WASHINGTON
— The C.I.A. is pushing for expanded powers to carry out covert drone
strikes in Afghanistan and other active war zones, a proposal that the
White House appears to favor despite the misgivings of some at the
Pentagon, according to current and former intelligence and military
officials.
If
approved by President Trump, it would mark the first time the C.I.A.
has had such powers in Afghanistan, expanding beyond its existing
authority to carry out covert strikes against Al Qaeda and other
terrorist targets across the border in Pakistan.
The
changes are being weighed as part of a broader push inside the Trump
White House to loosen Obama-era restraints on how the C.I.A. and the
military fight Islamist militants around the world. The Obama
administration imposed the restrictions in part to limit civilian
casualties, and the proposed shift has raised concerns among critics
that the Trump administration would open the way for broader C.I.A.
strikes in such countries as Libya, Somalia and Yemen, where the United
States is fighting the Islamic State, Al Qaeda or both.
Until
now, the Pentagon has had the lead role for conducting airstrikes —
with drones or other aircraft — against militants in Afghanistan and
other conflict zones, such as Somalia and Libya and, to some extent,
Yemen. The military publicly acknowledges its strikes, unlike the
C.I.A., which for roughly a decade has carried out its own campaign of
covert drone strikes in Pakistan that were not acknowledged by either
country, a condition that Pakistan’s government has long insisted on.
But
the C.I.A.’s director, Mike Pompeo, has made a forceful case to Mr.
Trump in recent weeks that the Obama-era arrangement needlessly limited
the United States’ ability to conduct counterterrorism operations,
according to the current and former officials, who would not be named
discussing internal debates about sensitive information. He has publicly
suggested that Mr. Trump favors granting the C.I.A. greater authorities
to go after militants, though he has been vague about specifics, nearly
all of which are classified.
“When we’ve asked for more authorities, we’ve been given it. When we ask for more resources, we get it,” Mr. Pompeo said this week on Fox News.
He
said that the agency was hunting “every day” for Al Qaeda’s leaders,
most of whom are believed to be sheltering in the remote mountains that
straddle the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“If I were them, I’d count my days,” Mr. Pompeo said.
From the outset of his tenure at the C.I.A.,
Mr. Pompeo, a West Point graduate and former Army officer, has made
clear that he favors pushing the agency to take on a more direct role in
fighting militants. Afghanistan, the most active war zone in which the
United States is fighting, makes sense as the place to start: In the
past three years, the number of military drone strikes there has
climbed, from 304 in 2015, to 376 last year, to 362 through the first
eight months of this year.
The
C.I.A., in comparison, has had little to do across the border in
Pakistan, where there were three drone strikes last year and have been
four so far this year, according to the Long War Journal published by
the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
“This
is bureaucratic politics 101,” said Christine Wormuth, a former top
Pentagon official. “The C.I.A. has very significant capabilities, and it
wants to go use them.”
Spokesmen
for the C.I.A. and the Defense Department declined to comment on the
pending proposal, which involves delicate internal deliberations.
Defense
Secretary Jim Mattis has not resisted the C.I.A. proposal,
administration officials said, but other Pentagon officials question the
expansion of C.I.A. authorities in Afghanistan or elsewhere, asking
what the agency can do that the military cannot. Some Pentagon officials
also fear that American troops on the ground in Afghanistan could end
up bearing the burden of any C.I.A. strikes that accidentally kill
civilians, because the agency will not publicly acknowledge those
attacks. The military has also had to confront its own deadly mistakes in Afghanistan.
One
senior Defense Department official said that the United States would
gain little from having the C.I.A. carry out drone strikes alongside the
military, and that it raised the question of whether it was an
appropriate use of covert action.
A
former senior administration official familiar with Mr. Pompeo’s
position said that he views a division of labor with the Defense
Department as an abrogation of the C.I.A.’s authorities.
Mr.
