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All right.
Many of you may know that there's a documentary called National Bird about the American drone wars.
And the good news is that it ran on PBS, Independent Lens, on your local PBS affiliate, I guess.
And it's also online, at least for a limited time, at their website.
And I watched it the other night and, man, it is something else.
You really got to see it.
You just go pbs.org slash Independent Lens.
And it's right there, National Bird.
And on the line, I have the director, Sonia Kennebec.
Welcome to the show.
How are you?
Thank you.
Thanks for having me, Scott.
I really appreciate your work and you joining us on the show today.
Really appreciate it.
What a great piece of work that you've done here.
And it's interesting.
It's not about, OK, bombing Pakistan here and Yemen here and Somalia here and the different, you know, the foreign policy of it.
It's about really more than anything, the American drone pilots and video intelligence specialists and these kinds of things and telling the story of their war waged from trailers here in the United States against people, I guess, primarily in Afghanistan and in Pakistan.
Right.
Yeah.
And I what I really wanted to do with the film is to show that there are people behind the drones, you know, because what I had reading, had been reading when I started my research was, you know, everyone was talking about the technology and these unmanned aircraft.
But these are not autonomous weapons.
You know, there are people behind the drones who are operating them.
And then there are also people in the target countries.
And and so this film is really about sort of the humanity behind this technology.
Yeah, no, that's a really good point, because, you know, on one hand, we all know that, right, that there are people driving these things.
But, you know, mostly, I guess we just think in the pictures and the pictures are of these robots flying in the sky.
You don't really think too much about them.
In fact, I think some of the biggest press that the drone pilots got was a few stories that came out, I don't know, maybe a couple of years ago, about how some of these pilots have PTSD.
And basically, I think the media take on it was how ridiculous they're sitting in trailers in Nevada or New York State somewhere.
And they're claiming they have PTSD like a combat soldier does.
And it was kind of just blown off.
It was it was seen as something sort of silly.
But that's something that actually features very prominently in your movie.
And yet, they do kind of have a point, right, that these are not combat veterans, they are sitting half a world away from the people they're killing.
So what's so traumatic about that?
Yeah, well, I would never, you know, directly compare the work of someone who, you know, flies a drone as to someone who is, you know, in a combat zone, you know, these are very different experiences.
But, you know, the work does impact the people as I as I found out, I'm doing my research.
And, and I think it's, you know, it's easier to understand when you understand how the job works in these, you know, dispositions work.
So I have this young woman in my film, her name is Heather.
And she enlisted, you know, when she was 18.
And then she got her, you know, basic training and, and then she learned her job, which was to be an imagery analyst in the drone program.
And what she was doing then, was she had to analyze the live video feed coming from the drones.
And it's basically make the call, this person who I'm seeing here is carrying a shovel or weapon, this person say, civilian or a terrorist.
And she was 20 when she flew her first mission.
And, you know, most of the people who are working this analyst positions are 18 to 25.
So, you know, just, you know, imagine, you know, what it takes to make such a far reaching decision that, you know, eventually could lead to a, you know, the killing of even a group of people.
And, and then, you know, judging that, you know, based on sometimes very, you know, kind of unclear video and, and, yeah, not really even, you know, hearing after the attack, kind of, you know, who did you kill?
And how many people did you kill?
So there's a lot of kind of doubt in their minds.
Well, yeah, just to pick up on one small point there, the video quality really isn't nearly as good as people might assume, right?
Even have one of the victims, one of the survivors.
Well, yeah, victims and survivors saying, I don't understand, you can tell the difference.
I forget what he says between a needle, whatever the proverbial.
Yeah, yeah, you can, you can read a license plate or track a golf ball or whatever, this kind of thing.
But for some reason, you can't tell that that's my daughter there that you're killing and not some tribal fighter.
Yeah, it's, you know, when, when we watch these Hollywood movies, you often see, you know, drones being used or other aircraft, and you see this crystal clear HD video where you can, you know, see everything.
And, you know, it just, you know, it's in full color, and you can read license plates and all of that.
And so what, what I found out is that the quality in reality is not as good, which has, you know, a number of reasons.
It's, you know, the number of drones that are in the air at the same time, and all, you know, you have to imagine all that data has to be transferred halfway across the world.
And it's, you know, live feed, you know, with maybe, you know, a couple seconds delay, but these are enormous amounts of data.
