The mechanisms for carrying out drone strikes don't require positive identification of some one, just patterns of life. The rules allowed the c i a to kill those it didn't need to know who they were. They would do things like what they ddouble tap strikes, where they would kill people and then kill attendes of their funerals. This was authorized in the rules of what became known, under barocco bomb as the disposition matrix. It's on par with calling torture enhanced interrogation. Calls it targeted killing.