Democracy Now! Daily Digest ~ A Daily Independent Global News Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González ~ Friday, 25 October 2013
STORIES:
We look at how the United States uses drones in war, and their impact, through the eyes of one of the first U.S. drone operators to speak out. Former U.S. Air Force pilot Brandon Bryant served as a sensor operator for the Predator program from 2007 to 2011, manning the camera on the unmanned aerial vehicles that carried out attacks overseas. After he left the active duty in the Air Force, he was presented with a certificate that credited his squadron for 1,626 kills. In total, Bryant says he was involved in seven missions in which his Predator fired a missile at a human target, and about 13 people died in those strikes — actions he says left him traumatized. "The clinical definition of PTSD is an anxiety disorder associated with witnessing or experiencing a traumatic event," Bryant says. "Think how you would feel if you were part of something that you felt violated the Constitution."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to look at how the United States uses drones, and their impact—this time through the eyes of one of the first U.S. drone pilots to speak out. Former Air Force pilot Brandon Bryant served as a sensor operator for the U.S. Air Force Predator program from 2007 to 2011. He manned the camera on the unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones. After he left the active-duty Air Force, he was presented with a certificate that credited his squadron for 1,626 kills.
AMY GOODMAN: In total, Bryant says he was involved in seven missions in which his Predator fired a missile at a target, and about 13 people died in those strikes. He describes the grisly scenes he watched unfold on his monitor as an Air Force drone operator in a new article in GQ magazine, "Confessions of a Drone Warrior" by Matt Power. He joins us now in our New York studio.
Brandon Bryant, welcome to Democracy Now!
BRANDON BRYANT: Thank you for having me.
AMY GOODMAN: Place us in the room in 2007 with your first strike. Describe what happened.
BRANDON BRYANT: It was roughly around January 26, the end of January. And I had gotten on shift. I used to be what they called a multi-aircraft control qualified sensor operator, which is where a pilot controls multiple drones, and then a sensor operator controls one drone. So, you have a sensor operator basically in control of the aircraft until the pilot decides to take over. And that was my typical mission and would usually result in no shots being fired. And that—the day of my first shot, I was told to go in—
AMY GOODMAN: Where were you?
BRANDON BRYANT: I was in Nevada. And—
AMY GOODMAN: Which base?
BRANDON BRYANT: Nellis. And—
AMY GOODMAN: What did the room look like?
BRANDON BRYANT: The room? The room is not necessarily a room. It’s a trailer. It’s like a eight-by-20 trailer, kind of the same size as a Formula One racing car. And so, I was told to go in there and do this. And we came across—it was a troops-in-contact situation, where guys were firing from the top of a hill to guys on the bottom of a hill at—
AMY GOODMAN: In what country?
BRANDON BRYANT: Afghanistan. And the guys at the bottom of the hill were U.S. forces, and these guys were—needed air support. And the—we were about to fire on the guys on the top of the hill, and we were told to back off, and an F-16 was going to drop. But the F-16 came across three individuals a short distance away, and they wanted us to fire on those guys, because they thought that those guys were coming in to reinforce.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, this was a nighttime operation?
BRANDON BRYANT: Yeah, it was.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: So you were basically dealing with infrared as you were looking at these figures?
BRANDON BRYANT: Correct. And so, when we came across these guys, the two individuals in the front were having a heated discussion, and you could see that they were talking about something. And the guy in the back was kind of watching the sky. And they weren’t really in a hurry to do anything. And so, we got the confirmation that they had weapons, and we were told to fire. And in that situation—
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, does this confirmation come from troops in the field? Or does it come from—
BRANDON BRYANT: No, it came from somewhere else. You got to understand that the whole operation procedures is like a web, and, like, you’re dealing with people from multiple locations from all over the world. And so, when we—
AMY GOODMAN: You’re speaking—you’re hearing them in headphones, and you’re watching them on a computer monitor.
BRANDON BRYANT: Yeah, we’re like—there’s like a chat program. Like so, that’s the easiest way to communicate because of the satellite delay. But we weren’t in radio communications with anyone except for the guys that were on the ground, so we heard them asking for air support.
And so, we got confirmation to fire on these guys. And the way that they reacted really made me doubt their involvement, because the guys over there, the locals over there, have to protect themselves from the Taliban just as much as armed—us—we do, as U.S. military personnel. And so, I think that they were probably in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the way that—I’ve been accused of using poetic imagery to describe it, but I watched this guy bleed out, the guy in the back, and his right leg above the knee was severed in the strike. And his—he bled out through his femoral artery. And it—
AMY GOODMAN: You saw that on your computer screen?
BRANDON BRYANT: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s that detailed?
BRANDON BRYANT: Yeah, it’s pixelated, but, I mean, you could—you could see that it was a human being, and you could see that—what he was doing, and you could see the crater from the drone—from the Hellfire missile, and you could see probably the body pieces that were around this guy.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the other two that were in this strike?
BRANDON BRYANT: They were completely destroyed.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Blown apart.
BRANDON BRYANT: Blown apart.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you watched this guy bleed out for how long?
BRANDON BRYANT: You know, it’s the femoral artery, so he could have bled out really fast. It was cold outside, you know, wintertime. It seemed like forever to me, but we—as the Predator drone can stay in the air for like 18 to 32 hours, and so they just had us watch and do battle damage assessment to make sure that—to see if anyone would come and pick up the body parts or anyone really cared who these people were. And we watched long enough that the body cooled on the ground, and they called us off target.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, there was a—sometime later, you think that—you’ve written that you thought you killed a child, as well.
BRANDON BRYANT: There’s—yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Could you talk about that particular day?
