Chinese Govt Makes Millions of Fake Social Media Posts

Posted on June 13, 2016June 13, 2016 by Denise Simon

Sounds just like Russia…and China has an army that is assigned to keep up the espionage against the West.

Red astroturf: Chinese government makes millions of fake social media posts

“50-cent” posters aim to distract from dissent rather than confront it.

arsT: Data scientists at Harvard University have found that the government of the People’s Republic of China generates an estimated 448 million fake social media posts per year. The posts are an effort to shape online conversations by citizens and to distract them from sensitive topics “and change the subject”—largely through “cheerleading” posts promoting the Chinese Communist Party and the government.

The research, conducted by Harvard professor Gary King and former Harvard graduate students Jennifer Pan and Margaret Roberts and supported by Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Science, made use of a goldmine of propaganda content. This included a leaked archive of e-mails sent to the Zhanggong District Internet Propaganda Office from 2013 to 2014 that showed government workers’ documentation of completion of fake post work, including screen shots. The research also analyzed social media posts on Chinese websites from 2010 to 2015.

Previously, posts like these were believed to be the work of what observers have called the “50-cent Party”—named for what some believed the posters are paid by the state for their propaganda work. As it turns out, the posts analyzed by King and his co-researchers were likely mostly written for free as an extra duty of government employees.

And while the “50c” posts had long been assumed to be focused on attacking critics of the government and the Party, the researchers found instead that “the Chinese regime’s strategy is to avoid arguing with skeptics of the party and the government, and to not even discuss controversial issues. We infer that the goal of this massive secretive operation is instead to regularly distract the public and change the subject, as most of these posts involve cheerleading for China, the revolutionary history of the Communist Party, or other symbols of the regime.” In essence, the fake posts are a government-sponsored “astro-turfing” campaign—an attempt to create the impression of a grassroots groundswell of support for the Party and the government.

The term “astro-turfing” first became widely used to online public relations efforts by Microsoft as the company was fighting a government anti-trust case through the Microsoft-funded group Americans for Technology Leadership, though the term had been used in the past to describe off-line fake grassroots efforts. It has become a common (but unethical) political and marketing practice—particularly as companies try to shape online reviews and comments about their products and services. But none has engaged in this practice on the scale of the Chinese government’s campaign, which used government workers to spread happy talk about the Party and state. Of the posts analyzed from the Zhanggong archive, the researchers found 99.3 percent were contributed by one of more than 200 government agencies. Twenty percent of those posts were posted directly by employees of the Zhanggong Internet Propaganda Office, with smaller percentages coming from other regional and municipal government agencies.

As for the allegation that these astroturfers get paid by the government for their posts, the researchers noted, “no evidence exists that the authors of 50c posts are even paid extra for this work. We cannot be sure of current practices in the absence of evidence but, given that they already hold government and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) jobs, we would guess this activity is a requirement of their existing job or at least rewarded in performance reviews.”

Yup, there is more….

Defence forces on alert after Chinese cyber attack

TheNewIndianExpress: An alert has been issued to the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force that a Chinese Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) group called Suckfly, based in Chengdu region, is targeting Indian organisations. India’s defence establishment is its prime target.

Suckfly is involved in carrying out cyber espionage activities by sending out a malware called Nidiran.

According to the alert, Suckfly has stolen certificates from legitimate software developing firms in South Korea and is using them to camouflage its attacks. “Sensitive information from targeting computers and networks is exfiltrated, and this information is being used to undermine the national security and economic capabilities,” the alert issued from the Ministry of Defence states.

APT is a network attack in which an unauthorised person gains access and stays there undetected for a long period of time. The intention of an APT attack is to steal data instead of causing damage to the network or organisation.

“It has successfully carried out cyber espionage by infecting computers of both government and commercial houses of India involved in e-commerce, finance, healthcare, shipping and technology. Targeting of military personnel cannot be ruled out, keeping in mind the sensitive nature of data being handled by them,” the alert adds.

What is alarming for security agencies is that the cyber attack was carried out from the headquarters of China’s People’s Liberation Army. Chengdu Military Command is in charge of security along India’s eastern sector in the Tibet region, including Arunachal Pradesh. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had visited Chengdu Military Command during his visit to Beijing in April.

