Ho / AFP - Getty Images

Two freshly assembled Grey Eagle unmanned aerial vehicles sit on the tarmac at Forward Operating Base Shan in Logar Province, Afghanistan in April, 2012.

WASHINGTON - With debate intensifying in the United States over the use of drone aircraft, the U.S. military said on Sunday that it had removed data about air strikes carried out by unmanned planes in Afghanistan from its monthly air power summaries.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Afghanistan war, said in a statement the data had been removed because it was "disproportionately focused" on the use of weapons by the remotely piloted aircraft as it was published only when strikes were carried out - which happened during only 3 percent of sorties. Most missions were for reconnaissance, it said.

The debate over the use of drones in Afghanistan and elsewhere was triggered in part by U.S. President Barack Obama's decision to nominate his chief counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan, an architect of the drone campaign, as the new director of the CIA.

The Air Force Times said air force chiefs had started posting the drone data last October in an attempt to provide more detail on the use of drones in Afghanistan.

The newspaper said the statistics were provided for November through January, but the February summary released on March 7 had a blank spot where the drone data had previously been listed.

"A variety of multi-role platforms provide ground commanders in Afghanistan with close air support capabilities, and it was determined that presenting the weapons release data as a whole better reflects the air power provided" in Afghanistan, Central Command said in its statement.

"Protecting civilians remains at the very core of AFCENT's (Air Force Central Command's) mission," it said. "The use of all AFCENT aerial weapons are tightly restricted, meticulously planned, carefully supervised and coordinated, and applied by only qualified and authorized personnel."

The statement said the decision to stop reporting the drone strikes was taken with the International Security Assistance Force - the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan.

Brennan was sworn into office on Friday following a protracted confirmation battle that saw Senator Rand Paul attempt to block a vote on the nomination with a technical maneuver called a filibuster, in which he tried to prevent a vote by talking continuously.

Paul held the Senate floor for more than 12 hours while talking mainly about drones, expressing concern that Obama's administration might use the aircraft to target U.S. citizens in the United States.

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President Barack Obama has deployed American military personnel and drone aircraft to the African country of Niger, where they could be used to support a French counterterrorism mission in neighboring Mali.

Defense Department officials told NBC News that a first wave will include two Raptor surveillance drones and 250 to 300 military personnel, including remote pilots and security and maintenance crews. They are expected to arrive soon.

The officials stressed that the drones are meant for surveillance only. The White House has faced criticism for a legal memo concluding that the U.S. government can use drones to kill American citizens overseas in certain cases.

Besides helping the French in Mali, the drones could be used to provide intelligence on a growing Islamic militant threat throughout North and East Africa.

The president notified Congress on Friday under the War Powers Act, which requires him to tell Congress when heavily armed U.S. military personnel are newly deployed to a region or nation.

Obama told Congress that the U.S. military presence was under the consent of the government of Niger, and that they would “facilitate intelligence-sharing” with the French. He said that the American military personnel were armed for their own protection and security.

Next door in Mali, Tuareg rebels overthrew the government last year. Islamists then pushed the rebels aside, taking control of important towns and pushing toward the capital.

France intervened last month — initially with airstrikes and later with about 4,000 ground troops. The United States has flown French troops and equipment into Mali and refueled French fighter jets there, the Pentagon has said. France plans to begin withdrawing troops from Mali next month, once African forces are in place to take over.

On Friday, five people were killed in a remote Malian town in car bomb attacks by Islamists on Tuareg fighters, a spokesman for the Tuareg fighters said.

Reuters contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Fri Feb 22, 2013 11:19 AM EST

They fight the war from computer consoles and video screens.

But the troops that launch the drone strikes and direct the cyberattacks that can kill or disable an enemy may never set foot in the combat zone. Now their battlefield contributions may be recognized.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced Wednesday that for the first time the Pentagon is creating a medal that can be awarded to troops who have a direct impact on combat operations, but do it from afar.

"I've seen firsthand how modern tools, like remotely piloted platforms and cyber systems, have changed the way wars are fought," Panetta said. "And they've given our men and women the ability to engage the enemy and change the course of battle, even from afar."

The work they do "does contribute to the success of combat operations, particularly when they remove the enemy from the field of battle, even if those actions are physically removed from the fight," he said.

Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americans

The new blue, red and white-ribboned Distinguished Warfare Medal will be awarded to individuals for "extraordinary achievement" related to a military operation that occurred after Sept. 11, 2001. But unlike other combat medals, it does not require the recipient risk his or her life to get it.