BRANDON BRYANT: That was—I was still feeling the effects of my first Hellfire shot. And, like, you have to understand that what we did over in Afghanistan and Iraq there, it’s constitutionally viable. We were given permission by the American public to go to war with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. And so, when this specific Hellfire shot, we were—the intel that we were given is that there was this commander and some of his people inside this building. And they had been watching it for multiple days. They had been keeping track of people that had gone in and out. And they had made the determination that those were the only people that were in there. And something ran around the corner, and it looked like a little person. And it made me realize that, you know, we can have all the intel in the world, and it’s still not going to be perfect. And as clean as these types of strikes can be, they’re in reality really dirty.
And military operations—being part of the military, talking about military operations, like, that’s—that’s just the nature of what it is. And the real—the real debate should be about places other than where we went to war and, you know, violating the constitutional rights of an American citizen who was in another country, who was killed without due process, and that type of thing. And my—my goal in all of this is to talk about, like, these aren’t killer robots. They’re not like unfeeling people behind this whole thing. There are—there are some people that are extremely scary when talking to them, and there was one individual who got the word "infidel" tattooed in Arabic on his side, and he had Hellfire tattoos marking every shot. But that’s an extreme. Most—
AMY GOODMAN: You mean who you work with, who was—
BRANDON BRYANT: Who I worked with.
AMY GOODMAN: —who was killing people on the computer—
BRANDON BRYANT: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: —with the drone strikes.
BRANDON BRYANT: Right. And that’s an extreme personality. But there’s a lot of like—those people are so few in the community, so few in the military, that—but they’re looked at as like that’s who everyone is. And that’s not the case. Like, there’s people behind there.
AMY GOODMAN: Brandon, in this case where you believe you killed a child, the report was written up as killing a dog?
BRANDON BRYANT: No, the report actually said enemies killed in action, executed to standards. Like, that’s what the after-action report said. It was very, very antiseptic, I guess is the word.
AMY GOODMAN: Mm-hmm.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And help me understand this. When you’re doing these drone strikes, is it basically you’re on duty for a set number of hours controlling one Predator, let’s say, or one drone that’s over a particular area, or are you specifically assigned to particular missions and called in?
BRANDON BRYANT: No. So, there’s a shift that goes on. So, there’s multiple shifts in the day. And typically, you are assigned a mission on that shift, because crew continuity is so viable. They want the same types of people on the same missions, because that means that less explanation has to happen between crews, and there’s more accountability there, internal accountability. And so, but the shifts, typically they were 11-and-a-half-hour shifts with a small break in the middle, where you’re flying four-and-a-half hours with a small break, four-and-a-half hours, or even longer depending on how many people we had available to fly that day.
AMY GOODMAN: Why have you decided, Brandon, to speak out?
BRANDON BRYANT: Because there’s so much misinformation out there, that—so much speculation, and—and that’s wrong. The United States government hasn’t really done a good job of humanizing the people that do it. And everyone else thinks that the whole program or the people behind it are a joke, that we are video-game warriors, that we’re Nintendo warriors. And that’s—that’s really not the case. And these—the people that do the job are just as legit and just as combat-oriented as anyone else. And I’m not like their official spokesperson. In fact, I’m probably the most hated person in the entire community right now.
AMY GOODMAN: Why?
BRANDON BRYANT: Because I have spoken out, and they’re—they’re hurt. They feel like I’m trying to hurt them, and that’s not the case. I’m trying to give them credence, you know? But the problem is, like, again, we’re going back to like the Constitution and what is viable and what is not inside and outside of war zones, what the people of the American—of America has permission—what they have given us.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you about a certificate in which your squadron, the 3rd Special Operations Squadron at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico, was credited for 1,626 kills. Air Force Special Operations Command spokeswoman, Captain Belena Marquez, responded to your claims about this in an email to the Air Force Times. She wrote, quote, "Only a very small percentage of that [enemy killed in action] total can be attributed to any one crew member when assessing actual kinetic activity."
BRANDON BRYANT: And I think that’s a—that’s the misconception there, is I’ve never taken credit for these kills. They’re not my kills. Like, I didn’t drop the bombs or shoot the people on the ground. These are all the number of people that have perished in all the operations that I was told that I participated in over the five-and-a-half-year period that I actually operated. And that’s a completely viable number, if you look at it. And some people could be surprised that it’s not larger. And if it’s the number that’s solely attributed to the 3rd Special Operations Squadron, then—and in the first place, I don’t know why they gave that certificate, or whatever it was, to me, because I never cared about it in the first place. But like—
AMY GOODMAN: Do you feel you suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD?
BRANDON BRYANT: Well, you know, the clinical definition of PTSD is an anxiety disorder associated with witnessing or experiencing a traumatic event. And it’s such a blanket term that so many people are like, "Oh, you can’t get PTSD from this or that." And it’s a widely—it’s a wider phenomenon than I think a lot of people realize.
And my deal is more moral injury, like think of it—think how you would feel when—if you were part of something that you felt violated the Constitution. And, I mean, I swore an oath, you know? I swore to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And how do you feel if, like—you can’t use "I obeyed orders" as an excuse. It’s "I obeyed the Constitution, regardless of lawful or unlawful orders." And lawful orders follow the Constitution. And that, that’s the hardest part.
And I was really unprepared for—for it. I tried to get out multiple times and do a different job, and I was consistently told that it’s the needs of the Air Force come first, and so I did it. I buckled down, and I did it. I did the job. I did it as best as I could, because I was scared that someone would come in, and they wouldn’t do it very well. And I—I mean, I paid a spiritual and mental price for that. And I think that’s something that people really discount, because I didn’t take any physical injury through it.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Brandon, I want to thank you for being with us. When I asked earlier about the dog, a child being identified as a dog, though it didn’t appear in the final report, it did come out in the chatter, right, as the killings were happening?
