The New York Times has a long piece (8/12/11) looking at the question of how many civilians in Pakistan are killed by CIA drones. The agency doesn't even speak about the program on the record, except to make the far-fetched claim that no civilians have died in the past year or so.

The article, written by Scott Shane, includes some useful criticism of the CIA, and it's hard not to conclude that the agency's claims are not very credible.

But the real problem with the piece is that it gives much weight to the CIA's defense at all, using their almost entirely anonymous claims as one side in a dispute:

The government's assertion of zero collateral deaths meets with deep skepticism from many independent experts. And a new report from the British Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which conducted interviews in Pakistan's tribal area, concluded that at least 45 civilians were killed in 10 strikes during the last year.

Shane writes that a "closer look at the competing claims... suggests reasons to doubt the precision and certainty of the agency's civilian death count." He adds, though, that "if there are doubts about the CIA claim, there are also questions about the reliability of critics' reports of noncombatant deaths."

Shane also reports that "American officials" do not trust Pakistani lawyer Mirza Shahzad Akbar, who has been a key player and is suing the CIA-- which apparently discredits the British Bureau of Investigative Journalism study:

American officials said the Bureau of Investigative Journalism report was suspect because it relied in part on information supplied by Mr. Akbar, who publicly named the CIA's undercover Pakistan station chief in December when announcing his legal campaign against the drones.

If you read some of the British press about this study (as I did, thanks to CommonDreams.org), you get a very different impression than the one you get from the New York Times. From the Telegraph:

168 Children Killed in Drone Strikes

in Pakistan Since Start of Campaign

New research to send shockwaves through Pakistan

by Rob Crilly, Islamabad

In an extensive analysis of open-source documents, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that 2,292 people had been killed by U.S. missiles, including as many as 775 civilians.

An opinion piece at the Guardian:

The Civilian Victims

of the CIA's Drone War

A new study gives us the truest picture yet--in contrast to the CIA's own account--of drones' grim toll of 'collateral damage'

by Clive Stafford Smith

In that piece, Smith writes:

This week, a new report from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism gives us the best picture yet of the impact of the CIA's drone war in Pakistan. The CIA claims that there has been not one "noncombatant" killed in the past year. This claim always seemed to be biased advocacy rather than honest fact. Indeed, the Guardian recently published some of the pictures we have obtained of the aftermath of drone strikes. There were photos of a child called Naeem Ullah killed in Datta Khel and two kids in Piranho, both within the timeframe of the CIA's dubious declaration.

The BIJ reporting begins to fill in the actual numbers. It's a bleak view: more people killed than previously thought, including an estimated 160 children overall. This study should help to create a greater sense of reality around what is going on in these remote regions of Pakistan. This is precisely what has been lacking in the one-sided reporting of the issue--and it doesn't take an intelligence analyst to realize that vague and one-sided is just the way the CIA wants to keep it.

The Times account obeys normal journalistic  "rules" about balance and giving official sources their say. Which, in this case, amounts to giving space to anonymous killers to defend their actions.

On the release of CIA agent Raymond Davis, who was held in Pakistan on charges of killing two Pakistani men on a street in Lahore, the Times explains the reaction (3/17/11)

The Davis episode was particularly sensitive because of the resentment among Pakistanis who believe that a growing American security contingent roams the country with relative impunity.

The Davis incident would seem to confirm this "belief," wouldn't it?

New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane (2/27/11) offers a justification that makes very little sense for his paper's concealing the fact that an American arrested in Pakistan worked for the CIA. The Times, Brisbane wrote, could not "take the risk that reporting the CIA connection would, as warned, lead to Mr. Davis’s death."

Davis was arrested for murder after allegedly shooting two people in Pakistan. Pakistan has the death penalty, so in theory he could be tried and executed if found guilty. Is that the risk that the New York Times is concerned about? If so, is that how the Times approaches all its crime reporting? This would lead to some interesting editorial conversations:

"We found out that the suspect took out a big insurance policy on his wife just before she disappeared, chief."

"We can't report that!! We're journalists! Do you want to get someone killed??"

