CIA director defends assassinations

CIA Director Leon Panetta was in San Francisco defending the U.S. policy of targeted assassinations in the war on terror last week. He spoke to the Commonwealth Club, where he was peppered with questions about the CIA's predator attacks in Pakistan. The Pentagon operates unmanned drones above battlefields in Afghanistan. But the CIA has its own predator program, credited with targeting terrorists in Pakistan, where we are not at war. Members of the Commonwealth Club asked Panetta to explain. Panetta said, "Well obviously I'm not going to talk about the operations we conduct," but, he said, when the CIA uses predators to launch hell fire missiles, the targets are enemies of the U.S."