Congress has moved to block President Obama’s plan to shift control of the U.S. drone campaign from the CIA to the Defense Department, inserting a secret provision in the massive government spending bill introduced this week that would preserve the spy agency’s role in lethal counterterrorism operations, U.S. officials said. 
 
 The measure, included in a classified annex to the $1.1 trillion federal budget plan, would restrict the use of any funding to transfer unmanned aircraft or the authority to carry out drone strikes from the CIA to the Pentagon, officials said. 
 
 The provision represents an unusually direct intervention by lawmakers into the way covert operations are run, impeding an administration plan aimed at returning the CIA’s focus to traditional intelligence gathering and possibly bringing more transparency to drone strikes. 
 
 The move also reflects some lawmakers’ lingering doubts about the U.S. military’s ability to conduct strikes against al-Qaeda and its regional affiliates without hitting the wrong targets and killing civilians. 
 
 Those apprehensions were amplified after a U.S. military strike in Yemen last month killed a dozen people, including as many as six civilians, in an 11-vehicle convoy that tribal leaders said was part of a wedding procession. U.S. officials said that the strike was aimed at a senior al-Qaeda operative but that reviews of the operation have raised concern that it failed to comply with White House guidelines requiring “near certainty” that no civilians would be harmed. 
 
 Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) read from a Washington Post story on the Senate floor Thursday, slamming the Senate and House Appropriations committee for amending a spending bill so that it would affect policy with regard to drones. (The Associated Press) 
 
 On Wednesday, there were reports that another U.S. strike had killed a farmer in Yemen. 
 
 The extent of the restrictions contained in the drone provision remained unclear. The measure was included by members of the House and Senate appropriations committees, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly on the legislation. Other senior lawmakers and congressional officials declined to comment on the contents of the classified annex, which details funding for U.S. spy agencies. 
 
 Still, senior lawmakers have been vocal in expressing concern about the prospect of the CIA ceding responsibility for drone strikes to the military. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a member of the Appropriations Committee, said last year that she had seen the CIA “exercise patience and discretion specifically to prevent collateral damage” and that she “would really have to be convinced that the military would carry it out that well.” 
 
 Feinstein declined to comment on the budget measure this week. But a senior aide said that the senator “stands by her earlier statements” and that the Intelligence Committee has “recently reviewed this issue, and Senator Feinstein believes her views are widely shared on the committee.” 
 
 Asked about the scope of that review, the aide said the panel “took stock of” the program and “came to a conclusion” but would not elaborate. 
 
 Among Feinstein’s colleagues on the Intelligence Committee is Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), who is chairman of the appropriations panel responsible for the budget bill. A spokesman for that committee declined to comment. 
 
 There is no mention of the drone provision in the hundreds of pages of the budget blueprint released to the public. A section outlining $572 billion in Pentagon spending notes that “adjustments to classified programs are addressed in the accompanying classified annex.” 
 
 The Houes voted to adopt the $1.1-trillion measure that funds the government through the fiscal year. (The Associated Press) 
 
 A person familiar with the omnibus bill confirmed that the annex includes language on the drone program but would say only that the provision is more complicated than merely withholding money to prevent drone operations from being transferred to the Pentagon. 
 
 Former U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence appropriations process said that aside from placing restrictions on funding, Congress could create other obstacles — for example, requiring the Pentagon to certify that it has matched the CIA’s capabilities and targeting methodology before it is allowed to proceed. 
 
 Spokespeople for the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon declined to comment. 
 
 The spending bill sets budgets for agencies across the federal government for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30. The measure cleared the House late Wednesday. It is expected to be approved by the Senate this week and delivered to President Obama for his signature as soon as Saturday. 
 
 The move by Congress carries implications for the course of the U.S. efforts against al-Qaeda at a time when its affiliates in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq and Syria have become more worrisome to American counterterrorism officials than the terrorist organization’s traditional core. 
 
 Also at issue is the fundamental mission of the CIA, which during the past decade has morphed into a paramilitary force. Senior officials, including CIA Director John O. Brennan, have warned that the agency’s emphasis on lethal operations deviates from its traditional mission and could impair its ability to focus on gathering intelligence. 
 
 The administration first signaled its intent to shift control of drone operations to the Pentagon last year, when Obama announced new guidelines for counterterrorism missions — including a pledge of greater transparency — during a speech at the National Defense University. At the time, administration officials briefing reporters said there would be “a preference for the Department of Defense to engage in the use of force outside war zones.” 
 
 The remark was a reference to Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia — countries beyond the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, where the United States has carried out drone strikes against al-Qaeda targets. 
 
 Obama’s policy shift was expected to mainly affect Yemen, where the CIA and the elite U.S. Joint Special Operations Command conduct overlapping drone campaigns. 
 
