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Terror suspects abroad: Is the U.S. killing or capturing?

In an upcoming Showtime documentary "The Spymasters - CIA in the Crosshairs," former CIA directors provide new insight into the spy agency's controversial policies
Is U.S. drone policy hurting intelligence-gathering? 02:21

Although President Obama is pledging to intensify the U.S. campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), that fight is unlikely to produce what the war in Afghanistan once did: hundreds of terror suspects for detention and, potentially, interrogation.

The Obama administration has largely relied on lethal force to kill its enemies on the battlefield, rather than capturing them. The most famous example of this is the raid in Pakistan that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Another example -- U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was dispatched with a drone in Yemen.

More recently, airstrikes have been used to kill Sanafi al-Nasr, a top al Qaeda commander, and two key ISIS figures, Abu Nabil and Mohamed Emzawi. Emzawi, known colloquially as "Jihadi John" because he was British, was best known for beheading several Western hostages in a series of videos released by ISIS.

"Jihadi John" apparently dead: What's the significance? 08:02

"It's a matter of practicality, it's a function of risk, and it's the nature of the landscape of our both operations and our limitations," said CBS News Senior National Security Analyst Juan Zarate.

In the immediate aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, U.S., Afghan and Pakistani forces were able to capture many al Qaeda leaders. But the current terror threat is concentrated in places like Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya - countries where there is no major U.S. presence to hunt down and trap those threatening the country.

"In some ways, we don't have the facilities overseas -- or in general -- to detain and question people that may be relevant. And we haven't been engaging in the types of daily, on-the-ground raids that are putting us in physical contact with the kind of people we would want to question," Zarate said.

And there is another consideration. The accumulation of so many suspects in the last decade necessitated a place to house them. That led to the creation of the Guantanamo Bay prison. President Obama campaigned on a pledge to close the prison, and although he has faced stiff resistance from Congress in achieving that goal, his administration has not added a single person to its population.

What are the chances Guantanamo Bay detainment camp closes? 05:50

"It's certainly not lost on the Obama administration that the Bush administration got itself into a deep morass both domestically and internationally by holding a bunch of people," John Bellinger, an adjunct senior fellow for international and national security law at the Council on Foreign Relations told CBS News.

"It was a whole lot easier for the Obama administration to not have to deal with detention, much less interrogation, and simply easier to launch drones at people, particularly when they were deep in the mountains of Pakistan," said Bellinger, who was also George W. Bush's legal adviser for the State Department.

Last week the president reaffirmed his commitment to close Guantanamo Bay in spite of the recent terror attacks in Paris. Administration officials have been working for months on a plan they can submit to Congress, but the proposal is stalled over questions about costs. The Pentagon promised to deliver the plan as soon as it is complete, but said in a statement, "We don't have a specific timeline."

The president acknowledged the difficulties in capturing terrorists during a 2013 speech at the National Defense University, but said it was still the administration's top priority.

In places like parts of Somalia and Yemen, "the state only has the most tenuous reach into the territory. In other cases, the state lacks the capacity or will to take action," Mr. Obama said. "And it's also not possible for America to simply deploy a team of Special Forces to capture every terrorist."

There are places, he pointed out in that speech "where it would pose profound risks to our troops and local civilians." But he added, "America does not take strikes when we have the ability to capture individual terrorists; our preference is always to detain, interrogate, and prosecute."

That was also the speech in which he set the elevated standard for using drone strikes to kill a terror suspect: "There must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured."

In practice, the number of civilian casualties the administration will accept depends on the target, reports CBS News Pentagon Correspondent David Martin. The military aims for zero civilian casualties, but has accepted up to five in the past.

The administration has captured some high-profile suspects and brought them back to the U.S. to face trial. In April, the American-born Muhanad Mahmoud Al Farekh was detained by the Pakistanis and brought to the New York to face federal terrorism charges.

Benghazi terror suspect appears in federal court 03:06

Abu Khatallah, a suspected leader of the 2012 attacks on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, was captured by U.S. Special Operations Forces during a secret raid in June 2014. He has appeared in federal court on murder charges.

In October 2013, Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai - better known as Abu Anas al-Libi - was captured in Tripoli, detained at sea for questioning, and brought to the U.S. He was charged in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans. He died of complications from liver surgery while awaiting trial.

And in 2011, Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, was captured off the coast of Somalia and interrogated at sea for several months before being brought to the U.S. He pled guilty in federal court to several charges.

For the Obama administration, "that's kind of the ideal case," Zarate said.

"We can capture a guy, we can interrogate him for a while in this kind of limbo state, a ship, and then we can ship him back when we're ready to go for criminal prosecution."

But Zarate and others have warned that killing terror suspects, while sometimes the easiest route, has an opportunity cost.

In a Showtime documentary called "The Spymasters - CIA in the Crosshairs," that will air on Nov. 28, Former CIA Director James Woolsey argues that the Obama administration is losing the opportunity to gather valuable intelligence.

The president "is killing more people than he needs to, and we'd be better off capturing some of them and interrogating them," he says.

Zarate said the U.S. hasn't grappled with the potential that the U.S. might capture a detainee and bring him back to the U.S. to stand trial, only to see him gain access to the U.S. legal system and possibly be ordered released by arguing he was unlawfully imprisoned.

"He has nowhere else to go but you can't keep him custody...that's a real thorny issue that no one has answered," Zarate said.

He also suggested that the U.S. may not necessarily have the intelligence framework it needs to fight ISIS effectively if it's forgoing the chance to extract information from captured leaders by killing them instead.

Bellinger was less certain of that argument, countering, "The Bush administration's interrogation program certainly was not a clear success....While one can argue in the abstract that if someone was detained, that one theoretically could interrogate them and theoretically obtain useful information from them, in practice, that has been much harder and certainly caused huge problems for the Bush administration."

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