Obama Administration On Plan To Take Away CIA's Drones: Never Mind, Keep 'Em

via George Jefferson: "Promises made, promises broken."

Huffington Post

President Barack Obama has abandoned his two-year push to consolidate his controversial targeted killing program under Pentagon control and has spent the past several months finalizing a new plan that would give the Defense Department and the CIA joint control of drone strikes, sources tell The Huffington Post.

Two years ago, Obama promised during a speech at the National Defense University that he would move the CIA's controversial drone program out of the covert shadows and into the relative sunlight of the Defense Department. Drone critics greeted the announcement with cautious optimism, hoping that a Pentagon-run drone program would be more transparent and allow more oversight of targeted killings. 

The CIA and its allies on the congressional intelligence committees resisted Obama's proposal. But until recently, the Obama administration was still publicly pushing forward, saying as recently as April that it wanted to take the trigger out of the CIA's hands for good.

Behind closed doors, all of that has changed. On June 10, administration officials gave a classified briefing to lawmakers laying out a blueprint for a new transition plan that would involve a dual command structure. That blueprint is all but complete, U.S. officials briefed on it said.