The closest Brisbane comes to explaining the Times' logic is this: "The American government hoped to avoid inflaming Pakistani opinion and to create 'as constructive an atmosphere as possible' while working to resolve the diplomatic crisis." In other words, it will be easier for the U.S. to get Davis out of the country where he can't face trial if key facts in the case are hushed up. If you think that's a good reason for self-censoring your reporting, then you have no business calling yourself a journalist.

UPDATE: The New Yorker's Amy Davidson (2/28/11) delves into Brisbane's illogic in greater detail.

The Washington Post has an interesting piece on the CIA's drone program in Pakistan (2/21/11), pointing out that the drones are killing plenty of Pakistanis, but not the "high-value" ones:

CIA drone attacks in Pakistan killed at least 581 militants last year, according to independent estimates. The number of those militants noteworthy enough to appear on a U.S. list of most-wanted terrorists: two.

Despite a major escalation in the number of unmanned Predator strikes being carried out under the Obama administration, data from government and independent sources indicate that the number of high-ranking militants being killed as a result has either slipped or barely increased.

The piece seems to present a pretty clear story-- until they  allow anonymous U.S. officials to weigh in to defend their assassination program. Hence we hear from "U.S. officials familiar with drone operations":

"This effort has evolved because our intelligence has improved greatly over the years, and we're able to identify not just senior terrorists, but also al-Qaeda foot soldiers who are planning attacks on our homeland and our troops in Afghanistan," said a U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the classified program.

"We would be remiss if we didn't go after people who have American blood on their hands," the official said. "To use a military analogy, if you're only going after the generals, you're likely to be run over by tanks."

An unnamed former government official is also quoted comparing the drone assassinations to the HBO series The Sopranos and to a game of chess. Readers are told that drone advocates "say that empirical evidence suggests that the ramped-up targeting of lesser-known militants has helped to keep the United States safe." Sounds like the sort of thing Bush administration officials liked to say all the time about anything they were doing.

Yesterday the Guardian reported that Raymond Davis, the American held in Pakistan on charges of killing two men last month in Lahore, was working for the CIA. The Davis case has received sustained coverage in the U.S. media and is the subject of intense U.S lobbying. All the while U.S. officials referred to Davis as a "diplomat."

Today the New York Times has posted a story on its website catching up with the Guardian. The most notable revelation, though, comes when the Times admits that it knew Davis' status--but obeyed a government request to keep it quiet:

The New York Times had agreed to temporarily withhold information about Mr. Davis' ties to the agency at the request of the Obama administration, which argued that disclosure of his specific job would put his life at risk. Several foreign news organizations have disclosed some aspects of Mr. Davis' work with the CIA, and on Monday, American officials lifted their request to withhold publication.

So is the lesson here that if you're interested in what your government is doing, read a foreign newspaper?

UPDATE: Michael Calderone at Yahoo! News notes that several U.S. outlets-- the Post, the New York Times and the Associated Press-- knew about Davis' status. The Guardian was asked by U.S. officials to keep Davis' status under wraps, but decided not to:

Ian Katz, deputy editor of The Guardian, told The Cutline that "similar representations were made to the Guardian to those received by U.S. media." But unlike its U.S. counterparts, The Guardian went ahead with the story.

Katz noted that two senior Pakistan government sources officially confirmed that Davis was a CIA operative and explained in an email why it was relevant to report.

"We believe Davis's role in Pakistan is unavoidably connected with both the legal case surrounding him and with the U.S. government's attempts to seek his release," Katz said. "And since Davis is already widely assumed in Pakistan to have links to U.S. intelligence, we did not accept that disclosing his CIA role would expose him to increased risk."

A Newsweek report (2/21/11) looks at the CIA's aerial drone assassination program through the agency's eyes--leaving questions about civilian deaths and the effort's dubious legality for a couple of brief paragraphs at the end. To encourage Newsweek to take critics of the drone program seriously, see FAIR's new Action Alert. Please leave copies of your messages--or comments on the alert--in the comments thread here.

Apparently not, judging by the Washington Post's October 3 story ("Military Drones Aid CIA's mission") about the CIA's expansion of its drone war in Pakistan. It is "part of a high-stakes attempt by the Obama administration to deal decisive blows to Taliban insurgents," and also  "a significant evolution of an already controversial targeted killing program."

