Alright y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton and I saw the funniest thing I think someone posted on my Facebook page here from CNN.com, U.S. denies report alleging drone strikes killed 160 kids in Pakistan.
A senior U.S. official is dismissing a report that says covert American drone strikes in Pakistan have killed 385 civilians, nearly half of them children, saying the findings by the London-based Bureau for Investigative Journalism are faulty and uncooperative.
Well, Chris Woods from the Bureau for Investigative Journalism is on the line right now.
His website, or their website, is thebureainvestigates.com and the piece is Drone War Exposed, the complete picture of CIA strikes in Pakistan.
Welcome to the show, Chris.
Thanks, Scott.
I'm very happy to have you here.
Now listen, before we get to exactly what you found, why don't you tell us how you found it.
Are these, is this report completely uncooperative?
Well, if you call examining in fine detail more than 2,000 credible media reports, cross-referencing that with leaked U.S. intelligence reports, with leaked government cables, with memoirs, journals, and so on of former counterintelligence officials, journalists, and politicians, and then also looking at the work of lawyers on the ground in Pakistan, putting our own researchers on the ground in Waziristan, and from that drawing our conclusions, I would obviously have to dispute the contention that the CIA and others are putting forward today.
We think this is a very, very solid piece of journalism.
Well, it sure looks like it, just from the first few paragraphs here.
Again, it's called, Drone War Exposed the Complete Picture of CIA Strikes in Pakistan, and it begins with reassessment, and the description that you just gave us the rundown of here, of how you came to these conclusions.
This must have taken you a long time, huh?
Yeah, absolutely.
This was many months of work for a team of journalists here in London, and also working on occasion with field researchers in Pakistan.
So yeah, it's been a great deal of work.
The main database that we put out is about 22,000 words, and also a company with search engines, with timelines, with maps.
We want this to be a resource for people to use, and simply to get as clear an understanding as possible of what we think is happening in the covert drone war inside Pakistan today.
Is it true, as I'm reading here, that they smeared this piece of journalism before it was even published?
Well, we were certainly hearing reports from Washington on Wednesday before we published the report, that they were calling into question the credibility of our material.
They were casting aspersions on the numbers we were putting forward.
And yet, having said that, that same day, a U.S. counterterrorism official put out numbers for the first time, I believe, where the U.S. government has admitted to killing over 2,000 people in these drone strikes, which is not so far, I have to say, from the 2,292 bottom line number that we've advanced ourselves from this work.
So, if they're calling our numbers problematic, we'd like to see their basis for that.
We really do call on them to make public, as much as possible, the information they have on these drone strikes.
All right, so, just to make sure I got that right, you're saying that their estimate of how many people have been killed is pretty close to yours.
Within a couple of hundred, it's just who got killed is in question.
Yes, I think absolutely, Scott.
The contention here, I think, is who's getting killed.
And as I'm sure you know, the U.S. has claimed that not a single civilian has been killed in these Pakistan strikes since May 2010.
That is almost 150 drone strikes over that time.
It's more than half of all drone strikes that have taken place in Pakistan have taken place in this time period.
And it is their contention that not a single civilian has died.
We've done significant research in this, and we have to say we do not agree with them on that.
We've identified a number of cases where we've identified, often by name, individuals killed in that period.
And we've given that information to them, but they stand by their position, no civilians being killed.
Yeah.
Well, it is ridiculous.
Of course, at AntiWar.com, we cover this on a daily basis, and they kill innocent people in Pakistan, you know, at least every week.
I guess sometimes if something goes down with Raymond Davis, the CIA agent or something, maybe they take a break for a couple of days or something.
But this is pretty much a regular occurrence over there.
Well, actually, I mean, it would be fair to say that civilian deaths have certainly dropped.
I mean, you know, we are not saying that the majority of people that they're killing are not militants.
Actually, we believe the majority of being killed in these strikes almost certainly are militants.
