US memo justifies drone killings
2013-02-05 22:26
Washington - The US government has authorised the killing
of American citizens as part of its controversial drone campaign against al-Qaeda
even without intelligence that such Americans are actively plotting to attack a
US target, according to a justice department memo.
The unclassified memo, first obtained by NBC News, argues
that drone strikes are justified under American law if a targeted US citizen
had "recently" been involved in "activities" posing a
possible threat and provided that there is no evidence suggesting the
individual "renounced or abandoned" such activities.
The document was disclosed as a bipartisan group of US
senators called on the Obama administration to release to Congress "any
and all" legal opinions laying out the government's understanding of what
legal powers the president has to deliberately kill American citizens.
The senators who signed the letter, including members of
the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the administration's co-operation would
"help avoid an unnecessary confrontation that could affect the Senate's
consideration of nominees for national security purposes”.
Obama has nominated John Brennan, his White House
counter-terrorism adviser, who defends drone strikes, to lead the CIA.
An Intelligence Committee confirmation hearing on the
nomination is scheduled for Thursday, and Brennan is likely to face questioning
on drone policy.
One national security official said the leak of the
justice department memo may have been timed to blunt such congressional demands
for the release of additional, possibly classified, documents relating to the
US use of drones.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Democrat who chairs the
Senate Intelligence Committee, in a statement on Tuesday said she had been
calling on the administration to release legal analyses related to the use of
drones for more than a year.
Feinstein said the document published by NBC had been
given to congressional committees last June on a confidential basis, and that
her committee is seeking additional documents, which are believed to remain
classified.
Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday said he was
concerned release of more documents could put sources and operations at risk.
"We'll have to look at this and see how, what it is
we want to do with these memos. But you have to understand that we are talking
about things that are, that go into really kind of how we conduct our offensive
operations against a clear and present danger to this nation," Holder said
at a press conference.
"That is a real concern to reveal sources, to
potentially reveal sources and methods and put at risk the very mechanisms that
we use to try to keep people safe, which is our primary responsibility, he
added.
'Imminent threat'
In the unclassified justice department paper posted by
NBC on its website, the authors laid out three conditions that the executive
branch should meet before a drone strike is ordered.
A top US official must determine that the targeted person
"poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States”,
cannot be captured, and that the strike "would be conducted in a manner
consistent with applicable law of war principles”, the department said.
A justice department spokesperson declined to comment to
Reuters about the report.
The memo is drawing new attention to the 2011 strike that
killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born alleged leader of al-Qaeda's Yemen-based
affiliate who US investigators linked to a botched plot to blow up a US
airliner with a bomb hidden in a man's underwear on Christmas Day, 2009.
Targeted killings, carried out by remotely piloted
unmanned aircraft, are controversial because of the risks to nearby civilians
and because of their increasing use. The UN recently launched an investigation
into their use.
Most such attacks have been carried out by the US, but
Britain and Israel have also used drones.
‘Profoundly disturbing’
Hina Shamsi of the American Civil Liberties Union, which
has sued for more information on the drone programme, called the memo
"profoundly disturbing" and "a stunning overreach of executive
authority”.
Shamsi, head of the ACLU's National Security Project, in
a statement called on the Obama administration to release what she said was a
50-page classified legal document on which the 16-page summary is based.
"Among other things, we need to know if the limits
the executive purports to impose on its killing authority are as loosely
defined as in this summary, because if they are, they ultimately mean
little," she said late on Monday.
The ACLU on Tuesday will also file court papers seeking
to block government efforts to dismiss the group's lawsuit challenging the 2011
killing of Awlaki and two other Americans in Yemen, the statement said.