Post readers get details from "a U.S. official"--who says things like, "Our intelligence has gotten a lot better." The only other perspective comes from Bruce Reidel at Brookings, who is "a former CIA analyst who led the Obama administration's initial overhaul of its Afghanistan/Pakistan strategy." In other words, not much of a critic.

There are obviously fundamental questions about this policy--such as whether it's legal, something Jim Lobe wrote about recently for Inter Press Service (4/2/10).

Are Pakistanis more gullible than other people? That's what the New York Times would have you believe.  In a front page May 26 article, "U.S. Is a Top Villain in Pakistan's Conspiracy Talk," the Times reports that "Conspiracy theory is a national sport in Pakistan," where "the United States has taken center stage, looming so large in Pakistan's collective imagination that it sometimes seems to be responsible for everything that goes wrong here."

As a video sidebar that runs in the Web version of the Times article reports, "In most of the world these conspiracies are the stuff of fringe, but in Pakistan they make for mainstream television."

The Times notes some far-fetched allegations, including that the failed Times Square bombing suspect, Faisal Shezad, was a U.S. plant, but it also cites as conspiratorial a commentator who says that if the Times Square suspect were really trained by Al-Qaeda, he wouldn't have left his keys in the truck and the bomb would have actually worked. It's hard to see how that is a conspiracy theory, or even an unreasonable opinion.

But are Pakistanis more credulous than, say, Americans? Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald cites several instances of unfounded conspiracy theories  that were embraced by large numbers of Americans, including the 2003 poll that found 70 percent of Americans believing that Saddam Hussein was linked to the 9/11 attacks.

But there's also the significant numbers of Americans who believe that Barack Obama is a Kenyan, a Muslim sleeper agent, a Communist sleeper agent, the Anti-Christ or some combination of these. And what of the many Americans--including some major media figures--who see global warming as a conspiracy hatched by the world's scientists?

There is one difference between the U.S. theories and their Pakistani counterparts. While there is  virtually no evidence for these U.S. allegations,  the Pakistani charges that "place the U.S. at center stage" are rooted, as the Times briefly mentions, in the U.S.'s imbalanced, largely secretive relationship with Pakistan, which includes the officially unacknowledged U.S. missile attacks in the country and the U.S.'s support for the former Pakistani dictatorship.

Moreover, the Times video sidebar closes with a clip of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's remarks about the Times Square bomb plot: "If, heaven forbid, an attack like this that we could trace back to Pakistan were to have been successful, there would be very severe consequences."

Of course, the Clinton threats undermine the Times' central theme that Pakistanis who see the U.S. as a menace to their country are all raving conspiracy nuts. Perhaps that's why they were relegated to the end of a video sidebar in the Web version of the story.

A real headline today (4/26/10) in the Washington Post:

Amid Outrage Over Civilian Deaths in Pakistan, CIA Turns to Smaller Missiles

The piece--by Joby Warrick and Peter Finn--has government officials (anonymously, of course) providing new assurances:

The technological improvements have resulted in more accurate operations that have provoked relatively little public outrage, the officials said.... The CIA declines to publicly discuss its clandestine operations in Pakistan, and a spokesman would not comment on the kinds of weapons the agency is using. But two counterterrorism officials said in interviews that evolving technology and tactics have kept the number of civilian deaths extremely low. The officials, along with other U.S. and Pakistani officials interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because the drone campaign is both classified and controversial.

The piece goes on to offer some numbers:

According to an internal CIA accounting described to the Washington Post, just over 20 civilians are known to have died in missile strikes since January 2009, in a 15-month period that witnessed more than 70 drone attacks that killed 400 suspected terrorists and insurgents. Agency officials said the CIA's figures are based on close surveillance of targeted sites both before and after the missiles hit.

Unofficial tallies based on local news reports are much higher. The New America Foundation puts the civilian death toll at 181 and reports a far higher number of alleged terrorists and insurgents killed--more than 690.

The Post account is one of those instances where accepting the government's (anonymous) claims at face value is really the only way to accept the storyline, since they're unwilling to go on the record or share their data with independent researchers.

The piece includes this strange comment:

The drone strikes have been controversial in Pakistan, where many view them as an infringement on national sovereignty.

Yes, "many" people would probably agree that another country conducting secret, deadly airstrikes in another country infringes that country's sovereignty. Does that conclusion really need to qualified?

