The eagle comes home to roost: the historical origins of the CIA's lethal drone programme
The eagle comes home to roost: the historical origins of the CIA's lethal drone programme
The rapid escalation of the CIA's drone program under the Obama administration has attracted the close attention of the media and academic experts. While such attention has helped shine a light on the scale, effectiveness and legality of drone warfare, there has been little attempt to explain the origins of the program and place it within wider US counterterrorism practice. This article meets that need. Drawing upon executive orders, national security directives, documents from the CIA's archive, memoirs of key individuals and technical specifications of drones themselves, the article demonstrates how the current drone campaign has its origins in America's first clash with international terrorism, fought against state sponsors such as the late Colonel Gaddafi. As such, the article concludes that the Obama administration's approach, whilst unique in scale, actually marks a return to, rather than a departure from, counterterrorism methods developed in the decades preceding 9/11.
769-792
Fuller, Christopher J.
c382672a-11a3-4d2a-8aa4-8ba345c64cc2
Fuller, Christopher J.
c382672a-11a3-4d2a-8aa4-8ba345c64cc2
Fuller, Christopher J.
(2014)
The eagle comes home to roost: the historical origins of the CIA's lethal drone programme.
Intelligence & National Security, 30 (6), .
(doi:10.1080/02684527.2014.895569).
Abstract
The rapid escalation of the CIA's drone program under the Obama administration has attracted the close attention of the media and academic experts. While such attention has helped shine a light on the scale, effectiveness and legality of drone warfare, there has been little attempt to explain the origins of the program and place it within wider US counterterrorism practice. This article meets that need. Drawing upon executive orders, national security directives, documents from the CIA's archive, memoirs of key individuals and technical specifications of drones themselves, the article demonstrates how the current drone campaign has its origins in America's first clash with international terrorism, fought against state sponsors such as the late Colonel Gaddafi. As such, the article concludes that the Obama administration's approach, whilst unique in scale, actually marks a return to, rather than a departure from, counterterrorism methods developed in the decades preceding 9/11.
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e-pub ahead of print date: 1 May 2014
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Local EPrints ID: 368783
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/368783
ISSN: 0268-4527
PURE UUID: 599ee103-8ee3-4643-aec5-53a814e3fa37
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Date deposited: 13 Sep 2014 10:47
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 17:53
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