Citizens and people participating in the democratic government and we have the ability can to control the use of these technologies. One of these tests is whether we can safeguard privacy. I agree with that. Effectively i think that if we dont acknowledge the fact that everything that a machine has access to, we have just compromised it. Everyone sees this and they give them a nickel or a penny and they want to pay him to do his work for him and that is what we are doing with our content on the internet. And so he we are trying to build mousetraps versus those that catch our tail at the time. And we will have a much more productive relationship. Please had out there to get the book, thank you so much and we certainly appr youre watching booktv, television for serious redders. Readers. You can watch any program you see here online at booktv. Org. Andrew coburn looks at the rise of drones. During this event he reads transcripts from actual drone strikes and describes the role of the different participants. This is about an hour and contains language that some viewers may find offensive. Im rick mcafternew the publisher of mcarthur, the publish per of harpers magazine, not a waiter on break. [laughter] im delighted to welcome you to a continuing serious series of events sponsored by harpers and is rapidly becoming a neighborhood institution. You will noted that this is note that this is not a chain store or a Citibank Branch which means that we really need your patronage to thrive. And and so far the support of our customers has been remarkable, and were grateful for it. Its my great pleasure tonight to introduce Andrew Coburn who is the author of the justpublished kill chain the rise of the hightech assassins. I like doing this for two reasons. First, as publisher of harpers, im lucky to have annandrew as our andrew as our washington editor with pieces of equality that you simply cant find anywhere else these days. Andrew is a combination of outraged journalist and studious craftsman who never lets his anger get in the way of scrupulous accuracy and wellwritten storytelling what always strikes me about andrews work is the great amount of detail rendered in sentences that enliven rather than weigh down their subject. This talent is very much in evidence in the april issue of harpers magazine in his piece about the history of corruption and, shall we say loan sharking at citibank. Im so proud to be publishing this article that i rushed early copies here that i hope youll buy right after youve bought account quill chain. Kill chain. I cant resist reading a brief passage from this book that i think captures the essence of the story and the deeply disturbing approach to modern warfare practiced by the pentagon and the executive branch. Kill chain, as you may know is an expose of the Remote Control drone and Missile Program that nowadays sucks up such an immense amount of money and thought in washington. But its also a history of the peculiar american obsession with assassination and with system mattized supposedly sanitized military tactics an obsession that works itself out at a dangerous remove from reality on the ground. That this obsession is delusional and selfdefeating should have should have been proven finally by our defeat in vietnam, but it lives on today seemingly stronger than ever. But i couldnt resist this because as reporter to reporter, this is a lot harder to get than you may realize. Andrews describing a meeting between i guess you could call him a kind of internal whistleblower, tom christie who has tested the predator drones and figured out theyre highly inaccurate. In fact overwhelmingly inaccurate, only about 21 hit their targets in their tests nevada. But in nevada. But hes up against the military Industrial Complex in the form of a i forget what her name is its, shes known as the dragon lady of procurement at the pentagon, the Principal Deputy undersecretary of the air force. And she would eventually be sentenced to a nine month prison term for corrupt dealings with the boeing corporation. But on that october morning when she went in to confront christie to complain about this report that hed written about the inaccuracy of the drones, she was still much, very much im quoting now much feared for her commanding role in negotiating prices in multibillion dollar contracts. The pentagon building was still smoking from the devastating impact of American Airlines flight 11 on 9 11 when she marched into christies third floor office with, quote four or five sycophantic generals trailing behind her unquote. Not known for diplomacy she came straight to the point. What the fuck is this, she shouted at the officer director. What do you mean sending out this fucking report saying the predator doesnt work . Who is the fucking asshole that wrote this report . Im going to ream him a new fucking asshole. Unquote. [laughter] that is the votes of the military voice of the military Industrial Complex in the 21st century. Anyway, christie is unfazed. He reports hold on. Have you found anything have you found anything in this report thats wrong . Er no, admitted the official. Couldnt you at least take the bit out about, quote, not operationally suitable, unquote, out of the cover letter . All present were well aware that this was as far as most officials would ever read. Christie gave no ground. The letter and report stood, but it didnt matter. Washington was already entranced by the notion of killing people at a distance. Anyway bravo andrew cockburn. [applause] well, thank you rick. Thanks very much rick. Im bowled over by your very kind introduction, and you must have broken the fourletter barrier on cspan, i think, right now. [laughter] together, we did it. Okay. Im going to go back, im going to start by reading a, what is it part of the book which is a description of an actual drone strike which its the [inaudible] i think youll see because it contains all the communications between the various perpetrators of the drone strike, the pilots in nevada and the people on the ground in