DOJ’s Defense of Drone-Killing American Alleged Terrorist Without Trial: Because War

Today, in response to lawsuits filed by the
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and The New York
Times, the Obama administration has finally released an
important memo written by the Department of Justice explaining the
legal authority to use drones to sometimes kill Americans without
the benefit of a trial first. Anwar Al-Awlaki was an American
citizen and also allegedly a terrorist organizer for Al Qaeda,
killed in a drone strike in 2011 in Yemen.

The administration had been fighting the memo’s release and
losing. Today a redacted version of the memo was released. The ACLU
has it posted
here (the memo actually begins on page 67, following a lengthy
court ruling). The “too long; didn’t read” version: The
Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) that gave us wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan gave the administration permission to pursue
and capture or kill members of Al Qaeda; Al-Awlaki was a member of
Al Qaeda; therefore, killing was legal.

Al-Awlaki’s Fourth Amendment right to due process is brought up
toward the end. The Justice Department argues here that capturing
Al-Awlaki was infeasible, yet he presented a threat to the United
States as “continued” and “imminent,” therefore lethal force was
justified.

What sort of continued and imminent threat did Al-Awlaki present
from Yemen? Don’t know. That part is all redacted. The
justification of why the CIA pursued this course of action is also
almost entirely redacted. Even with the memo, we actually don’t
learn anything new from a leak of a similar memo NBC published

last year. We don’t know why Al-Awlaki was considered to be an
imminent threat and why this drone strike was the only way the
Obama administration believed it needed to deal with him.

Also note that the memo is entirely only about the execution of
Al-Awlaki. The United States has killed four Americans abroad with
drone strikes, including Al-Awlaki’s teenage son. The son was not
purposefully targeted, but was killed two weeks after his father’s
death after running off to Yemen. He had no known connections to
terrorism himself.

The ACLU, in a release, said it would
push for more information to be made public:

“We will continue to press for the release of other documents
relating to the targeted-killing program, including other legal
memos and documents relating to civilian casualties.” [ACLU Deputy
Legal Director Jameel] Jaffer said.

“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.”