CERL-Hosted Brown-Bag Event: Book Talk Series with Dr. Christopher J. Fuller

Dr. Christopher Fuller is a Lecturer in Modern American History, University of
Southampton, U.K. He will be speaking about his book, “See It, Shoot It; The Secret
History of CIA’s Lethal Drone Program”, during the first in a series of new book talks that CERL will host during the 2017-18 academic year. “See It, Shoot It” has been described as eye-opening study uncovers the history of the most important instrument of U.S. counterterrorism today: the armed drone. It reveals that, contrary to popular belief, the CIA’s covert drone program is not a product of 9/11. Rather, it is the result of U.S. counterterrorism practices extending back to an influential group of policy makers in the Reagan administration. 

Tracing the evolution of counterterrorism policy and drone technology from the fallout of Iran-Contra and the CIA’s “Eagle Program” prototype in the mid-1980s to the emergence of al-Qaeda, Fuller  shows how George W. Bush and Obama built upon or discarded strategies from the Reagan and Clinton eras as they responded to changes in the partisan environment, the perceived level of
threat, and technological advances. Examining a range of counterterrorism strategies, he reveals
why the CIA’s drones became the United States’ preferred tool for pursuing the decades-old goal
of preemptively targeting anti-American terrorists around the world.

This book talk will be moderated by Mark Nevitt, Former aviator  and attorney in the U.S. Navy, Sharswood Fellow at Penn Law.