The Importance of Targeted Airstrikes and Killing Abu Sayyaf

Posted on June 11, 2016June 11, 2016 by Denise Simon

A document trove tells how Abu Sayyaf ran the terror group’s operations; approving expenses for slaves, dodging U.S. airstrikes

by, Benoit Faucon and Margaret Coker | The Wall Street Journal

Islamic State oil man Abu Sayyaf was riding high a year ago. With little industry experience, he had built a network of traders and wholesalers of Syrian oil that at one point helped triple energy revenues for his terrorist bosses.

His days carried challenges familiar to all oil executives—increasing production, improving client relations and dodging directives from headquarters. He also had duties unique to the extremist group, including approving expenses to cover the upkeep of slaves, rebuilding oil facilities damaged by U.S. airstrikes and counting towers of cash.

Last May, U.S. Special Forces killed Abu Sayyaf, a nom de guerre, at his compound in Syria’s Deir Ezzour province. The raid also captured a trove of proprietary data that explains how Islamic State became the world’s wealthiest terror group.

Documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal describe the terror group’s construction of a multinational oil operation with help from officious terror-group executives obsessed with maximizing profits. They show how the organization deals with the Syrian regime, handles corruption allegations among top officials, and, most critically, how international coalition strikes have dented but not destroyed Islamic State’s income.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter called the May 16, 2015, raid a “significant blow” against Islamic State and heralded the death of Abu Sayyaf, the terror group’s No. 2 oil executive.

In the 11 months since, U.S. and allied forces have launched hundreds more strikes against terrorist-controlled oil facilities and killed dozens of militants working in Islamic State’s oil and finance business. U.S. officials estimate that at least 30% of the group’s oil infrastructure has been destroyed, and taxes have replaced oil as the group’s largest profit center.

Daily oil sales in Syria and Iraq, though fallen, still total nearly $1 million. Two former Islamic State oil managers said the corporate structures created by Abu Sayyaf remained intact, including deals with businessmen linked to the Syrian regime.

Spreadsheets and Excel files show that Abu Sayyaf’s division contributed 72% of the $289.5 million in total Islamic State natural-resource revenues over the six months that ended in late February 2015.

The documents reviewed by the Journal represent only a portion of the files recovered in last year’s raid, which U.S. officials said has been useful for intelligence and military operations. This account of how Abu Sayyaf built and operated his division of Islamic State’s oil business is based on the documents and interviews with five people familiar with him and his Syrian operation.

Turning to terror

Abu Sayyaf was born in a working-class neighborhood of the Tunisian capital Tunis in the early 1980s and named Fathi Ben Awn al-Murad al Tunisi. How he became an extremist is unclear. He left for Iraq after dictator Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003 by U.S. forces and joined the jihadist group then known as al Qaeda in Iraq. Its goal was to repel U.S. troops and fight the Shiite-led government that took over Iraq.

In 2010, Abu Sayyaf married an Iraqi woman from a family also involved in the anti-American jihad. He took the name Abu Sayyaf al-Iraqi—literally, father of the sword bearer—reflecting his close ties with the jihad movement in Iraq and the nucleus of Iraq’s Sunni militants that included Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, founder of Islamic State.

Islamic State had seized many of Syria’s best-producing oil fields and created its oil ministry known as the Diwan of Natural Resources by the time Mr. Baghdadi declared his so-called caliphate in June 2014. Their lightning advance overwhelmed other rebel groups that shared control of Syrian oil territory. The terror group had crushed the Iraqi army to take oil fields and territory around Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.

The head of the oil ministry, an Iraqi known as Haji Hamid, put Abu Sayyaf in charge of Syria’s best oil-producing provinces, Deir Ezzour and al Hakasah. Abu Sayyaf’s 152 employees included managers from oil-producing Arab-speaking countries who had joined the extremist group: a Saudi, who managed the top-producing fields; an Iraqi, who ran oil-field maintenance; an Algerian responsible for refinery development; and a Tunisian, who was in charge of refinery operations.

Abu Sayyaf set up his headquarters at the giant al-Omar field in Deir Ezzour, which was previously run by Anglo-Dutch major Royal Dutch Shell RDS.A -1.93 % PLC.

Islamic State moved swiftly to expand sales to friendly Iraqi and Syrian traders. It began accepting dollars instead of the Syrian pound, making it easier for the terror group to transfer funds abroad and pay for imported goods through its international network of money changers.

Syria’s state-controlled system of marketing oil to international buyers through pipelines and oil tankers was replaced by a cottage industry of small smugglers who bought oil at the fields and ferried it away by truck.

