Pentagon defends drone missile strike in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON -- U.S. soldiers who scoured the site of a CIA-directed missile attack in Afghanistan found evidence disputing claims that those killed were innocents, a senior Pentagon official said Monday. \nRear Adm. John Stufflebeem said a team of more than 50 U.S. military personnel recovered ammunition, an empty box for a hand-held radio, English-language documents -- including credit card applications and commercial airline schedules -- and pieces of human remains. \nThey also checked in nearby caves and villages and talked with locals before leaving the area Monday, he said. \nBased on initial indications from these efforts, U.S. officials are "in a comfort zone" about the attack, he said.\n"These were not innocents," he said, while acknowledging that their identities are not known. Stufflebeem is deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. \nVillagers told a Washington Post reporter that the victims were three peasants who were gathering scrap metal from the war when a Hellfire missile launched from a pilotless aircraft operated by the Central Intelligence Agency shrieked out of the sky last Monday and killed the men. \nResponding to that report, Victoria Clarke, chief spokeswoman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said, "We haven't seen or heard anything that leads us to believe that it was anything other than what we thought the target was." \nStufflebeem, however, stressed that the attack was carried out by the CIA with no direct participation by U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for all U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. \nStufflebeem said he could not talk about targeting methods used by the CIA. In some instances, Central Command works closely with the CIA on military actions; in other cases the CIA operates on its own, he said. \n"This was an agency mission," Stufflebeem said. "This was a case where Central Command was not actively participating or coordinated with this particular strike."\nAfterward the U.S. military entered the picture by dispatching soldiers to the strike site to investigate, he added. \nThat differs from the description offered by Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when he was asked about the Hellfire strike during a Pentagon news conference last Friday. \n"There were lots of discussions among Central Command and other folks on the target, and it was concluded that it was a valid target and it was struck," Myers said.\nHe never mentioned the CIA by name.