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CIA mum on lawsuit alleging drone targeting errors
The CIA has declined comment on allegations that its drones have a targeting margin of error of up to 40 feet, a malfunction that could be contributing to civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The allegations have surfaced in a complex suit over intellectual property theft in Massachusetts, in which the developer of the targeting software testified that he was surprised to hear that the CIA was willing to use untested code in the drones.
"My reaction was one of stun, amazement that they want to kill people with my software that doesn't work," Richard Zimmerman, chief technology officer for Boston-based Intelligent Integration Systems (IISi), said in a sworn deposition in April.
Zimmerman said an executive from Netezza, his company's partner in the venture, had told him and other company executives that "the CIA called them on the phone, said we need to target predator drones in Afghanistan, that this is a national security matter. We need [the software] up and running immediately."
The spy agency was desperate for the software and willing to accept untested code in increments, the Netezza executive said, according to Zimmerman.
But IISi would not cooperate in a rush job, Zimmerman said -- at least not without some legal immunity in case the missiles missed their targets -- or as Zimmerman put it in his deposition: "without some sort of terms around that that indemnifies us in case that code kills people."