Rise of the Drones – UAVs After 9/11

[Ed Jewett]

[URL="http://www.defencetalk.com/rise-of-the-drones-uavs-after-911-37432/"]Rise of the Drones UAVs After 9/11

By US Department of Defense on Wednesday, October 5th, 2011


Read more: http://www.defencetalk.com/rise-of-the-d...z1ZznRH0Ik[/URL]

[Ed Jewett]

Computer Virus Hits U.S. Drone Fleet

October 7, 2011 by legitgov

ShareThisComputer Virus Hits U.S. Drone Fleet --'We keep wiping it off, and it keeps coming back.' [What a shame!] 07 Oct 2011 A computer virus has infected the cockpits of America's Predator and Reaper drones, logging pilots' every keystroke as they remotely fly 'missions' over Afghanistan and other warzones. The virus, first detected nearly two weeks ago by the military's Host-Based Security System, has not prevented pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada from flying their missions overseas. Nor have there been any confirmed incidents of classified information being lost or sent to an outside source. But the virus has resisted multiple efforts to remove it from Creech's computers, network security specialists say.

[Magda Hassan]

Of course it could all be a cover to explain 'unauthorised' drone targets too.:panic::plane:

[Peter Lemkin]

I put drones in the same class I put chemical, biological, nuclear, 'star-wars' beam weapons, as well as phosphorous, napalm, air-fuel, blockbuster and clusterbombs, et al. They are all illegal by international law - all obscene and all offensive, only. Ban them and convict those who developed, fund, promote and operate them!...all of them! In fact, get rid of all weapons!

[Magda Hassan]

America's Secret Empire of Drone Bases: Its Full Extent Revealed for the First Time

A ground-breaking investigation examines the most secret aspect of America's shadowy drone wars and maps out a world of hidden bases dotting the globe.
October 16, 2011 |