But the problem is that of the 2,292 minimum deaths we think have taken place, we can only identify 126 named militants, and the vast majority of people that have been killed, we don't know who they are.
They're allegedly militants.
And generally, that's not contested by people locally when this is reported.
For example, the strike on Wednesday, in fact, on that occasion, the Taliban commander said, yes, that the 25 who died in that strike were Taliban.
But most of the time, we say in our reports, these are alleged militants, because we don't know who they are.
We've got their names for them.
And likewise, where civilians are killed, we say civilians are reported killed here.
And that's that's where our numbers are coming from, from the credible media reports on the ground, which show far, far higher levels of civilians reported killed than than they are reported killed.
And that's what we're trying to do.
And that's what we're trying to do.
And that's what we're trying to do.
And that's what we're trying to do.
And that's what we're trying to do.
And that's what we're trying to do.
And that's what we're trying to do.
And that's what we're trying to do.
And that's what we're trying to do.
Well, Chris, I think that speaks volumes for the credibility of this research, when you're more than happy to say that, yeah, the locals, they're verified for us that it was a house full of, you know, Taliban fighters.
And even though we couldn't identify who they are, that, yeah, in these cases, the government's claims seem to hold up.
You don't seem to have any problem giving them credit where it's due, or so-called credit, at least acknowledging when what they claim, who they claim they killed is accurate is.
I mean, I think we are a process here has been to be as absolutely transparent as possible and to put out there for everybody to look out for themselves and draw their own conclusions.
Every single source we use, we quote, we identify, we give a web link to, you know, people are free to look at this material and make up their own minds and where they see errors in our material, or we've missed something, we're very, very open to being challenged on that.
This is an organic process for us, we see this as a database that will change over time as we get more information.
You know, the missing piece of this jigsaw is the CIA's own evidence.
And as you may have seen in today's New York Times, you know, they've challenged us on four cases that we've looked at, out of 291.
I mean, our view is if they can do that on four cases, they can do that on 291.
Let them put that evidence out in the public domain and let it be engaged with and challenged if necessary.
Okay, now let's go through some of these key findings here.
Hit us with some numbers, please, Chris.
Well, with all of these numbers, it's just the qualifier on this that we are saying that these are the numbers that are credibly reported, and ultimately, you know, untangling exactly what's happening on the ground in Waziristan is always difficult, it's a very, very dangerous place for journalists and for researchers to operate, never mind civilians on the ground, civilians threatened not just by drone strikes, but attacks by militants and a lot of killings of local people by militants as well.
And also operations by the Pakistani military, so it's a very dangerous area to operate.
But nevertheless, the overall figures we have suggest just under 2,300 killed in drone strikes.
We have almost 240 drone strikes under President Obama, which have killed, we believe, over 1,800 people and as many as 2,280 people.
And among those killed in the Obama strikes, we have identified reports of 56 children killed over that time as part of a greater tally of as low as 218 civilians and perhaps as many as 516 civilians.
So these are significant numbers of people that have been killed in these strikes, and a significant number of strikes, it's about 10% more strikes than had previously been reported.
Did you find in many of these cases, or most, or whatever, can you explain the response of the Pakistani government when this happens, when a house full of civilians gets killed, whether it's the next door neighbors or whatever, did they even pay lip service to accountability for these kinds of things at this point, or how does that work in Pakistan?
I would say it's changed quite radically in the last seven or eight months.
I think really the Raymond Davis case, I'm sure your listeners know, the Raymond Davis case changed a great deal in Pakistan and really saw the withdrawal of cooperation on the ground.
I'm sorry, we have to hold it right there, Chris, I should have saved that question for after the break.
We'll be right back with Chris Woods from the Bureau for Investigative Journalism right after this.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show, it's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton and I'm talking with Chris Woods from TheBureauInvestigates.com, that's the Bureau for Investigative Journalism in England, and the piece is called Drone War Exposed, The Complete Picture of CIA Strikes in Pakistan.
