The Central Intelligence Agency may be out of the armed drones business soon, according to a report out Wednesday morning, possibly granting more visibility to the Obama administration’s targeted killing program.

According to The Daily Beast, the White House is ready to approve a plan transferring authority to launch lethal missions in areas such as Pakistan from the CIA to the Department of Defense. Both DOD and the CIA currently have access to unmanned aerial vehicles, as drones are formally known, but use them in different ways for different purposes under different congressional authorities and different rules of transparency.

Should President Obama sign-off on the idea, the shift that would take place would not likely be immediately apparent to the public, but would go a long way to formalize the procedures in which drones are used. The process known as “institutionalization” has been in motion for over a year now, according to The Daily Beast, headed by newly-confirmed CIA Director John Brennan:

Brennan, who has presided over the administration’s drone program from almost day one of Obama’s presidency, has grown uncomfortable with the ad hoc and sometimes shifting rules that have governed it. Moreover, Brennan has publicly stated that he would like to see the CIA move away from the kinds of paramilitary operations it began after the September 11 attacks, and return to its more traditional role of gathering and analyzing intelligence.

Under the new structure, the CIA would still have a role in providing the intelligence necessary to identify targets, at least temporarily, but would no longer have operational control of lethal missions. That role in gathering intelligence means that the CIA’s use of unarmed drones for surveillance purposes is unlikely to be affected. While not a guarantee of greater transparency, placing the targeted killing program entirely under the Defense Department would mean that it would no longer be “covert” — or both secret and deniable by the government — but instead “clandestine” — meaning the administration would be unable to legally lie about operations.

The move mirrors an approach former Defense Department lawyer Jeh Johnson promoted in an appearance at Fordham University on Monday. Johnson is the latest in a long line of high-profile Democrats questioning the current structure of the targeted killing program and the secrecy surrounding it. In recent weeks, CAP Chair John Podesta, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) have all called for greater openness from the Obama administration about the way the program is carried out.

The Senate on Thursday voted to confirm John O. Brennan as the new Director of Central Intelligence, by a vote of 63-34, following what was at times a contentious confirmation process.

Brennan has spent the last four years as the top counterterrorism official in the White House in his role as Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism. Originally a consolation prize, following his withdrawal from consideration as CIA Director in 2008, Brennan conveyed the role’s proximity to President Barack Obama into one that possessed a large deal of sway over the counterterrorism policies of the administration.

A second chance to lead the CIA for Brennan came following the surprise resignation of former Gen. David Petraeus in Oct. 2012. In the days and weeks after Obama named Brennan as Petraeus’ successor, however, he faced possible roadblocks from various corners. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) threatened to hold up confirmation until more information was handed over related to the Sept. 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya that killed four Americans. Brennan then had to face questions about his role in the waterboarding of detainees during his time at the CIA under the George W. Bush administration.

Brennan received the approval of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Tuesday, following a deal with the White House to provide Senators access to classified memos related to the administration’s ongoing targeted killing program. What could have been a smooth vote to confirm Brennan was held up by a nearly thirteen hour-long filibuster by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) over the potential use of armed drones in the United States.

After receiving a letter from Attorney General Eric Holder clarifying the administration’s position, Paul agreed to allow Brennan’s nomination to come to a vote. The vote for cloture passed easily by 81 votes to 16, paving the way for a swift confirmation vote only minutes thereafter.

The White House cleared a huge hurdle for John Brennan’s path to becoming CIA Director on Tuesday, agreeing to provide Congress with classified memos on the administration’s targeted killing program.

Brennan received approval to move forward to the full Senate this afternoon in a closed session of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in the aftermath of the White House decision. The Obama administration had previously provided an unclassified white paper summarizing the classified Department of Justice memos that laid out the legal justification for the targeted killing of an American citizen, while only allowing access to briefly view some of the memos themselves. The white paper leaked to the press several weeks ago, kicking off debate about the extent to which the administration viewed its powers to execute suspected terrorists without trial.

That withholding of full access to the classified memos had been a major snag in Brennan’s confirmation process. Today’s agreement between the White House and Senate allowed for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), chair of the Intelligence Committee, to bring Brennan’s nomination to a vote. The memos released to Congress are only those memos related to the killing of Americans. Other legal opinions related to the use of drone strikes and other methods to target suspected terrorists for killing were not provided. Likewise, only one member of each committee member’s staff will be granted access to view the memos provided along with the Senators themselves.

Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Mark Udall (D-CO) and Susan Collins (R-ME) in a joint statement praised the administration for releasing the memos and agreeing to provide unclassified answers on when the President can use “lethal authorities” within the United States. “In our view, the appropriate next step should be to bring the American people into this debate and for Congress to consider ways to ensure that the President’s sweeping authorities are subject to appropriate limitations, oversight, and safeguards,” the statement said, reflecting Wyden’s commitment to further declassification of the drone program.

Despite clearing the Intelligence Committee by a vote of 12-3, several Senate Republicans still are insisting that they may tie up Brennan’s nomination further. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) believes that the administration has yet to clearly answer his question on whether the Executive Branch can launch a strike against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, citing discrepancies in letters from Brennan and Attorney-General Eric Holder. Sens. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and John McCain (R-AZ), meanwhile, have been using the Brennan nomination as a platform to receive more information about the Sept. 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) appeared on MSNBC this morning calling for greater openness related to the Obama administration’s use of armed drones ahead of today’s hearing on the confirmation of John Brennan as the next CIA Director.

Wyden, a long opponent of over-classification by the intelligence community, has been particularly critical ahead of Brennan’s confirmation. At the heart of Wyden’s concerns is the secrecy surrounding the administration’s targeted killing program.

More needs to be done to ensure that Americans are aware of the justification used by the administration to target those they deem combatants, Wyden told the panel interviewing him on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “What I’m going to be pressing for today and in the days ahead is declassifying more information about those issues,” Wyden said. “I think we can do it consistent with national security.”

WYDEN: Every American has the right to know when their government believes it’s allowed to kill them. I don’t think that, as one person said, that is too much to ask. And this idea that security and liberty are mutually exclusive, that you can only have one or the other, is something I reject. So we’re now going to have to begin the heavy lifting of the congressional oversight process by examining the legal underpinnings of this program and to make very clear I am going to push for more declassification of these key kinds of programs. And I think we can do that consistent with national security.

Watch the full interview here:

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence — of which Wyden is a member — gets access to information surrounding drones, but struggled to obtain access to a classified Department of Justice memorandum laying out the legal argument for the use of targeted killing against American citizens. The existence of that memo was first reported in 2011, following the killing of American radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen. After an unclassified white paper describing the argument leaked on Tuesday, and Wyden hinting that he would be willing to launch a filibuster against Brennan, the Obama administration has agreed to provide the DOJ memo to Congress.

Operations involving drones used by the CIA remain classified, striking at militants and suspected terrorists in places like Pakistan and Somalia. When used by the military as in Yemen, the strikes have been for the most part unclassified, but have included missions from a recently revealed air base in Saudi Arabia.

When he first came into office, President Obama pledged to be a greater proponent of declassifying documents than previous administrations. In his first year in office, Obama signed off on an executive order and accompanying Presidential Memorandum to speed the declassification of documents dating back to World War II and remove the ability of the intelligence community to veto declassification.

The Senate Intelligence Committee will hold a hearing tomorrow on the confirmation of President Obama’s nominee for Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan. There are a number of questions Brennan should and needs to answer but the hearing presents the perfect opportunity to get the current top Obama administration counterterrorism official perhaps most closely involved in the targeted killing program against al Qaeda to answer the fundamental question about it: when does it end?

Since his first bid to direct the Agency fizzled in 2008 after questions were raised about his role in the CIA torture program during the Bush years, Brennan has filled an at times more vital role in the Obama administration. Acting as the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security, serving under the National Security Adviser, Brennan has advised the President on counterterrorism for the past four years. As such, his access to the President to weigh in on security matters domestic and international has been almost unparalleled. In the aftermath of the failed Christmas Day bombing in 2009, Brennan authored a scathing review of what was then U.S. counterterrorism policy. While the Newtown tragedy was still ongoing last December, it was Brennan who first briefed Obama about the school shooting.

Brennan’s most controversial role has been his front-and-center position in the Administration’s military campaign against al-Qaeda and its affiliates. The use of targeted killings — most famously executed with drones — against individuals and groups suspect of connection to terrorist groups off the battlefield is by far the most visible outcome of those discussions. In a profile written in the Washington Post, Brennan is identified as the primary supporter of codifying the rules regarding when and where armed drone strikes could be carried out into what’s now called “the playbook” and the benign-sounding disposition matrix that identifies targets for strikes.

So Brennan, then, is ideally positioned to answer the fundamental question that needs to be answered to get a hold on America’s targeted killing program:

What role do targeted killings play in the broader U.S. counter-terrorism strategy and under what circumstances might we cease to employ them?

The question goes beyond the tactic of drone strikes to the conditions that cause them to be used in the first place. As a tactic, drone strikes have garnered significant opposition due to the potential for blowback among the populations where they are utilized, as well as the secrecy that surrounds the CIA’s classified program in Pakistan and moral questions about the serious harm cost in civilian lives the program carries with it. However, whether the program is achieving the ends that the Obama administration seeks, or even an explanation of what those ends are, is often left out of the debate and questioning of government officials.