Am I right that they're basically looking at forward looking infrared, that FLIR?
So it's, they're looking at black blobs that represent the heat of the bodies rather than any real attempt to be high definition in terms of just visual color, radio spectrum?
Well, you know, some of these strikes and the surveillance takes place at night, so they have to use heat signatures or, you know, to, to, to look into, you know, cars and so on.
So, yes, that's some, you know, sometimes, and we've, we're showing some of the video in, in our, in our documentary, you see, you know, kind of black blobs, and then, you know, people like Heather have to make a judgment, you know, is this person, you know, is this person a man or a woman or a child?
Or what age is that child?
So you can imagine that that is a very, very complicated decision to make.
And then the other thing that I think is also, you know, traumatizing is that after the strike happened, there's, you know, from the air, a, an assessment that, you know, the imagery analysts have to make, they have to count the body parts, and they sort of have to follow through after the strike and, you know, watch people come and pick up, you know, the body parts and bury them and sometimes have funerals.
So, so all of that, you know, has an impact on the people operating the drones.
And especially when, you know, like Heather, when the other people in my film, really, you know, understand the other side and understand they are human beings on, you know, on the other side.
Well, you know, I think anybody who spent the 1990s watching weekday wings on the Discovery Channel and this and that we all know that a real pilot, no offense to these drone pilots, but a real pilot in a F-15 or F-16, he drops his bomb or shoots his missile.
And then it's called fire and forget, they find out whether they hit their target when they get back to base.
They do not sit there hovering around and looking down and watching people collect the body parts and do all this and even watch, you know, the people literally bleeding out and dying and, you know, screaming and flailing around as they die and this kind of thing as the drone pilots do.
So they're, I guess, in a sense, taking a risk.
They could run out of gas over Afghanistan or something.
Not that anybody's shooting at them, but they don't have to witness it the way this young lady has to sit there and watch for hours and hours the aftermath of her massacres.
And then, you know, what do you have to think about as well is that they are in complete safety while doing that.
And one of the, my other subjects in my film, her name is Lisa.
She actually served in the U.S. military for over 20 years.
And she had been deployed to combat zones.
And then her last deployment was within the drone program.
And she was based in California.
And she says she found it worse.
You know, her worst deployment was within the drone program because she said when she was in a combat zone, at least she could say, you know, for herself that I'm defending myself.
I'm defending the people left and right of me.
But in the drone program, you can't say that.
And, you know, you're not defending your own life.
So there's something really strange with this new type of warfare where you're so detached and you can still kill so many people on the other side.
And then, you know, one thing that was very important to me, you know, to also show in my documentary is, you know, what happens on the ground in a place targeted by drones, because it's not just the strikes itself that impacts and traumatizes the people, but it's also, you know, just a knowledge that they are being watched all the time and could be targeted at any moment.
Yeah.
Well, now I want to ask you all about the receiving end here in a minute.
But before that, I wanted to, well, I mean, there's so many different things.
But first of all, I wanted to touch on just how naive this young lady Heather was, and how I should drop just there.
She is basically, I think you said a 19, 20 year old girl, and she, her understanding of what was going on here with joining the armed services and fighting for your country and whatever, was exactly what everybody thinks, other than people who just happen to have a really smart uncle who clued them in on a lot of stuff before, whatever.
But this is the default position of all 20 year olds, or 19 year olds who were approached by a recruiter, all this is that, of course, this is all legitimate.
This is all red, white, and blue.
It's all green camouflage.
It's not a crime.
This recruiter is saying, I'm going to hire you to kill these people.
But it's not only is it not a crime, you're a hero, you're an idol, you're the best and brightest.
And we have to stop and clap for you at the airport.
And all of these things, it's the celebrated thing.
It's there's so much, you know, civic religion and everything built around being in the service.
But then the point is, the contrast, is when she gets there and actually turns up for work, she basically has like a fluorescent light, cubicle office job, just like every other schmuck in America, only hers, she's pulling the trigger on people killing women and children.
And as you're saying, I think this is kind of what you're getting at.
When you're actually there, at least you can rationalize, never mind, you know, why the politician sent you there or anything, but at least you're fighting for your buddies to either side and that kind of thing.
But just the surreality of, of going from naive high school graduate who assumes that everything here is on the up and up, right, because everyone in town seems to think so.
And that kind of deal to actually living this way, you could see why.
