The Untold Casualties of the Drone War

The entire week has been shrouded under a cloud of paranoia. All four whistleblowers — each honorably discharged from the Air Force — have endured threats from strangers, and been called traitors by former friends and colleagues. Each is convinced the NSA is keeping tabs on them. Haas and Bryant have even developed a private code for all digital communication. A year ago, Bryant says, the FBI contacted him to tell him that he was on an ISIS hit list; bragging on social media, they said, only put him at greater risk. “My computer isn’t clean at all,” he says, referring to his belief that almost anything he touches connected to the Internet is compromised.

A 2013 study conducted in part by the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center found that remote piloted aircraft officers experience mental health problems, including PTSD, in much the same way as traditional fighter pilots. But while the Predator and Reaper drones have been favored weapons of two administrations, surprisingly few former operators have detailed their experiences in the program. The next day, the four former officers in this room will become the most visible faces of anti-drone sentiment in the U.S. They hope that there is strength in numbers, that by speaking out about matters of incompetence and disregard for human life, and in an open appeal to the president, they can alter what is likely to be a central military strategy for generations to come.

“What do you think of this paragraph?” Bryant asks, before reading: “We came to the realization that the innocent civilians we were killing only fueled the feelings of hatred that ignited terrorism and groups like ISIS, while also serving as a fundamental recruitment tool similar to Guantanamo Bay. This administration and its predecessors have built a drone program that is one of the most devastating driving forces for terrorism and destabilizations around the world.”

As much as anywhere else, the War on Terror is being fought from a sprawling collection of squat buildings at Creech Air Force Base in Indian Springs, Nevada. Situated 40 miles north of Las Vegas — past vast stretches of sagebrush and sandstone, the Paiut Reservation and the High Desert maximum security prison —the town consists of a couple dozen trailers nestled against the highway, a Shell gas station and a dive bar open 24 hours a day, serving beer and greasy food beside counter-top slot machines. There used to be another gas station and casino on the other side of the highway, but the Air Force took over the land in 2014 and placed it all behind barbed wire and heavy barricades. Most of the time nothing moves around the base, save for the odd Air Force security SUV making its patrols or an alien-grey drone practicing takeoffs and landings.

Creech’s three runways form the shape of a cross lying on the ground. Off to one side sit the motor pool, dorms, gym, mess hall, the closed-down casino, and the command stations of the 17^th and the 11^th Reconnaissance Squadrons. The 11^th oversees training exercises; the 17^th flies top-secret missions, carrying out the CIA’s campaign of targeted assassinations. “The squadron buildings for the 17^th had walls built around it so no one knew what was going on in there,” says Michael Haas, on his first trip back to the base in years. “Of course we all knew because the operators in the 17^th were douches who would constantly brag about the shit they did in Pakistan and the people they killed. But in theory we weren’t supposed to know.”

Haas, who is tall and heavyset, with longish red hair that frames a freckled and boyish face, worked at Creech off and on between 2006 and 2011. When he first arrived, all the new officers were ushered into a large assembly hall. Haas had been sent up from San Angelo in Texas, where he was trained in imagery intelligence, examining satellite photos to spot enemy movements on the ground. He still had not been told what his job would be on his new base. “I heard whispers that it had something to do with drones, but nothing more than that,” Haas says. “They had told me I needed to get a flight physical, so I assumed I was going to fly planes.”

Haas had signed up for the Air Force two years earlier during his senior year of high school. Operation Enduring Freedom was well underway, and despite President Bush’s claims of “Mission Accomplished,” the US invasion in Iraq had turned into a bloody occupation. Haas however, had very little patriotic fervor. “I joined for the GI Bill,” he says. “I didn’t want to put my parents into debt for me to go to college, and the recruiter promised me a desk job where I’d never have to fight.”