Islamic State retained many Syrian oil-industry veterans, in part by paying high salaries. Two workers at Abu Sayyaf’s operations said in interviews that experienced people were paid handsomely—from $160 a month for an accountant to $400 for a drilling technician, compared with Syria’s average monthly wage of $50. Islamic State’s treasury, known as Beit al-Mal, based pay on the number of dependents and slaves a worker had.

Everyone was afraid of Islamic State, said Ibrahim, a 36-year-old former oil worker. “Local tribes used to fight over the fields,” he said, but now all submit to the terror group.

Islamic State oil managers demanded cash payments from traders buying their crude, with security supervisors deciding who was trustworthy enough to count the money. They were warned against transferring funds via banks for fear Western intelligence agents would intercept the financial information.

Abu Sayyaf created a regimented, compartmentalized work environment unusual for the region. Syrian workers had long relied on social and family contacts to retain plum positions. Under Islamic State rule, foreigners supervised their work. Such tasks as accounting were assigned to two Islamic State operatives from outside the region to discourage embezzlement.

The responsibilities of Abu Sayyaf extended beyond oil. In September 2014, he was given custody of Kayla Mueller, a kidnapped American aid worker. Ms. Mueller, who had been sexually abused by Mr. Baghdadi after being taken hostage in 2013, was killed about five months later, U.S. officials said.

Abu Sayyaf was a strict and unpopular manager, said Ibrahim, who had worked in oil fields under his supervision. Employees were threatened with transfers to Iraq, he said, where they feared oil bosses who were even more extreme.

The areas around the fields became scenes of occasional horror, said the drilling technician who fled Syria last year: “You go to work and you find someone beheaded.”

Under fire

At a Sept. 19, 2014, meeting, the United Nations Security Council called for a crackdown on Islamic State’s oil business. Five days later, U.S. jets started bombing the group’s makeshift refineries in Syria.

By mid-October, the U.S.-led coalition reported hundreds of strikes a day against Islamic State, which was increasing its grip on Iraq’s Anbar Province and battling for the Syria-Turkey border city of Kobani.

Some allied strikes targeted Abu Sayyaf’s wells. On Oct. 13, the Pentagon reported hitting oil collection points in Deir Ezzour. He ordered repair crews into action. Memos dated on Oct. 17 from his Saudi deputy provided details of an estimated $500,000 in damage at several oil facilities.

His Saudi subordinate, Abu Sarah al-Zahrani, promised that teams would have the wells up and running within four to 14 days. Workers had to fortify derricks and fix broken valves and pipes. In follow-up memos, Mr. Zahrani provided photos of the repairs, including jury-rigged pumps and hoses.

The allied bombardments forced attention on security. Islamic State bureaucrats in the Syrian city of Raqqa, its administrative headquarters, ordered militants to stop using communication devices equipped with GPS trackers.

Abu Sayyaf’s work brought tangible results. For the Islamic State monthly budget running from Oct. 25 to Nov. 23, 2014, his division reported $40.7 million in revenue, a 59% increase over the previous month. Monthly totals topped $40 million for each of the next two reporting months.

Internal affairs

By the end of 2014, Abu Sayyaf was facing pressure from inside Islamic State, which was struggling to build a promised religious utopia. People in Islamic State-controlled territory complained about high fuel prices, and Abu Sayyaf was ordered to keep a lid on prices and boost margins on oil sales, the terror group’s largest income source at the time.

In one memo, Islamic State’s General Governance Committee demanded a 10% cap on profits by fuel traders. Another memo from central command demanded that Islamic State’s oil ministry work with the local governor to set oil prices in al Hasakah, a district under Abu Sayyaf’s control.

Oil sellers, in turn, launched their own revolt. Angry over moves to slice profit margins, they alleged that Islamic State officials, including Abu Sayyaf, overcharged them and embezzled the money.

Abu Sayyaf set different prices for crude from different fields, depending on quality. For example, the average price a barrel in November 2014 at the al-Tanak field in Deir Ezzour ranged from $32 to $41, according to a spreadsheet seized by U.S. forces. Prices at the al-Omar and al-Milh fields, meanwhile, ranged from $50 to $70 a barrel around that time.

Oil buyers believed Islamic State gave some traders preferential treatment. The complaints reached Abu Sayyaf’s boss. A memo dated Dec. 22, 2014, from Islamic State’s oil ministry admonished employees in the field to maintain fair trade rules, including not allowing favored traders to cut in line at the oil fields.