And you talk about this in the film that she ended up suicidal, not that her commanding officers cared that she might kill herself, you know, at any day.
And it was not just her.
When I first met Heather, she had just left the military.
She had at that time already lost three friends, fellow airmen to suicide.
So it wasn't just her struggling with her job and her position.
So I think, you know, it's really important that the military looks at, you know, this work closer and provides the help that the people need.
And, and also maybe, you know, consider all of the, you know, the full implications, you know, strategic implications of using this type of weapon, because, you know, I do understand kind of why and how drones are, you know, so easy to use because you're not putting boots on the ground, you're not putting anyone in immediate danger.
But, you know, the final the final strategy should be to keep, you know, us all safer and reduce terrorism.
And that's really my question, you know, like, Sophia, the drone program has been, you know, active for a very long time, you know, over 10 years.
So has it actually, you know, had this effect?
Is it, is it reducing or is it in fact, increasing terrorism?
Well, of course, as they say, they don't really have the metrics.
They can't really know that.
We can certainly count quite a few terrorists who have attacked or attempted to attack the United States who cited the drone wars in Afghanistan and in Pakistan.
Zazi and Omar Mateen.
And I forgot the guy that set off the bombs in New York and New Jersey just last year.
And they keep citing Afghanistan, they keep citing drone wars.
Of course, Faisal Shahzad that tried to blow up Times Square in 2010 cited a drone attack in Pakistan that he was witness to the aftermath of it when he went home to visit family there.
So you're certainly right that it's an important question.
And it's hardly settled when they say, Oh, yeah, no, this is surgical.
We're just getting rid of tying up the last few loose ends and eliminating the last few bad guys in the world.
That's not how it works.
Yeah.
And I actually want to get back to what you said earlier, too, about the, you know, the recruitment, because I'm showing in my film, I'm showing, you know, recruitment videos, and they, they look, you know, exciting.
They look clean.
They're, they're, they look like video games, essentially.
And they're made for for young people.
And, and then, you know, the military goes out and goes into, you know, areas to recruit where, you know, a lot of people are in, you know, desperate situations, it's so expensive to go to college and have opportunities.
And then, you know, of course, everyone, I think, or most people who actually, you know, end up enlisting, they also, you know, want to do something good for their country and a service to their country, at least, you know, all the three veterans in my film had that motivation.
But then when they were in the program, and they had access to all this classified information, something in them changed something, you know, changed so much that they, they decided to participate in this film and speak out and show their faces and be critical and become whistleblowers, which is not an easy decision.
But they did it to inform the public, you know, and for the public interest.
Yeah, and I want to talk about Daniel here in a second, it seems like he's the one who's actually taken a real legal risk here.
I'm not exactly clear on why.
But But first, I wanted to mention about the recruitment ads that you show, I thought that it was really important.
Not only are they like a video game, but what they portray is some Marines or some army soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan, and a drone pilot, basically, as their guardian flying overhead and saying, Wait, guys, don't go around that corner.
There's some bad guys over there.
Let me target them and get rid of them for you.
Okay, now go ahead and proceed this kind of thing as ultimate air cover protectors, basically, like a sniper protecting men down in the field.
And yet, from everything I can tell in the video, nothing like that is happening all the all the drone, they don't seem to describe anything like that they seem to be talking about assassination missions, where they're hunting down people who aren't holding a gun at all, necessarily, they're going about their day, and then they take, you know, advantage of the opportunity to go ahead and kill them.
They might not even know who it is.
It's someone who fits a signature, as we know, the signature strikes, especially in Afghanistan, very loose rules of engagement there.
But did anyone ever tell you I'm curious, Sonya, whether they said that those recruitment ads ever came true, that they were really actually flying as air cover and air support protecting infantry on the ground?
Well, I have spoken to former Marines.
And when they first had, you know, when they were on ground, and they had drones, you know, early on, who would protect them, it's called overwatch, do overwatch for for ground troops.
And it was something very helpful.
And, and that I think, you know, it does make sense to have, you know, these extra eyes in the sky, when you have boots on the ground.
But what Lisa, you know, who is one of the subjects in my film was saying, is that, even, you know, during her time in the drone program, that mission really changed, that, you know, whereas at the beginning, you know, they were doing more of the overwatch, they they actually moved to fly drones in a lot of areas where ground troops couldn't get to because it was too dangerous, you know, and like Waziristan.
