[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 200 (Wednesday, December 19, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7830-S7832]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Drone Attacks

  Mr. PAUL. Do drone attacks work? Well, you might say: Of course they 
work; they kill their intended target.
  But do drone attacks really work? Do drone killings make us safer? Do 
drone killings bring victory nearer? Do drone killings kill more 
terrorists than they create? I think these are valid questions and 
questions that should be debated and discussed.
  There are those who have been involved in the drone killings who 
actually believe that they aren't helping our country. This is a letter 
from four American servicemen in the Air Force to President Obama from 
a year or two ago. It reads:

       We are former Air Force servicemembers who have been 
     involved in the drone program. We joined the Air Force to 
     protect American lives and to protect our Constitution. We 
     came to the realization, though, that innocent civilians we 
     were killing only fueled the feelings of hatred that ignited 
     terrorism in groups like ISIS, while also serving as a 
     fundamental recruitment tool.
       This administration--

  then, referring to the Obama administration--

     and its predecessors have built a drone program that is one 
     of the most devastating driving forces for terrorism and 
     destabilization around the world.

  The question is this: Do drone killings actually kill more terrorists 
than they create?
  As the brothers, sisters, and cousins from the village gather around 
the mangled bodies, do they say, ``Oh, well, I guess we are now going 
to put down our arms and make peace,'' or are they excited, are they 
engendered, are they somehow motivated to become suicide bombers 
themselves?
  Do the drone killings simply steal their resolve? Do the drone 
killings cause surviving members to strap on suicide vests? Is there a 
limit? Is there an end to how many we will kill with drones?

[[Page S7831]]

  The power to kill anyone, anywhere, anytime is an ominous power. I 
think most of the people involved in the program, including President 
Obama, had motives to kill our enemies, to kill those who they thought 
might come someday and kill us, but the program has become so 
extensive, and it has extended across so many different countries that 
there is concern, No. 1, about the civilians--the women and children 
who are being killed in these strikes as collateral damage--but there 
is also some concern about whether or not that kind of ominous power--
the power to kill anyone, anywhere, anytime in the entire world--is so 
ominous that there should be checks and balances.
  In our country, no one is killed without not only checks and balances 
but without the due process of the law. People say: Well, you can't 
have due process in far-flung battlefields around the world. Shouldn't 
we at least consider, though, whether or not there should be checks and 
balances and whether or not one person can make the decision to kill? I 
think this is something that should be debated, discussed, and we 
should have oversight from Congress.
  You will recall that in Obama's administration, the drone attacks 
really hit a new peak. You will recall that he made his decisions on 
whom to approve the killing of on ``Terrorism Tuesdays.'' There were 
reports that flash cards were used in the discussion of who was to be 
killed.
  There were also reports that John Brennan had complete authority to 
kill on his own in certain places. John Brennan also responded and 
said, when asked about the drone program, that there are no 
geographical limitations to where we can kill.
  That is a little bit worrisome, particularly since Congress has never 
authorized war in the seven different countries where President Obama 
utilized drones and where drones continue to be used.
  People say: Well, this isn't really war, or this has something to do 
with 
9/11.
  This has nothing to do with 9/11. None of these people had anything 
to do with 9/11.
  People say: There are associated forces.
  That is not in the 9/11 authorization. Congress voted after 9/11 and 
said: You can go after those who organized, aided, abetted; those who 
helped to plan; those who helped the attackers of 9/11. It didn't say 
you could go after any far-flung religious radical or ideologue 
throughout the world and kill them, but that is what we do. It is an 
ominous power to kill anyone, anywhere, anytime.
  I had this debate with the Obama administration, and I asked them 
directly: Can you kill an American with a drone?
  Interestingly, they hesitated to answer that question. They finally 
did say: We are not going to kill an American not involved in combat in 
the United States with a drone. It took 13 hours to get that answer 
from them.
  There are questions about what happens to an American accused and put 
on the kill list. Can we kill an American overseas?
  Often the killings aren't people marching around with muskets. They 
aren't people marching around shooting each other in a war, where it is 
like you have a war zone and you are dropping a bomb on the other side 
of a war. These are often people sitting in a hut somewhere, eating 
dinner. These are often people whom we kill where we find them. We 
often don't know the names of those who are killed, and we often have 
no idea in the end who is killed in these attacks.
  Sometimes we do it just simply because it looks like a bunch of bad 
people all lined up. So we have what we call ``signature strikes,'' 
where we just kill people whose cars are lined up whom we presume to be 
bad people.
  I think their motives are well intended, but sometimes we end up 
killing the wrong people. We killed about 12 people in Yemen in 2013 
for which we paid $1 million, saying: Whoops, we got the wrong people. 
It is an ominous power that should have more oversight and more checks 
and balances.
  One of the statements that particularly bothered me was when the 
former head of the NSA, Michael Hayden, said: Well, we kill people 
based on metadata.
  That is an alarming statement to me. Metadata is whom you call and 
how long you talk to them. We remember they said that it was no big 
deal. Your metadata is not that private. You should just give it up. 
And for a while they were vacuuming up everyone's metadata--whom you 
call and how long you talk.
  It turns out that they are so competent in metadata that they are 
actually making kills based on metadata. That is what Hayden said.
  So we have before us a nominee for the National Counterterrorism 
Center who has some involvement with developing these kill lists. So we 
asked him that question. I said: Do we kill people based on metadata?
  The nonanswer was very interesting. He said: Well, I can't tell you 
because I am not in government.
  Well, my guess is he has been in government, and he has been in the 
military. So he probably knows the answer, but he is saying that he 
will not tell the answer because he is not in government.
  So we said to ask the people who are in government: Do we kill people 
based on metadata?
  Do you know what every one of them said? None of my business.
  I was elected to the U.S. Senate to represent an entire State, and 
the people in the administration had the audacity to say: If you want 
to know that, why don't you join the Intelligence Committee?
  See, a democratic republic is where all elected officials have 
oversight, not only a select few--often, a select few who actually are 
always in agreement with more power for the Intelligence Committee and 
become a rubberstamp simply for more power. Those of us who are 
skeptical of power, those of us who think we need to have more 
oversight are typically not on those committees. But the question is 
whether we should allow a select few to be the overseers. Often, these 
overseers aren't a check and a balance. These overseers are people who 
simply say: We want to be consulted.
  When the President comes to you or the CIA comes to you and says ``We 
are going to kill this person; oh, you have been consulted--often 
consulted after the fact, but you have been consulted,'' that, to me, 
is not a check and a balance. That is being a rubberstamp for the 
policy.
  The question has come up time and again, and the media looks and 
says: Oh, my goodness, this is a conspiracy theory, the deep state. 
There actually is a deep state, and the deep state has been around for 
decades and decades. In fact, the Church commission in the 1970s was 
set up to investigate the deep state.
  Who was the deep state in those days? It was Hoover. Hoover was using 
the enormous power of the intelligence agencies to investigate people 
he didn't like--civil rights leaders and protesters of the Vietnam 
war--so he illegally used this power of intelligence gathering to spy 
on Americans.
  Americans were rightly upset. The Church commission tried to rein in 
the intelligence communities. But the interesting thing is, in those 
days, the power to do intelligence was some guy sneaking into your 
house and placing a little magnet on your phone. It is not done that 
way now. They can scoop up every phone call in America like that. They 
can scoop up every international phone call, every phone call to a 
country. We can listen to what anybody is saying anywhere around the 
globe any time we want, and then we can kill anyone anytime, anywhere 
in the world. These are ominous powers and deserve more oversight. So 
when people refer to the deep state, that is what we are talking 
about--more oversight.
  What happens now is there are eight people in Congress who are 
consulted about intelligence, consulted about targeted killings--eight 
people. But they are not given a check and a balance. They are 
consulted. They are told often after the fact. So, really, there are no 
checks and balances. This is an enormous, ominous power, and it is not 
checked. Those eight people are the leader of the Senate, the minority 
leader of the Senate, and the chairman and ranking member of the 
Intelligence Committee. It is the same on the House side. So eight 
people know anything.
  You say: Well, this certainly can't be true. Certainly, they must 
brief all of you.
  Do you remember when they were collecting all of your phone data and

