"Top secret US government documents obtained by the Guardian from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden characterize even the most basic political and legal opposition to drone attacks as part of "propaganda campaigns" from America's "adversaries".
The entry is part of a top secret internal US government website, similar in appearance to the online Wikipedia site. According to a June interview with Snowden in Hong Kong, the only individuals empowered to write these entries are those "with top secret clearance and public key infrastructure certificates", special access cards enabling unique access to certain parts of NSA systems. He added that the entries are "peer reviewed" and that every edit made is recorded by user.
One specific entry discusses "threats to unmanned aerial vehicles". It lists various dangers to American drones, including "air defense threats", "jamming of UAV sensor systems", "terrestrial weather", and "electronic warfare employed against the command and control system".
But alongside those more obvious, conventional threats are what the entry describes as "propaganda campaigns that target UAV use".
Under the title "adversary propaganda themes", the document lists what it calls "examples of potential propaganda themes that could be employed against UAV operations".
One such example is entitled "Nationality of Target vs. Due Process". It states:
Attacks against American and European persons who have become violent extremists are often criticized by propagandists, arguing that lethal action against these individuals deprives them of due process."
In the eyes of the US government, "due process" – the idea that the US government should not deprive people of life away from a battlefield without presenting evidence of guilt – is no longer a basic staple of the American political system, but rather a malicious weapon of "propagandists". The ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights, among many other groups, have made exactly that argument against the US drone targeting program ("the US government's killings of US citizens Anwar Al-Awlaki, Samir Khan, and 16-year-old Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki in Yemen in 2011 violated the Constitution's fundamental guarantee against the deprivation of life without due process of law").
Another paragraph from the NSA entry complains that the phrase "drone strike" is a "loaded term", as it "connote[s] mindless automatons with no capability for independent thought" and thus "may invoke an emotional reaction". This, the document asserts, "is what propaganda intends to do".
Although the document at one points suggests that some drone opposition may come from "citizens with legitimate social agendas", the section on "adversary propaganda themes" includes virtually every one of the arguments most frequently made in the US against the US drone policy, including that the threat of terrorism is small when compared to other threats, that drone strikes intensify rather than curb the risk of terrorism by fueling anti-American animus, and that drones kill too many civilians.
The NSA entry further claims that "manipulation of statistics" over civilian deaths is a frequent propaganda tool of "adversaries", citing one study that concluded that roughly 9 out of 10 victims from drone strikes are civilians. To contrast such propaganda studies, the NSA entry cites a New America Foundation study concluding that "civilians make up about one-third of those killed".
Also included in the broader section on "threats" to drones are various lawsuits brought by the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights, reports of human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and UN investigations into the legality of drone attacks."
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/25/nsa-uk-drone-opponents-threats
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