Officials said the new medal will be the first combat-related award to be created since the Bronze Star in 1944.

A recognition of the evolving 21st Century warfare, the medal will be considered a bit higher in ranking than the Bronze Star, but is lower than the Silver Star, defense officials said.

The Bronze Star is the fourth highest combat decoration and rewards meritorious service in battle, while the Silver Star is the third highest combat award given for bravery. Several other awards, including the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, are also ranked higher, but are not awarded for combat.

Over the last decade of war, remotely-piloted Predators and Reapers have become a critical weapon to both gather intelligence and conduct airstrikes against terrorist or insurgents around the world. They have been used extensively on the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and northern Africa.

Over the same time, cyberattacks have become a growing national security threat, with Panetta and others warning that the next Pearl Harbor could well be a computer-based assault.

Lawmakers wrestle with Obama drone program

The Pentagon does not publicly discuss its offensive cyber operations or acts of cyberwarfare. Considering that secrecy, it's not clear how public such awards might be in the future. The federal government, for example, launched a broad leak investigation after reports surfaced that the U.S. and Israel may have been responsible for the Stuxnet computer virus that attacked computers in Iran's main nuclear enrichment facilities.

According to the Pentagon criteria, the medal gives the military a way to recognize a single act that directly affects a combat operation, doesn't involve an act of valor, and warrants an award higher than the Bronze Star.

"The extraordinary achievement must have resulted in an accomplishment so exceptional and outstanding as to clearly set the individual apart from comrades or from other persons in similar situations," according to the Pentagon's list of criteria for the medal. It could include the "hands-on" but remote launching of a weapon and could specifically include efforts in space or cyberspace.

The medal is a brass pendant, nearly two inches tall, with a laurel wreath that circles a globe. There is an eagle in the center. The ribbon has blue, red and white stripes.

Saul Loeb / AFP - Getty Images

CIA director nominee John Brennan during a meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 31, 2013.

Amid new developments and revelations, President Barack Obama’s national security policies, past and future, are set to come under Senate scrutiny Thursday.

Most notably, Obama’s nominee to head the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan, will address what role the targeted killings of terrorists, either by using drone strikes or other means, have played and should play in national security policy.

Questions about targeted killings intensified Monday after a report by NBC News revealed a Justice Department memo which argued it was lawful for the president to target U.S. citizens who are leaders of al-Qaida or “an associated force.” Brennan will be appearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee for his confirmation hearing.

On Wednesday, an Obama administration official said the president had directed the Justice Department to give the congressional intelligence committees access to classified memos justifying the targeted killings policy. Until now the administration had refused to do this.  

Addressing the past on Thursday will be Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as they testify before the Armed Services Committee about the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi.

Senators on the panel -- especially Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. -- want to know how the U.S. military reacted to the attack, and what the Defense Department’s internal review revealed after the event.

The two hearings will feature contrasting political color: Republicans -- led by Graham, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire -- have been the ones who have made an issue of the Benghazi attack almost since it took place. They’ve implied that a full accounting of what happened was delayed until after the presidential election. Graham held up Obama’s nomination of Chuck Hagel to be defense secretary until he could get a chance to question Panetta about Benghazi.

But Obama’s drone policy -- directed largely by Brennan in his role as Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser -- has drawn criticism both from progressives on the left and those on the right who are fearful of an excessive concentration of power in the presidency.

On Benghazi, much is already known. In its report on the attack, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee said last December that Panetta’s Defense Department and Hillary Clinton’s State Department hadn't jointly studied the availability of U.S. military forces to defend or rescue the U.S. diplomats in Benghazi in the event of a crisis.

The Pentagon’s Africa Command didn’t have planes, helicopters, or other forces close to Benghazi on the day of the attack. “The Djibouti base was several thousand miles away. There was no Marine expeditionary unit, carrier group or a smaller group of U.S. ships closely located in the Mediterranean Sea that could have provided aerial or ground support or helped evacuate personnel from Benghazi,” the report said.

As for Brennan and drones, Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of a new report called “Reforming U.S. Drone Strike Policies,” said Obama’s choice of him as CIA director “now places him as the lead executive authority over all CIA drone strikes. The real question is whether John Brennan’s move from the White House to Langley to be director of the CIA is in fact an effort for the CIA to get out of the drone strikes business.”

Zenko noted that Panetta recently said that the Pentagon, not the CIA, should be conducting the drone strikes against al-Qaida suspects.