afghanistan. So without further ado on a cold february dawn in 2010, two small suvs and a fourdoor pickup truck headed down a dirt road in the mountains of southern afghanistan. They set out soon after midnight traveling across the country to reach the countrys principal paved road. Crammed inside were more than 30 men, women and children four of them younger than 6. Everyone knew one another, for they all came from the same cluster of mountain villages roughly 200 miles 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. The women carried turkeys gifts for their relatives in kabul. An ethnic majority of shia muslims who the taliban treated with cruelty whenever they had the opportunity. Now theyre in taliban country and, therefore very dangerous for them but they risk the shortcut because they were short on gas. They met no other cars and little foot traffic. The world around them must have seemed empty but it was not. Unbeknownst to them, they were unbeknownst to them they were being watched and their every movement, even the warmth from their bodies, transmitted across the globe. As the ram shack bl vehicles clattered around, people they would never meet conferred across oceans and continents as to who they were, where they were going, what they were carrying and whether they should live or die. Unwittingly, the little group was watching toward a u. S. Special forces patrol dropped in with a supporting force of Afghan Soldiers soon after midnight to attack a nearby village. Such raids were routine in afghanistan, planned and executed by the semimythic special Operations Command that specializes in the pursuit and elimination of high value targets. Someone thought this operation important enough to give it the code name operation noble justice. Sunday february 21 4 12 a. M. Mqi predator time eyes on the first vehicle. Observed to try and pid on tracks in the open. Stand by for movement on the second. The 27footlong predator drone was circling at 14,000 feet. Below its belly it cared a carried a variety of cameras. Almost in an instant but not quite, the images flashed across the world to twin screens inside a metal box roughly the size of a shipping container in the nevada desert. Facing the screen sat kirk 97 a pilot guiding the drone by Remote Control. Beside him sat a sensor operator who guided the cameras and weaponstargeting laser. In another room sat the Mission Intelligence coordinator who was watching the same video images. The pictures had audiences elsewhere, Florida Panhandle is headquarters for special Operations Command and home to one station of the vast but little known Global Network referred to as the distributed Common Ground system, dcgs. This is the Central Nervous system of drone warfare, sharing quantities of imagery and electronic information collect by reconnaissance planes around the globe. In theory, anyone in any part of the system has access to any information thats been fed into the system wherever they are. Thus it was that the images captured by the predator were being watched by a dedicated team a mini bureaucracy of young men and women, each with specialized task. An overall charge was supervising two screeners. The chief screener, civilian on contract from a major Defense Corporation heavily involved in Drone Operations, outranked a Junior Air Force officer who happened to be her husband. Also present were two fullmotion video analysts. While one watched the screen, the ore typed products other typed products conclusions drawn from the imagery then pass today the screeners to the Mission Intelligence coordinator sitting in his trailer in nevada. Another analyst generating relevant geographical information made up the complement. The ultimate beneficiary of these complex arrangements were the joint internal track controller, responsible for communicating by radio with any and all air support and relaying orders and intelligence to and from the young captain commanding the party. Calling himself jaguar 25, the sergeant was the forces only link with the team in nevada which in turn was the sole link with screeners in florida. Almost as soon as the Raiding Party disembarked from their helicopters shortly after midnight, someone out in the darkness had switched on a hand held radio. They are here, he said. Let us get all the mujahideen together and defend this place. It was a simple uncomplicated ex40ation, awed exhortation. Americans listening in were bemused by their enemys concern for eavesdropping and indeed the taliban summons was overheard by a number of posts on the ground and in the air. Accordingly, the word was passed to look out for enemy reinforcements. Two vehicles in tandem, the pickup and suv easily fit that picture, and suspicions hardened when they and another suv flashed lights at each other. 4 15 a. M. Mission intelligence coordinator see if you can zoom in on that guy because hes like pilot what did he just leave there . Is that a fucking rifle . Sensor operator maybe just a warm spot from where hes been sitting. Pilot i was hoping we could make out a r50eu6. Sensor the only way i see a rifle is if theyre moving them around slinging them across their shoulders. Drone operators are are not in immediate contact with the real world literally so. A reference to the time it takes for information to make its way from the drone to a satellite 22,000 miles up in space down again to a ground station in germany, switching to a fiber optic cable through which it travels across western europe, the Atlantic Ocean and the continental United States before reaching nevada and the screen in the pilots trailer. As the electronic pulses have split, reunited and buffered into packages pending their dispatch to the next weigh station, microsecond delays steadily accumulate. The screen on the pilots screen is out of date usually two seconds, but sometimes as much as five seconds. As the crew reacting to what theyre reacting to what theyre seeing, that signal in turn takes 25 seconds to deliver. This time lapse is why drone takeoffs and landings must be