BRANDON BRYANT: Right. It said, upon—like, the person who was—I mean, there’s multiple people that review the feed, and the person that was in the chat said, "Upon further review, it was a dog." So—
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you for being with us. You’re going to speak today also at the United Nations?
BRANDON BRYANT: Yeah, I’ve been given a little—a little time to address the folks there. It’s a pretty big responsibility, I think.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, thank you for talking to us here at Democracy Now! Brandon Bryant is a former sensor operator for the U.S. Air Force Predator program, manned the camera on the unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones. After he left the active-duty Air Force in 2011, he was presented with a certificate that credited his squadron with 1,626 kills. This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a minute.
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Ben Emmerson, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, has called on Britain and the United States to release confidential reports into the countries’ involvement in kidnapping and torture of terrorism suspects during the era of the George W. Bush administration — after years of denial. "A crucial part of the duty of accountability under international law is the so-called right to truth," Emmerson says. "That’s a right that is not just belonging to the victims, but to society at large."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Ben Emmerson, finally, you’ve called on Britain and the U.S. to release confidential reports into the countries’ involvement in the kidnapping and torture of terrorism suspects, accusing them of years of official denials. Can you expand on that?
BEN EMMERSON: Yes, I presented in my last report to the Human Rights Council a series of principles on accountability for what are described in international law as gross or systemic human rights violations. And I think that there’s no doubt that the conspiracy that involved the commission of acts of secret detention, torture and rendition under the Bush administration constitute gross and systematic human rights violations. And international law is clear on this. There is no superior orders defense. There is no principle that would justify—just as at the Nuremberg trials there was no principle that would allow someone to say, "Well, this is what was ordered by my officials." There must be—international law requires that there be—a system for achieving accountability.
And we know that the Feinstein Senate committee report into the activities of the CIA is said to be a very thorough and comprehensive analysis and to identify who made the decisions, who committed the acts alleged, and where and how and why. And a crucial part of the duty of accountability under international law is the so-called right to truth. And that’s a right that’s not just belonging to the victims, but to society at large. And, therefore, I mean, the time has come, unequivocally, for the release of the Feinstein report. I mean, if there have to be particular redactions in order to protect the identity of operatives from reprisals, so be it. But the key findings of the Feinstein report and of a parallel report commissioned and prepared and provided to the British prime minister in relation to the United Kingdom’s involvement in these activities must now be made public. And we will not stop calling for the publication of this material until at least a sufficient amount of it has been put into the public domain.
AMY GOODMAN: Ben Emmerson, I want to thank you for being with us, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, has issued an interim report on his investigation into U.S. drone strikes and targeted killings. His findings, along with a report by the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, will be debated today at the U.N. General Assembly. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, a drone operator. Stay with us.
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The Obama administration’s drone and targeted killing policy will come under scrutiny at the United Nations today with a report concluding at least 400 Pakistani civilians have been killed by drone strikes over the past decade. Another 200 victims have been deemed "probable non-combatants." The report also looks at U.S. drone attacks in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Somalia, as well as Israel’s use of drones in Gaza. The U.N. report comes at a time when U.S. drone policy is facing unprecedented public criticism. Earlier this week, Amnesty International said some civilian drone killings in Pakistan may amount to war crimes. Human Rights Watch criticized U.S. drone strikes in Yemen. On Wednesday, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif urged President Obama to end drone strikes in Pakistan. Ahead of unveiling his findings today at the United Nations General Assembly, Ben Emmerson, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, joins us to discuss his probe of the U.S. drone war.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The Obama administration’s drone and targeted killing policy will come under scrutiny today at the United Nations. The U.N. special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism is scheduled to present a report that concludes at least 400 Pakistani civilians have been killed by U.S. drone strikes over the past decade. Another 200 victims have been deemed "probable non-combatants." The report also looks at U.S. drone attacks in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Somalia, as well as Israel’s use of drones in Gaza.
The U.N. report comes at a time when U.S. drone policy is facing unprecedented public criticism. Earlier this week, Amnesty International said some drone killings in Pakistan may amount to war crimes. Human Rights Watch criticized U.S. drone strikes in Yemen. Then, on Wednesday, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif urged U.S. President Barack Obama to end drone strikes in Pakistan.
PRIME MINISTER NAWAZ SHARIF: Pakistan and the United States have a strong, ongoing counterterrorism cooperation. We have agreed to further strengthen this cooperation. I also brought up the issue of drones in our meeting, emphasizing the need for an end to such strikes.
AMY GOODMAN: During his public remarks with Nawaz Sharif, President Obama did not directly address the U.S. drone war.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We talked about security and the concerns that both of us have about senseless violence, terrorism and extremism. And we agreed that we need to continue to find constructive ways to partner together, ways that respect Pakistan’s sovereignty, that respect the concerns of both countries. And I’m optimistic that we can continue to make important strides in moving forward, because both the Pakistani people and the American people have suffered terribly from terrorism in the past.
AMY GOODMAN: One day after the Pakistani leader met with President Obama, The Washington Post revealed how the United States and Pakistan communicated about, and in some cases coordinated, dozens of drone strikes in Pakistan from late 2007 to late 2011.
To talk more about this growing debate, we’re joined by Ben Emmerson, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism. He will be addressing the U.N. General Assembly today.
Welcome to Democracy Now!
BEN EMMERSON: Thanks, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about your findings.
