Keeping drone costs, kill strikes and who's running their operations a secret - a good thing?

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: Tensions are quietly increasing between the White House and some congressional leaders over access to sensitive information about the government’s use of drones in Pakistan and Yemen, write Adam Entous and Siobhan Gorman in Wall Street Journal, quoting officials.

The White House has brushed aside requests for information from lawmakers, who argue that the strikes, carried out secretly by the Central Intelligence Agency and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command, have broad implications for US policy but don’t receive adequate oversight.

Some current and former administration, military and congressional officials point to what they see as significant oversight gaps, in part because few lawmakers have full access to information about the drone strikes. Lawmakers on Congress’s intelligence committees are privy to information about all CIA and military intelligence operations, but members of at least two other panels want insight on the drone programme.
----
While few US lawmakers question the effectiveness of the targeted killing campaigns, some top lawmakers complain about what they see as excessive White House secrecy about how targets are chosen and how the administration justified the killings, particularly of American citizens.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2011%5C12%5C31%5Cstory_31-12-2011_pg7_7?du

####
and in case there's a belief that it's only military or CIA operations running the drone "programs," we learn that the government contracts out killings.
####

WASHINGTON — After a U.S. airstrike mistakenly killed at least 15 Afghans in 2010, the Army officer investigating the accident was surprised to discover that an American civilian had played a central role: analyzing video feeds from a Predator drone keeping watch from above.

The contractor had overseen other analysts at Air Force Special Operations Command at Hurlburt Field in Florida as the drone tracked suspected insurgents near a small unit of U.S. soldiers in rugged hills in central Afghanistan. Based partly on her analysis, an Army captain ordered an airstrike on a convoy that turned out to be carrying innocent men, women and children.

"What company do you work for?" Maj. Gen. Timothy McHale demanded of the contractor after he learned that she was not in the military, according to a transcript obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
----
"Our No. 1 manning problem in the Air Force is manning our unmanned platforms," said Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, Air Force vice chief of staff. Without civilian contractors, U.S. drone operations would grind to a halt.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/12/29/134436/contractors-role-grows-in-drone.html#storylink=cpy?du