Democrat Senator exposes top secret information

[Tigermike 4,246]

I always assumed that the US conducted its Predator strikes on Taliban and al-Qaeda targets from bases in Afghanistan. Now, however, Senator Dianne Feinstein (d - calif) has exposed a Pakistani partnership on Predator launches that the previous administration tried to keep quiet. Her offhand remark may put the entire program in jeopardy:

Predator drones flown from base in Pakistan, U.S. lawmaker says

Sen. Feinstein's surprise disclosure likely to complicate joint campaign against Taliban militants

Greg Miller | Washington Bureau

7:06 PM CST, February 12, 2009

WASHINGTON, D.C. - A senior U.S. lawmaker said Thursday that unmanned CIA Predator aircraft operating in Pakistan are flown from an airbase inside that country, a revelation likely to embarrass the Pakistani government and complicate its counterterrorism collaboration with the United States.

The disclosure by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, marked the first time a U.S. official had publicly commented on where the Predator aircraft patrolling Pakistan take off and land.

At a hearing, Feinstein expressed surprise at Pakistani opposition to the ongoing campaign of Predator-launched CIA missile strikes against Al Qaeda targets along Pakistan's northwest border.

"As I understand it, these are flown out of a Pakistani base," she said of the planes.

The basing of the pilotless aircraft in Pakistan suggests a much deeper relationship with the United States on counterterrorism matters than has been publicly acknowledged. Such an arrangement would be at odds with protests lodged by officials in Islamabad and could inflame anti-American sentiment in the country.

The CIA declined to comment, but former U.S. intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, confirmed that Feinstein's account was accurate.

Phil LaVelle, a spokesman for Feinstein, said her comment was based solely on previous news reports that Predators were operated from bases near Islamabad.

"We strongly object to Sen. Feinstein's remarks being characterized as anything other than a reference" to a article that appeared last March in the Washington Post, LaVelle said. Feinstein did not refer to newspaper accounts during the hearing.

Many in counterterrorism experts have assumed that the aircraft were operated from U.S. military installations in Afghanistan, and remotely piloted from locations in the United States. Experts said the disclosure could create political problems for the fledgling government in Islamabad.

"If accurate, what this says is that Pakistani involvement, or at least acquiescence, has been much more extensive than has previously been known," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. "It puts the Pakistani government in a far more difficult position [in terms of] its credibility with its own people. Unfortunately it also has the potential to threaten Pakistani-American relations."

Feinstein's disclosure came during testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee by U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair on the nation's security threats. Blair did not respond directly to Feinstein's remark, except to say that Pakistan is "sorting out" its cooperation with the United States.

Pakistani officials have long denied that they ever granted the United States permission to fly the Predator planes over Pakistani territory, let alone to operate the aircraft from within the country.

The new civilian leadership has gone to significant lengths to distance itself from the Predator strikes, which are extremely unpopular in Pakistan, in part because they are widely reported to kill civilians as well as militants.

The Pakistani government regularly lodges diplomatic protests against the strikes as a violation of its sovereignty, and officials said the subject was raised with Richard C. Holbrooke, a newly appointed U.S. envoy to the region, who completed his first visit to the country on Thursday.

Nevertheless, most Pakistanis believe the civilian leadership has continued former President Pervez Musharraf's policy giving the United States tacit permission to carry out the strikes.

The CIA has been working to step up its presence in Pakistan in recent years. The CIA has deployed as many as 200 people to Pakistan, one of its largest overseas operations outside of Iraq, current and former agency officials have estimated. That contingent works alongside other U.S. operatives who specialize in electronic communications and spy satellites.

The use of Predator planes armed with Hellfire anti-tank missiles has emerged as perhaps the important U.S. tool in its ongoing efforts to attack Al Qaeda in its sanctuary in Pakistan's tribal belt. Last month, a New Year's Day strike killed two senior Al Qaeda operatives who were suspected of involvement in the bombing of Islamabad's Marriott They were among at least eight senior Al Qaeda figures reportedly killed in Predator strikes over the past seven months as part of a stepped-up missile campaign that U.S. intelligence officials have characterized as major success against Al Qaeda.

In his prepared testimony Thursday, Blair said that Al Qaeda has "lost significant parts of its command structure since 2008 in a succession of blows as damaging to the group as any since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001."

Los Angeles Times staff writer Laura King contributed from Istanbul.

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Until now, that was a closely guarded secret. The drone attacks are incredibly unpopular among the Pakistani public, and the US didn’t want to undermine the current, democratically-elected government in Islamabad. They wanted to give the Yousef Gilani government deniability on their cooperation with the American military in order to keep our options for attack open.

HOPE and CHANGE

[autigeremt 7,543]

God help us! We have the worst possible situation since 1976.

[pensacola tiger 0]

She's head of the Intelligence Committee and it seems she doesn't have very much (intelligence that is). What an idiot.

[arnaldoabru 11]

She should be prosecuted, as soon as Rove and Cheney.

[WinCrimson 61]

I've never liked Feinstein. I think she's unauthentic and ineffective. That said, I'm willing to give her a mulligan on this one since I highly doubt her intent was to do what she did -- potentially screw-up a military operation.

Yay or nay on this? And I do concede that she's never really proven herself worthy of a chairmanship.

[Tigermike 4,246]

I've never liked Feinstein. I think she's unauthentic and ineffective. That said, I'm willing to give her a mulligan on this one since I highly doubt her intent was to do what she did -- potentially screw-up a military operation.

Yay or nay on this? And I do concede that she's never really proven herself worthy of a chairmanship.

You are aware this isn't the first time for Feinstein don't you?

From one of thse pesky right wing blogs.

This isn’t the first time Feinstein has blown a sensitive operation by opening her mouth, either. Californians will recall that Mayor Feinstein called a press conference to discuss the Night Stalker case, a string of violent rapes and murders that terrified the entire state. She divulged previously-confidential information about Richard Ramirez’ shoes and gun — and on hearing it, Ramirez promptly dumped them into the bay on his way out of town, eliminating key evidence in the case.

[Ranger12 53]

These democrat idiots in congress want to hold some type of "trial" On Bush's administration, basically because they are still bitter towards him. They can't let it go, so even though they say they are not seeking any type of prosecution, that what a "truth commission". What a waste of taxpayer's money and Congress' time.

Trust me, the hypocrisy is not lost on me either. For the dems to act like their party's sitting presidents have never did anything less the honest while in office shows how vengeful and hateful those guys can be. They have short memories, because the Clinton ands Kennedy clans have not exactly been the model leaders of this country either.

They want to risk exposing issues of national security just so they can hold their Salem Witch Trials.