And I'm sorry, I asked the last question right before we went out to break there, Chris, did you have anything more to say in answer to the reaction of the Pakistani government to this?
I was just saying, Scott, before the break, that interestingly there was a great deal of obvious cooperation between U.S. and Pakistani intelligence services up until really the beginning of this year.
And often when these civilian strikes took place where civilians were killed in large numbers, there was very little comment, but I have to say in the last six or seven months, that really has changed.
And quite frequently now, there'll be public condemnations by Pakistan Parliament, by the Prime Minister, by the President, on occasion, the head of the army has stepped in and made very public criticisms.
So there is a significant change of mood in Pakistan about these drone strikes, and a much more unified response among the people.
It used to be categorized as just a problem for the people in the tribal areas, whereas now I think this is much more a mainstream concern for all Pakistanis about the fact that this is taking place.
Yeah, well, there's so many different things to talk about here.
I want to go back to this piece in the New York Times that you mentioned today by Scott Shane.
Tsk, tsk.
Here, they're disputing your work here in four cases out of, I forgot the exact number you mentioned earlier.
291.
Yeah.
There you go.
So, you know, what's that, 1% or something like that?
Anyway, you're being disputed by an American official hiding behind anonymity.
No one, they can't find anyone in the U.S. government to put his name out in public while challenging your findings.
And now the New York Times official policy on anonymity is, that's for whistleblowers, right?
That's for protecting people who are, you know, leaking important truth out, you know, who would be at risk.
Not the people, it's not supposed to be to protect the administration's lackeys when they come out and they want to, in this case, they're not just, you know, challenging your work.
They're challenging your methodology and they're saying it's faulty and all this.
It's not quite a personal attack, but almost.
And they're hiding their names while doing it.
I mean, this is, this Times piece is worthless to me.
They might as well just got some lady from the mall and told her, okay, it'll be anonymous.
Read this or whatever, you know?
I mean, that is the way of intelligence services the world over.
I mean, by their nature, they are covert and by nature, they won't tell you who they are.
I think that highlights an issue.
We have a military campaign, which is an extension of the war in Afghanistan, predominantly being fought by covert forces who are not publicly accountable, certainly.
And that is an issue, certainly for journalists in terms of covering this.
You have a military campaign, you have a great number of military events involved.
If one of these drone strikes were taking place across the border in Afghanistan against the same target, it could be the same militant organization, there is direct accountability.
The moment it crosses that border into Pakistan, there is no known accountability and no transparency.
If there are inquiries, we don't know about them.
If there are reports of civilian casualties and tallies being kept, we don't know about them.
And I think that is the issue rather than anonymous officials, which I have to say in my business, I'm somewhat used to.
It's more the fact that this is a major military operation being conducted by the CIA.
Right.
Well, and that's something that's been going on really for the last 10 years or so, is this somewhat of a change where the CIA more and more becomes a paramilitary force or a military force, while also more and more the military special forces, the special operations command are running secret intelligence missions and the missions of these different agencies are getting conflated.
And I wonder whether you can tell us anything about the division of labor inside Pakistan in waging this war.
Is this basically all the CIA, like it says in the title of this piece, or is this also the Joint Special Operations Command, Blackwater, now known as Z, and who knows what else going on there?
We have some evidence in terms of JSOC operations inside Pakistan.
They were referred to recently in that New York piece that looked at the Bin Laden raid that came out a couple of days back.
And I think we have particular evidence on, I think, about a dozen boots on the ground raids in Pakistan over the last five or six years or so.
But certainly for our purposes, there have been rumors, strong rumors.
In fact, Jeremy Scahill at The Nation did some very strong work on this, looking at JSOC and the possibility that there might be a parallel campaign, a drone campaign in Pakistan.
I have to say, in the work that we've done, we haven't uncovered any evidence of that.
