WASHINGTON - The FBI has received clearance from federal aviation officials to conduct drone surveillance in the United States on at least four occasions since 2010, according to public records and U.S. officials.
The FBI began seeking permission in 2009 from the Federal Aviation Administration to fly drones domestically and received authorization for its first operations a year later, according to documents released Thursday by the FAA.
The documents provide virtually no detail on where the FBI has operated drones in U.S. airspace, for what purpose or how long the missions lasted. But they shed some additional light on the origins and extent of the FBI’s secretive drone program, which FBI Director Robert Mueller revealed Wednesday in Senate testimony.
Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FBI uses drones “in a very, very minimal way and very seldom.”
In a statement after Mueller’s testimony, the FBI said it used a drone in Alabama in February during a seven-day hostage standoff. The documents released Thursday show that the FAA granted the FBI permission to fly three other drone operations in 2010 and 2011. The records were disclosed in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy-rights group based in San Francisco.
Front Section, Pages 7 on 06/21/2013