Photo Credit: U.S. Air Force Photo/Lt. Col. Leslie Pratt



They increasingly dot the planet. There's a facility outside Las Vegas where "pilots" work in climate-controlled trailers, another at a dusty camp in Africa formerly used by the French Foreign Legion, a third at a big air base in Afghanistan where Air Force personnel sit in front of multiple computer screens, and a fourth that almost no one talks about at an air base in the United Arab Emirates.
And that leaves at least 56 more such facilities to mention in an expanding American empire of unmanned drone bases being set up worldwide. Despite frequent news reports on the drone assassination campaign launched in support of America's ever-widening undeclared wars and a spate of stories on drone bases in Africa and the Middle East, most of these facilities have remained unnoted, uncounted, and remarkably anonymous -- until now.
Run by the military, the Central Intelligence Agency, and their proxies, these bases -- some little more than desolate airstrips, others sophisticated command and control centers filled with computer screens and high-tech electronic equipment -- are the backbone of a new American robotic way of war. They are also the latest development in a long-evolving saga of American power projection abroad -- in this case, remote-controlled strikes anywhere on the planet with a minimal foreign "footprint" and little accountability.
Using military documents, press accounts and other open source information, an in-depth analysis by AlterNet has identified at least 60 bases integral to U.S. military and CIA drone operations. There may, however, be more, since a cloak of secrecy about drone warfare leaves the full size and scope of these bases distinctly in the shadows.
A Galaxy of Bases
Over the last decade, the American use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned aerial systems (UAS) has expanded exponentially as has media coverage of their use. On September 21st, the Wall Street Journal reported that the military has deployed missile-armed MQ-9 Reaper drones on the "island nation of Seychelles to intensify attacks on al Qaeda affiliates, particularly in Somalia." A day earlier, a Washington Post piece also mentioned the same base on the tiny Indian Ocean archipelago, as well as one in the African nation of Djibouti, another under construction in Ethiopia, and a secret CIA airstrip being built for drones in an unnamed Middle Eastern country (suspected of being Saudi Arabia).
Post journalists Greg Miller and Craig Whitlock reported that the "Obama administration is assembling a constellation of secret drone bases for counterterrorism operations in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula as part of a newly aggressive campaign to attack al-Qaeda affiliates in Somalia and Yemen." Within days, the Postalso reported that a drone from the new CIA base in that unidentified Middle Eastern country had carried out the assassination of radical al-Qaeda preacher and American citizen Anwar al-Aulaqi in Yemen.
With the killing of al-Aulaqi, the Obama Administration has expanded its armed drone campaign to no fewer than six countries, though the CIA, which killed al-Aulaqi, refuses to officially acknowledgeits drone assassination program. The Air Force is less coy about its drone operations, yet there are many aspects of those, too, that remain in the shadows. Air Force spokesman Lieutenant Colonel John Haynes recently told AlterNet that, "for operational security reasons, we do not discuss worldwide operating locations of Remotely Piloted Aircraft, to include numbers of locations around the world."
Still, those 60 military and CIA bases around the world, directly connected to the drone program, tell us a lot about America's war-making future. From command and control and piloting to maintenance and arming, these facilities perform key functions that allow drone campaigns to continued expanding as they have for more than a decade. Other bases are already under construction or in the planning stages. When presented with our list of Air Force sites within America's galaxy of drone bases, Lieutenant Colonel Haynes responded, "I have nothing further to add to what I've already said."
Even in the face of government secrecy, however, much can be discovered . Here, then, for the record is a AlterNet accounting of America's drone bases in the United States and around the world.
The Near Abroad
News reports have frequently focused on Creech Air Force Baseoutside Las Vegas as ground zero in America's military drone campaign. Sitting in darkened, air conditioned rooms, 7,500 miles from Afghanistan, drone pilots dressed in flight suits remotely control MQ-9 Reapers and their progenitors, the less heavily-armed MQ-1 Predators. Beside them, sensor operators manipulate the TV camera, infrared camera, and other high-tech sensors on board. Their faces lit up by digital displays showing video feeds from the battle zone, by squeezing a trigger on a joystick one of these Air Force "pilots" can loose a Hellfire missile on a person half a world away.
While Creech gets the lion's share of attention -- it even has its own drones on site -- numerous other bases on U.S. soil have played critical roles in America's drone wars. The same video-game-style warfare is carried out by U.S and British pilots not far away at Nevada's Nellis Air Force Base, the home of the Air Force's 2nd Special Operations Squadron (SOS). According to a factsheet provided to AlterNet by the Air Force, the 2nd SOS and its drone operators are scheduled to be relocated to the Air Force Special Operations Command at Hurlburt Field in Florida in the coming months.
Reapers or Predators are also being flown from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona, Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, March Air Reserve Base in California, Springfield Air National Guard Base in Ohio, Cannon Air Force Base and Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, Ellington Airport in Houston, Texas, the Air National Guard base in Fargo, North Dakota, Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, and Hancock Field Air National Guard Base in Syracuse, New York. Recently, it was announced that Reapers, flown by Hancock's pilots, would begin taking off on training missions from the Army's Fort Drum, also in New York State. While at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, according to a report by theNew York Times earlier this year, teams of camouflage-clad Air Force analysts sit in a secret intelligence and surveillance installation monitoring cell phone intercepts, high altitude photographs, and most notably, multiple screens of streaming live video from drones in Afghanistan -- what they call "Death TV" -- while instant-messaging and talking to commanders on the ground in order to supply them with real-time intelligence on enemy troop movements.