The Los Angeles Times (11/2/09) gives readers a mostly upbeat account about the use of unmanned drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan-- weapons that have killed hundreds in Pakistan in recent years. But Times reporter Julian Barnes tells us their popularity with U.S. military officials has "changed the nature of the current policy debate in Washington."  The evidence:

The technology allows us to project power without vulnerability," said a senior Defense official. "You don't have to deploy as many people. And in the modern age you want as little stuff forward as long as you can achieve the effects as if you had lots of people forward."

But some officials caution that policymakers should not rely too heavily on the unmanned drones.

"It has made some people feel there can be a pure counter-terrorism mission without any counter-insurgency strategy," said a government official. "But that isn't truly viable without taking on a certain amount of risk."

Huh. So some anonymous government officials really seem to love them, while other anonymous government officials think they should be used in conjunction with other types of warfare. What a debate!

In the same piece, readers are told that in Pakistan the drones are unpopular--"much of the population believes they have killed civilians as well as militants." In other words, they believe in things that happen to be true.

Back in May, CBS' 60 Minutes aired a terrible report on the Air Force's use of drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan-- see FAIR's action alert for all the details. CBS never responded to the criticism, but they did re-air the segment this past Sunday, without any major changes. To let CBS know how you feel about this one-sided reporting, here's the contact info:

CONTACT:
CBS
60 Minutes
524 West 57th St.
New York, NY 10019

Email: 60m@cbsnews.com
Phone: (212) 975-3247

In his introduction (TomDispatch, 5/12/09) to Pepe Escobar analyzing the current politics of the Aghanistan/Pakistan region, Tom Engelhardt describes how "there, the skies are filled with planes and unmanned aerial drones, and civilians as well as combatants die every day in increasing numbers as ever more frequent attacks and expanding conflicts make daily headlines." But there's more to the story:

Those are, of course, the front-page stories. Energy, especially in the form of oil and natural gas, fuels everything from civilization to its various discontents and means of destruction, and yet it remains largely on the business pages of our papers. Even in a time of relatively depressed oil and gas prices, energy runs like an undercurrent just beneath global headlines. Under the carnage of war, that is, courses what Escobar likes to call the Liquid War, and just how the energy flows and through which territories controlled by whom does turn out to make--quite literally--a world of difference, even if that isn't what captures our attention most of the time.

Of "The Real Afghan War," Escobar writes in his essay: "In the ever-shifting New Great Game in Eurasia, a key question--why Afghanistan matters--is simply not part of the discussion in the United States. (Hint: It has nothing to do with the liberation of Afghan women.) In part, this is because the idea that energy and Afghanistan might have anything in common is verboten."

Pointing to a May 9 Boston Globe editorial saying that Barack "Obama conveyed the right message last week by hosting Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari" to emphasize "the close link between Pakistan and the anti-Taliban struggle in Afghanistan," before admitting that "U.S. military strikes against militants in both countries inevitably provoke anger and indignation among civilians," Palestine Chronicle editor Ramzy Baroud (5/14/09) notes that "this is as much as most U.S. media... are willing to concede as far as U.S. responsibility in lethal wars, civil strife and militancy in both countries is concerned."

Baroud elaborates in ways unheard in corporate media:

The escalation in Pakistan is not entirely surprising, however, as U.S. officials and media pundits have been adamant in advising the new administration that it was not Afghanistan that posed the greater threat to U.S. interests, but Pakistan. It was similar to the attitude of neoconservatives in the Bush administration after its failure in Iraq. It was not Iraq that the U.S. should have attacked, but Iran, they tirelessly parroted, hoping to generate yet another war.

What we are not told, however, is that unremitting U.S. bombings of the utterly poor and neglected northern provinces of Pakistan have garnered untold animosity towards the U.S. and its central government allies. It provoked, in some areas, total chaos and lawlessness, which in turn gave rise to the Pakistani "Taliban."

Closing with distressing estimates of "1 million Pakistanis already on the run in the northern and eastern parts of the country," Baroud tells us how "they are threatened by fighting, hunger and all sorts of predators, including U.S. drones circling overhead"--which U.S. media also are keen to push as the latest bloody solution in the region. See the new FAIR Action Alert: "CBS Pro-Drone Propaganda: 60 Minutes Slights Critics of Controversial Weapons" (5/12/09).

