The Senate Intelligence Committee has taken an important step by passing an intelligence authorization which would, for the first time, require the Administration to publicly report on civilian casualties from U.S. drone strikes. The Administration should support this provision, and Congress should pass this drone strike transparency provision into law.

Help us move Congress and the President to support this key reform by signing our petition:

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/pass-the-drone-strike?source=c.fwd&r_by=1135580

Sarah Knuckey is Director of the Project on Extrajudicial Executions at New York University School of Law, and a Special Advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions. About this provision, she recently wrote: [1]

The legislation contains an important section which would require the President to publicly report the numbers of combatants and civilians killed by the U.S. in its targeted killing operations.

The reporting that would be mandated by this section would be an important step toward improving transparency … This is particularly so given the significant discrepancies between the various publicly available civilian casualty databases and statistics, the range of statistics reported by Pakistan, and U.S. claims (without offering evidence, or its own counts) that the numbers are very low, and lower than counts by non-government actors. Various U.N. officials, foreign governments, a broad range of civil society, and many others, including former U.S. Department of State Legal Advisor Harold Koh … have called for the publication of such basic information. It is also important that these potential reporting requirements are coming from Congress itself, which many have called for to be more rigorous in its oversight of executive action in this area.

Forcing the Administration to publish information is crucial, because in the court of poorly informed public opinion, the Administration has gotten away with two claims that the record of independent reporting strongly indicates are not true: 1) U.S. drone strikes are “narrowly targeted” on “top level terrorist leaders,” and 2) civilian casualties have been “extremely rare.” Poll data shows that majority public support of the policy is significantly based on belief in these two false claims; if the public knew that either of these claims were not true, public support for the policy would fall below 50%. By keeping key information secret, the Administration has been able to avoid having its two key claims in defense of the policy refuted in media that reach the broad public.

This language could be offered as an amendment in the Senate to the National Defense Authorization Act in the next few weeks. It could be offered in the House as an amendment to the intelligence authorization, or as a freestanding bill. But it’s not likely to become law unless there is public agitation for it. Help us move Congress and the President by signing our petition:

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/pass-the-drone-strike?source=c.fwd&r_by=1135580

Thanks for all you do to help hold U.S. officials accountable for the impact of U.S. policy on civilians,

Robert Naiman, Chelsea Mozen and Megan Iorio

Just Foreign Policy

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References:

1. “Key Issues in the New Senate Bill to Require White House Drone Strike Casualty Reports,” Sarah Knuckey, Just Security, Thursday, November 7, 2013, http://justsecurity.org/2013/11/07/key-issues-senate-bill-require-white-house-drone-strike-casualty-reports/

2. “’Ending the Forever War’: A Progress Report,” Harold Hongju Koh, Just Security, Monday, October 28, 2013, http://justsecurity.org/2013/10/28/ending-war-progress-report/