And then, of course, you know, all these, you know, CIA drone missions, and in countries that, you know, it's, it's not really talked about, you know, where there's no real, you know, war or conflict, you know, at least non that the US is, is openly involved in.
And that's, that's what the, you know, the veterans in my film are really, really criticizing these, these missions where, you know, high value target missions, for example, where you go after one single target, but if this target of this person is surrounded by a group of people, and they, you know, the military, the CIA decides, you know, this is the person we want at this time, all the other people, you know, just considered collateral damage or guilty by association.
And yeah, now, that was something that Daniel talked about in the movie there.
And he, I think it was right, kind of in that same conversation, he talks about how there are really no consequences.
In fact, she talks about, Heather talks about how she would have to stop them.
No, no, no, their children don't do it.
But that they all the time wanted to push the envelope, the actual trigger pullers on who they would bomb.
And she was constantly having to try to rein them in.
And she would say, she said is in there that people get a raise, you get a promotion based on body count based on number of kills.
And so all the incentive is to keep going and going.
And then Daniel says, on the other end, there's no consequences if they do the wrong thing, and if they kill innocent people, and so all the commanders are emboldened.
It's like a scene out of Catch-22 or something where the guy just comes in and demands higher quota returns from everybody under him and never mind who's actually getting killed down there.
And never mind, as you said, whether it's productive or counterproductive to the overall mission, even.
Well, yeah, that's, you know, these, these drones are easy to use.
But what I really found out during my research is that while, you know, politicians and military officials have been, you know, telling the public for a long time, oh, these are surgical, precise weapons, and, you know, make it seem as if only terrorists are being killed.
And almost, you know, I think the words, the way, you know, this weapon has been described, and I see it when, you know, we have audiences in our screenings, people actually think it is almost like a sniper, you know, one person is being killed.
And then they, they are shocked when they see, you know, in my film, I'm looking at, you know, one airstrike gone wrong, and it, and during this airstrike, 23 civilians were killed, including children, and they didn't even have a knife, you know, they had no weapons, they were all civilians, you know, women, children, men, you know, older people, and just travelers.
And so that's, you know, what I really want to show in my film, it's just not as clean and precise as the politicians want us to believe.
Yeah, whoever coined that phrase surgical strike.
I mean, you know what, compared to Bush sending in the 3rd Infantry Division, everything looks like the Quakers, right?
I mean, Bill Maher and Jeremy Scahill got into it on the HBO show one night there, where Scahill is going, look, they're killing innocent people with these things.
And he of course, knows exactly what he's talking about on this stuff.
And Bill Maher is saying, yeah, but compare that to marching the 3rd Infantry Division into Iraq.
So basically, for the rest of the 21st century, as long as it's not marching the 3rd Infantry Division into Iraq, it's acceptable.
It is surgical.
It's absolutely surgical compared to that.
What do you prefer Hiroshima?
And so there you go.
That's all you need to know shrug.
Yeah, that's an argument I've heard to, you know, occasionally at a screening coming up.
And, you know, it's this whole like, oh, well, what's the lesser evil and, and to that I can only say, again, you know, like, I think we should consider the overall strategy and is because the implications of using drones really go beyond all the civilians who are killed.
It also, you know, just imagine the impact of having, knowing that you are under constant surveillance, you could be killed at any moment.
And people in these countries, you know, I went to Afghanistan and I spoke to people there, they are, they are aware, they are very, very knowledgeable about drones.
And we are hearing more and more reports about, you know, children being afraid to go outside because they're afraid of the sky.
So they want to want to play outside.
You know, a boy who, who actually was in this in the strike that I'm where I'm just I'm talking to the victims and survivors in the film.
There's a mother I'm talking to one of her sons.
He's a teenager now, he wasn't a strike.
He's, he's physically unharmed, but he's so scared.
He's panic attacks and anxiety disorder.
And he can't go outside anymore.
How is this, you know, young boy teenager going to, you know, live his life and get a job and all of that.
So it does have an impact that goes beyond just the individual strikes.
Yeah, I've one time interviewed a guy who was, I believe, a Pakistani survivor.
His family had been killed.
He had written that thing.
I'm sure you're familiar with that thing in the Guardian what it's like to be on the kill list.
And talked about that.
And there's a great study also, everybody called living under drones about life in in Pakistan.
In fact, there's a great piece in the Washington Post about the living under drones in the Gaza Strip.
