A federal appeals court on Monday made public a previously secret memo detailing the Obama administration’s legal justification for using drones to kill American terror suspects overseas.
The 41-page memo, disclosed in redacted form by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, specifically charts the government’s legal rationale for the September 2011 drone-strike killing in Yemen of Anwar Al-Awlaki, an American-born al-Qaeda leader, and fellow US citizen Samir Khan. A drone strike a month later also killed al-Awlaki’s teenage son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, another U.S. citizen.
“High-level government officials have concluded … [al-Awlaki] is a leader of [al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] whose activities in Yemen pose a ‘continued and imminent threat’ of violence to United States persons and interests,” the July 2010 memo written by Acting Assistant General David Barron states.
“The contemplated [Department of Defense] operation, therefore, would be carried out against someone who is within the core of individuals against whom Congress has authorized the use of necessary and appropriate force.”
Barron was referring to a law enacted after the 9/11 terror attacks that empowered senior government officials to authorize such military force in cases where suspected terrorists are plotting a deadly attack against Americans – even if they’re US citizens.
Al-Awlaki had been involved in an unsuccessful attack against the US and was planning other attacks from his Yemen base, the memo said. This reference is likely referring to al-Awlaki allegedly directing a failed Christmas Day 2009 plot to take down a plane by relying on so-called “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
The document — which was released after the American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Times filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit — defends drone strikes by comparing them to cops using deadly force to thwart suspects when they have “probable cause.”
“This forced transparency comes years late, long after the memo was drafted and used to justify the premeditated killing of a U.S. citizen without trial and far from any battlefield,” said Pardiss Kebriaei, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which filed lawsuits challenging al-Awlaki’s killing.
“Although the American public may now finally start having a more complete debate about this program, the Obama administration’s stonewalling has delayed this conversation for far too long.”
ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer said the memo’s release signifies a “crucial step towards transparency” and that the group “will continue to press” for more information to be released about the top-secret program.
“The drone program has been responsible for the deaths of thousands of people, including countless innocent bystanders, but the American public knows scandalously little about who is being killed and why,” he said.