Meaning they were moving from the midwest and the south. They are placing it with a bout of activity along route 128 in the boston area as well. A lot of automotive presence in that area. Guest one of the things that killed kodak was a Great Technology company that all the work that was happening with digital i think thats exciting. We know him well if you believed in connection and a it is a part of it and they are now in the mobility business. And mobility as we said before his opportunity. And it is a big part of our future and it is now dependent on Wireless Networks and other devices by which we control Data Information so you want to be where the innovators are in the field. So it is a big change and people would work differently. I hope we can get the national will to have the conversation to make this optimistic some rrw come true. Host with this book we will. Thank you. Guest thank you. That was the Signature Program in which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists public policymakers and policy makers and others familiar with the material. After words airs every weekend at 10 p. M. On saturday, 12 and 9 p. M. On sunday and 12 a. M. On monday. You can also watch online. Click on the book tv series and topics list on the upper right side of the page. This is about one hour and contains language that some may find offensive. I am delighted to welcome you here to another continuing series brought to you by harpers and the heart of manhattans upper west side. You will note that this is not a chain store or City Bank Branch which means we really need for patients to thrive and so far the support of the customers has been remarkable and we are grateful for it. It is my pleasure tonight to introduce the author of the just published rise of the hightech assassins. I like doing this for two reasons. First im lucky to have andrew as the washington editor the role that he performs brilliantly at least four times a year with pieces of quality that you cant find anywhere these days. Hes a very rare combination of outraged journalist and craftsmen that never let his anger get in the way of scrupulous accuracy and wellwritten story telling. What always strikes me about his work is the great amount of detail rendered in sentences. His talent is an evidence in his piece about the history of corruption. Im so proud to be publishing this article that i hope you will buy right after you buy to change. Im going to read a passage to the approach to modern warfare practiced by the pentagon and the executive branch. As you may know it is an expose of the Remote Control drone and Missile Program that nowadays sucks up such an immense amount of money and thought in kent. But its also an in history of the peculiar american obsession with an assassination and systematized military tactics that work itself out in a dangerous removal from reality on the ground. But this obsession is delusional and selfdefeating should have been proven finally by the vietnam but it was today seemingly stronger than ever. Andrew is designing a meeting between i guess you could call him the kind of internal whistleblower who has actually tested the predator drone and figured out is there highly inaccurate. In fact overwhelmingly about 21 if they hit their target in the test in nevada. But hes up against a militaryindustrial complex in the form of a shes known as the dragon lady procurement under secretary of the air force , and she would eventually be sentenced to crypt dealings with the corporation on that october morning when she went in to confront christie to complain about this report that he had written about the inaccuracy of the drones, she was still very much feared in the negotiating prices in the multibilliondollar contracts. When they marched into the third floor office as related four or five generals is known for diplomacy she came straight to the point. What the fuck is this sending out this fucking report and who is the fucking asshole. Org to this report, im going to rename a new fucking asshole i would quote. [laughter] that is the voice of the militaryindustrial complex in the 21st century. Anyway christie reports hold on, have you found out anything have you found out anything in this report but wrong. It didnt matter. Washington was already entranced by the notion of killing people at a distance. Bravo. Thanks very much. You must have broken the four letter berrier on cspan i think by now. But, together we did it. Im going to go back and start by reading a description of an actual drone strike. It contained the actual communications of the various perpetrators of the drones strikes so without further ado on a cold february bond in 2010 and the fourdoor pickup truck they headed down the road in southern afghanistan. They settled soon after midnight traveling crosscountry and the principal trade road which would lead them to kandahar and north kabul. This came from the same southwest of kabul. Many of the men were on their way to iran in hopes of work. Others were shopkeepers heading to the capital to buy supplies of the students returning to school. A number of them are ethnic minorities who discovered and treated with cruelty whenever they had the opportunity. Now they were in the Western Province and therefore very dangerous but this is that was the short because they were short on gas. They met no other cars and traffic. The world around them must have seemed empty but it was not. Unbeknownst to them they were being watched and their every movement transmitted across the globe. As the ramshackle vehicles, one kept breaking down people convert across the oceans and continents on who they were where they were going to know what they were carrying and whether they should live or die. Unwittingly the group was going towards a detachment in the u. S. Special forces patrol dropped them with a supporting cause of the Afghan Soldiers to attack the nearby neighbors. Such were routine and a planned and executed by the special Operations Command specialize in the pursuit and elimination of the highvalue targets. Someone thought this was important enough for the operation noble justice. February 21 we are the eyes of the first vehicle to stand by the movement on the second. It was sensible carrying an infrared video picked up the vehicles in the pastors to him pastors two and a half miles below. Almost