Public Enemy #1: The Intercept

With a helpful framing narrative and context, lots of big pictures and graphics, and many new insights, this reporting could awaken or reintroduce interested readers to how the U.S. national security apparatus has thought about and conducted counterterrorism operations since 9/11. The reporting is less one big “bombshell” and more of a synthesis of over a decade’s worth of reporting and analysis, bolstered by troubling new revelations about what has become routine.

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The Intercept series, at a minimum, reconfirms and illuminates much of what we knew, thought we knew, or suspected about drone strikes. For example, there is “not a bunch of folks in a room somewhere just making decisions,” as President Barack Obama put it in 2012, but indeed a clear chain of command that is displayed in a slide with the heading: “Step 1 — ‘Developing a target’ to ‘Authorization of a target.’” Also, it is clear that the Obama administration strongly prefers killing suspected terrorists rather than capturing them, despite claiming the opposite.

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This series calls into question many U.S. government claims about lethal counterterrorism strikes, which should compel long-overdue, rigorous oversight hearings by the relevant congressional committees and a full and complete public investigation of U.S. targeted killing policies — similar to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee (SSCI) report of the CIA’s rendition and interrogation program.

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[A]s impressive and important as “The Drone Papers” are, I am sadly certain that this balanced reporting and its eye-opening disclosures will not compel any new concerns or investigations in Washington. Nor should we ever expect them under this president and this Congress.

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Despite the normalcy of the never-ending war on terror, we still know remarkably little about what is being done around the world by the U.S. military and intelligence communities. As I have noted, it is only due to the work of investigative journalists, and their sources in the U.S. government or in the associated countries, that we know anything about U.S. counterterrorism operations over the past 14 years. The George W. Bush and Obama administrations have fought to shield what the public knows about these operations, described them incredibly selectively, and refused to answer clarifying questions when their rhetoric does not match their practice. In the absence of aggressive journalism, American citizens would be largely ignorant.

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Thankfully, the Intercept has taken the time to put its stories into context and explicitly name and link to the work of other journalists and even academics. This is a model that all national security journalists should emulate.

  Foreign Policy

Call me paranoid, but I'd be willing to bet the government has somebody dedicated to finding a way to squash The Intercept, it being the news service whistleblowers are going to.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.