Hank Crumpton's Keynote Address at the Texas International Law Journal's Symposium on Air & Missile Warfare

As noted below, Ambassador Hank Crumpton gave the keynote address at last week's symposium on air & missile warfare sponsored by the Texas International Law Journal.  His speech was terrific, and the Q&A was uncommonly interesting. The most interesting passage, as I noted yesterday, occurs when Mike Lewis asks Ambassador Crumpton about CIA compliance with IHL when it comes to drone strikes.  The actual exchange is as follows:

Q: “What sort of law of war training do the CIA operators get within, you know, proportionality, military necessity requirements for the strikes?”  A: “On 9/11 not much.  We were, we were at war.  To reinforce our weakness, we brought in the military, including legal counsel, both in our shop and also through telecommunications.  We had a real interagency task force, if you will, with CENTCOM involved, the Pentagon, helping us, making sure we were going down the right path.  Now also bear in mind there’s covert action law, very specific, and that we knew." 

Here's the video.  The quoted passage begins around the 42:00 mark.  More video from the three symposium panels to follow shortly.