And the first half of the article is, of course, about poor little Israel can't help it.
But the second half of the article is just incredible about what it's like to be a little girl or be a little boy living in the Gaza Strip with the constant buzz of assassination drones overhead.
It's unimaginable the terror really, Americans don't live like that.
Americans have no idea of that kind of situation.
And this has been going on for years and years and years on end.
Then Donald Trump actually just launched a new drone strike into Pakistan a couple of weeks ago.
They had been laying off Pakistan for a little while.
It looks like now they're back targeting the Haqqani network there.
And you know, I'm sorry, I'm doing so much talking during your interview here.
But I want to bring this up.
It's such an important point and you address it so well in your movie.
Someone on Twitter recently forget the exact context.
But they brought to me a quote from a friend of theirs who is an Afghan war vet.
And the quote was something along the lines of, yeah, you don't understand.
Life is cheap over there.
You know, more or less, these guys are more than happy to have their daughter killed if they can get a $1,200 condolence payment or whatever.
They're a bunch of backward savages and blah, blah, and all of this and that.
And yet, keep finding quotes.
Anand Gopal's got great quotes of victims in his book.
And there's so many great quotes to hear.
But in this book, the guy, he's, well, the mother talking about her dead children.
And then the poor guy with the one leg, he says, I'm so sad.
My heart wants to explode.
And you can just see.
I could see easy this guy being my next door neighbor.
You know, I mean, I don't know.
I live in a very multicultural town in a very mixed neighborhood.
This guy could be anybody.
He's no different.
This is I'm supposed to believe that he's the savage and that the high tech Americans who destroyed his entire family, 20 something victims in his family and left him maimed like this for the rest of his life.
We're the ones who are the civilized enlightenment, you know, individual human rights and this and that.
And he's the backwards barbarian who we have to be protected from.
And am I reading that right?
Meanwhile, if you give him a chance to tell the story, he's as heartbroken as any person would be upon the death of their child.
Give me a break.
Yeah.
And that's what we really saw.
And it was heart wrenching when we did the interviews with the survivors, because first of all, you know, we were thankful that they traveled to us and travel three days and three nights because it would have been too dangerous for us to go to where they are living in the very rural area.
And so when we met them, the first thing that all of these family members said was, thank you for speaking to us and giving us the opportunity to tell our story.
We want to tell the world community what has happened to us.
And so I really saw and we learned, you know, all this, like the value of, you know, having the opportunity to share your story.
And then, you know, what we saw was, you know, exactly the same way as, you know, over here, what you were just describing, you know, so much love and care and compassion.
And there was, you know, one father who came with his little son and the father was in the strike, he lost his leg and his little son would not move from his side because he was very small when the attack happened.
He wasn't in it, but he realized he knew something had happened to his father.
So now he's always afraid that his father could go away.
So, you know, all these days that we filmed with them, the son would always like hold his father's hand and be at his father's side.
And then the mother who talks about her son and her daughter, who she lost.
And, you know, she starts talking about her daughter and says how much she loved the daughter and how, you know, she was such a good and beautiful girl and the son was a good boy as well.
And there's so much, you know, love and sadness.
But what I thought was most remarkable, and that's where we can really learn something from, you know, our interview partners in Afghanistan, was that they were without hate, they were without anger.
And throughout the entire interview, all they were saying was, you know, this has happened to us and it can be changed, but please, please stop bombing innocent civilians.
And that's all they said.
There was not a trace of anger or hate, just this like heartfelt pledge.
Yeah.
Well, listen, I'm sorry that we're out of time here.
I want to make sure this is short enough I can run it on the KPFK show on Sunday here.
But, you know, I think I have the contact information for Lisa Link.
So I think I'm going to follow up and see if I can get her on and talk about that.
She has, she's wonderful.
She has such, you know, like she has had such a long experience in military for over 20 years.
And she is the one who traveled to Afghanistan, who after fighting a war over a distance in Afghanistan, went there and, you know, risked her own life to understand what's going on underground.
Yeah, definitely.
I'm going to do that.
All right.
Well, thank you so much again for coming on the show, Sonia.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you for having me and your great questions.
Thank you.
All right, you guys, that is Sonia Kennebec.
And this film is so important.
You've got to look at it.
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It's online for a limited time at pbs.org slash independent lens.
It's called National Bird.
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I really hope you guys will check it out.
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai
