{"id":528350,"date":"2010-04-15T08:45:45","date_gmt":"2010-04-15T12:45:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=82325"},"modified":"2010-04-15T08:45:45","modified_gmt":"2010-04-15T12:45:45","slug":"the-post-kappes-era-of-cia-drone-strikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/528350","title":{"rendered":"The Post-Kappes Era of CIA Drone Strikes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Both <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2010\/apr\/15\/obama-asked-deputy-cia-chief-to-stay\/print\/\">Eli Lake<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2010\/04\/14\/AR2010041403134.html\">Greg Miller<\/a> report that President Obama personally asked Steve Kappes last year to remain the CIA&#8217;s deputy director. Kappes&#8217; boss, Leon Panetta, <a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/82203\/powerful-steve-kappes-will-retire-as-cias-deputy-director\">announced yesterday<\/a> that Kappes will be<a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/82229\/cia-kappes-didnt-leave-because-of-negative-magazine-piece\"> retiring next month<\/a>. Under the Kappes Continuity &#8212; he ascended to deputy director in 2007 &#8212; the CIA began increasing its drone strikes in Pakistan, accelerating them significantly in 2007 and expanding them to Yemen. It&#8217;s a tool the Obama administration has zealously defended.<\/p>\n<p>No one should labor under the misconception that Kappes is the linchpin of the drone-strike effort, which has many authors and advocates and structural factors pushing it forward. (Simply put, it&#8217;s what you do when you perceive a terrorist threat in a place you can&#8217;t invade.) But now that Kappes is out and his replacement is a longtime CIA analyst, not an operative, named Michael Morrell, it&#8217;s an open question whether Panetta and Morrell will shift the agency&#8217;s focus at all. The smart early money is probably not, since Panetta believes the strikes to be a smashing success. But watch his next round of congressional testimony to see if any post-Kappes shift is underway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Both Eli Lake and Greg Miller report that President Obama personally asked Steve Kappes last year to remain the CIA&#8217;s deputy director. Kappes&#8217; boss, Leon Panetta, announced yesterday that Kappes will be retiring next month. Under the Kappes Continuity &#8212; he ascended to deputy director in 2007 &#8212; the CIA began increasing its drone strikes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4314,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-528350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4314"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528350\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}