BEN EMMERSON: Well, I think, first of all, the first point to make is this is not a final report, so "findings" is perhaps putting it too high. This is a process of dialogue which will involve a number of reports, both to the General Assembly and to the Human Rights Council. And what I’m presenting to the General Assembly this morning is an interim report.
In terms of the key issues, what we sought to do was to take an overview of the use, the deployment of armed drones both by the United States and the United Kingdom in Afghanistan and other parts of the world, and of course by Israel in Gaza, as well, to get a sense of the difficulties involved in assessing civilian casualty levels. And I make it absolutely clear there are real practical problems in that process, partly due to the lack of transparency from the states engaged in these counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations, and partly because of the sheer topographical challenges involved in conducting investigations in these largely ungoverned or poorly governed spaces.
So, at this stage, the principal recommendation of the report is that where states have a credible information from any source, including sources like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, that civilians have been killed or injured, then they are under an obligation, of course, to conduct their own investigations—and, no doubt, all states do conduct their own investigations when deploying this technology—but more important than that for the public process, that the results of those investigations should be disclosed. We’ve seen, for example, in Afghanistan, a couple of instances where both the U.S. and, in one case, the U.K. have released, declassified investigation reports or the summaries of the findings of investigation reports involving drone strikes where civilians have been killed. And that type of transparency goes an awful long way to allaying people’s concerns that there is a disproportionate risk of civilian casualties.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the—as a policy matter, what is—do you see problems with the United States in terms of even actually recognizing or seeking to report civilian casualties?
BEN EMMERSON: Well, I mean, the principal historical problem, clearly, is that somebody in the earlier administration, the Bush administration, thought it was a smart idea to hand control of what amounts to the delivery of ordnance through the air in an act of war to an organization, the CIA, which by its own terms, and as with all secret intelligence organizations, cannot either confirm or deny the existence of its operations. That is an essential operating prerequisite for clandestine intelligence organizations, and it’s exactly why clandestine intelligence organizations are not the right body to be carrying out acts of counterinsurgency warfare. And, I mean, obviously one of the principal tenets of the president’s speech at the National Defense University in May was that the use of armed drones would migrate away from CIA and into the hands of DOD, and that certainly is part of what we would see as a development towards transparency and accountability.
AMY GOODMAN: Going from CIA to Pentagon. Well, let me ask you—earlier this week, State Department spokesperson Marie Harf suggested Amnesty and Human Rights Watch were overestimating the number of civilians killed by U.S. drones but offered no facts to back up what she was saying. She was repeatedly questioned about why the administration has refused to release information about civilians killed by U.S. drones.
REPORTER 1: If you dispute these figures by these organizations, do you have—do you counter with your own figures? Do you have figures of your own?
MARIE HARF: We do certainly have this kind of information.
REPORTER 1: Could you tell us what these figures are?
MARIE HARF: Well, I think I’d make a point—I knew where that—where that’s where this was going, Said. And I think I’d make the point that when we make determinations about issues like this one, that substantial information concerning U.S. counterterrorism strike, it’s collected through a variety of sources and methods. In order to protect these sources and methods, we can’t make much of this information publicly available, because we want to have access to that information in the future. ... We take a full, holistic picture of what happened before and after such operations to make determinations about these things. So it’s a much more complete picture than any one non-governmental organization would likely have on the ground.
REPORTER 2: OK, well, this is two non-governmental organizations, two—
MARIE HARF: Or two.
REPORTER 2: Two organizations which you have held up in the past as conducting accurate and credible reports on things like in Syria.
MARIE HARF: Every situation is different.
REPORTER 2: Oh, so they just don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to drones in Pakistan?
MARIE HARF: We evaluate every report separately. We don’t make blanket statements about organizations’ reports before seeing them. That would seem to be a little unreasonable.
AMY GOODMAN: State Department spokesperson Marie Harf. Ben Emmerson, your response?
BEN EMMERSON: Well, first of all, the core of the problem with the U.S. government’s refusal to identify its own estimates of civilian casualties lies in what you’ve just heard: the justification that this would compromise sources and methods. Now, obviously, I am not privy to the details of that justification, but what I do know is that the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan, during his confirmation hearings, himself, suggested that transparency and accountability calls for the release of precisely the information that in that clip you saw it being suggested that the information can’t safely be released. And one would have thought that before making that statement, Mr. Brennan, who knows a thing or two about intelligence risks and about the need to protect sources and methods, would have had those considerations well in mind.
The basic position that my report takes on this question is that considerations of national security may, in certain circumstances, justify withholding limited information about particular strikes, if to do that would compromise an individual source or an individual operation, but that, in general, statistical and methodological information can safely be released and should be released. And by methodological information I mean explaining how and why a decision has been taken to calculate in a particular strike the number of civilian casualties, because there’s a big dispute about who is a civilian in this context.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I would like to ask you also about the actual legality or illegality of the drone strikes. Clearly, we’ve seen in many of these countries this dance of, the one hand, the leaders of the countries condemning the strikes, while on the other hand we’re getting reports in among journalists close to power sources in the U.S. that this is merely for the local public consumption, that the leaders are really supportive of these strikes. This whole issue of how you see the actual legality of these strikes?
BEN EMMERSON: Yes. Well, first of all, I mean, there are, if you like, two separate questions there. The first is the issue of consent to the use of force on the territory of another state. And although—I mean, I take the description that you give. In reality, the allegation has only been leveled at Pakistan that it would say in public—or the government would say in public for public consumption that it was opposed to the use of drone strikes whilst in private consenting to their continued operation. And I think—and I indicate this in the report—that there is pretty clear evidence that that was the position in the past. And we’ve seen some recent leaks in The Washington Post, but, I mean, it was well known before that. And indeed former President Musharraf himself indicated that that was the position in a recent interview during the course of the Pakistani presidential elections.