But Zenko cautioned against those who would head into the Brennan hearing with high hopes for new information. Having read transcripts of the past 10 CIA director confirmation hearings, he said, “It would be unprecedented if there were an in-depth discussion about ongoing covert activities.” The Senate Intelligence Committee “simply doesn't work that way, especially under chairman Sen. (Dianne) Feinstein” of California, he said.

Zenko added that the most useful line of questioning of Brenna would be regarding his conceptions of airpower. Brennan has repeatedly used the cancer analogy for air strikes killing terrorists without damaging the surrounding “tissue.”

“That's a dangerous, antiseptic, and unrealistic conception of military force,” Zenko said.

Interrogation vs. deadly strikes
But Obama spokesman Jay Carney told reporters at a White House briefing Wednesday, “Far fewer civilians lose their lives in an effort to go after senior leadership in al-Qaida” by using drone attacks “as opposed to an effort to invade a country with hundreds and thousands of troops and take cities and towns.” Implication: if you want to avoid another Iraq or Afghanistan, then support Obama’s drone policy.

Carney said Obama believes “that we need to move forward with more transparency as well as create, in his words, a legal framework around how these decisions are made.” But Obama believes he has the full constitutional authority to order targeted killings -- “transparency” or no transparency.

For those skeptical of Obama’s policy, there will be two other possible lines of questioning directed at Brennan:

1. Do the foreign policy costs of Obama’s use of drones -- alienating and angering people in Muslim countries -- outweigh its benefits?
2. Does the drone policy suggest that Obama would rather kill jihadists than capture them? Adding more detainees to those already held at Guantanamo -- a facility he pledged to close but hasn’t -- could amount to a political public relations headache.

The drone strikes have been unpopular in Pakistan and other countries. Making the case that drone strikes have high costs as well as benefits, the former U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, told Reuters recently, “What scares me about drone strikes is how they are perceived around the world. The resentment created by American use of unmanned strikes … is much greater than the average American appreciates.”

Brennan has an opportunity on Thursday to rebut this view. He argued last August that “contrary to conventional wisdom, we see little evidence that these actions (drone strikes) are generating widespread anti-American sentiment or recruits” for al-Qaida. The targeted strikes against terrorists, he said, “are not the problem, they are part of the solution.”

Finally, Thursday’s Brennan hearing is a chance for senators on the panel to ask him whether Obama is using drone strikes as a less politically troublesome option than capturing detainees and putting them in Guantanamo.

This is an argument that former Bush administration officials such as ex-CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden and former CIA legal counsel John Rizzo have made.

Last week in a panel discussion at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank, Hayden said interrogating al-Qaida operatives is a vital source of insight into the terrorists’ plans and capabilities:

But he warned, “We have made it so legally difficult and so politically dangerous to capture that it seems, from the outside looking in, that the default option is to take the terrorists off the battlefield in another sort of way” – in other words, by killing them. This could result in a loss of valuable intelligence.

Rizzo said, “It’s always been in the agency’s institutional DNA to want to collect intelligence by all sorts of means, especially human intelligence. You can’t collect human intelligence from a dead guy.”

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Legal experts fear implications of White House drone memo

Updated at 9:44 p.m. ET -- Reversing its course, the White House will now brief members of Congress on the legal justifications for drone strikes against U.S. citizens, an administration official said Wednesday night.

"Today, as part of the president's ongoing commitment to consult with Congress on national security matters, the president directed the Department of Justice to provide the congressional intelligence committees access to classified Office of Legal Counsel advice related to the subject of the Department of Justice White Paper," the official said.

The Justice Department paper, first obtained by NBC News, concluded that the United States can legally order the killing of American citizens believed to be al-Qaida leaders.

Until Wednesday, the administration would not even confirm these memos existed.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement Wednesday night she was pleased with the White House's decision.

"I am pleased that the president has agreed to provide the Intelligence Committee with access to the OLC opinion regarding the use of lethal force in counterterrorism operations. It is critical for the committee's oversight function to fully understand the legal basis for all intelligence and counterterrorism operations," Feinstein's statement read.

Earlier Wednesday, the Associated Press reported that White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama was engaged in an internal process deliberation to determine how to balance the nation's security needs with its values. He said Obama was committed to providing more information to Congress, even as he refused to acknowledge whether the drone memo even existed.

"He thinks that it is legitimate to ask questions about how we prosecute the war against al-Qaida," Carney said. "These are questions that will be with us long after he is president and long after the people who are in the seats that they're in now have left the scene."

Some legal experts warned that the secret memo threatened constitutional rights and dangerously expanded the definition of national self-defense and of what constitutes an imminent attack.

