Congress to CIA: Provide US Drone Victim Count

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http://www.juancole.com/2014/02/congress-provide-victim.html

Congress to CIA: Provide US Drone Victim Count
By Juan Cole | Feb. 6, 2014
(By Alice K. Ross)

The CIA director and other intelligence chiefs were urged to increase transparency over covert drone operations by members of the House intelligence committee yesterday.

Adam Schiff, a Democratic Party congressman, called on CIA director John Brennan, to support an annual report detailing the number of alleged militants and civilians killed each year. This would enable the administration to ‘correct the record at times where there are misleading claims of civilian casualties’, he added, without providing detailed information to enemies of the US.

Brennan said this was ‘certainly a worthwhile recommendation’, but he refused to explicitly back it, insisted that the decision rested with the administration.

He added: ‘There’s a lot of debate about what is the basis for those determinations (of civilian and combatant casualties), and those numbers, so it’s something again I would defer to the administration on’.