But, you know, governments change, and situations change. And in 2012, the Pakistani Parliament passed a resolution, the effect of which was to rescind all prior consents and to require consent to be done above board, to be done in writing, to be provided to the relevant committees, to be approved during debates on the floor of the House of Parliament. And that hasn’t been done, and therefore, really, whatever levels of cooperation there may continue to be at an intelligence level, if we support, as we must, the democratic process in Pakistan, the elected representatives of the people in Pakistan unanimously have adopted a position that the government cannot lawfully consent other than to do—other than by doing so through a prescribed procedure. So, the short answer to the question is, my view, certainly on the information that I’ve received from the government of Pakistan over quite an extensive period of time, is that currently—this is not by any means a statement as to the position in the past, but currently—Pakistan does not give valid consent in international law to the use of force on its territory.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about Israel’s use of drones in Gaza. What did you find?
BEN EMMERSON: Well, one of the difficulties with analysis of the position in Israel is that currently Israel has suspended its relations with the Human Rights Council. And the consequence of that is that Israel has not formally cooperated with this process so far.
AMY GOODMAN: And they’ve done that because?
BEN EMMERSON: The suspended their relations with the Human Rights Council? Well, I think the given reason was a position taken by the council in relation to settlements. It’s nothing to do with drones. But that is the position as we sit here today. I think all of us within the U.N. are optimistic that Israel will shortly re-establish its relationship with the Human Rights Council, and the high commissioner for human rights has called on Israel to—effectively, to re-engage. And that is, in fact, part of the reason—by no means the only reason, but part of the reason—why this process needs to take place over a period of time, because I’m very keen to engage directly with the state of Israel.
And I hope that those who have been following this process will see from the content of the report that I have tried to do justice to the position of all sides in this debate. I mean, I make it absolutely clear I wouldn’t want this report to be held up as though it were a condemnation of the United States. We’re nowhere near that position at the moment. What we are seeking to do is to encourage states to engage constructively. I mean, you asked about law. The fact of the matter is that there are many crucial areas in this debate on which international lawyers disagree. And states disagree. I mean, the United States has an analysis which some—in some parts of the world is regarded as legally unsustainable, but in other parts of the world is regarded as credible and realistic, and as a modern adaptation of the Geneva Conventions, to what we call asymmetrical conflict—in other words, where one party to a conflict is a non-state armed group labeled as a terrorist organization.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, in that vein, you also raise questions about how the United States defines associated forces or co-belligerence as a rationale for some of these—for mounting some of these drone strikes. Could you expand on that?
BEN EMMERSON: Well, yes. I mean, I think one of the—one of the lessons of the past decade, since the crime against humanity that was committed in New York and Washington in 2001, is that attacks that have been mounted in order to destroy al-Qaeda Central have been significantly successful, but the consequence has been like the hydra, where the head is cut off, the creation of—I mean, the current estimate is somewhere near 40 organizations pledging, broadly speaking, allegiance to the same philosophy of violent extremism under the name of Islamist politics and with an anti-Western and anti-U.S. agenda, spreading from Central North Africa right the way across to the Middle East and Syria. And we hear the stories every day.
So, if the United States were to take the position that it remains in a state of armed conflict—because that is its position in relation to al-Qaeda—with all of these organizations, wherever they are, then of course the United States would be condemning itself to a permanent state of war. I mean, I think probably your viewers aren’t necessarily alive to the fact that the United States is at war in Yemen and is at war in the FATA region of Pakistan, because it considers itself to be engaged in what’s known as a non-international armed conflict—a war, in other words—with the al-Qaeda-related groups in those areas.
So, the answer to your question is, I think there is a real realization within the administration—and we see hints of this in the May speech from the president, but we also see it more explicitly in some of the speeches that have been made by former officials like Harold Koh and Jeh Johnson—a real realization that in order to bring this conflict to an end, the effective way to do that is not to have an ever-expanding list of so-called co-belligerent organizations.
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As the problem-plagued roll-out of President Obama’s signature healthcare policy undergoes congressional scrutiny for the first time, we speak with Clay Johnson, a former Obama campaign innovation expert who founded Blue State Digital, the company that built Obama’s 2008 website. During a House panel on Thursday, lawmakers questioned executives of two of the lead contractors behind the website, healthcare.gov — CGI Federal and Quality Software Systems Incorporated — about the myriad of glitches and defects. Johnson says the new website is built with outdated and proprietary software. "When the government is building software like this, it ought to be built out in the open — built with a licensing system called open source so that the public truly owns it," Johnson says. He notes that "In 1996, Congress lobotomized itself by getting rid of its technology think tank called the Technology Assessment Office. So they’re writing bills where they don’t understand the technology required in their laws."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The problem-plagued roll-out of President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare policy has undergone congressional scrutiny for the first time. During a House panel on Thursday, lawmakers questioned technology contractors about a myriad of defects with the healthcare.gov website. The online portal for uninsured Americans in 36 states has been marred by crashes, glitches and system failures since it went live earlier this month. The website’s launch began a six-month enrollment period that is expected to draw an estimated seven million people to sign up for federally subsidized private insurance for 2014. During the hearing, Republican Representative Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania accused the Obama administration of wasting millions of dollars of taxpayer money.
REP. TIM MURPHY: We were promised a website where people could easily compare plans and costs. $500 million later, we find the American public have been dumped with the ultimate cash for clunkers, except they had to pay the cash and still got the clunker.
AMY GOODMAN: Lawmakers questioned executives of two of the lead contractors behind the website: CGI Federal and Quality Software Systems Incorporated. They both blamed demanding deadlines, higher-than-anticipated website traffic, and a last-minute registration system that they say may have overloaded the system.