 The overall pace of strikes has diminished significantly in Pakistan and Yemen, and Brennan has held secret meetings with Pentagon officials in recent months to work out logistical challenges and other impediments to shifting control of drone operations. 
 
 But the CIA still carries out the majority of strikes, and the collateral damage that has accompanied some JSOC strikes has generated growing opposition to removing the agency from such operations anytime soon. 
 
 The Pentagon has refused to release any details on the Dec. 12 strike carried out by JSOC in Radaa, a district that has become a stronghold for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP. Yemen initially insisted that only militants had been killed, but it later acknowledged civilian casualties. 
 
 The government then delivered rifles and other compensation to victims’ families — payments that a Yemeni official described as a “deposit” to encourage clan leaders to take part in tribal mediation and accept further compensation rather than seek retaliation against the Sanaa government. 
 
 “There was a [legitimate] target, and then something happened, a misfire,” the Yemeni official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the secrecy surrounding U.S. strikes. “I’ve never been aware of any incident before where a strike targeted such a large convoy of vehicles.” 
 
 AQAP is responsible for near-miss attacks on the United States, including the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day in 2009. The terrorist group has been driven out of territory it had gained over the past two years but is still considered by U.S. officials to pose a serious threat to the United States. 
 
 In a meeting with U.S., European and Middle Eastern diplomats last week, Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi described the security situation as unstable and warned specifically of indications that potential al-Qaeda recruits from European and other Western nations were seeking to enter the country, according to U.S. and Yemeni officials. 
 
 Lori Montgomery and Ed O’Keefe contributed to this report. ||||| Senior aide says US will disclose the number of terrorism suspects and civilians killed since 2009 in bid to bolster public support for controversial operations 
 
 A senior White House aide has pledged to release how many terrorism suspects and civilian casualties the US has killed in its drone strikes since 2009, the first-ever disclosure surrounding the US’s most controversial lethal operations. 
 
 
 
 Lisa Monaco, Barack Obama’s counter-terrorism and homeland security adviser, said in a Washington speech on Monday that the expanded transparency would bolster public support for drone strikes and other counter-terrorism practices that she indicated would last “for years to come”. 
 
 The long-desired disclosure will cover strikes in undeclared US battlefields, such as Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and elsewhere, rather than the active war theaters of Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. There was no specific date set for release, White House officials said, though Monaco said it will occur in the “coming weeks”. 
 
 “Not only is greater transparency the right thing to do, it is the best way to maintain the legitimacy of our counter-terrorism actions and the broad support of our allies,” Monaco told the Council on Foreign Relations on Monday. 
 
 As Monaco spoke, the Pentagon confirmed it had conducted a massive airstrike in Somalia that left 150 people dead, one the largest casualty totals in a US military attack of the post-9/11 era. 
 
 Monaco said the administration intends the disclosure to occur annually, though she and her colleagues have less than a year remaining in office and it is unclear if their successors will institutionalize the disclosure of what Obama aides have for years suggested was a highly classified assessment. A key congressional leader argued on Monday for codifying the disclosure in law. 
 
 Cori Crider, an attorney for drone strike victims at Reprieve, said that though this was a step in the right direction, “it doesn’t go nearly far enough”. 
 
 “In every region where we have pursued an aggressive, secret drone policy, militancy has gotten stronger. It’s not enough to tally up the drones’ body count – we need a thorough reassessment of the program itself.” 
 
 Human rights groups have for years called upon the administration to release hard data about its lethal counter-terrorism strikes and interpreted the administration’s reluctance as an indication that the strikes kill vastly more people than US officials – who rarely speak for the record – acknowledge. 
 
 In February 2013, Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican on the armed services committee, stated that drone strikes had killed approximately 4,700 people. Administration officials have over the years obfuscated whether the CIA and the US military have compiled data on how many people – including civilians – their overlapping strikes have killed, particularly considering that the CIA’s so-called “signature strikes” kill people without prior knowledge of their identities if they fit presumed terrorist behavioral criteria. 
 
 A senior senator on the intelligence committee, Democrat Dianne Feinstein of California, said in 2013 that the CIA’s drone strikes were killing “single digits” of civilians each year, a claim made earlier by the CIA director, John Brennan. That figure has come into question, as Feinstein has accused the CIA of lying to her on an unrelated inquiry, and documents published by the Intercept last year indicated that the US military retroactively defines people killed in drone strikes as combatants. 
 
 Monaco indicated the casualty assessments will reflect “the latest in intelligence across all sources” and might take into account the informal tallies compiled by non-government organizations, the vast majority of which rely on media reports. 
 
 While the administration claims its drone strikes are the state of the art in precision, some of those outside accounts call the unverified claims into question. An analysis by the group Reprieve in 2014 found that the US killed 1,147 people in Pakistan and Yemen in the course of targeting only 41 men. 
 
