From WNYC in New York, this is on the media.

I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield.

The White House announced this week the death of al-Qaeda's number two operative in Pakistan.

The U.S. has eliminated another prominent terror figure.

U.S. officials believe his death is so significant.

Press Secretary Jay Carney would not confirm how Al-Libbi died.

Here's a hint.

The U.S. did not use secret border crossing karate operatives. The government killed

al-Libbi the way it kills most enemies of the state in the Obama era via targeted drone attack.

New York Times reporter Scott Shane says that the administration calls the program classified

but talks about it coyly all the time. He says it's like a strip tease, a

striptease that looks increasingly absurd as news stories about drone strikes proliferate seemingly

everywhere. Dron strikes are reported within minutes or hours by the Pakistani media, by

wire services. President Obama went on YouTube

and Google Plus back in January and surprised people by talking about how precise the drone

strikes against al-Qaeda were. Leon Panetta, the defense sector, and a number of other

officials have often blurted something out about

the program. So the question has sort of increasingly become, why is this program classified?

And there are quite a few intelligence officials who are wondering about that.

In that press conference, when Secretary Panetta did articulate something close to a new security doctrine

in justifying the strikes as protection of U.S. sovereignty, this as opposed to violating

...