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Ex-CIA officer John C. Kiriakou became the first person to be sentenced to prison for issues related to torture at Guantanamo Bay on Friday– because he talked about, but did not participate in, “enhanced interrogation” techniques. Kiriakou pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act in October for revealing the name of a former operative involved the Bush era’s brutal interrogation of detainees at Guantanamo to a reporter.

Kiriakou worked as a CIA operative for more than two decades and led a March 2002 raid that captured high-ranking Al Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah. He was also a vocal torture opponent who revealed his knowledge of U.S. enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, in an ABC interview in 2007. A confidential 2004 International Committee of the Red Cross report stated that the intentional physical and psychological harm done to detainees at Guantanamo was “tantamount to torture.” While several soldiers involved in the Abu Graib prison scandal were prosecuted and sentenced, the conviction of the only officer court-martialed was thrown out in 2008, and no one has ever been prosecuted for abuse at Guantanamo Bay. Leonie M. Brinkema, the judge who sentenced Kiriakou called his punishment “way too light.”

Kiriakou is the first ever CIA agent to be prosecuted under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, and the first successful conviction under the statute in 27 years. His case continues a trend of harsh, but selective, crackdowns on whistle-blowers and intelligence leaks by the Obama administration; The Justice Department has prosecuted more government officials for alleged leaks under the World War I-era Espionage Act under Attorney General Eric Holder than under all his predecessors combined.

Former Director of National Intelligence Adm. Dennis Blair (ret.) today defended the role of drones in the United States’ foreign policy toolkit, before calling for greater transparency in the programs that utilize them.

Speaking on a Council on Foreign Relations conference call with scholar Michael Zenko — who recently published a report on reforming drones’ use — Blair said that drones should be thought of as “long-range snipers, in the military sense.” Despite his support, he recognized the limitations. “I’m not as much a believer that drones are ‘wonder weapons’ as other people,” Blair made clear.

More concerning to both Zenko and Blair was the way in which the use of unmanned aerial vehicles — the technical name for drones — goes unexplained to the public and that the justification for their role in targeted killing is tightly held. That combination negatively impacts the U.S. mission in the countries it is trying to impact, Zenko argued. “Drones are the face of U.S. foreign policy” in Pakistan and Yemen, he said. “We allow the Taliban, and the Pakistani [intelligence agency], to tell the story of how our drones are being used.”

The majority of criticism of the Obama administration’s drone program from Zenko and Blair centered on the targeted killing component. On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that a new “playbook” is being developed to codify the ways in which targeted killings are decided upon and conducted:

Among the subjects covered in the playbook are the process for adding names to kill lists, the legal principles that govern when U.S. citizens can be targeted overseas and the sequence of approvals required when the CIA or U.S. military conducts drone strikes outside war zones.

U.S. officials said the effort to draft the playbook was nearly derailed late last year by disagreements among the State Department, the CIA and the Pentagon on the criteria for lethal strikes and other issues. Granting the CIA a temporary exemption for its Pakistan operations was described as a compromise that allowed officials to move forward with other parts of the playbook.

While Zenko and Blair both welcomed the playbook concept in theory, they both had their reservations about the scope of the document. “A classified ‘playbook’ does not reassure the American people, who I think are the primary ones that need to be convinced that their government is doing the right thing,” said Blair. Zenko in turn called a playbook that did not cover Pakistan at all “useless,” as 85 percent of targeted killings in non-battlefield areas have taken place in Pakistan.

Asked about the split between drone programs operated by the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency, Blair said that he strongly believes a great majority of the use of drones should be used by military forces. At present, the Defense Department operates armed drones openly, using them for strikes in areas such as Yemen. These strikes are included in reports to Congress under the War Powers Act, leaving a paper trail for their use.

The CIA run program in Pakistan falls under aims to be covert, with the entire program classified. This distinction, Blair said, allows Pakistan to have the best of all worlds on the program, allowing the United States to take care of shared militant threats while vehemently denouncing the United States.

What Blair’s looking for isn’t greater review of the program, though. There’s plenty of that, he said, as there are internal review methods within the Executive Branch, as well as reports to Congress from both Defense and the CIA regarding the programs. What’s needed instead is more transparency and investigation into the programs. The goal, according to Blair: “Remove not the secrecy, but the mystery of these things.” Blair’s thinking coincides with several major newspapers who are suing for greater transparency, as well as former Pentagon lawyer Jeh Johnson.