Congress, Constitutional Law, International, Politics, Society

DOJ Memo: Obama Administration Claims Broader Authority To Kill Americans

PresObamaWe have previously discussed the President’s “kill list” policy under which Obama claims the right to be able to kill any American based on his sole judgment and discretion. A confidential Justice Department memo now sheds more light on that policy and states a broader basis for such killings than previously suggested by the Administration. It is also not clear why this memo was kept secret by the Administration since it deals only with legal interpretations — not classified operational information.

Last March, Attorney General Eric Holder appeared at the Northwestern University Law School to present the new policy, claiming that the President did not need any conviction or even a charge to kill an American citizen. While he stressed that this was based on a rationale that the citizen posed “an imminent threat of violent attack,” I noted at the time that any such limitation was purely discretionary under the theory of executive power being advanced by the Obama Administration.

It now appears that the Administration lawyers reached the same conclusion. The memo notes that there does not need to be an imminent attack in terms of an unfolding plan or operation: “The condition that an operational leader present an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.”

In plain language, that means that the President considers the citizens to be a threat in the future. Moreover, the memo allows killings when an attempt to capture the person would pose an “undue risk” to U.S. personnel. That undue risk is left undefined.

The memo, entitled “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al Qa’ida or An Associated Force,” is a tour de force of an imperial presidency. It was provided previously to both Democratic and Republican members of Congress on the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees. However, those members did nothing to stop such an extreme assertion of unilateral presidential power or to alert the public that the president was claiming far greater latitude in ordering the killings of citizens.

In an Orwellian twist, the memo insists “A lawful killing in self-defense is not an assassination.” It is more like a very pointed expression of presidential displeasure.

Here is the memo: 020413_DOJ_White_Paper

Source: NBC

395 thoughts on “DOJ Memo: Obama Administration Claims Broader Authority To Kill Americans”

  1. New definition of “imminent”:

    Something that hasn’t actually happened but could conceivably happen someday — and even if it couldn’t, who cares?

  5. “The problem is that to accept this position, you have to put complete trust in the competence, wisdom, and ethics of the president, his underlings, and their successors. You have to believe they are properly defining and inerrantly identifying people who pose an imminent (or quasi-imminent) threat to national security and eliminating that threat through the only feasible means, which involves blowing people up from a distance. If mere mortals deserved that kind of faith, we would not need a Fifth Amendment, or the rest of the Constitution.” Jacob Sullum

  6. As much as Obama talks about rejecting the concept of “perpetual war” he’s providing, and institutionalizing, a blueprint for it.
    -Spencer Ackerman

    How Obama Transformed an Old Military Concept So He Can Drone Americans

    By Spencer Ackerman
    02.05.13

    http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/02/obama-imminence/

    Excerpt:

    “Imminence” used to mean something in military terms: namely, that an adversary had begun preparations for an assault. In order to justify his drone strikes on American citizens, President Obama redefined that concept to exclude any actual adversary attack.

    That’s the heart of the Justice Department’s newly leaked white paper, first reported by NBC News, explaining why a “broader concept of imminence” (.pdf) trumps traditional Constitutional protections American citizens enjoy from being killed by their government without due process. It’s an especially striking claim when considering that the actual number of American citizens who are “senior operational leader[s] of al-Qaida or its associated forces” is vanishingly small. As much as Obama talks about rejecting the concept of “perpetual war” he’s providing, and institutionalizing, a blueprint for it. …continues…

  7. I think I’m generally fine with the legality of killing Al Queda guys using drones. But, it seems to me that being a US citizen changes the legalities and that US citizens abroad have rights that non-citizens lack. One is the right to not be deprived of life without due process of law. It’s inconvenient and hampers our ability to protect against terrorist attack if we cannot strike US citizens of Al Queda the same way we can non-citizens. However, that’s the price we sometimes pay for having legal rights and following the rule of law that protect us from a tyrannical government. So, just as I support criminal procedural rights even if that means that sometimes the guilty go free, I support protections for US citizens allegedly members of Al Queda. This accumulation of power in the hands of the presidency is too much and too risky.