And so we refer throughout to CIA strikes.
It doesn't mean it's not there, but in all of the public sources that we turn to in the various documents and so on and so on, I guess the point of that being is what we're effectively reporting is what's happening on the ground.
And to someone in a village, you know, a drone is a drone, who's flying that drone is neither here nor there to them, although it probably matters more to us.
Right.
OK.
Now, to get back to the very main points of this piece, John Brennan, the counterterrorism advisor to Barack Obama, said no civilians have died.
And yet you've uncovered government documents where their own internal estimates say that at least some civilians have died, correct?
Well, Brennan's head, just to be clear, they are saying that 50, an estimated 50 civilians have died over the course of the campaign.
And John Brennan speaking June this year, said that in the last year, no civilians have been killed.
And we're led to believe by various briefings flying around over the last day or two from U.S. counterterrorism officials that they're saying, in fact, no civilians have died since May of this year.
So, but yes, I mean, you know, Brennan apparently has gone from saying categorically that no civilians have died.
There does seem to be a change on that position today.
And I'm just looking for the exact wording, if you'll bear with me.
His wording now is that the U.S. government has not found credible evidence of collateral debts.
There doesn't seem to be a row back from there haven't been a single collateral death, which was his previous position.
And we think that's in part to do with the work that we're doing here, that we have presented them with what we think is credible evidence of civilian deaths.
And you know, their response has been to mock our work, to undermine our work, to suggest our work is not credible.
You know, surely the valid and grown up response would be to inquire into this, if we present them with credible evidence of civilian deaths, including names, one would hope that that might lead to some form of inquiry, some sort of engagement that questioned at least whether these, these reports were accurate or not.
But no, their response does seem to be to really just to ridicule the work that we've done.
And that's a shame.
I think that's a wasted opportunity.
Yeah, well, hopefully, I mean, people ought to know that whenever they attack a reporter like that, that it's probably worth reading whatever it is, you know, at least from here, there's nothing that could give you more credibility than to have the US military say you don't have any.
But tell me a little bit, if you could, please, Chris, about this sidebar article, you cannot call me lucky, drones injure over 1100.
What really surprised us when we were involved in this process, I mean, despite this drone operation running for the last seven years, and it's, I guess, indicative of the way we as the media treat this sometimes nobody had ever bothered to attempt to collate details on those injured in the drone attack.
We searched and searched and there is not a single source you can turn to to find out when people got injured, and the total numbers of injured so we ran that exercise.
And we have found that just under 1200 reports of people injured in the drone strikes over the last seven years now that they will be a mix of militants and civilians, we're not making any call on who those people are.
But obviously, the impact that those injuries often very severe injuries can have in terms of local communities, particularly where civilians are affected, can be severe.
And we do a feature if you look on the website, you'll see there's a very sad photograph of a young man who was hit in a drone strike a couple of years back, I think he was 14.
At the time, he lost both legs and an eye.
And there's a photograph of him there on our website with his two artificial legs.
And, you know, he is one of the many injured the quote, you know, do not think I'm lucky was reported to us by a lawyer who represents a number of civilian cases in Pakistan affected by the drone strikes.
The point that he made was, you know, this is not the US.
This is not Islamabad.
You know, there are no resources for people with disabilities there.
If you lose a leg, if you lose an arm, if you lose an eye, this can have profound effects on people that are far greater and far more amplified than we might consider them to be.
Mm hmm.
All right.
Well, I urge everyone to take a look at this piece.
Drone war exposed the complete picture of CIA strikes in Pakistan.
The website is the Bureau investigates dot com for the Bureau for investigative reporting in England.
The reporter Chris Woods.
Thank you so much for your time on the show today.
It's a pleasure, Scott.
Thanks very much.
You know, they end here with a quote from reprieve asking whether drones are radicalizing as many young men's as Guantanamo did.
Seems like a fair question to me.