The administration’s decision to give the memo to the congressional intelligence committees comes a day before the Senate confirmation hearing Thursday for John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s pick to lead the CIA. Brennan was an architect of the administration’s controversial escalation of drone strikes to take out suspected militants.

Members of Congress have expressed serious reservations about the memo. On Wednesday, Rep. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. and a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told NBC News Radio that the memo “doesn’t answer the central questions” revolving around an important policy decision: "When does the government have the legal right to kill an American?"

"The administration has essentially been stonewalling the committee and myself and others for over two years by not actually making that memo available with someone willing to answer questions about it," Wyden said.

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Wyden vows to 'pull out all the stops' to get 'actual legal analysis' on drones

White house drone memo: Four key questions

Published 2:05 p.m. ET: A Justice Department paper concluding that the United States can order the killing of American citizens believed to be al-Qaida leaders shed at least some light on a legal rationale that lawmakers, journalists and civil libertarians have asked about for months.

But it leaves a swarm of questions unanswered.

The document says that the government can use lethal force against its citizens under three conditions: The citizen must pose “an imminent threat of violent attack” against the country, capturing the citizen must not be feasible, and it all has to be done within “law of war principles.”

The paper, first obtained by NBC News, is expected to figure prominently in the Senate confirmation hearing Thursday for John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s pick to lead the CIA. Brennan was an architect of the administration’s controversial escalation of drone strikes to take out suspected militants.

Here are four key questions about the Justice Department paper:

1. What’s in the original Justice Department memos?

What was obtained and made public Monday by NBC News was a Justice Department white paper. It summarizes classified memos on targeted killings produced by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal advice to the president.

Those original memos have not been released.

The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union sued the Justice Department in 2011 and 2012, seeking the administration’s legal justification for the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen believed by the government to have directed the attempted bombing of an airliner on Christmas Day 2009.

In January, a federal judge refused to require the government to disclose the justification, but she expressed frustration.

“The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me,” wrote the judge, Colleen McMahon of Manhattan federal court. “I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret.”

2. What is an imminent threat?

The paper, in requiring that the U.S. citizen must pose an imminent threat, refers to a “broader concept of imminence.” It goes on to say what an imminent threat is not: Meeting the condition “does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.” 

“Everyone agrees that if the country is about to be attacked, the country has a right to defend itself,” Stephen Saltzburg, a constitutional scholar and law professor at George Washington University, said Wednesday on MSNBC. But the Justice Department paper “defines imminent threat as being nothing that’s imminent at all.”

Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that he was satisfied with the definitions.

The paper says that al-Qaida is continually plotting against the United States and says that the government may determine that a citizen has been “recently” involved in “activities” posing a threat of violent attack, without defining either term. The government may also determine simply that “there is no evidence suggesting that he has renounced or abandoned such activities.”

3. Who pulls the trigger?

Outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told CBS News last year that the president makes the call when an American citizen is targeted for killing, without court oversight, when the government believes that that citizen wants to attack the country.

“The president obviously reviews these cases and reviews the legal justification and in the end says go or no-go,” Panetta said. “In the end, when it comes to, you know, going after someone like that, the president of the United States has to sign off. And he should.”

The Justice Department paper suggests that a wider circle of people could make that call, however. It permits targeted killing when an “informed, high-level official of the U.S. government” has determined that the target is an imminent threat. The memo does not say who in the government might qualify.

“It’s completely on faith,” said Naureen Shah, a lecturer at Columbia Law School and associate director of the Counterterrorism and Human Rights Project at the school’s Human Rights Institute.

“That might be something we’re willing to trust President Obama with,” she added, “but are we willing to trust the junior-level people who are actually running the show? Who are we trusting here?”

4. Could the justification apply in the United States?

The Justice Department paper explicitly refers to killing an American citizen in a foreign country. But legal experts and some lawmakers, concerned that the rationale violates the right to due process afforded Americans by the Constitution, see no reason why it couldn’t apply inside the United States.

“That should be the question on everyone’s mind. Probably the first question,” said Mary Ellen O’Connell, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame and an authority on international law and the use of force.

“If the president can make up law,” she said, “I don’t see why he would think he is stopped from making up law to apply inside the United States.”

The question was among those submitted by Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, to Brennan in January when Brennan was nominated for the CIA post. Among the other details Wyden sought was clarification on when the capture of such a citizen is “infeasible,” another standard laid out by the Justice Department white paper.

“Every American has the right to know when their government believes it is allowed to kill them,” Wyden said Tuesday.

The senator sits on the Intelligence Committee and will question Brennan directly at his confirmation hearing.

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