How black sites and drones are linked

This article in the New York Times explains how the first drone strike in Pakistan happened in 2004 as an agreement between the CIA and Pakistan's military to effectively assassinate someone that Pakistan had defined as an enemy of state.  CIA gained airspace, enabling them to shift from capturing to targeted killing.

That back-room bargain, described in detail for the first time in interviews with more than a dozen officials in Pakistan and the United States, is critical to understanding the origins of a covert drone war that began under the Bush administration, was embraced and expanded by President Obama, and is now the subject of fierce debate. The deal, a month after a blistering internal report about abuses in the C.I.A.’s network of secret prisons, paved the way for the C.I.A. to change its focus from capturing terrorists to killing them, and helped transform an agency that began as a cold war espionage service into a paramilitary organization.

This implies that these two architectures - incessant interrogations within secret rooms and rapid assassinations by flying robots - are interchangeable within some framework.  Will we just keep vacillating between being disgusted by one or the other?

Follow the plywood

In a densely informative pair of articles

OPERATION DELIRIUM

 in the New Yorker, this caught my eye:

In May, 1962, while testing BZ’s effect on soldier performance, Ketchum oversaw the construction of an entire Hollywood-style set in the form of a makeshift communications outpost. The plan was to confine four soldiers to the outpost for three days...  Technicians built a small room out of plywood. Cots and a table were brought in, and a handheld radio and switchboard were positioned against the green walls. To help achieve realism, Ketchum added a large switch with a sign that warned “Danger—Do Not Touch.” Cameras were installed behind wall panels. “It was a nervy operation, no matter how you looked at it,” Ketchum wrote. “Even with an inch of padding on the walls and a two-inch foam rubber carpet to minimize the chance of injury. ”

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/12/17/121217fa_fact_khatchadourian#ixzz2IijpWys8 

Do the tactics of Black Sites begin with the military's unhinged experiments with LSD? This would fit my (admittedly vague) vague hypothesis that the hyper- control, banality, and reproducibility of the space enables its escape from political and social boundaries, from everything we consider civilized or modern.