in an instant but not quite the images flashed a by the shipping container in the nevada desert. Facing the screen by Remote Control there was an operator that guided the targets and in another room a third member of the crew of the Mission Intelligence coordinator watching the same video images. The pictures were held in the Florida Panhandle special Operations Command and hoped one station referred to as the distributed Common Ground system. This is a Central Nervous system sharing the unimaginable electronic information collected by air force drones and reconnaissance planes around the globe. In theory any part of the system has access to any information into the system wherever they are. The images captured with being watched by the young men and women each with a specialized task. The chief civilian arm contract heavily. Also present were video analysts while one watched the screen the other types of the conclusions drawn which were then passed on to the mission toward nader sitting in nevada. Another analyst had up to complement. It was known as the joint attack controller he was communicating without any support including the predator to and from the young captain commanding the party. Internet was for the screeners in florida is. Almost as soon status and dark shortly after midnight, someone from the darkness switched on. They are here, he said. Let us get on with the mujahedin together. It was a simple and complicated interest to no one in particular or anyone with a radio. Unlike the esa esa terex system in the u. S. Forces americans listened and they were unused by the events dropping dropping and the summons if thats what it was was overheard by a host of intelligence posts on the ground. Accordingly the word was passed to look at the enemy reinforcement. Two vehicles in tandem to pick up one suv into the area. What did he leave their come is that a fucking rifle . I was hoping that we could make out a rifle. The only way ive been able to see a rifle is in a move them around flinging them across their shoulders. The Drone Operators are not in immediate contact with the world utterly so to the reference of the time it takes to make its way from the drone to the satellite down again to the station and ran his times germany switching to a fiberoptic cable which it travels to the Atlantic Ocean and the continental United States before reaching nevada. As they reunited into the package packages dispatched to the next station its steadily accumulates and that means the scene is out of date. As they react to what theyve seen it takes five seconds to deliver so they can see the planes verifying in realtime. Potential targets on the ground are aware of the delay. The members reported in 2011 when they hear the drone overhead. Nor do they bear close resemblance. Most of the time they could only focus on two or three at a time and it was lost. They became less precise. When they couldnt focus utterly the video was received full of static and crackling. We are looking for a Quick Reaction we believe they may have a highlevel taliban commander. It wouldnt surprise me watching from a distance. Send me a stealth. At least one child. A military age male. That means hes got the. Maybe a teenager but i havent seen anything that short although they are grouped together but the Mission Intelligence coordinator. Reviewed at. Why didnt they say possible child . Many of the passengers got out at the pictures reveal something ominous. This is definitely it. They are going to do something nefarious. Of all of the adults in the party they got off on the convoy stopped but on the camera high above and so to far away that men and the men and women were nearly indistinguishable since the party was one of the top of an enforcement no one thought. Now the vehicles that would be heading south towards the ground unit turned off in a different direction and this led them 12 miles away for the indication wherever for everyday wherever they were they had no hostile intent. Nevertheless they assess this. 6 59. Cant wait till this happens with all of this coordination shit. It was in the same tradition as the early age down. The combat stress not to mention the success that was demanded. They chatted at night in the crews for the battle. Only once in a while does the record revealed they were in fact firmly on the ground seven and a half thousand miles away. Would you mind if i take a bathroom break real quick . No, not at all. It was so laden with acronyms but that nights conversation showed the military jargon like the 22nd video delay between them and the video of the ground in the military age male that came the definition and enemy fighter and a legitimate target. The positive identification is a military term identified as a hostile press. As investigators discovered the term meant Different Things to different people. They are calling no females into possible children. When we say children are we talking teenagers were toddlers . I would say about 12. Something more toward adolescence. 7 40 a. M. They identified only one so that is one doubledigit range. People we will pass that along on the ground to the ground force commander. The 12 to 13 with a weapon is just as dangerous. We we agree. Hispanic good copy on that we understand and agree. A 35 a. M. So the plan is we are going to watch this go down and when theyve run out of ammunition we can play cleanup. When it comes down everybody is running in a separate direction they dont care if you just follow one. Whatever you decide to do im with you on it. A they scored a direct hit on the pickup. They began and hit the rear most vehicle which absorbed to allow them to escape. As a matter of routine they pursued them and someone noticed something strange. 8 52. Thats it. I cant tell what they are doing. Safety observers, are they wearing burke has . He looks like hes wearing jewelry like a girl. Disc despite this they were waiting there starts at waving their scarves of the helicopter that eventually seized. Eight men, one woman and three children age three, five and 14 were wounded. 