    1. Waldo, I guess you would have objected to the police killing Bonnie and Clyde too then. They simply set up an ambush and opened fire. I have no problem with what they did, even though they are supposed to take them alive if possible. Given the circumstances, I don’t think most folks would denounce the cops for simply killing them. Nor would they fear that the cops would go around killing all citizens they suspected of being crooks.

  8. Definition of Corrupt-to-the-Core:

    “The government can neither confirm nor deny that any such secret law exists as that under the authority of which you have just died for reasons which neither you or anyone else can ever know unless you can posthumously demonstrate otherwise.”

  9. As contemporary biographer Edward Grim attributed to Henry II, “What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?”

    Miserable drones. How appropriate.

    Who needs four knights when one drone will do the job?

  10. Dredd,

    Have you ever noticed when Turley or the Presdent is about to comment on something….. This blog get jacked by antiobama and Turley supporters…..

    Well the converse is true….. When someone says something even truthful about Obama…. The thread gets jacked…. You think it’s a coincidence?

  12. “Oh, what a tangled web we weave…”

    EXCLUSIVE – Petraeus: the Plot Thickens

    By Douglas Lucas and Russ Baker on Feb 5, 2013

    http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/02/05/petraeus-the-plot-thickens-1/

    Excerpt:

    Was the ambitious General David Petraeus targeted for take-down by competing interests in the US military/intelligence hierarchy—years before his abrupt downfall last year in an adultery scandal?

    Previously unreported documents analyzed by WhoWhatWhy suggest as much. They provide new insight into the scandalous extramarital romance that led to Petraeus’s resignation as CIA director in November after several years of rapid rise—going from a little-known general to a prospective presidential candidate in a stunningly brief time frame.

    …

    The Turf War

    Control over US policy in Yemen was at stake, and General Petraeus was right in the midst of it. The CIA and the Pentagon had competing objectives in Yemen. The CIA was pushing Obama to authorize the agency to deploy its pilotless drones against radical Islamist forces, while the military wanted to train and supply Yemeni special forces to handle the country’s problems. Debate raged over whether US drone operations—which often involve civilian casualties—were not just further alienating the local population and thereby playing into those Islamists’ hands. Both sides were leaking information to the press to try to influence the White House, and Petraeus himself was one of the leakers. (Later, as CIA director, Petraeus would advocate for increased use of drones.)

    Email-ID 1204569, sent September 4, 2010, while Petraeus was CENTCOM commander, contains Stratfor analyst Bhalla’s report of a discussion over hookah (“sheesha”) with her “Yemeni diplomat source” and two younger sons of President Saleh.

    She mentions “leaks from a couple weeks ago on CIA recommendations to the [Obama] administration to carry out drone strikes in Yemen,” and says: “There’s a huge turf war between CIA and JSOC over this, which is why all these leaks are coming out,” and notes that

    CENTCOM leaked their rec for $1.2 billion assistance funding for Yemeni special forces (this was all Petraeus, who has a very good relationship with the Yemenis and goes to the Yemeni ambo’s house pretty regularly for dinner.) The Yemenis are nervous about [General James] Mattis taking over Centcom. They could deal well with Petraeus, whom they consider a ‘diplomat.’ Don’t know yet how to read Mattis. …continues…

    (Wikileaks has promised to release additional documents/information early this year… The world is waiting.)

  13. “Various tea party activists, libertarian websites and other conspiracy-minded Obama haters are claiming that Russian security forces have discovered that Obama is about to unleash “death squads” across America to assassinate defenders of the Second Amendment. According to Liberty.com, one of the sites perpetuating this latest story, Russian intelligence has outlined the whole nefarious plot in a memo for President Vladimir Putin, detailing the Obama’s administration’s dispatch of “VIPER teams…which is the acronym for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response Team, a programme run by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and whose agents terrify millions of Americans with Nazi-like Gestapo tactics on a daily basis at airports and who report to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).” Mother Jones

  14. matt, is that ever a rightwing website. Blouise, This blog is no place for a liberal democratic woman.

  20. Maybe it’s not a government of the people for the people and by the people anymore?

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