For more, we go to Atlanta, Georgia, where we’re joined by Clay Johnson, former Obama innovation expert who founded the company that [built] Obama’s 2008 site; CEO, Department of Better Technology. He’s the author of The Information Diet: The Case for Conscious Consumption.
Clay Johnson, welcome to Democracy Now! What do you think happened? Why has this website not worked?
CLAY JOHNSON: Well, government doesn’t have a lot of people to choose from when they’re looking for contractors to build this stuff. And I think part of the problem is that the same people that are building drones are building websites. When government is building a website like this, they have to use a system called procurement, which is about 1,800 pages’ worth of regulation that all but ensures that the people who are building this stuff are the people with the best lawyers, not the people with the best programmers. And so, you know, you have this sort of fundamental lack of talent amongst the contractor ecosystem that’s building this stuff, that it’s bound to be bad work—that, combined with the fact that in 1996 Congress lobotomized itself by getting rid of its technology think tank, called the Technology Assessment Office. So when they’re writing bills, they don’t understand the technology that they’re requiring in their laws. This is what you get when you have a Congress that is basically brainless on technology, and government who can only pick from a few old, stodgy contractors. You’re bound to have this result. And, in fact, the standings group came out earlier this week and pointed out that over—for all procurements over $10 million, 94 percent of them fail.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, that’s what I wanted to ask you about, these—we’ve seen it not only at the federal level with this, the healthcare roll-out, but at local government levels, these huge technology contracts that promise the moon and the stars, and then when they actually are rolled out have major, major problems. And what about CGI, the main contractor here? Have you had any experience with their track record in the past?
CLAY JOHNSON: I’ve never worked with them directly, but I can tell you from watching the hearing yesterday that, from a technologist point of view, both the questions from Congress were sort of absurd and not particularly helpful, and the answers from the contractors were also just demonstrably ignorant of the technology that they were managing. And so, you have these bizarre exchanges where, you know, a member of Congress is asking the vice president of CGI Federal about code inside of the website that isn’t even being displayed and isn’t even relevant to the user, and CG—and the VP of CGI Federal not even recognizing that it’s not displayed and not even relevant to the user. It was this really baffling set of exchanges. It’s like watching my one-year-old argue with my cat.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: What—what about this whole issue of many of these contractors insisting on developing proprietary software for many projects like this? What is the impact of that on—not only on cost, but on the ability to hold contractors accountable for the kind of product they produce?
CLAY JOHNSON: Well, it’s not just about accountability, it’s about security. Look, the Constitution says that government can’t hold a copyright. And I understand that government needs to be able to buy commercial software. You know, government needs to be able to buy a Coca-Cola, if it needs to, and the recipe for Coca-Cola ought not to be, you know, posted on the Internet as a result. But when government is building software like this, it ought to be built out in the open. It ought to be built with a licensing system called "open source," so that the public truly owns it. You know, if my tax dollars are going to something, then it ought to belong—if the public’s tax dollars are going to something, then it ought to belong to the public. And that’s the only thing that open source can afford.
But the other point about, you know, contractors developing out in the open and using open-source technology is that it makes websites more secure. It makes it so that security holes are easier to find. And that’s why you see, I think, lots of companies moving towards open-source infrastructure, because you’ve got many eyes on problems.
In the case of federal contracting, though, it’s not just about a move to open source, it’s also about moving from these large, stodgy, old vendors, who basically haven’t had to compete in the past couple of decades, to smaller, more innovative businesses, who are more competitive. And what the Obama administration needs to do to—not to fix healthcare.gov, but to fix the next healthcare.gov from happening, is to really open the door to these smaller—these smaller businesses who have more experience in delivering this stuff.
AMY GOODMAN: So what would it mean right now, Clay Johnson? How could this idea about open-source technology be incorporated into what everyone is experiencing right now?
CLAY JOHNSON: Well, I think that it would be a great—it would be a great solution to this problem for the CMS and HHS teams to really start developing out in the open. I think part of the reason why the White House and this administration is suffering from kind of a PR disaster is because they’re not being open and transparent with how this stuff is working and when people can be expected—you know, I shouldn’t be talking to you; it should be people from CMS and HHS talking to you about what’s going on, what’s happening on a regular and daily basis. You know, in development cycles and programming, you have these things called "release notes." And release notes are, you know, you send out very short notes about what’s changed in the software so far and what progress is being made and what’s left to do. And I think the American public would love to see what’s going on with healthcare.gov in that regard.
AMY GOODMAN: What are they hiding, Clay Johnson? We just have—
CLAY JOHNSON: And I think that HHS and CMS could start doing that.
AMY GOODMAN: What are they hiding? We have 20 seconds.
CLAY JOHNSON: I have no idea what they’re hiding. I think what they’re hiding is a procurement system that’s broken and needs to be fixed.
AMY GOODMAN: Clay Johnson, we want to thank you very much for being with us, former member of President Barack Obama’s technology team, founded the company that built Obama’s 2008 site. It’s called [Blue State Digital. He is CEO at] Department of Better Technology.
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HEADLINES:
Germany, France Seek "No-Spying" Pledge from U.S.
Germany and France are demanding a "no-spying" agreement with the United States following new revelations of National Security Agency espionage. Leaks from Edward Snowden this week show the NSA tapped into the cellphone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and collected French phone records in bulk. News of the spying dominated the first day of a European Council summit in Brussels, with European leaders uniting in outrage. Appearing with Merkel, French President François Hollande said France and Germany will seek an agreement with the United States before the end of the year on ending the spying.