9 10 a. M. , the coordinator said there wasnt anyone in her later. They were in the middle vehicle. Mission intelligence coordinator , women and children. The conversation was losing its term. Looks like it may be carrying a child as well. No way to tell from here that same year describing an annual dinner held by a the Officers Memorial Foundation which raises money for the love of defense corporations and so forth. Decades earlier, the director for whom the event was named what refer to the contractors as those bastards. Such sustained for commerce was long gone after it was demonstrated by the rest bonds. The executive was there to rub shoulders with an old friend and current partner. It seems like every one of the country had taken a and was doing business right and left. The cia had been blighted by scandal, torture, renditions secret prisons, ignored signs of the attacks but such unwholesome realities found no eecho in this gathering. Even the cia director who had resided over all the scandals was greeted by the colleagues when he allowed every other director stood to be introduced from the former Deputy Director himself. Each of the exception received applause and then current secretary of defense robert gates. Although he left the cia 18 years before. The supervisor and the third agency post was an analyst with the intelligence director. The successful confirmation was as much so to do the work behind the scenes on the part of the telechecks committees. In 1993 he moved on to be the director for the program from the Clinton WhiteHouse National security staff in which capacity the midlevel analyst to greek staffers. When he himself moved as the Deputy Director in 1995 he had the station chief and important position normally reserved for someone with operational experience. In the post he worked tirelessly to avoid irritating showing reluctance for example when asked to survey the unit back in the headquarters because he said it would hear the tape in. He spent the next three years on the profitable terrorist watch list in the 2008 alone. Among the relationships he cultivated over the years. Was the marriage of the approach to terrorist threats, the need to target the missed test assessing disease without destroying the surrounding tissue as he put it for which they were the ideal tool. He was initially designed to make director because of the association to the program. So instead he made him into counterterrorism and held that security. Two years into the administration, everyone knew that he was the most powerful man in the kill list on which the chief executive and the constitutional professor insisted on reserving the last word taking his final selection for execution as regularly choose chosen in the meetings. You know our president has a brutal side of the caucus and although his involvement was observed at the time. Now along with the other 600 dinner, he would send to the award for Exemplary Service to the nation and the Central Intelligence agency. After paying to be at the honorees as being a perfect family can he spoke knowingly of the recent hit particularly tragic incidents dated coincidence in the Forward Operating base. He then moved on to a more upbeat topic. When he arrived at the pentagon in 2007 he said he found deeprooted resistance to the new technology to the traditions in the combat but all of that informed had changed for the fight against terrorism from now on. The applause was long and loud. He gave a famous speech about how we have to be more careful now. What happened since that speech . Our weapons were aimed with a precise precision. So thats its what do you consider a civilian . Yes they hate it when they kill children but since that speech there been a number of occasions particularly where theyve unquestionably killed civilians and in pakistan as well im not so sure about that, but in pakistan they dont really know because of the nature of the society they kept it away and then neighbors dont know their names. You couldnt know how many. So basically im sure if you put a lie detector on hand he would say he hates the idea of killing civilians but the fact is with this kind of intelligence which is almost fully electronic with maybe a little input from some very questionable forces as i explain in the book it is inevitable. Is there any data that shows that there is more killing of civilians using drones than conventional methods . Theres some spectacular ones that have been done in 2009 the bomber bombed what was the concentration in afghanistan and killed somewhere between 80 to 120 civilians. I should say either the people or particularly fascinated by drones there is a very narrow line by the drones that operate by Remote Control by someone sitting half a world away and the person that presses the button and aims the weapon. But i think its not a huge amount of difference. Its the same distance when removed from reality. But to answer your question i think because the nature of the weapons being dropped they could kill more people. The thing about drones is that thats the whole effect on society because of the presence of you could hear them all the time i should say in gaza, too. The constant buzzing and so it seems to have a much more traumatizing effect on society. They know at any moment there are things you could hear at any moment that could blow people away and thats why the children in pakistan and the northwest frontier though not to play when its a sunny day. They go out and play when its cloudy. Thats why people dont gather like they used to. Its a particular target for the strike so if you add up the numbers, its hard to tell because of so many cases. I did a story at couple of years ago about a strike on the compound in afghanistan or complaints initially dispatched because they were quick to look directly at the ground they said this is an innocent family taking in the animals at night. So they refused to bomb and said no we are going home. Up above they said well we are happy to do that and they dropped the bomb and blew away the parents but that was classified as a successful operation. The classified record was actually stolen, disappeared from the finals. But initially questioned about this they said said weve blown away cementer crests. Its a difficult thing to assess so it is the drift of the drones that i think is more hard fighting in a way. The instigators for this violence, the white house for example, obama they are still removed from the action themselves and i wonder if you feel they are more removed and more capable of district kind of killing because of the drum strikes because for