CIA drone operators also reportedly pilot their aircraft from the Agency's nearby Langley, Virginia headquarters. It was from here that analysts apparently watched footage of Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan, for example, thanks to video sent back by the RQ-170 Sentinel, an advanced drone nicknamed the "Beast of Kandahar." According to Air Force documents, the Sentinel is flown from both Creech Air Force Base and Tonopah Test Range in Nevada.
Predators, Reapers, and Sentinels are just part of the story. AtBeale Air Force Base in California, Air Force personnel pilot the RQ-4 Global Hawk, an unmanned drone used for long-range, high-altitude surveillance missions, some of them originating from Anderson Air Force Base in Guam (a staging ground for drone flights over Asia). Other Global Hawks are stationed at Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota, while the Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio manages the Global Hawk as well as the Predator and Reaper programs for the Air Force.
Other bases have been intimately involved in training drone operators, including Randolph Air Force Base in Texas and New Mexico's Kirtland Air Force Base, as is the Army's Fort Huachuca in Arizona which is home to, according to a report by National Defensemagazine, "the world's largest UAV training center." There, hundreds of employees of defense giant General Dynamics train military personnel to fly smaller tactical drones like the Hunter and Shadow. The physical testing of drones goes on at adjoining Libby Army Airfield and "two UAV runways located approximately four miles west of Libby," according to Global Security, an on-line clearinghouse for military information.
Additionally, small drone training for the Army is carried out at Fort Benning in Georgia while at Fort Rucker, Alabama -- "the home of Army aviation" -- the Unmanned Aircraft Systems program coordinates doctrine, strategy, and concepts pertaining to UAVs. Recently, Fort Benning also saw the early testing of true robotic drones which fly without human guidance or a hand on any joystick. This is considered, wrote the Washington Post, the next step toward a future in which drones will "hunt, identify, and kill the enemy based on calculations made by software, not decisions made by humans."
The Army has also carried out UAV training exercises at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah and, earlier this year, the Navy launched its X-47B, a next-generation semi-autonomous stealth drone, on its first flight at Edwards Air Force Base in California. That flying robot -- designed to operate from the decks of aircraft carriers -- has since been sent on to Maryland's Naval Air Station Patuxent River for further testing. At nearby Webster Field, the Navy worked out kinks in its Fire Scout pilotless helicopter, which has also been tested at Fort Rucker, Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, and Florida's Mayport Naval Station and Jacksonville Naval Air Station. The latter base was also where the Navy's Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) unmanned aerial system was developed and is now, along with Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Washington State, based.
Foreign Jewels in the Crown
The Navy is actively looking for a suitable site in the Western Pacific for a BAMS base, and is currently in talks with several Persian Gulf states for one in that region, as well. It already has Global Hawks perched at its base in Sigonella, Italy.
The Air Force is now negotiating with Turkey to relocate some of the Predator drones still operating in Iraq to the giant air base at Incirlik next year. Many different UAVs have been based in Iraq since the American invasion of that country, including small tactical models likeRaven-B's that troops launched by hand from Kirkuk Regional Air Base, Shadow UAVs that flew from Forward Operating Base Normandy in Baqubah Province, Predators operating out of Balad Airbase, miniature Desert Hawk drones launched from Tallil Air Base, and Scan Eagles based at Al Asad Air Base.
Elsewhere in the Greater Middle East, according to Aviation Week, the military is launching Global Hawks from Al Dhafra Air Base in theUnited Arab Emirates, piloted by personnel stationed at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland, to track "shipping traffic in the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz and Arabian Sea." There areunconfirmed reports that the CIA may be operating drones from that country as well. In the past, at least, other UAVs have apparently been flown from Kuwait's Ali Al Salem Air Base and Al Jaber Air Base, as well as Seeb Air Base in Oman.
At Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the Air Force runs an air operations command and control facility, critical to the drone wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The new secret CIA base on the Arabian peninsula, used to assassinate Anwar al-Aulaqi, may or may not be an airstrip in Saudi Arabia whose existence a senior U.S. military official recently confirmed to FOX News. In the past, the CIA has also operated UAVs out of Tuzel, Uzbekistan.
In neighboring Afghanistan, drones fly from many bases including Jalalabad Air Base, Kandahar Air Field, the air base at Bagram, Camp Leatherneck, Camp Dwyer, Combat Outpost Payne, Forward Operating Base (FOB) Edinburgh and FOB Delaram II, to name a few. Afghan bases are, however, more than just locations where drones take off and land.
It is a common misperception that U.S.-based operators are the only ones who "fly" America's armed drones. In fact, in and around America's war zones, UAVs begin and end their flights under the control of local "pilots." Take Afghanistan's massive Bagram Air Base. After performing preflight checks alongside a technician who focuses on the drone's sensors, a local airman sits in front of a Dell computer tower and multiple monitors, two keyboards, a joystick, a throttle, a rollerball, a mouse, and various switches and oversees the plane's takeoff before handing it over to a stateside counterpart with a similar electronics set-up. After the mission is complete, the controls are transferred back to the local operators for the landing. Additionally, crews in Afghanistan perform general maintenance and repairs on the drones.