 Peter Cook, the Pentagon spokesman, confirmed on Monday the US military strike, which occurred on Saturday targeting what he described as an al-Shabaab camp in Somalia. The strike, using drones as well as piloted warplanes, has killed a reported 150 people, although Cook said the military was still “assess[ing] the results of the operation”. 
 
 Cook said the strike, yielding one of the largest-ever casualty totals of the war on terrorism, was intended to thwart “fighters who were scheduled to depart the camp [and who] posed an imminent threat to US and African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom) forces in Somalia”. 
 
 Monaco’s address came days after the Justice Department agreed to disclose additional information about how the administration conducts lethal drone strikes. 
 
 Late on Friday, in response to a transparency lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, US attorney Preet Bharara and a senior department official, Benjamin Mizer, agreed to release “a much more detailed explanation of the standards and procedures employed in both capture and lethal targeting counter-terrorism operations”, according to a letter the officials sent to US federal judge Colleen McMahon. 
 
 It is unclear when the documents – authored by the Justice Department’s powerful office of legal counsel and the Defense Department – will be released, as disclosure will follow a review to excise classified information. A February ruling from McMahon indicated that the judge wished to reach a resolution “by the end of March”. 
 
 But the ACLU hailed the acquiescence as a victory for additional transparency around the drone strikes, beyond a 2013 overview provided to Congress. 
 
 The main document, known as the Presidential Policy Guidance, is “long overdue”, said Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU’s deputy legal director, who also challenged the administration to disclose further material. 
 
 “We hope that the administration’s decision to release this critical document reflects a broader commitment to make the lethal drone program more transparent. In that spirit, the administration should also release the legal memos that are the foundation for the program, basic information about those killed in past drone strikes, and detailed investigative files relating to strikes that killed bystanders”, Jaffer said. 
 
 Representative Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, praised the forthcoming casualty assessment as a method to combat “propaganda” about drones and indicated that Congress ought to require the disclosure by law. 
 
 “There is still value in considering a statutory requirement to make this executive action permanent, ensuring that our commitment to transparency extends beyond the term of the current administration,” Schiff said. ||||| President Obama said Thursday that the United States has reached a “crossroads” in its fight against terrorism and that it is time to redefine and recalibrate a war that eventually will end. 
 
 Far from repudiating the controversial use of drones against terrorist targets, Obama defended the tactic as effective, legal and life-saving. But he acknowledged that threat levels have fallen to levels not seen since before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, requiring new criteria for the use of lethal force. 
 
 Obama used the first major counterterrorism address of his second term to outline newly narrowed guidelines that call for deploying drones only against targets that pose a “continuing, imminent threat” to the United States and only in cases in which avoiding civilian casualties is a “near-certainty.” 
 
 “As our fight enters a new phase, America’s legitimate claim of self-defense cannot be the end of the discussion,” Obama said. “To say a military tactic is legal, or even effective, is not to say it is wise or moral in every instance.” 
 
 In a long, wide-ranging speech at the National Defense University at Fort McNair, Obama used the depiction of a diminished threat environment to make the case for broad counterterrorism changes, including closing the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and finding a U.S. site where military commission trials can be held for eligible detainees. 
 
 View Graphic Guantanamo Bay, by the numbers 
 
 Among steps to help thin the detention center’s population of 166, many of whom are on a hunger strike, he called for an end to congressional restrictions on transfers for those cleared to leave and said he is lifting his own moratorium on the repatriation of several dozen Yemeni prisoners. 
 
 But even while declaring that “this war, like all wars, must end,” Obama made clear that other pieces of the nation’s counterterrorism apparatus will remain in place, including targeted killings with drones. He made no mention of ending the CIA’s involvement in the drone campaign. 
 
 Obama’s remarks followed a pledge in his State of the Union address in January to make his counterterrorism policies — particularly about drones — more transparent and accountable to Congress and the American public. 
 
 Congressional responses ran the gamut. “The president’s speech today will be viewed by terrorists as a victory,” said Sen. Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “Rather than continuing successful counterterrorism activities, we are changing course with no clear operational benefit.” 
 
 Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said the speech went further in describing the president’s vision of how the country should counter a diminished terrorist threat than it did in delineating how it will go about doing so. 
 
 “It seemed like the administration is using a two-tiered approach,” Schiff said. “A public speech to set up a broad idea that we’re at a crossroads. And at the same time, a more private track which changes the criteria and adds restrictions to the drone program.” 
 
 As a result, Schiff said, Obama “raised a number of questions as well as answering some.” 
 
 The president sought to both describe a reduced threat level and avoid dismissing the risk. “Now, make no mistake,” he said, “our nation is still threatened by terrorists. From Benghazi to Boston, we have been tragically reminded of that truth.” But rather than “the threat that came to our shores on 9/11,” he said, al-Qaeda is “on a path to defeat.” 
 