Video recordings recovered from the raid appear to be part of an investigation of Abu Sayyaf at the time. Videos show interviews with oil tanker drivers at the al-Omar and al-Milh fields, and Islamic State officials talking about procedures for pricing and purchasing oil

One of the videos, recorded in January 2015, shows two lines of approximately 500 trucks waiting to purchase crude at the al-Omar field. A second video shows a high-ranking Islamic State official, identified as Abu Ubaydah, talking with truck drivers, traders and Islamic State officials there.

Drivers in the video complained that local Islamic State managers ran a two-tier pricing system: Drivers willing to pay higher prices—between $60 to $70 a barrel—moved to a priority loading lane, with little or no waiting. The $50-a-barrel line had a long wait.

Islamic State at the time was undercutting international oil prices, which were still about $80 a barrel. The loaded trucks left oil fields bound for either local makeshift refineries, buyers in Syrian government-held territory or the extremist-held city of Mosul in Iraq, according to Islamic State workers in the area. Discounted prices at Islamic State fields left room for sizable profits.

In the recording, Mr. Ubaydah told the drivers there was no corruption scheme and that Islamic State wasn’t driving up prices. He blamed the secondary fuel market in Syria where traders resold their loads. “We provided very low prices, but you all increased your prices at the auction, [so] we increased our prices, too,” he told the drivers on the video.

“We are the people,” one trucker said, “but you are ISIL.”

“It’s true that we are ISIL, but you are the one who are raising your prices against all Muslims,” Mr. Ubaydah said.

A report from Islamic State’s General Governance Committee dated Feb. 24, 2015, concluded there was no corruption and cleared Abu Sayyaf.

He didn’t have time to savor the victory. Global oil prices were falling. For the month ending on Feb. 20, 2015, his oil division revenues fell 24% from the previous month to $33 million.

Abu Sayyaf and his team focused on a new mission: finding investment capital to open operations at wells left inactive because of a labor shortage.

Memo No. 156 dated Feb. 11, 2015, from Islamic State’s treasury to Abu Sayyaf’s boss requested guidance on establishing investment relationships with businessmen linked to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The document said the terror group already had agreements allowing trucks and pipeline transit from regime-controlled fields through Islamic State-controlled territory.

In the early hours of May 16, U.S. Special Forces flew from a military base in Iraq to al-Omar. U.S. forces killed several armed Islamic State guards outside his compound, U.S. officials said, and then fatally shot the Tunisian.

“The operation represents another significant blow to ISIL, and it is a reminder that the United States will never waver in denying safe haven to terrorists who threaten our citizens, and those of our friends and allies,” Defense Secretary Carter said that day.

In September 2015, the U.S. Treasury placed Abu Sayyaf’s boss, Haji Hamid, on a terror-sanctions list, and, four months later, Abu Sayyaf’s Saudi deputy.

This spring, Islamic State oil wells pump at reduced capacity. In March, a baby-faced French jihadist called Abu Mohammad al-Fransi took over some of Abu Sayyaf’s duties as a senior accountant of Syrian oil fields.

Latin America, Hezbollah Moving Cocaine, Funding Terror

Posted on June 10, 2016June 10, 2016 by Denise Simon

Hezbollah moving ‘tons of cocaine’ in Latin America, Europe to finance terror operations

Taylor/Dinan/WashingtonTimes: Hezbollah’s terrorism finance operations are thriving across Latin America months after the Drug Enforcement Administration linked the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group to drug cartels in the region, U.S. lawmakers were told this week.

Former DEA operations chief Michael Braun said Hezbollah is “moving [multiple] tons of cocaine” from South America to Europe and has developed “the most sophisticated money laundering scheme or schemes that we have ever witnessed.”

The agency announced in February that it had arrested several Hezbollah operatives accused of working with a major Colombian drug cartel to traffic drugs to Europe and launder money through Lebanon. Those arrests come against a backdrop of rising fears in Washington about smuggling connections between Middle East terrorist groups and the Western Hemisphere.

Hezbollah has “metastasized into a hydra with international connections that the likes of [the Islamic State] and groups like al Qaeda could only hope to have,” Mr. Braun told the House Financial Services Committee.

Adding to concerns about security threats from Central and South America, intelligence reports have also tracked how smugglers managed to sneak illegal immigrants from the Middle Eastern and South Asia straight to the doorstep of the U.S. — including helping one Afghan who U.S. authorities say was part of an attack plot in North America.