In the wake of a devastating suicide attack by an al-Qaeda double agent that killed CIA officers and contractors at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Afghanistan's eastern province of Khost in 2009, it came to light that the facility was heavily involved in target selection for drone strikes across the border in Pakistan. The drones themselves, as the Washington Post noted at the time, were "flown from separate bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan."
Both the Air Force and CIA have conducted operations in Pakistani air space, with some missions originating in Afghanistan and others from inside Pakistan. In 2006, images of what appear to be Predator drones stationed at Shamsi Air Base in Pakistan's Balochistan province were found on Google Earth and later published. In 2009, the New York Times reported that operatives from Xe Services, the company formerly known as Blackwater, had taken over the task of arming Predator drones at the CIA's "hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan."
Following the May Navy SEAL raid into Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden, that country's leaders reportedly ordered the United States to leave Shamsi. The Obama administration evidently refused and word leaked out, according to the Washington Post, that the base was actually owned and sublet to the U.S. by the United Arab Emirates, which had built the airfield "as an arrival point for falconry and other hunting expeditions in Pakistan."
The U.S. and Pakistani governments have since claimed that Shamsi is no longer being used for drone strikes. True or not, the U.S. evidently also uses other drone bases in Pakistan, including possibly PAF Base Shahbaz, located near the city of Jacocobad, and another base located near Ghazi.
The New Scramble for Africa
Recently, the headline story, when it comes to the expansion of the empire of drone bases, has been Africa. For the last decade, the U.S. military has been operating out of Camp Lemonier, a former French Foreign Legion base in the tiny African nation of Djibouti. Not long after the attacks of September 11, 2001, it became a base for Predator drones and has since been used to conduct missions over neighboring Somalia.
For some time, rumors have also been circulating about a secret American base in Ethiopia. Recently, a U.S. official revealed to theWashington Post that discussions about a drone base there had been underway for up to four years, "but that plan was delayed because the Ethiopians were not all that jazzed.'" Now construction is evidently underway, if not complete.
Then, of course, there is that drone base on the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. A small fleet of Navy and Air Force drones began operating openly there in 2009 to track pirates in the region's waters. Classified diplomatic cables obtained by Wikileaks, however, reveal that those drones have also secretly been used to carry out missions in Somalia. "Based in a hangar located about a quarter-mile from the main passenger terminal at the airport," thePost reports, the base consists of three or four "Reapers and about 100 U.S. military personnel and contractors, according to the cables."
The U.S. has also recently sent four smaller tactical drones to the African nations of Uganda and Burundi for use by those countries' own militaries.
New and Old Empires
Even if the Pentagon budget were to begin to shrink in the coming years, expansion of America's empire of drone bases is a sure thing in the years to come. Drones are now the bedrock of Washington's future military planning and -- with counterinsurgency out of favor -- the preferred way of carrying out wars abroad.
During the eight years of George W. Bush's presidency, as the U.S. was building up its drone fleets, the country launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and carried out limited strikes in Yemen,Pakistan, and Somalia, using drones in at least four of those countries. In less than three years under President Obama, the U.S. has launched drone strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. It maintains that it has carte blanche to kill suspected enemies in any nation (or at least any nation in the global south).
According to a report by the Congressional Budget office published earlier this year, "the Department of Defense (DoD) plans to purchase about 730 new medium-sized and large unmanned aircraft systems" over the next decade. In practical terms, this means more drones like the Reaper.
Military officials told the Wall Street Journal that the Reaper "can fly 1,150 miles from base, conduct missions and return home… the time a drone can stay aloft depends on how heavily armed it is." According to a drone operator training document obtained by AlterNet, at maximum payload, meaning with 3,750 pounds worth of Hellfire missiles and GBU-12 or GBU-30 bombs on board, the Reaper can remain aloft for 16 to 20 hours. Even a glance at a world map tells you that, if the U.S. is to carry out ever more drone strikes across the developing world, it will need more bases for its future UAVs. As an unnamed senior military official pointed out to aWashington Post reporter, speaking of all those new drone bases clustered around the Somali and Yemeni war zones, "If you look at it geographically, it makes sense -- you get out a ruler and draw the distances [drones] can fly and where they take off from."
Earlier this year, an analysis by TomDispatch.com determined that there are more than 1,000 U.S. military bases scattered across the globe -- a shadowy base-world that provides plenty of existing sites that can, and no doubt will, host drones. But facilities selected for a pre-drone world may not always prove optimal locations for America's current and future undeclared wars and assassination campaigns. So further expansion in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia is likely.
What are the Air Force's plans in this regard? Lieutenant Colonel John Haynes was typically circumspect. "We are constantly evaluating potential operating locations based on evolving mission needs," he said. If the last decade is any indication, those "needs" will only continue to grow.
Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com and a senior editor at AlterNet. His latest book is The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Verso). You can follow him on Twitter @NickTurse, on Tumblr, and on Facebook.
This article marks another of Turse's joint Alternet/TomDispatch investigative reports on U.S. national security policy and American empire.
http://www.alternet.org/story/152756/ame...age=entire

