WASHINGTON — President Obama’s pick to run the CIA defended the administration’s extensive use of drones to kill terrorists abroad — as senators overseeing his confirmation pushed for answers about the killings.
“What we were trying to do in this administration is to take every measure possible to protect the lives of American citizens whether it be abroad or the United States,” said John Brennan, considered the architect of the drone program as Obama’s top national security adviser.
Brennan appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday just hours after the White House relented and handed over a Justice Department memo to lawmakers outlining the basis of the authority to kill American citizens abroad.
Members of the anti-war group “Code Pink” disrupted the hearing several times at the outset, as one protester called Brennan a “traitor to democracy.” Chairman Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) stopped the hearing and had Capitol Police eject the protesters.
Brennan, who spent 25 years at the CIA, managed to dodge a series of efforts to wrestle new details about the program.
Citing one US citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, killed by a drone strike in Yemen, Brennan said al-Awlaki was an al Qaeda leader tied to at least three attacks planned or carried out on US soil, including the shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, that left 13 dead.
“He was intimately involved in activities to kill innocent men, women and children, mostly Americans,” Brennan said.
When Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Brennan whether he’d provide a list of “any and all countries” where the CIA had used its “lethal authorities,” Brennan responded, “If I were to be confirmed as director of CIA, I would get back to you.”
But Brennan balked at the suggestion of establishing a court-like system to approve drone strikes. He said defending American lives was “inherently an executive-branch function.”
Years after 9/11, the hearings shed new light on the effort to go after Osama bin Laden even before the 2001 terror attacks. Brennan defended his decision to advise against a hit on bin Laden in 1998.
“Based on what I had known at the time, I didn’t think that it was a worthwhile operation and it didn’t have a chance of success,” Brennan said under questioning from Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) about whether he now “regrets” counseling against an operation to go after bin Laden.
Brennan also raised questions during his testimony about statements from top Bush-administration CIA officials that “enhanced interrogation techniques” helped the CIA identify bin Laden’s courier, a tactic that eventually led to bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan and the operation that killed the terror leader in 2011.
Brennan said he needed to review a 6,000-page Senate report on interrogation practices to reach a judgment.
“I don’t know what the facts are or the truth is. I really need to look at that,” Brennan said.
He said there were many things in the Senate report on enhanced interrogation that he found “very concerning and disturbing.”
Brennan called waterboarding “reprehensible” and “something that should not be done,” although he said such techniques during the Bush administration saved lives.
Brennan also acknowledged, “I did not take steps to stop the CIA’s use of those techniques. I was not in the chain of command of that program.”
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