Immigration officials identified at least a dozen Middle Eastern men smuggled into the Western Hemisphere by a Brazilian-based network that connected them with Mexicans who guided them to the U.S. border, according to internal government documents reviewed this month by The Washington Times.

Those smuggled included Palestinians, Pakistanis and the Afghan man who Homeland Security officials said had family ties to the Taliban and was “involved in a plot to conduct an attack in the U.S. and/or Canada.”

Concerns about Hezbollah’s activities in Latin America have surged the DEA’s announcement in February that top operatives from the group’s so-called Business Affairs Component, or BAC, “have established business relationships” with South American drug cartels such as the Colombia-based Oficina de Envigado, a crime syndicate “responsible for supplying large quantities of cocaine to the European and United States drug markets.”

The DEA said several of the BAC’s Europe-based operatives had been arrested on charges of trafficking drugs and laundering money from South America to purchase weapons and finance the group’s military activities in Syria. The agency described an intricate network of money couriers who collect and transport millions of euros in drug proceeds from Europe to the Middle East.

“The currency is then paid in Colombia to drug traffickers,” it said, adding that “a large portion of the drug proceeds was found to transit through Lebanon, and a significant percentage of these proceeds are benefiting terrorist organizations, namely Hezbollah.”

The DEA said seven countries, including France, Germany, Italy and Belgium, were involved in an ongoing investigation. But few details were provided about how many suspects had been apprehended or where they are being held.

Officials said the most significant arrest was of Mohamad Noureddine, whom the DEA accused of being a Lebanese money launderer for Hezbollah. A week prior to the announcement, the Treasury Department had imposed sanctions freezing any U.S. accounts tied to Mr. Noureddine as well as to Hamdi Zaher El Dine, another suspected money launderer.

Decades of activity

U.S. officials have long been wary of Hezbollah, a Shiite Islamic group.

While it has a mainstream political arm in Lebanon, officials have linked the group to terrorist attacks in various corners of the world over the past 25 years — the vast majority targeting Israel. The State Department listed Hezbollah as a terrorist organization in the late 1990s and has characterized Iran as a leading state sponsor of terrorism largely on grounds that it supplies the group with weapons.

But the full scope of Hezbollah’s operations has long been a subject of debate in Washington. The DEA’s recent claims followed years of speculation about Iranian activities in Latin America.

Responding to pressure from Republican lawmakers, the State Department conducted a formal probe into the matter in 2013 and issued a report claiming that Iran was not supporting any active terrorist cells in the region.

While the report said the number of Iranian officials operating in Latin America had increased, the report concluded Tehran had far less influence in Latin America than critics claimed.

But former officials like Mr. Braun, who retired as DEA chief of operations in 2008, say Hezbollah is extremely active in the region.

President Obama signed the “Hizballah International Financing Prevention Act” last year, authorizing a range of actions, including sanctions, to block Hezbollah’s ability to fund itself.

Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow on Iran and illicit finance with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told lawmakers at Wednesday’s hearing that Congress and the administration should use the law to “aggressively focus” on Hezbollah’s presence in Latin America.

Brazilian connection

Mr. Ottolenghi pointed to the group’s “vast network of support,” particularly in Brazil, which is home to some 7 million people of Lebanese descent, including an estimated 1 million Shiite Muslims.

“Hezbollah generates loyalty among the local Shia communities by managing their religious and educational structures,” Mr. Ottolenghi told the hearing. “It then leverages loyalty to solicit funds and use business connections to its own advantage, including, critically, to facilitate its interactions with organized crime.”

He cited a 2014 report by the Brazilian newspaper O Globo that outlined a connection between Hezbollah and the Primeiro Comando da Capital, a Sao Paulo-based prison gang, which is widely regarded to be among the country’s biggest exporters of cocaine.

“Drug cartels need middlemen, as well as commodity and service providers, for the supply line and delivery to cartels in Colombia, Venezuela and Central America,” Mr. Ottolenghi said. “They need assistance facilitating transit to West Africa before drugs cross the Sahara on their way to Western Europe and enabling the producers, refiners and cartels to launder their revenues and acquire the accessories for the trade in the process.”

