) A lot implied by that “if appropriate” language on whether the operational plan can be shared with the Deputies Review.

(9) Note the DNSA determines who will be present at a Deputies Committee review. It’d be easy to leave, say, State out.

(10) Note that they consider whether detaining someone would interfere with sources or methods. Not surprising but the implications of that are worth nothing.

(10) The reference to humane treatment in bullet 6 is likely to relate to redacted passages earlier (and must have been introduced in a redacted passage).

(10) Foreign detention should be explored based on NatSec considerations. No mention here of humane treatment.

(10) Interesting Q why the decision to strike in defiance of Principals Committee guidance goes through DNSA, not NSA. If a Brennan or Monaco presents that decision, it’ll lack the larger picture that an NSA might bring.

(11) Only those people present at DC meeting will learn that POTUS has approved a strike over their guidance.

(11) I will probably return to 3A but I think it is a muddle that totally turns this document inside out.

(11) 3b is written in an odd voice: “lethal action requires” rather than “before taking lethal action.” Also note this comes from within the capture process.

(11) The decision to off someone has to formally come from the GC of the agency that will do the business. Interesting how this might result in two, potentially competing lists.

(11) FN 8: This language seems to provide a time where the DC would reassess feasibility for capture, on expedited process. But the way in which this “procedure” works largely ensures it can be sidestepped.

(12) Here’s how the list of considerations for a capture versus a kill operation look, in completely redacted form.

Given the significant differences in redaction, there doesn’t appear to be much overlap beyond the initial bullet.

(12) It is really bizarre to have to specify that NSS forwards the package to the DC, as if in the past the wrong package got forwarded.

(13) What does this mean: “In all events, the NSS Legal Adviser and the General Counsel of the nominating agency shall consult with DOJ”? Given that they try to avoid paper trails, what does this entail? And when reviewing a USP nomination, there are no requirements about what the DOJ review must include (which might be another bulleted list like the one above if this document weren’t a joke).

(13) Here’s how the Deputies Committee meetings for a capture versus a kill decision differ.

The redacted agency(ies) present at capture but observant at kill may be involved in detention and/or (FBI) prosecution. If so, that means FBI would only get observant status if the IC had decided to kill someone.

(14) Here’s what the DC considers for a capture versus a kill decision.

While both consider intelligence implications (sort of) the unredacted section doesn’t consider how a kill decision will affect CT strategy outside of broader regional interests (that it is phrased in that way is particularly interesting given the prominence of side payment strikes in Pakistan).

(14) This seems to permit bypassing the DC altogether.

The Principal of the nominating agency may approve lethal action against the proposed individual if: ( I) the relevant Principals unanimously agree that lethal action should be taken against the proposed individual. and (2) the Principal of the nominating agency has notified the President through a DNSA of his intention to approve lethal action and has received notice from a DNSA that the President has been apprised of that intention. The Principal of the nominating agency may not delegate his authority to approve a nomination.

Note, they don’t even need to get approval from the President to kill someone–she need only be apprised of it. (I’m mindful that this rule book was largely written, though not finalized, by John Brennan). I half wonder whether consideration #6 involves a need to remove him from this earth for secrecy reasons.

(14) Note, the annual review does not explicitly review whether the person still remains a threat.

(15) The redaction describing lethal force here seems longer than the one describing HVT lethal force, though it’s possible this section describes first targeting on patterns and then on infrastructure.

(15) The thing that will be missed in a “fleeting opportunity” attack is contrary intelligence and downsides, yet nevertheless claims to abide by the same “near certainty” criteria.

(16) The “appropriate NSS official shall communicate the President’s decision” would seem to invite that person bypassing the President altogether (as it did with Brennan in fact).

(17) The PPG specifically permits the President to authorize drone strikes because a person presents a threat to other country’s persons. I look forward to legal analysis of this attenuated imminence standard (especially since the government has most jealously guarded its OLC memos on agreements with countries in question).

(17) Since the after action report must be submitted after 48 hours, it can’t consider larger questions, such as whether it helped or hurt overall CT strategy.

(18) This would seem to permit the agency of any principal/deputy to review after action reports.

(18) Only “appropriate” members of Congress get notified, and this doesn’t even list them. This section would appear to permit briefing the Gang of Four before an operation (for secrecy reasons) but then only informing the Gang of Four afterwards, when secrecy concerns were no longer as urgent. In addition, agencies have to get the NSS to approve sharing with Congress, and only applies it to those “required to submit congressional notifications,” which may create some loopholes.

(18) The redaction at 8B is pretty interesting.

(18) As noted above: the reporting requirements of the PPG don’t invite reporting on larger strategic issues on lethal killing, making the review under 8C pretty useless as well.