Reading Mark Lander's and Elizabeth Bumiller's New York Times "tidbit out of an overheated Washington last week: 'President Obama and his top advisers have been meeting almost daily to discuss options for helping the Pakistani government and military repel the [Taliban] offensive,'" Tom Engelhardt (TomDispatch, 5/7/09) decides to toss some cold water on "this kind of atmosphere that naturally produces the bureaucratic equivalent of mass hysteria":

Reports indicate that Obama's national security team has been convening regular "crisis" meetings and having "nearly nonstop discussions" at the White House, not to mention issuing alarming and alarmist statements of all sorts about the devolving situation in Pakistan, the dangers to Islamabad, our fears for the Pakistani nuclear arsenal and so on. In fact, Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landy of McClatchy news service quote "a senior U.S. intelligence official" (from among the legion of anonymous officials who populate our nation's capital) saying: "The situation in Pakistan has gone from bad to worse, and no one has any idea about how to reverse it. I don't think 'panic' is too strong a word to describe the mood here."...

You know, that offensive in the Lower Dir Valley. That's near the Buner District. You remember, right next to the Swat Valley and, in case you're still not completely keyed in, geographically speaking, close to the Malakand Division. I mean, if the Pakistani government were in crisis over the deteriorating situation in Fargo, North Dakota, we would consider it material for late night jokesters.

Reminding you that "if Pakistan poses a mortal threat to you in New York, Toledo or El Paso," you'll just have to "get in line"--and "it will be a long one and you'll be toward the back"--Engelhardt sees "a certain irony" in that "we essentially know what those crisis meetings will result in. After all, the U.S. government has been embroiled with Pakistan for at least 40 years and for just that long, its top officials have regularly come to the same policy conclusions--to support Pakistani military dictatorships." Even McClatchy reports on how "that, another senior official acknowledged Wednesday, 'means another coup.'"

In today's New York Times (4/16/07), Jane Perlez is wondering about Pakistani government officials who complain about  U.S. drones attacks in their country. Perlez starts by floating the idea that Pakistan can't possibly be against the strikes, because the government has asked to have some control over the use of the drones:

In fact, both sides have grown accustomed to an unusual diplomatic dance around the drones. For all their public protests, behind the scenes, Pakistani officials may countenance the drones more than Mr. Qureshi's reprimand would suggest, Pakistan and American analysts and officials say.

Why else would Pakistani military officials be requesting that the United States give them the drones to operate, asked Professor Riffat Hussain, of the defense studies department at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.

I'm not sure how that adds up. Most governments would like to have better weapons, wouldn't they? Especially those that are being used against their own populations.

But in case you might believe that the Times thinks civilian deaths are the least relevant factor in this discussion, this piece comes out and more or less says so:

But as effective as the attacks have proved, the Pakistanis' discomfort with the drones is real. The larger issue surrounding the drone strikes is the trade-off between decapitating the militant hierarchy and the risk of further destabilizing Pakistan--by undercutting the military and civilian government, by provoking retaliatory attacks from the militants, and by driving the Taliban and Al-Qaeda deeper into Pakistan in search of new havens.

Then there is the matter of public perception, particularly over the civilian casualties caused by the drone strikes, which infuriate Pakistani politicians and the media.

The deaths make it difficult for any Pakistani leader to support the drones publicly. At the same time, the Pakistani disavowals only reinforce the popular notion that the war against the militants merely furthers America's interests, not Pakistan’s own.

Well, it's good that civilian deaths--"the matter of public perception"-- was tacked on after other "larger" issues. The Times goes on to cite a number of deaths, but then finds someone to justify the killings:

About 500 civilians have been killed in the drone attacks, Talat Masood, a former Pakistani general, estimates. But, he said, the government fails to point out that many of those killed are most likely hosting Qaeda militants and cannot be deemed entirely innocent.

That's not all; Perlez closes with a survey of Pakistani opinion that serves the piece's point of view nicely:

One intriguing aspect of the drone attacks is that people living in the tribal region under the militants' grip may be more accepting of them than other Pakistanis, according to a recent but limited survey.

Perlez acknowledges that the survey can be "described as unscientific," but it's clearly too important to the point of the piece to leave out.