US documents show Brennan’s ‘no civilian drone deaths’ claim was false

Throughout the first half of 2011 US intelligence sources had been insisting that civilians were no longer being killed by drone attacks. On June 29 2011 Brennan said ‘there hasn’t been a single collateral [civilian] death‘ in Pakistan in 10 months.The Bureau was the first to challenge this assertion. After carrying out a field investigation in Pakistan’s tribal areas, it submitted to the US administration a list of 45 civilians killed in drone strikes in the period Brennan had referred to. A senior US counter terrorism official refuted the findings at the time, insisting: ‘The most accurate information on counter-terror operations resides with the United States.’