Congress Restricts Push to Transfer Drone Program From CIA to Pentagon

Law­makers are us­ing the om­ni­bus spend­ing bill to re­strict Pres­id­ent Obama’s at­tempt to trans­fer con­trol of the U.S. drone pro­gram to the Pentagon — mark­ing one of the more dir­ect at­tempts by Con­gress to in­ter­fere in how the ad­min­is­tra­tion handles cov­ert op­er­a­tions.

The pro­vi­sion re­stricts the ad­min­is­tra­tion from us­ing any fund­ing to move drones or the au­thor­ity to carry out drone strikes from the CIA — which cur­rently has over­sight — to the De­fense De­part­ment. The pro­vi­sion was in­cluded in a clas­si­fied ad­di­tion to the bill by mem­bers of the Ap­pro­pri­ations Com­mit­tee in both cham­bers, of­fi­cials told The Wash­ing­ton Post.

Spe­cif­ics on the re­stric­tions are cur­rently un­known, but a per­son fa­mil­i­ar with the bill said they are more com­plex than simply with­hold­ing money.

The move comes as the ad­min­is­tra­tion is try­ing to trans­ition the CIA back to its more tra­di­tion­al in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing mis­sion. But some mem­bers of Con­gress have doubts about the Pentagon’s abil­ity to over­see the coun­try’s drone pro­gram ef­fect­ively and ac­cur­ately.

A sec­tion in the om­ni­bus bill deal­ing with De­fense De­part­ment spend­ing notes that “ad­just­ments to clas­si­fied pro­grams are ad­dressed in the ac­com­pa­ny­ing clas­si­fied an­nex.”