Head of UN Inquiry Into Drone Strikes and Targeted Killings Backs Brennan for Top CIA Job

from Spencer Ackerman at Wired: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/02/un-drone-brennan/


John Brennan, right, gives President Obama a security briefing in Massachusetts, Aug. 2011. Photo: Flickr/White House


The head of the United Nations inquiry into drone strikes and targeted killings (Ben Emmerson, the United Nations special rapporteur for human rights and counterterrorism) believes the chief architect of those efforts will rein them in at the CIA.---

Ben Emmerson, the United Nations special rapporteur for human rights and counterterrorism, tells Danger Room he’s giving his qualified backing to John Brennan, President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser and nominee to become CIA director. The endorsement comes at a critical time for both men: Brennan faces Senate questioning on Thursday afternoon, and Emmerson is negotiating access with the U.S. government to its targeted-killing efforts for his recently announced international inquiry into their legality.

It’s an unlikely endorsement. Emmerson, a British lawyer, has put the U.S. on notice that he won’t hesitate to investigate U.S. “war crimes” if he uncovers evidence of them. While Emmerson’s inquiry won’t focus on individuals responsible for any uncovered abuses, Brennan, as a White House aide, presided over the bureaucratic process for ordering suspected terrorists killed. Yet at the White House, Emmerson says, Brennan “had the job of reining in the more extreme positions advanced by the CIA,” which he thinks augurs well for Brennan’s CIA tenure.

“By putting Brennan in direct control of the CIA’s policy of targeted killings, the president has placed this mediating legal presence in direct control of the positions that the CIA will adopt and advance, so as to bring the CIA much more closely under direct presidential and democratic control,” Emmerson says. “It’s right to view this as a recognition of the repository of trust that Obama places in Brennan to put him in control of the organization that poses the greatest threat to international legal consensus and recognition of the lawfulness of the drone program.”

“Warts and all” conversations with current and former Obama administration officials convince Emmerson that Brennan tried to steer the drone program from a “technology-driven process” to one that attempted to balance the interests of the law, counterterrorism, and the agencies involved in implementing it. “There are significant elements within the CIA who are unhappy about Brennan’s appointment,” Emmerson says. “These are the hawkish elements inside the CIA who would rather have as a director someone who reflected their agenda, rather than someone who is there to impose the president’s agenda.”

Emmerson says he can’t know if Brennan will actually carry out fewer drone strikes at the CIA. “What I’m saying is, Brennan has been the driving force for the imposition of a single consistent and coherent analysis, both legal and operational, as to the way the administration will pursue this program,” he explains. “I’m not suggesting that I agree with that analysis. That’s not a matter for me, it’s a matter for states, and there’s a very considerable disagreement about that. But what I am saying is that what he will impose is restraint over the wilder ambitions of the agency’s hawks to treat this program in a manner that is ultimately unaccountable and secret.”


read: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/02/un-drone-brennan/

related:

U.N. Drone Investigator: If Facts Lead to U.S. War Crimes, So Be It
http://contextly.com/redirect/?id=YqhWhwKNQ9:102508 7