[Ed Jewett]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRQyS_8sShw&NR=1 (30-seconds)

[Peter Lemkin]

Just a short note on a story that happened by for the MSM just about never happened. A group of DC-OWS protesters peacefully went into the Smithstonian Museum, the part that has a drone on display, to protest their use for extra-judicial murder and spying [usually of totally innocent wedding parties and unlucky civilians, etc. who are not humans, but 'collateral damage']. They were all arrested, pepper-sprayed or blocked from entry. Most stories don't even mention the arrests - only that they were blocked, but several were arrested inside, having made it past the guards. :unclesam: The entire part of the museum was closed. So, it is OK with the officials to kill people without an judicial process - but not OK to protest same. :loco: Some 'democracy' we now have!

[Magda Hassan]

Just a short note on a story that happened by for the MSM just about never happened. A group of DC-OWS protesters peacefully went into the Smithstonian Museum, the part that has a drone on display, to protest their use for extra-judicial murder and spying [usually of totally innocent wedding parties and unlucky civilians, etc. who are not humans, but 'collateral damage']. They were all arrested, pepper-sprayed or blocked from entry. Most stories don't even mention the arrests - only that they were blocked, but several were arrested inside, having made it past the guards. :unclesam: The entire part of the museum was closed. So, it is OK with the officials to kill people without an judicial process - but not OK to protest same. :loco: Some 'democracy' we now have!

There was an agent provocateur causing all the drama too. It is in the Occupy Wall Street thread.

[Peter Lemkin]

U.S. Drone Kills 16-Year-Old Pakistani Boy Days After He Attends Anti-Drone Organizing Meeting

A group of Pakistanis met in Islamabad late last month to discuss the impact of U.S. drone strikes in their communities. One of the attendees was a 16-year-old boy named Tariq Aziz who had volunteered to learn photography to begin documenting drone strikes near his home. Within 72 hours of the meeting Aziz was killed in a U.S. drone strike. His 12-year-old cousin was also killed in the Oct. 31 attack. "People were aware of the threat to them, yet they volunteered. Tariq in particular because he, at his age in that remote community, was familiar with computers, was excited about the idea of being able to document the civilian casualties," says reporter Pratap Chatterjee, who met Aziz days before he was killed. As part of a larger investigation on the CIA-led U.S. covert drone war, Chatterjee and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports that drone strikes in Pakistan have killed at least 392 civilians, including 175 children. "I question as to whether the CIA is really attempting to identify people before they kill them," he says. "It would have been so easy for the CIA, the ISI to come question these kids, to have taken them aside, even put them in jail or interrogate them ... but instead, they chose to kill them." JUAN GONZALEZ: We turn now to look at the secret U.S. drone war in Pakistan. Late last month, a group of Pakistanis met in Islamabad to discuss the impact of U.S. drone strikes in their communities. One of the attendees was a boy named Tariq Aziz, who had volunteered to learn photography to begin documenting drone strikes near his home. Within 72 hours of the meeting, Tariq Aziz himself was killed in a U.S. drone strike. He was 16 years old. His 12-year-old cousin was also killed.

AMY GOODMAN: We're joined now by Pratap Chatterjee, a reporter for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, director of CorpWatch. He was in Pakistan this month and went to the news conference, where Tariq Aziz was just days before he was killed. Pratap is back now in London.

