Steve Coll
April 25, 2015
“As President and Commander-in-Chief, I take full responsibility for all our counterterrorism operations,” President Obama said in a press conference at the White House on Thursday. Obama was announcing the news that C.I.A. drone strikes in Pakistan last January killed two hostages being held by Al Qaeda—Warren Weinstein, an American, and Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian—along with two American-born Al Qaeda members. Obama added, “I profoundly regret what happened.”
That is what a President ought to say at such a moment. Obama owns the decision to prioritize lethal drone strikes over other counterterrorism strategies. He owns the record of civilian and other collateral deaths that those strikes have created—a record still frustratingly shrouded in secrecy. But the President’s mea culpa masks an important and timely question: How exactly did this mistake at the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorism Center happen, and who will be held accountable for it? By putting the President out front and withholding all but the broadest details about the failed operation, the Obama Administration apparently hopes to evade that question.
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