* Senators seek more documents
* ACLU calls for release of full legal memo
WASHINGTON, Feb 5 (Reuters) – The U.S. government has
authorized 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S.
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
cooperation 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
counterterrorism 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 U.S. 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
provided to congressional committees last June on a confidential
basis, and that her committee is seeking additional documents,
which are believed to remain classified.
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.
‘IMMINENT THREAT’
A top U.S. 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 spokeswoman declined to comment to
Reuters about the report.
The memo is drawing new attention to the 2011 strike that
killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born alleged leader of Al Qaeda’s
Yemen-based affiliate who U.S. investigators linked to a botched
plot to blow up a U.S. 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 United
Nations recently launched an investigation into their use.
Most such attacks have been carried out by the United
States, but Britain and Israel have also used drones.
Hina Shamsi, The head of the American Civil Liberties
Union’s National Security Project, which has sued for more
information on the drone program, called the memo “profoundly
disturbing” and “a stunning overreach of executive authority.”
The ACLU’s Hina Shamsi 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 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.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey, David Ingram and Mark Hosenball
Editing by Warren Strobel and Vicki Allen)