Pratap, tell us what took place in Islamabad, how you came to meet Tariq Aziz, and then what happened.

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: Amy, a group here in London called Reprieve, which is a legal charity, and a group in Islamabad by the name of the Foundation for Fundamental Rights worked with Waziristan elders to create a Waziristan Grand Jirga, in which they brought together elders and families of those that had been killed in the drone strikes over the last five years in northern Pakistan. So they met at the Margala Hotel, and this jirga was held on Friday the 28th.

And there were probably 35 people, who were families, relatives of people who were killed, includingamong them was Tariq Aziz, whom I met briefly, who was 16. And he had lost his cousin 18 months ago. His cousin's name is Aswar Ullah, who was killed when he was riding a motorbike near their home village of Norak.

So, at that meeting, the elders, as is typical in a jirga, met to discuss what had happened. They adopted a resolution condemning the strikes and then went to a rally organized by Imran Khan. And Tariq Aziz traveled with all of us to the rally. There were lawyers. There were reporters. It was an open meeting, an open rally in front of the parliament in Islamabad.

After that, Tariq Aziz and the other attendees returned to their homes. And 72 hours later, when Tariq was traveling with his 12-year-old cousin to go pick up his aunt on Monday morning, he was killed in a drone strike.

AMY GOODMAN: He had expressed concern, at the news conference, of going home?

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: Well, Amy, he was not at the news conference, but at the jirga. I think every one of the people there were very aware of the situation that they were in, because in every village around Mir Ali, Miranshah, there are drones, often 24 hours a day. So people were aware of the threat to them. Yet they volunteeredTariq, in particular, because he, at his age in that remote community, was familiar with computers, was excited about the idea of being able to document the civilian casualties. There's a photographer who's been doing that for three yearsNoor Behram is his nameand he's been doing a lot of documentation. Tariq was one of the young men who had volunteered to help him out and to be able to document, you know, the devastation that had happened in their own family.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Pratap, he is now one of about 175 children that have been killed in these drone strikes in recent years in Pakistan? And what about the rest of civilian casualties?

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: Exactly, Juan. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, where I work, has created a database of everybody that has been killed since these drone strikes began a number of years ago under Bush. Eighty-five percent of them have taken place under Barack Obama. And we have used the most conservative counting methodology that we can. We only record a death if it is confirmed by multiple sources. So if it's reported by AP and then re-reported by the New York Times, we don't count it. It has to be reported by multiple sources. And using that methodology, we have counted over 2,300 people that have been killed, and as many as 3,000. And when we have found an individual below the age of 18a child, in other wordswe have identified them separately. And we have documented at least 175 children, together with the number of women that have been killed in these strikes, that have been casualties of this secret war in Afghanistan. So, Waheed Khan, age 12, and Tariq Aziz, age 16, were the 174th and 175th documented child casualties in this war.

One of the things that John Brennan and many people in the administration are fond of saying is, "These are all militants." Well, I question how a 12-year-old could be a militant in this war. But more than that, the very fact that I personally was able to meet them in an open, public meeting in Islamabad, I question as to whether the CIA is really attempting to identify people before they kill them, because if this person was a militant, they could well have met them in Islamabad, as did hundreds of other people. And at the press conference, there wereI counted 23 cameras. At the jirga, there were a dozen cameras. There are thousands of people in the streets of Islamabad. It would have been so easy for the CIA, the ISI, to come question these kids, to have taken them aside, even put them in jail or interrogated them, send them to Guantánamo. But instead they chose to kill them. This, to my mind, suggests that thesetheir information is erroneous, that there is collateral damage. And these are children that they are killing.

AMY GOODMAN: Pratap, I'm looking at Clive Stafford Smith's piece, who heads up Reprieve, that gathered that group together. He said, "I told the elders [that] the only way to convince the American people of their suffering was to accumulate physical proof that civilians had been killed... Tariq stepped forward. He volunteered to gather proof if it would help to protect his family from future harm. We told him to think about it some more before moving forward." I ask about the importance of documenting evidence. That was Clive Stafford Smith talking about the 16-year-old Tariq Aziz, who then went home to do that documentation and was killed with his 12-year-old cousin.