handled by a special team of pilots stationed closes to the runway so they can see the planes flying in real time. Potential targets on the ground are aware of the delay. Yemeni members of alqaeda reported in 2011 that when they hear a drone overhead, they move around as fast as possible. Nor do the pictures themselves necessarily always bear close resemblance to the world as the rest of us see it, no better at look than looking at google earth through a straw as one veteran told me. For most of the time the convoy was under watch the sensor could only focus on two of the three vehicles at a time. If the operator zoomed out slightly, the resolution was lost. Imagery became less precise. The drone was too high, and both infrared and daylight cameras lose efficiency. When the sensor operator could not focus properly. The video received on the ground was even poorer, described as crap, full of static and crackling. 4 24 a. M. , jaguar 25 what were looking for is a Quick Reaction force. We believe we may have a highlevel taliban commander. Pilot wouldnt surprise me if this is one of their important guys, just watching from a distance, you know what i mean . Then came an unwelcome message from florida. 4 37 a. M. Mission intelligence coordinator screener said at least one child near suv. Sensor bullshit, where . Send me a fucking still. I dont think they have kids at this hour. I know theyre shady but come on. Pilot at least one child, really . Listing him as a mam militaryage male. That means hes guilty. Sensor well maybe a teenager, but i havent seen anything that looks that short. Granted, theyre all grouped together but Mission Intelligence coordinator theyre reviewing. Pilot yeah resaw that shit. Why didnt he say possible child . Why are they so quick to call fucking kids . Just as the sun rose above the mountains, many of the passengers got out. To the watchers, the pictures revealed something ominous. 5 10 a. M. , pilot theyre praying. Sensor this is definitely it. This is their force. Praying . I mean, seriously thats what they do. Mission intelligence coordinator theyre going to do something nefarious. All the adults in the party including the women got out when the convoy stopped at the river. But to the camera high above the men and women were merely indistinguishable blobs. Since the party was taliban enforcements, no one thought to ponder their gender. An hour later the vehicles, which had been heading south toward the american ground unit turned off in a different direction. This led them, ultimately 12 miles away from the americans on the ground, an indication that whoever they were, they most likely had no hostile intelligent. Nevertheless, the predator pilot assessed this as a flanking maneuver cotut off their escape cut off theirs calm route. Pilot cant wait until actually happens. Though far removed from the scene of the action drone crews see themselves in the same tradition as the Fighter Pilots of an early age down to the flight students they wear to work the combat stress, not to mention the pay theyve commanded. Their chatter echoed that of combat crews flying through a battle zone for real. They were on the ground 7. 5 thousand miles away. 7 1 a. M. sir would you mind if i took a bathroom break real quick . Pilot no, not at all. The crews spoke a language almost incomprehensible to outsiders, plain establish was often supplanted, but that nights conversation showed that the military jargon imposed another layer between them and the reality on the ground. Any man militaryage male became enemy fighter and, therefore, a legitimate target. Positive identification, pid, is an official u. S. Military term for someone positively identified as an immediate hostile threat and therefore a he jet mate legitimate target. The term meant entirely Different Things to different people. 7 38 a. M. Pilot our screeners are currently calling 21 mams, no females and two possible children. Jaguar 25 roger. And when we say children, are we talking teenagers or toddlers . Sensor i would say about 12. Something more towards adolescents or betweens. Pilot yeah, adolescents. 7 40 a. M. , pilot our screener identified one adolescent, so thats one doubledigit age range. Jaguar 25 well pass that on the ground to the ground force commander. Like i said, 12 to 13 years old with a weapon is just as dangerous. Sensor oh, we agree. Pilot we understand and agree. 8 35 a. M. Pilot all right the plan is were going to watch this thing go down, and when they run out of ammunition thats some helicopters that are also unattended, we can play cleanup. Sensor follow the largest group. Pilot yeah, sounds good. When it all comes down, if everybodys running in a separate direction, i dont care if you just follow one guy, you know . Like whatever you decide to do im with you on it so long as you keep somebody that we can shoot in the field of view, im happy. The first missile from the lead helicopter who scored a direct hit on the pickup killing instantly killing 11 passengerrings. The two following suvs jerked to a halt, and the passengers began frantically to scramble out. The second missile hit their rear vehicle in the engine block. Four died immediately. A third missile missed the middle suv with the blast blowing out the rearview mirror. As a matter of routine the attackers pursued those squirters their word for people fleeing a strike with 2. 75 inch rockets, though all of these missed. Then someone noticed something strange. The people who escaped were not running. 8 52 a. M. Sensor thats weird. Pilot cant tell what the fuck theyre doing. Safety observer are they wearing burkas . Sensor thats what it looks like. Pilot they were all pidd as males, no females in the group. Sensor that guy looks like hes wearing jewelry but he aint a girl. Despite the sensor operators hopeful theory, these were not taliban in drag, but women who had scrambled out and were waving their scarves at the helicopters. 23 people had been killed including two boys, one 3 and one 4. Eight men, one woman and three children ages be