 He outlined a threefold danger, from weakened al-Qaeda affiliates, threats to diplomatic facilities and businesses abroad, and homegrown extremists. 
 
 “This is the future of terrorism,” Obama said. “As we shape our response, we have to recognize that the scale of this threat closely resembles the types of attacks we faced before 9/11.” 
 
 Obama said he would not sign any proposed expansion of the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which gives the president the power to use military force against al-Qaeda. Some lawmakers have argued that the authorization should be revised because it is used to justify targeted killings against al-Qaeda “associates” in Yemen and Somalia, far removed from the Sept. 11 attacks. Obama said he will work to refine and ultimately repeal the mandate. 
 
 “America is at a crossroads,” he said. “We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us.” 
 
 Senior administration officials said some of the specifics of the changes Obama outlined are contained in a classified Presidential Policy Guidance directive on counterterrorism operations that he signed this week. 
 
 The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to brief reporters before the speech, said that requiring evidence of “a continuing and imminent threat to the United States” to justify a drone strike was more restrictive language than in the past. 
 
 The officials said the “near-certainty” that civilians would not be hit tightens a previous standard in which civilians have been killed unintentionally. Obama said there is a “wide gap” between the estimated thousands of civilian casualties cited by nongovernmental organizations and U.S. tallies, but he gave no numbers. 
 
 The officials said the classified directive also establishes a “preference” for the military to take the lead in drone operations, which are conducted by the armed forces and the CIA. That language suggests a change in course for the CIA, which has carried out hundreds of drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, killing an estimated 3,000 militants and civilians. 
 
 But the guidance appeared to stop well short of ending the CIA’s drone program, leaving enough room for the agency to continue using a controversial targeting practice known as “signature strikes” in Pakistan. 
 
 In his speech, Obama put the conflict in the “Afghan war theater” in a separate category from the fight against al-Qaeda “associates” elsewhere. He said the United States would “continue to take strikes against high value al-Qaeda targets, but also against forces that are massing to support attacks on coalition forces” until they are withdrawn from Afghanistan at the end of 2014. 
 
 The Obama administration, like that of President George W. Bush, has long considered Pakistan’s tribal areas part of the war theater. The carve-out presumably enables the CIA to continue hitting groups in Pakistan that are not part of al-Qaeda but regularly attack U.S. forces across the Afghanistan border. 
 
 The most immediate impact of the revised drone policy might be in Yemen, a country outside the designated war zone, where the CIA and the U.S. military have simultaneously operated armed drones and carried out dozens of strikes over the past two years. 
 
 If Obama’s “preference” for the Pentagon to take the lead in such operations is enforced, the CIA could be required to shutter a drone base it built in the desert of southern Saudi Arabia in 2011. 
 
 The revised drone policy comes amid a plunge in the overall number of strikes overseas. A total of more than 120 strikes occurred in Pakistan and Yemen in 2010, but there have been just 23 this year. The pace has been slowed by factors including the diminished number of senior operatives among al-Qaeda’s thinned ranks, as well as pauses triggered by diplomatic ruptures in Pakistan and political turmoil in Yemen. 
 
 Obama signaled that he is open to more fundamental changes, including the creation of a “drone court” that could evaluate targeting criteria and decisions. But he noted the drawbacks of such proposals, and made no commitment of support. 
 
 He contrasted the relative precision of drones to the risks of inserting commando teams or relying on the larger and more lethal munitions of conventional airpower. 
 
 Even so, his assertions about the drone program’s accuracy may have been undercut by the administration’s disclosure on Wednesday that four U.S. citizens have been killed in strikes over the past four years – and that only one of those, the U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, was specifically targeted.
– Congress' $1.1 trillion spending bill contains a secret provision torpedoing President Obama's plans to pass the drone program from the CIA to the Pentagon. In a classified annex, the bill specifically prohibits any funds being used to facilitate such a transfer, the Washington Post reports. Obama wants to shift the CIA from its paramilitary footing back to an intelligence one, and perhaps bring greater transparency to the drone program. But lawmakers don't trust the military with the keys. One source said the provision was more complicated than simply withholding money for the switch, and former officials said it could contain language forcing the military to demonstrate its targeting procedures were up to CIA standards. Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein last year said she'd "really have to be convinced" that the military could exercise as much "patience and discretion" as the CIA in avoiding civilian casualties, statements she says she stands behind. The military didn't help its case last month either by hitting a wedding party in Yemen; in an op-ed yesterday, Yemen's minister for human rights said that strike had sent a "wave of outrage" across the country. Yesterday also saw a drone strike kill a Yemeni farmer.