SEALs on loan to the CIA
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A viewer asked why, if the CIA has its own tactical capability, the bin Laden operation was given to the Navy SEALs. John Kiriakou called it a good question and then rejected the premise.

It was a CIA operation

"They did," Kiriakou said. "That Navy SEAL team was on loan to the CIA. So it was a CIA operation." He specified the chain of command: the raid "was directed by the CIA's Counterterrorism Center," and "all of the Navy SEALs were temporarily CIA contractors."

The arrangement he describes is a legal one as much as an operational one. The military personnel executing the raid did so wearing, in effect, a different institutional hat for its duration, which places the operation under the agency's authorities rather than the Pentagon's.

Whether capture was possible

Asked whether bin Laden could have been taken alive and brought to trial at The Hague or in New York, Kiriakou answered without qualification: "Yeah. Yeah, of course there was." The outcome was a choice, not a constraint. He attributed the choice to Barack Obama directly, citing the president's own account: "Obama said in his memoir, one of his three memoirs, that he made the decision just to kill him. Just kill him."

The legal basis

Asked whether that was lawful, Kiriakou said it was, and set out the mechanism. Under US law, if "the president or the president's representative, who is usually the national security adviser or the CIA director, determines that a person is a clear and present danger to the United States, any American installation or any US person," meaning a citizen or green card holder, "you can kill that person legally." He added the condition: "But the president has to order it."

When Ted Rall restated this as a president holding the power of life and death over every human being on earth, like a feudal lord, Kiriakou agreed, "Correct", and then volunteered his own view of it: "Isn't that awful?" Told that it should not be so, he answered: "No, no, it shouldn't be."

What came afterwards

Kiriakou noted that the capability has since been broadened. There are now teams belonging to the Counterterrorist Center, teams belonging to the Special Activities Division, and a further component he names as global resources. Any of those three, or elements of them, can be sent "pretty much anywhere in the world to kill who you want to kill."

See also

- Special Activities Division
- The assassination approval process
- How the CIA kills
- Tuesday morning kill list
- Barack Obama