Core of Hillary FBI Investigation, Wilful Drone Discussions

Posted on June 9, 2016June 9, 2016 by Denise Simon

Emails in Clinton probe dealt with planned drone strikes: WSJ

Reuters/WSJ: Emails between U.S. diplomats in Islamabad and State Department officials in Washington about whether to challenge specific U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan are at the center of a criminal probe involving Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

The 2011 and 2012 emails were sent via the “low side” -government slang for a computer system for unclassified matters – as part of a secret arrangement that gave the State Department more of a voice in whether a CIA drone strike went ahead, according to congressional and law enforcement officials briefed on the FBI probe, the Journal said.

Some of the emails were then forwarded by Clinton’s aides to her personal email account, which routed them to a server she kept at her home in suburban New York when she was secretary of state, the officials said, according to the newspaper.

Investigators have raised concerns that Clinton’s personal server was less secure than State Department systems, and a recent report by the State Department inspector general found that Clinton had broken government rules by using a private email server without approval, undermining Clinton’s earlier defenses of her emails.

The still-secret emails are a key part of the FBI investigation that has long dogged Clinton’s presidential campaign, the officials told the Journal. Clinton this week clinched the Democratic presidential nomination for the Nov. 8 election.

The vaguely worded messages did not mention the “CIA,” “drones” or details about the militant targets, officials said, according to the Journal.

The emails were written within the often-narrow time frame in which State Department officials had to decide whether or not to object to drone strikes before the CIA pulled the trigger, the officials said, according to the newspaper.

Law enforcement and intelligence officials said State Department deliberations about the covert CIA drone program should have been conducted over a more secure government computer system designed to handle classified information, the Journal reported.

Context at the time:

Pakistan UAV attacks have become one of the Obama administration’s signature efforts in the terror war. Although the CIA does not divulge how many drones it operates, press reports suggest the agency has as many as 16 such systems. But in the early days of his presidency, Barack Obama was advised by at least two former high-ranking CIA officers not to over-rely on the use of drones.

Former CIA analyst Bruce Riedel, commissioned by the president to review US policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, concluded that robot airplanes could only function successfully when allied to high-quality “on the ground” intelligence.

That view was shared by General Michael Hayden, CIA director at the start of the Obama presidency. In his book Obama’s Wars, Bob Woodward recounts how Hayden believed that “The great lesson of World War II and Vietnam was that attack from the air, even massive bombings, can’t win a war.”

Noah Shachtman, contributing editor of Wired.com, warns that the lesson of not having troops on the ground could be over-learned: “The idea that any terrorist problem could be solved by drones alone just isn’t realistic. Drones are only as effective as the human informants who tell them where to strike.” For him, a drones-only policy could become “a way of maintaining political cover and a veil of secrecy over operations that might ordinarily be wide open”. More here.

**** Additionally for later context:

NPR: In 2013, President Obama tightened rules for drone strikes in order to reduce civilian casualties. NPR’s Audie Cornish talks to Wall Street Journal correspondent Adam Entous who learned that the president secretly waived the new rules for CIA operations in Pakistan.

In 2015: The killings revealed last week of two hostages – an American and an Italian – have raised new questions about how the CIA operates in Pakistan. Warren Weinstein and Giovanni La Porto were aid workers. They were killed in January by a U.S. drone strike aimed at al-Qaida militants. The Wall Street Journal reports the CIA conducted that strike under a secret waiver approved by President Obama in 2013. Obama laid it out in a speech at National Defense University in 2013. And he didn’t reveal all the rules. The actual guidance that he issued is – remains classified. But he did talk about three of them. He said that operations targeting individuals needed to have near certainty that there would be no civilians killed or injured in those strikes. He also said that the CIA and the Pentagon, when conducting strikes like this, need to know that there is an imminent threat to the United States posed by the militants that they intend on targeting. And another guideline that he laid out was the idea that the United States is not going to kill people in order to punish them for acts that they did in the past. This is about preventing them from attacking the United States or U.S. persons or assets overseas in the future.

Pakistan is important because this is the staging area for al-Qaida and other militant groups that are looking to cross the border into Afghanistan and attack American forces there. Attacking al-Qaida in Pakistan is a way to prevent them from later attacking U.S. forces across the border. So the White House and the president said that there would be a thorough review of this incident in order to ensure that mistakes like this do not happen again. And within this debate within the administration, several members of the president’s inner circle are making the case that now is the time to rein in the program.

But it’s really hard to tell what direction this is going to go in the end because of strong support, not only within the administration for the drone program and wanting to have the flexibility to use it, but also within the Congress. You have very powerful committees, members of the president’s own party, who very much support this program and don’t want to see it go away. Additional information here.

DHS Wont Tell us but UK’s GCHQ Does