Over a six-week period last April and May, a flood of new information on our counterterrorism programs came out: a John Brennan speech and high-profile stories that claimed the drone killing program was narrowly targeted; stories revealing that Brennan had recently changed that process and adopted the use of strikes targeted at patterns, not known individuals, in Yemen; and news of a thwarted al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula operation that seemed to indicate AQAP remained a threat to the U.S. eight months after the U.S. had killed Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. It was a frenzy of administration-serving leaks and counter-leaks.
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