Pompeo’s argument seems to be carrying the day with Mr. Trump, who has
struck a bellicose tone in seeking to confront extremist groups in
Afghanistan, including Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Haqqani
network, a faction of the Taliban.
In Mr. Trump’s speech last month outlining his policy for South Asia,
including Afghanistan, the president promised that he would loosen
restrictions on American soldiers to enable them to hunt down
terrorists, whom he labeled “thugs and criminals and predators, and —
that’s right — losers.”
“The
killers need to know they have nowhere to hide, that no place is beyond
the reach of American might and American arms,” the president said.
“Retribution will be fast and powerful.”
Mr.
Pompeo may have a potentially important ally: Gen. John W. Nicholson
Jr., the top commander in Afghanistan, who reportedly favors any
approach to train more firepower on the array of foes of Afghan security
forces and the 11,000 or so American troops advising and assisting them.
Mr.
Trump has already authorized Mr. Mattis to deploy more troops to
Afghanistan. Some 4,000 reinforcements will allow American officers to
more closely advise Afghan brigades, train more Afghan Special
Operations forces and call in American firepower.
Among
the chief targets for the C.I.A. in Afghanistan would be the Haqqani
network, whose leader is now the No. 2 in the Taliban and runs its
military operations. The Haqqanis have been responsible for many of the
deadliest attacks on Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, in the war and are
known for running a virtual factory in Pakistan that has steadily
supplied suicide bombers since 2005.
Despite
their objections, Defense Department officials say they are now
somewhat resigned to the outcome and are working out arrangements with
the C.I.A. to ensure that United States forces, including Special
Operations advisers, are not accidentally targeted, officials said.
Beyond
the military, critics see the proposal as another attempt to expand the
C.I.A.’s drone wars without answering longstanding questions about
whether American spies should be running military-style operations in
the shadows.
“One
of the things we learned early on in Afghanistan and Iraq was the
importance of being as transparent as possible in discussing our
military operations,” said Luke Hartig, a senior director for
counterterrorism at the National Security Council during the Obama
administration.
“Why
we took the specific action, who all was killed or injured in the
operation, what we were going to do if we had inadvertently killed
civilians or damaged property,” he continued. “I don’t know what the
Trump administration is specifically considering in Afghanistan, but if
their new plans for the war decrease any of that transparency, that
would be a big strategic and moral mistake.”
When
John O. Brennan, a former top White House counterterrorism adviser,
became C.I.A. director in late 2013, he announced an intention to ratchet back the paramilitary operations that have transformed the agency since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mr.
Brennan’s goal, he said during his confirmation hearings, was to
refocus the agency on the traditional work of intelligence collection
and espionage that had sometimes been neglected. During those hearings,
Mr. Brennan obliquely criticized the performance of American spy
agencies in providing intelligence and analysis of the Arab revolutions
that began in 2009, and said the C.I.A. needed to cede some of its
paramilitary role to the Pentagon.
In
a speech in May 2013 in which he sought to redefine American policy
toward terrorism, President Barack Obama expanded on that theme, announcing new procedures for drone operations, which White House officials said would gradually become the responsibility of the Pentagon.
But
critics contended that effort, too, proved slow-going, and that Mr.
Brennan did not push forcefully for moving all drone operations away
from the C.I.A.
Now,
with Mr. Pompeo in charge, the agency appears to be aggressively
renewing its paramilitary role, and pushing limits on other forms of
covert operations outside conflict zones, including in countries where
no fighting is underway, such as Iran. A veteran C.I.A. officer viewed
as the architect of the drone program was put in charge of the agency’s Iran operations
this year, for instance, and Mr. Pompeo has made it clear that he
believes the C.I.A. has a robust role to play in fighting militants.
“We
broke the back of Al Qaeda,” he said at a public appearance in July,
referring to the drone campaign inside Pakistan that decimated the
militant network’s leadership ranks.
“We took down their entire network,” he said. “And that’s what we’re going to do again.”
