US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta on Friday acknowledged what has long been an open secret – that the CIA deploys armed Predator drones to hunt down militants. The US government officially declines to admit to the spy agency’s drone strikes, but Panetta – who served as Central Intelligence Agency director until taking over the Pentagon in July – made two casual references to the CIA’s use of robotic aircraft during a visit to US bases in Italy.
“Having moved from the CIA to the Pentagon, obviously I have a hell of a lot more weapons available to me in this job than I did at CIA – although Predators aren’t bad,” Panetta told an audience of sailors at the US Navy’s Sixth Fleet headquarters in Naples. Later at a joint US-Italian air base in Sigonella, Panetta thanked air crews for their role in the NATO air campaign over Libya as he stood in front of a Global Hawk drone, a larger unmanned aircraft that flies at high altitude for surveillance missions.
Panetta cited the important role of drones in the Libya operation, including the Predator drones. Predators are “something I was very familiar with in my past job”, he said. After Panetta spoke, a Predator drone took off from the base – right on cue. The military does not hide its own drone flights in Libya or the war in Afghanistan, in contrast to the CIA’s covert missions to take out al Qaeda extremists in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere.
It was not the first time Panetta has made references to the drone programme, which US officials credit with severely weakening al Qaeda. As CIA director, he once alluded to the drone strikes against al Qaeda as “the only game in town”.