me and i think most of us we are so removed from the violence anyway and from even recognizing. Perhaps there isnt that much difference because they are drones its still a great deal of difference and distance between the conceptual killing that they are doing whether they are sending the troops to do it or whether the distance is strong. I think what happened very much thanks to the drones is they think they are in touch. At the famous picture of the white house staff you think this could be off to watch their enemy being told so they are all watching a video but as we know could have been not a great picture but it was taken from a particular kind of stuff drowned so they feel they are in real time and excited watching tv so thats happening more and more not just for the president of the Senior Commander it gives them the illusion of being close to the action in a way they felt they might not have if they had sent the troops relying on the written reports. This could actually fourstar generals can now play platoon leaders in a fight in direct control. But for all sorts of reasons which i just talked about when i was reading they are not in contact and it gives you a false picture. Its much more blurry than they have you to believe and there is no context so i think that is the insidious thing. The general increasing dispensing from reality, from the real picture as exemplified by that strike on the farmhouse i was talking about whether people could see the ground and the people that couldnt away with the family and thats happening on an ever larger scale. Obama thinks this weird thing that he thinks if he actually has a look people will recommend it which is prepared by this privacy. He goes through the pictures and says obviously i havent been there but he seems to say him him coming and not him. And he thinks he is controlling the whole thing. The fact that its being sent to him. Its intelligence people that have given him they have roped him in so hes comfortable. So that is a longwinded answer to the question but that for me is one of the most basic planes of what is wrong with whats going on this evolution of contact. If i could find the passage i would like to read was anybody in Congress Going to try to do something about this . Theres not enough of them generally very popular in congress, one of the most eloquent sort of the announcers of all of this is rand paul who actually made the most eloquent statement that released the extremely squishy legal opinion on which they used to give themselves permission to kill and americans. Most of them sat very quiet for this. It was very outrageous that they had maybe federal judge run up an opinion saying its okay and even sort of cobbled together the opinion. Of the legal justification that they have a and then there was rand paul that came out of an eloquent statement saying this is outrageous. He has given himself the power to kill anyone he wants anytime which is not there are a few others. Barbara michaels is a congresswoman from berkeley tuesday only to vote against the authorization for the use of military force on which all of these have been based. So theyve regained that even if you meet a liberal senator on the committee its so clean and precise and it gives them a letter if the destroying societies. People picking up the top leaders as a way to gain victory and a lot of people said maybe thats not true. But until now i dont think anyone has produced an explanation of how we know thats not true. Theres been an empirical study. This was a study done in iraq by someone i know. He stopped to investigate the policy and strategy. This comes after the package for the homemade bombs. There was however, no mistaking who controlled the strategy. It was evident. Most of the equipment was pretty beat up compared to those that passed through the gates during the years of the occupation. One single story however was different. He walked in and everything was brandnew. You could tell it had a priority. This was the home of the highvalue targeting cell. A counterpoint to the south and the pentagon. Here the analysts tracked individuals on a manhunt list while others combed through the reports for the others to be added to the wanted men or others to be added to the joint prayer to use for the target listed for information. All around iraq and afghanistan every unit maintained its own list of highvalue targets known as highvalue individuals. Each beautifully recorded in the situation reports. For example the 2006 report on the shooting from the u. S. Army observation post and then shot as he tried to escape by car was out 8 10 engaged and killed the province in the longest of codewords. So the highvalue industry and of the leaders of the network appeared selfevident as assassinating hitler or Pablo Escobar in the years gone by. Since the abomination of the critical notes such as zarqawi had little dividend but the target list was ever expanding as such it do. To the end of 2007 come he was already dubious about the presumptions behind the strategy he began to look at the data that would review whether or not the strategy worked. He found it. With full access to the database come he extracted the records of the 200 cases which highvalue targets have been killed or captured between june and october of 2007. Then he went through the record again to see what happened in the neighborhood where each leader had operated. This was the crucial question. How did this make a difference in the fight against insurgents. He counted the number of attacks against americans in the early days following each highvalue target in a given distance and compared it to the number in the 30 days before as a percentage of change. Repeating this procedure he charged to the results on one axis of the craft graph and the distance on another. When complete, it delivered a simple unequivocal message to strategy was indeed making a difference but not the one intended. They didnt reduce the tax and save american lives. It increased them. Each had quickly prompted mayhem within three three coauthors in the operation, they shot up by 40 . With the typical area of operation for the insurgency was still up 20 . Summarizing the findings come he added the punch line. Conclusion the strategy on the principal strategy in iraq is counterproductive and it needs to be reevaluated. How