Judge: Feds can hide rationale for killing U.S. citizen [View all]
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
A Bay Area federal judge says the Obama administration can keep secret a memo spelling out the legal rationale for a 2011 drone attack in Yemen that killed a U.S. citizen and alleged terrorist mastermind.
The Justice Department was entitled to withhold the memo on the grounds of national security and lawyer-client confidentiality, Chief U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken of Oakland said Friday.
Although U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and other Obama administration officials have made public statements justifying drone strikes, Wilken said none of them was specific enough for her to rule against the government's claim of secrecy and require officials to disclose the legal rationale for the Yemen attack.
The ruling dismissed a suit by the First Amendment Coalition, an open-government advocacy group in San Rafael. The organization sued after a September 2011 drone strike in Yemen that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born Muslim cleric whom authorities suspected of organizing an attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner in 2009. Another U.S. citizen was also killed in the drone attack, and Awlaki's U.S.-born, 16-year-old son was killed by a drone in Yemen the following month.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Judge-Feds-can-hide-rationale-for-killing-U-S-5401933.php
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