[[Page S7832]]

storing it in Utah? Everybody's phone data, every phone call you were 
making, was being stored in Utah.
  One of the authors of the PATRIOT Act who had been involved in and 
had actually been supportive of this said that he was unaware of it and 
said that he didn't believe the legislation that wrote the PATRIOT Act 
actually authorized that.
  There is not enough check and balance. There is not enough oversight. 
We have seen it recently with the killing of the Washington Post 
journalist and dissident, Khashoggi. The CIA concluded, according to 
media reports, with high probability that the Crown Prince of Saudi 
Arabia--with a high degree of probability--was responsible for the 
killing. Was everybody told that? No, the public was not told that. 
Most of Congress, most of the Senate--I was not told that because the 
briefings are only for a select few.
  What happens is you get imperfect and not very good oversight; the 
checks and balances are not working because the only people being told 
about what the intelligence community is doing are the people who are 
rubberstamps for what they are doing. The skeptics, those who believe 
there is too much power, are not being told.
  My point in bringing that up with this nominee today is not the 
individual being nominated but that the deep state has circled its 
wagons, and they are preventing me from finding out: Do we kill people 
around the world based on metadata? It is a very simple question, it is 
a very specific question, and they are refusing to answer it.
  So I have been holding this nominee and will vote against the nominee 
because I believe that the deep state needs more oversight. I believe 
that we shouldn't kill anyone, anywhere, anytime around the world 
without some checks and balances.
  I also believe that our drone program, our targeted killing, actually 
makes the country less safe and makes us more at risk for terrorism. I 
think we should reevaluate this. We have had a top 20 kill list for 20 
years. We just keep replenishing it with more and more and more. It is 
a never-ending top 20 list. I think we should reevaluate it. I think we 
should talk about, is there a way we can declare victory?
  I am proud of the President today to hear that he is declaring 
victory in Syria. Most of the voices around here like to stay 
everywhere for all time, and they believe that it doesn't work unless 
you go somewhere and stay forever. The President has the courage to say 
that we won in Syria, and we are coming home--the first President in my 
lifetime really to do that. That is why President Trump is different, 
and that is why I think President Trump is one we should all look to 
for some changes and for some reform of the deep state.
  I yield back my time.