could removal from the ringleaders of the attack on the americans to generate such a counterintuitive result. Just as the field offices told them during the 2005 trip they were invariably replaced quickly usually in 24 hours always in 48. Through a variety of reasons the commanders were almost always eager to push to fight harder. The fight harder. Often they would be the tips and hot for revenge. They would feel the need to prove themselves especially if the leaders energies had highlighted the need for the new brew and always they were more deadly. A week after submitting the findings he asked odierno if he read the study. Yes, he replied sharply. But there is a limit to what i can do. The bureaucratic politics it seems superseded the empirical truth. Been on international question if you think back years ago people were worried about the proliferation of handguns not people on the streets had ak47s and automatic weapons and all kind of things. And i already read that they are being used and they talk about delivering packages, farmers using them photographers using them. Will we soon have drones being used. Theyve already been able to smuggle drugs across the mexico border also they kept crashing. So its between mexico and the u. S. Of course we had to case the other day of an Intelligence Agency that the site to fly his friends grown at 3 a. M. So its all made possible by gps. The technology isnt that a satiric. It is going to happen. People worry a lot about other countries. I would savor the moment i dont think any country has the kind of global command or control systems that we have built up in the staggering costs that enables them to run the Drone Operations so there are lots of other things we can worry about in the meantime. I just started reading your book and its very illuminating. I have two questions unrelated to the first one i wanted to get a sense of your critique. It seems there are two critiques one can make. One is about the technological failure that says they cant see it as clearly as they claim. They are killing too many, etc. And it seems to me we need more transparency and accountability. That cant sit very comfortably within the american empire. That is to make an empire more efficient. The other is one thats more of a moral political principle which is lets assume these things work at top form. Lets assume that they cant actually quite see very well and they dont kill civilians. Is it okay then . It seems to me like we tend to not question that sort of politics of this issue and the reason i ask that question is i have spoken with survivors of these attacks and when ive spoken with them they are not talking about accountability and transparency. They talk about wanting it to end and clearing up the logic by which the u. S. Allows itself to give itself the right to attack so i was wondering if you could talk about where you placed yourself in mac. They do work a lot of the time. I am not trying to say that they just fall out of the sky. Why do we pursue what it was at the beginning about the report said that this is about to the failover time and yet the official was very angry. You have to remember its all about money. People make a huge amount of money out of this and thats why you get a faulty system for this to. The drug lobby got the Border Patrol to put in an appropriation for the two by six b. For drugs which they did and they detected a lot. You can deliver 5000 across many including drug mules. Then some subversion of official documents and infrared telescope and that was on the same amount of time and that was 50 more illegal border crossings. And each character had cost to capture had cost to have broken down 7000, the captors cost 230. You have to think about what drives this and why the decisions that get made dudek made that way. Now its going to be worse. It does work a lot of the time and they are quite interesting. The last bit i read talks about the whole idea of highvalue targeting. Those are hundreds of Successful Missions where theyve taken out here or there and its not victory. This has been our principal weapon with occasional dips into coin program but theres been these wars on terror. In 2001, al qaeda were a bunch of in caves in afghanistan. There was a famous video used to scare us all to show the training. When they did that they have so few people they would have to rent a neighboring tribe to come play the terrorist. Now presiding over an area the size of texas with positive recruits every weekend branch operations. So there is those that you could hear all the time about the areas and was there a stand or yemen or somalia, gaza to name another operation. They are all working. Thats all going fine but the results are a huge whatever possibility. Did you identify a turning point comes in about 2007, the air force chiefs were not wild about the drones at all and when gates became the secretary of defense, he wanted to order more because of a ground commander said i need more needed more and just for reconnaissance to see the play of the plans. He forced them to buy them. They were fired mainly because they were racist and im getting drones. The story was that it is a was a Nuclear Accident but thats really all it was. Was there something was it a kind of generational thing, a new force officer coming around the chief chief of staff was replaced by the one who had the transformation command. Was that in order for what was going on that kind of changed the whole dynamic . Guest his predecessor was very keen on drugs and the different constituencies. I would say the turning point was in 2008 when the director of the cia went to the white house and he was egged on by this. They are regrouping and about to come out at us again. So they got authorization to loosen the restrictions on the drone targeting. To give him credit, you had to know to be. Comparatively speaking secretary of defense and did ramp up. Once there was money about suddenly there was a big change of opinion in the air force. I was at that time another factor you have to bear in mind its all about money. The the air force was thinking of other things more expensive, more attractive. The 400 million a copy. Jumping forward again drowns you now find the big manufacturers getting more interested because you have three and 400 million drowns which makes them more attractive