French President François Hollande: "France and Germany will take an initiative. We will start discussing the matter with the Americans in order to agree upon a common framework, that will be done by the end of the year, and the other Europeans who would like to join us will be welcome. To be more specific, we will make sure that between the various services we can not only clarify what happened in the past, but we can agree upon rules for the future."
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Report: NSA Spied on 35 Foreign Leaders
In the latest of Edward Snowden’s revelations, The Guardian newspaper reports the United States has monitored the phone calls of at least 35 world leaders. Staffers at the White House, State Department and the Pentagon were all encouraged to share the contact information of foreign politicians. One government official handed over 200 phone numbers. In Washington, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney refused to comment on the report, repeating his vow that the United States is no longer spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney: "We are not going to comment publicly on every specified alleged intelligence activity, and as a matter of policy, we have made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations. As I mentioned yesterday, the president spoke with Chancellor Merkel, reassured her that the United States is not and will not monitor the chancellor’s communications."
The identities of the 35 leaders targeted by the NSA have not been disclosed. According to a leaked government memo, the spying produced "little reportable intelligence."
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Anti-Surveillance "Stop Watching Us" Rally Set for D.C.
As the diplomatic uproar over National Security Agency spying continues overseas, activists in the United States are holding a protest on Saturday in Washington, D.C. "Stop Watching Us: Rally Against Mass Surveillance" is organized by a coalition of more than 100 groups, companies and public figures. In a statement, Edward Snowden urged supporters to attend, saying: "Today, no telephone in America makes a call without leaving a record with the NSA. Today, no internet transaction enters or leaves America without passing through the NSA’s hands. Our representatives in Congress tell us this is not surveillance. They’re wrong ... Join us in sending the message: Stop watching us."
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Obama Renews Call for Congressional Action on Immigration Reform
President Obama is renewing a push for immigration reform in the aftermath of the government shutdown that dominated Capitol Hill for weeks. Speaking in Washington, Obama urged Congress to take action.
President Obama: "But what we can’t do is just sweep the problem under the rug one more time, leave it for somebody else to solve sometime in the future. You know, rather than create problems, let’s prove to the American people that Washington can actually solve some problems. This reform comes as close to anything we’ve got to a law that will benefit everybody now and far into the future. So let’s see if we can get this done. And let’s see if we can get it done this year."
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Contractors Face Congressional Scrutiny on Healthcare Exchange Rollout
Contractors involved in the troubled rollout of the nation’s new healthcare exchanges appeared before Congress on Thursday to face questioning from lawmakers. The online portal for uninsured Americans in 36 states has been marred by crashes, glitches and system failures since it went live earlier this month. Cheryl Campbell of the firm CGI Federal vowed improvements in the coming weeks.
Cheryl Campbell: "The system will continue to improve. From our perspective, as painful as it sounds — I know that the experience has been a difficult experience — the system is working. People are enrolling, but people will be able to enroll at a faster pace, the experience will be improved as they go forward, and people will be able to enroll by the December 15 time frame."
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National Guard Members Wounded in Tennessee Shooting
Two members of the National Guard were wounded on Thursday when a subordinate opened fire at a Navy facility in Tennessee. The gunman, a National Guard recruiter, was being relieved of his duties when he retrieved a weapon from his car. Millington Police Chief Rita Stanback announced the shooting.
Rita Stanback: "At about 12:33, we responded to a 911 call at the Army National Guard unit over here in regards to shots fired. Officers arrived on the scene. We had two individuals that had been injured. We had one suspect who is in custody at this time."
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Police Kill 13-Year-Old Boy Carrying Assault Weapon Replica
A 13-year-old boy has been shot dead in California after police mistook the pellet gun he was carrying for an assault rifle. Andy Lopez was bringing the plastic replica weapon to a friend’s house when he was spotted by police. Believing the pellet gun was real, Lopez was shot dead within 10 seconds. The two officers have been placed on leave.
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Coalition Seeks Justice Dept. Probe of NYPD Spying on Muslims
A coalition of more than 125 groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union is seeking a Justice Department probe of the New York City Police Department’s spying on Muslim communities. The NYPD’s "Demographics Unit," as it was known until 2010, has secretly infiltrated Muslim student groups, sent informants into mosques, eavesdropped on conversations in restaurants, barber shops and gyms, and built a vast database of information. The program was established with help from the CIA, which is barred from domestic spying. In a letter, the coalition says: "The NYPD’s biased policing practices hurt not only Muslims, but all communities who rightfully expect that law enforcement will serve and protect America’s diverse population equally, without discrimination."
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African-American Shoppers Accuse Barneys of Racial Profiling
Two African-American customers have accused the high-end New York department store Barneys of racial profiling after they were detained for making expensive purchases. Trayon Christian, 19, was arrested moments after buying a $350 belt. Despite showing his ID and debit card to undercover officers, Christian was told the purchase was suspicious because he could not afford to make it. Christian has filed a lawsuit against Barneys. Another African-American shopper has since come forward to say she endured a similar experience earlier this year. The National Action Network has vowed to picket Barneys unless the alleged racial profiling stops.
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City College of New York Students Protest Closure of Campus Activist Center
Two people were arrested at the City College of New York on Thursday in a protest against the closing of a hub for student activism. The Guillermo Morales/Assata Shakur Student and Community Center was abruptly shut down last weekend after school officials said they needed the space to expand the campus career services office. Student activists say they believe the center was targeted in retaliation for the recent protests against the hiring of former CIA director and military general David Petraeus to teach a course. The chair of the Morales-Shakur Center, Shepard McDaniel, said student activists are being silenced.