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: Amy, one of the problems here is that because Waziristan is inaccessible to Western reporters, and indeed even Pakistani reporters from the cities, when the CIA or the Pakistani government, Pakistani military, says they have killed militants, high-level targets, there is no way to prove otherwise. So the only way that's possible is to gather physical evidence. At last week in Islamabad, in fact continuing as we speak, there is an exhibit of seven fragments of Hellfire missiles that I have seen and photographed myself, with serial numbers on them, that local villagers have picked up and can date to the dates of these attacks. So there's physical evidence that those missiles, with those serial numbers, have hit communities in Waziristan.

They haveNoor Behram has been very meticulous in taking photographs, as soon as a drone strike takes place, of individuals that have been killed. But these strikes take place over a very large area. And the only way to be able to prove that the CIA is killing innocent people is to muster as many people as possible, give them cameras, and try and arrange to prove that the CIA is wrong. And that is what Tariq Aziz was trying to do, that is what a number of people have been trying to do, because nobody believes people from Waziristan. All they believe, all the information they get, is from the CIA. And that information is clearly wrong, as I have experienced myself.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Pratap, what is the reaction, if any, of the Pakistani government to these continued killings of civilians in their country?

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: Well, the Pakistani government speaks, like the U.S. government, with many voices. By and large, they are silent. They sometimes claim that the U.S. government is doing this without their own permission. But there are also military officials in Pakistan who have claimed that every person that has been killed has been a militant. And this is part of the problem, is that even though, you know, the government supposedly is not involved in this, there is a nod and wink going on, where they are working with the CIA, they are working with the White House, in order to be able to ensure that, you know, there is no culpability.

Here's the thing. In Pakistan, if somebody is killed, just as in the U.S., we wouldthe state would intervene and investigate the murder. In Pakistan, the family can sue. A blood money can be paid. And in fact, the U.S. government, in many countries, has done this. It's called solatia payments. In Afghanistan, in Iraq, the U.S. has compensated people that they have killed by accident. In Pakistan, that does not take place. The Pakistani government, the U.S. government, the local courts have not intervened.

And so, Shahzad Akbar, who's a lawyer with the Foundation for Fundamental Rights in Pakistan, is trying to bring justice to these communities. He has worked with a journalist by the name of Kareem Khanand Kareem, in fact, has lost his son and his brother in drone strikesand he brought a lawsuit last December against the CIA. He named Jonathan Banks, the head of the CIA, who then fled the country. Today Shahzad is working to try and bring these kinds of lawsuits against the Pakistani government, against the CIA, to try and get compensation for these communities, because the Pakistani government is not stepping up to the plate. There is one politician today, Imran Khan, who is trying to change this. And he has said that he is going to, if he is elected, to try and bring justice and to deny the U.S. government permission to kill innocent people in Pakistan.

AMY GOODMAN: He is the famous cricketer who conceivably will run for president, is that right, of Pakistan? And people can go to our website at democracynow.org to see the different interviews that we've done with him as he has come to the United States. Pratap?

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: Imran Khan is running for the 2013 elections. Until recently, he was actually considered kind of a marginal player. But interestingly, the day the rally that Tariq Aziz attended, perhaps 2,000 people went to that Imran Khan rally. Nawaz Sharif had 35,000 people. But the following day in Lahore, Imran Khan had over 100,000 people, some believe as many as 500,000 people, attending. This is very significant. People are fed up with the drone strikes. They're fed up with the corruption in Pakistan. And the young people are rallying behind Imran Khan, because they see him as somebody who's not part of the establishment. Whether or not he can change what the U.S. government does in Pakistan is a question we will only be able to answer if he is elected. But there is certainly widespread dissatisfaction among the young communities. There is a tremendous surge of support for Imran Khan in Waziristan, where, you know, people are fed up with the politicians that they have elected and have sent to Islamabad.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you very much, Pratap, for being with us. Pratap Chatterjee, a reporter for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and director of CorpWatch, an NGO that tracks corporate malfeasance. Pratap Chatterjee, speaking to us from London.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Mors Ab Alto

Death From Above.

Terror and Slaughter to Keep the Free World safe from Terror.

The American way.