"Despite their overlapping “orbits” in Yemen, the CIA and JSOC employ different surveillance equipment on their drone fleets. They also rely on separate and sometimes incompatible communications networks to transmit video feeds and assemble intelligence from multiple streams in the moments before a strike."
"Keeping the drones with the CIA also offers legal cover for drone strikes, former officials argued. By law, the military is not supposed to conduct hostile actions outside a declared war zone, although special forces do so on occasion acting at the CIA's behest."
The first article is an anonymous source for a website's blog.
Some other choice headlines on the site's homepage:
Birth-Control Battle - Liberals are the agressors
Chait-Crime: Stop assuming conservatives are racist
Corporations Are People: The idea goes back to the Founding.
The Return of the Queue: O'care: just like any other liberal program.
Five Food-Stamp Myths: Does the program even work?
The Test-Score Gap: Race and class are not to blame.
Not exactly a fantastic citation, I think you'll agree. In any event, your quote specifically refers to intelligence drones, not strike drones. I'm not actually 100% sure about this, but I'm guessing they're different, just based on the different payloads required to perform each activity. In any event, the CIA here isn't admitting to anything. It's an anonymous inside source. Right. Hyperconservative blog has high-level inside source in the intelligence community in a post-Snowden world. Got it.
As for the second article, that's exactly what I'm saying. Special forces do so, "Acting at the CIA's behest". CIA provides intel, special forces conducts the operation. That's an important distinction.
Now you're just being lazy :) The articles above are simply the first that popped up. Look around a bit and I'm sure you can find the same stories on sites that better suit your particular political bent.
If you're intent on nitpicking, then I think the likely answer to your question is that the CIA openly runs a large and mature weaponized drone program using vehicles that are outfitted by the CIA but owned (in a procurement sense) by the USAF, with the weapon triggers actually pulled (per law) by USAF service members.
If the CIA wanted to keep this program secret then they're doing a shitty job. For example, look up the things that Lean Panetta has said about his program over the last few years.
The CIA's drone program is not secret, and hasn't been for some time.
From http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/363199/obama-plan-shift...:
"Despite their overlapping “orbits” in Yemen, the CIA and JSOC employ different surveillance equipment on their drone fleets. They also rely on separate and sometimes incompatible communications networks to transmit video feeds and assemble intelligence from multiple streams in the moments before a strike."
From http://killerapps.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/11/05/cia_pen...:
"Keeping the drones with the CIA also offers legal cover for drone strikes, former officials argued. By law, the military is not supposed to conduct hostile actions outside a declared war zone, although special forces do so on occasion acting at the CIA's behest."