Former CIA chief and retired general, David Petraeus, Tuesday said he wants the United States to consider working with some members of an al-Qaida-affiliated organization to tackle the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in Syria. In a statement to CNN, Petraeus said some members of the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front might be persuaded to join the coalition battling ISIS. "We should under no circumstances try to use or co-opt Nusra, an al-Qaida affiliate in Syria, as an organization against ISIS," Petraeus told CNN. "But some individual fighters, and perhaps some elements, within Nusra today have undoubtedly joined for opportunistic rather than ideological reasons – they saw Nusra as a strong horse, and they haven't seen a credible alternative, as the moderate opposition has yet to be adequately resourced."

Petraeus became a household name in the United States when he oversaw the troop surge in Iraq in 2007, and U.S. leaders credited him for salvaging the troubled war effort. His statement Tuesday followed the publication of a story in the Daily Beast that pointed out the irony of the U.S. working with anyone connected to al-Qaida.

Petraeus, 62, had a spectacular fall from grace this year when he pled guilty to providing classified secrets to his mistress. He was given two years' probation and a $100,000 fine.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is seeking new ways to erase ISIS from the region. The CIA and U.S. Special Forces are carrying out a secret campaign using armed drones to target and kill ISIS leaders in Syria, the Washington Post reported Tuesday. The clandestine program is separate from America's wider military operations against ISIS fighters, the newspaper reported, citing unnamed US officials.

Among those so far killed is Junaid Hussain, a militant hacker from Britain who the Pentagon said was recruiting ISIS sympathizers to carry out lone wolf attacks in the West. Officials told The Post that the drone program has only resulted in a handful of strikes, which are being carried out by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). The CIA's main role in the operation is identifying and locating senior ISIS leaders. The officials said the program was focusing on "high value targets." A decision to use the CIA's Counterterrorism Center (CTC) and JSOC in the operation reflects rising anxiety about the spread of ISIS fighters, the Post reported. The CTC led the hunt for Osama bin Laden and JSOC includes the elite Navy SEAL team that carried out the mission to kill the former al-Qaida leader in 2011.

Drone strikes are politically contentious in Washington and U.S. President Barack Obama wants the CIA to return to its core activity of spying and away from paramilitary actions. Instead, he wants the Pentagon to take over the drone strikes.

But Senator Barbara Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has said she was not convinced the military could carry out drone strikes with the same "patience and discretion" as the CIA.