Shepard McDaniel: "This is a lot bigger than just the administration here at City College. We know this is coming from the federal government, just in terms of their whole movement, particularly with the Petraeus demonstrations that are going on in this campus, too. And organizing for those took place in that center. So it’s been a target, and at this point that is really trying to silence, you know, student rights in terms of First Amendment, in terms of being able to organize against dissent and so forth."
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Catholic Worker Activists Acquitted of Protest at Drone Base
Five Catholic Worker activists have been acquitted for blocking the gate of a New York base where U.S. drones are operated remotely earlier this year. The protesters held signs condemning the killings of children and other civilians as they stood in front of the entrance to Hancock Field Air National Guard Base near Syracuse. Calling the drone strikes illegal, the activists had argued in court their intent was to uphold the law, not break it.
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Ex-NSA Chief Michael Hayden Outed for Off-the-Record Interview
The former head of the National Security Agency has been subjected to some unwanted eavesdropping of his own. Michael Hayden was riding a train from New York to Washington, D.C., on Thursday giving an off-the-record interview as an anonymous former official. Hayden did not realize he was sitting close to former MoveOn.org director Tom Matzzie, who proceeded to live tweet his account of Hayden’s phone call. Mattzie says Hayden’s comments included harsh criticism of the Obama administration, as well as bragging about the CIA’s rendition program under President George W. Bush.
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207 W 25th Street, 11th Floor
New York, NY 10001 United States
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Police Brutality, Mental Illness and ‘The Memphis Model’ by Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
Elsa Cruz filed a federal lawsuit in New York this week, months after police shot her husband dead. Last May, Cruz called 911 asking for help with her husband, Samuel. She feared he hadn’t taken his medication while she was on vacation in her native country, the Philippines. Eight months, almost to the day, before Cruz was killed, not far away in Harlem, Hawa Bah called 911 to ask for medical help for her son, Mohamed. Rather than getting medical help, Mohamed Bah was confronted by the New York City Police Department. Within hours, he, too, was shot dead by police, hit eight times, once in the head. Mohamed’s sister, Oumou Bah, is suing the City of New York and unnamed police officers. While neither lawsuit will bring back the dead, they may prevent future deaths by forcing the New Rochelle Police Department and the NYPD to adopt an increasingly mainstream police practice for dealing with emotionally distressed people, called “The Memphis Model.”
In an exclusive interview Tuesday on the “Democracy Now!” news hour, I had the chance to interview Hawa Bah and Elsa Cruz. They were meeting each other in our studios for the first time.
Hawa Bah made annual visits to New York from the West African nation of Guinea to see her son, Mohamed. On her most recent visit, she was struck by Mohamed’s deteriorating condition. He had lost weight and had a cut above his eye. He was acting erratically. She suspected he was depressed, and wanted him to go to the hospital. Unable to convince him to go, she sought advice from friends, who suggested she call 911. She told me, “When I saw the police car, I see him, I say, ‘Hey, I don’t call police. I call an ambulance.’ He say, ‘No, ma’am, don’t worry. In New York here, when you call an ambulance, we will come first. We will look at the person and call an ambulance.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry, he will be OK.’”
The NYPD never told Mohamed Bah that they were there at his mother’s request. Hawa Bah told me, “He didn’t tell Mohamed, ‘Your mom say go to the hospital.’ He just say, ‘Mohamed, open the door. I came for you.’” She begged the police to let her talk to her son. Her attorney Randolph McLaughlin explained what happened next: “They broke the door down, tasered, beanbagged and shot him eight times. The last bullet went into his head and had stippling around the entry wound, which says that that shot, which probably took his life, was at close range.”
On May 26, Samuel Cruz, like Mohamed Bah, was acting erratically. Elsa called 911. She recounted to me what she told the operator: “There’s something wrong with my husband. He needs help. Can you please send us somebody to help me to assisting him to go to the hospital?” She said, “Your husband is harming anybody?” And I said, “No, ma’am, no. He’s a very nice person. He never harm anybody. Could you please send us somebody, or whatever?” And then, “OK.” The New Rochelle police arrived, dressed, as Elsa recalls, “for war.” They forced their way into the apartment and shot her husband dead.
Both the NYPD, in Bah’s case, and the New Rochelle police, in Cruz’s case, claim that the distressed individual lunged at officers with a knife. As Bah and Cruz’s other attorney, Mayo Bartlett, noted: “The thing that’s striking in these cases is the fact that the police are not called in response to a crime. There’s no rush. There’s no need to take such immediate action.”
This is where “The Memphis Model” comes in. Maj. Sam Cochran is a retired officer with the Memphis, Tenn., police. In 1987, police responded to a man who was harming himself, and threatening others, with a knife. The police killed the man. Community outcry prompted the mayor to call for a solution. They developed the Crisis Intervention Team. Sam Cochran explained to me, “It’s a community program [with] three main partnerships: law enforcement, local mental-health services providers and also advocacy.” CITs put a trained officer or mental-health professional on the scene, to de-escalate a situation. Since its inception in Memphis, it has been adopted in more than 2,500 communities in 40 states, as well as internationally.
The Cruz and Bah families are suing, demanding that the New Rochelle Police Department and the NYPD adopt CIT policies. As attorney Randolph McLaughlin summarized: “The police say the exact same thing in Bah and in Cruz: ‘He came at us with a knife, and we killed him.’ ... What was their plan? Did they have a plan when they broke in the door? Why did they break in the door? Why didn’t they slow things down? Why did they aggravate the situation? In fact, the officers in all of these cases have not been trained in crisis intervention. They’ve been trained in the use of force—deadly force. And if that’s all the officer has at his disposal, he will use it.”
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