The CIA search drone
"Only days earlier, a CIA-guided Predator drone fired missiles at houses in the village of Damadola, aiming to kill Zawahiri. At least 18 people were obliterated, though probably not Zawahiri. U.S. officials remained confident that the dead included some senior Qaeda members, and Pakistani authorities maintained that four to five Qaeda operatives were killed in the missile attack. "We are still not sure who they were," said a senior official in Islamabad who spoke only on condition of anonymity. "We are still in the process of establishing their identity."
..."Despite the ethics—and public relations—issues, U.S. officials involved with the hunt for bin Laden and Zawahiri said they're quite sure that the benefits of the Predator campaign outweigh the costs. According to two former officials, several groups of missile-armed Predators—some of which are equipped with laser-guided gravity bombs—are based in the region. And a Pakistani official privy to intelligence says the January Predator strike was the fourth inside Pakistan's borders since May 2005 (two more than have been reported previously). Beginning earlier this month, the military and CIA have also begun to use the first production models of the Global Hawk unmanned recon aircraft,
which can survey distances of more than 100 miles from 65,000 feet and direct the lower-flying Predator to precise targets".
..."The CIA effectively has control inside Pakistan, where the U.S. military is not supposed to be operating (and the agency has "deniability" because it is engaged in covert operations that are never officially acknowledged). Indeed the Global Hawk and Predator systems are so sophisticated that live, high-resolution pictures are transmitted, via satellite links, to a large command post called the Global Response Center on the sixth floor of CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. There, officials can watch the satellite feeds in real time on large screens while other officials with headsets bark orders to operatives in the field".
