Intercept "Drone Papers" questions target selection and strike accuracy - sense or distortion?

Leaked "Drone Papers" Reveal 90% of People Killed in U.S. Drone Strikes are Innocent Civilians

Washington, D.C. – An anonymous whistleblower within the U.S.intelligence community provided a cache of classified intelligence documents to The Intercept, which revealed the extremely dysfunctional nature of the American drone warfare/targeted assassination program. The eight-part investigation, which included documents, analysis, slides, and visuals, was released on Thursday as “The Drone Papers,” by The Intercept. The stunning array of classified information revealed an extreme lack of precision in the drone assassination campaign, with one document reporting that “nearly 90 percent of people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets” over one five-month period.

The Intercept’s ‘Drone Papers’ Revelations Mandate a Congressional Investigation | Foreign Policy
This morning, the reporting team at the Intercept published an impressive eight-part series on the policies and processes of U.S. drone strikes, called “The Drone Papers.” Some of the newly reported information is purportedly based upon “a cache of secret slides that provides a window into the inner workings of the U.S. military’s kill/capture operations … between 2011 and 2013.” Intercept journalist Jeremy Scahill writes that the slides “were provided by a source within the intelligence community.” (Full disclosure: I spoke with two reporters from the Intercept about some of these documents in mid-July and have a partial quote in one of the pieces.)

The Intercept's "Drone Papers" Won't Do Much for Transparency | The National Interest
In the short term, the Drone Papers renew questions about many of the administration’s claims surrounding the lethal drone program and may help reignite calls for greater transparency and increased oversight. But it is unlikely that the documents will result in any considerable changes in the ways in which U.S. drone operations are conducted or the extent to which U.S. policy on drones is disclosed. This reality is particularly likely for two key reasons: general public support for the drone program and lack of Congressional and administrative action towards greater transparency and accountability.

Report: Drone Strikes Kill Dozens in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen in May

Monthly drone report: Total drone strikes under Obama in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen now 491 after September attacks - The Bureau of Investigative Journalism
Recorded US drone strikes to date

	Pakistan (June 2004 to date)	Yemen (Nov 2002 to date)*	Somalia (Jan 2007 to date)*	Afghanistan (Jan 2015 to date)
US drone strikes	421	107-127	15-19	48
Total reported killed	2,476-3,989	492-725	25-108	420-619
Civilians reported killed	423-965	65-101	0-5	14-42
Children reported killed	172-207	8-9	0	0-18
Reported injured	1,158-1,738	94-223	2-7	24-28

 
The 'Drone Papers' Do Not Reflect All Drone Programs, Especially in Pakistan | C. Christine Fair
Recently, The Intercept announced that it had "obtained a cache of secret documents detailing the inner workings of the U.S. military's assassination program in Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia." According to The Intercept, the documents, which were illegally furnished to the news outlet by a so-called whistleblower, "offer an unprecedented glimpse into Obama's drone wars."
Despite the hype, the documents offer little that is new. In fact, major newspapers, such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times and Los Angeles Times, did not bother reporting on it. Worse, members of The Intercept team continue to obfuscate the complex issues surrounding the various U.S. drone programs and these documents to promote what appears to be an anti-drone agenda.
The "Drone Papers" suffer from "selection bias." Selection bias occurs when the information that is available (the "sample") is not representative of all information about a particular subject ("the universe"). We would all recognize such bias if a polling firm claimed to offer insights into the "American voter" but only interviewed white males between the ages of 18 and 30. We would immediately understand that the survey could only speak to a particular slice of the American public.


The Drone Papers: Intercepting the Nonsense - Lawfare

Selection Bias Happens

First, a brief word about the nature of Mr. Greenwald’s enterprise, The Intercept. The Intercept has set up a secure drop box to facilitate government employees’ illegally providing classified information to the organization. Mr. Greenwald and his associates refer to these persons as “whistleblowers.” And let's leave aside for a moment whether that's a fair description. Empirically, the documents that have
been leaked are riven with selection bias; leakers, driven by whatever personal motives, often selectively leak specific documents.

Making a Bad Sausage out of Bad Data

In addition to the classified materials The Intercept has garnered, let’s turn to the ways in which Mr. Greenwald utilized these documents in the Al Jazeera debate. The discussion began with Mr. Greenwald making the sweeping assertion that 90 percent of the drone victims are “innocent.” Mr. Greenwald buttressed this claim by citing documents provided by the “whistleblower,” whose leaked materials formed the basis of "The Drone Papers." Obviously, someone who is breaking the law to provide these documents must be presumed to be completely honest and factually correct in his
assessments.


There are several problems with this assertion. First, The Intercept claims that the documents it received “show that during a five-month stretch of the campaign [Operation Haymaker],  nearly nine out of 10 people who died in airstrikes were not the Americans’ direct targets.” This is not the same as being “innocent.” Moreover, the documents shown in the report do not demonstrate this claim. In fact, one slide detailing the mission statistics for Task Force 3-10 from September 2011 through September 2012–a longer period of time than the five-month period cited above–indicates that only 14 civilians were killed. However, the leaker asserts that “the 14 civilian casualties is highly suspect … I know the actual number is much higher.” Why should anyone believe this claim?

Using and Abusing Data

During the discussion, Mr. Greenwald and Mr. Hasan made ample reference to a particular advocacy-driven report on drones in Pakistan authored by persons associated with the law school clinics of NYU and Stanford University Law Schools. That report is deeply flawed in every manner of execution. Let's start with the fact, acknowledged by the authors, that the report was commissioned and facilitated by Reprieve. The authors concede that in “December 2011, Reprieve, a charity based in Britain, contacted the Stanford Clinic to ask whether it would be interested in conducting independent investigations into whether, and to what extent drone strikes in Pakistan confirmed to
international law and caused harm and/or injury to civilians” (p. i.).