Greenwald,
January 2010<...>
But buried in Priest’s article is her revelation that American citizens are now being placed on a secret “hit list” of people whom the President has personally authorized to be killed:
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush gave the CIA, and later the military, authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests, military and intelligence officials said. . . .
The Obama administration has adopted the same stance. If a U.S. citizen joins al-Qaeda, “it doesn’t really change anything from the standpoint of whether we can target them,” a senior administration official said. “They are then part of the enemy.”
<...>
More from the Dana Priest's WaPo article:
<...>
Tenet provided Saleh's forces with helicopters, eavesdropping equipment and 100 Army Special Forces members to train an antiterrorism unit. He also won Saleh's approval to fly Predator drones armed with Hellfire missiles over the country. In November 2002, a CIA missile strike killed six al-Qaeda operatives driving through the desert. The target was Abu Ali al-Harithi, organizer of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole. Killed with him was a U.S. citizen, Kamal Derwish, who the CIA knew was in the car.
Word that the CIA had purposefully killed Derwish drew attention to the unconventional nature of the new conflict and to the secret legal deliberations over whether killing a U.S. citizen was legal and ethical.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush gave the CIA, and later the military, authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests, military and intelligence officials said. The evidence has to meet a certain, defined threshold. The person, for instance, has to pose "a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests," said one former intelligence official.
The Obama administration has adopted the same stance. If a U.S. citizen joins al-Qaeda, "it doesn't really change anything from the standpoint of whether we can target them," a senior administration official said. "They are then part of the enemy."
<...>
So Anwar al-Awlaki wasn't the first U.S. citizen deemed a terrorist to have been killed.
U.S. Citizen Among Those Killed In Yemen Predator Missile StrikeU.S. confirms death of man linked to alleged Buffalo terror cellNYT, 2002:
An American Was Among 6 Killed by U.S., Yemenis SayWASHINGTON, Nov. 7 — One of six people killed recently in Yemen by a United States missile attack may have been an American, possibly one holding dual citizenship, according to administration and Yemeni officials.
The prime target of the missile launched last Sunday from a pilotless Predator aircraft operated by the Central Intelligence Agency was a leader of Al Qaeda named Qaed Senyan al-Harthi, also known as Abu Ali, American officials have said. He was said to be a top leader of Al Qaeda's network in Yemen and one of the highest-ranking dozen or so of the terrorist group's leaders worldwide.
Yemeni and American officials said five other people, described as lower-level Qaeda operatives, were in the car with Mr. Harthi when it was destroyed by the missile as the vehicle drove in a remote region of Yemen. Today, a government newspaper in Yemen identified one of the others as Ahmed Hijazi, who was said to be an American citizen, but said it was not clear whether he was of Yemeni origin.
American officials did not confirm the Yemeni account. Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said the United States did not have enough information to verify whether the person identified by the Yemenis was an American citizen.
<...>
Greenwald,
March 2003<...>
But the Lackawanna Six were brought together by a seventh, shadowy figure named Kamal Derwish. Born in Buffalo, Derwish moved abroad as a kid, spending most of his life in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The pious and intimidating 27-year-old returned to Lackawanna in 1998, where he became the angry conscience of the Muslim community. From the Yemeni owner of the Holland Street deli who sold pork — considered an unclean food in Islam — to the younger men who went out clubbing, Derwish chastised his brethren for straying from the righteous path.
<...>
Recruiter Kamal Derwish might be able to shed light on exactly what the Lackawanna Six were planning, if anything, but his testimony won’t be forthcoming. On Nov. 3, 2002, he was on a remote Yemen highway with the head of al-Qaida’s Yemen operations, long wanted in connection with the attack on the USS Cole.
An unmanned CIA Predator aircraft took aim. A Hellfire missile was fired. Direct hit. Everyone was killed.
Rumors swirl that Juma was arrested in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom and is currently being held in Guatánamo Bay, which the Defense Department will not confirm. Mohamed Albanna — uncle of Jaber Elbaneh, the seventh man — says that he hasn’t heard from his nephew since he left for the camp in 2001. (Mohamed Albanna has his own troubles, of course. In December he and two relatives were arrested as part of “Operation Green Quest,” the federal crackdown on the illegal money-transfer systems in the Muslim world known as hawalas. The three are alleged to have sent almost $500,000 illegally to Yemen.)
<...>
Not a single mention of outrage that a U.S. citizen was killed without due process.
Greenwald,
May 2011...But one policy where Obama has gone further than Bush/Cheney in terms of unfettered executive authority and radical war powers is the attempt to target American citizens for assassination without a whiff of due process...
Greenwald seems to want to make this an "
Obama is worse than Bush," but the policy was, in fact, Bush's.
Here's a PBS
report on Derwish.
<...>
As with many details surrounding the Yemen strike, it remains unclear whether Derwish had been deliberately targeted or even if the U.S. knew he was in the vehicle when it was fired upon.
Regardless, the Bush administration has reportedly given itself the legal authority to use "extreme measures," including the targeted killing of terrorist suspects, whether Americans or foreigners. The authority rests, in part, on the premise that the United States is at war with terrorism, making terrorists "enemy combatants" and therefore lawful targets under the Hague Convention and recognized laws of war, according to legal experts.
Human Rights Watch, a private advocacy group, did not criticize the operation that killed Derwish, saying that the alleged target, Qaed Salim Sinan al Harethi, also known as "Abu Ali," fit the Bush administration's definition of an enemy combatant. They also said that there was apparently no "reasonable law enforcement alternative" to the attack.
However, the group did warn in its "
2003 World Report" that the Yemen strike could create a "huge loophole in due process protections worldwide."
<...>
Human Rights Watch,
2003<...>
The line between war and law enforcement gained importance as the U.S. government extended its military efforts against terrorism outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan. In November, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency used a missile to kill Qaid Salim Sinan al-Harethi, an alleged senior al-Qaeda official, and five companions as they were driving in a remote and lawless area of Yemen controlled by tribal chiefs. Washington accused al-Harethi of masterminding the October 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole which had killed seventeen sailors. Based on the limited information available, Human Rights Watch did not criticize the attack on al-Harethi as an extra-judicial execution because his alleged al-Qaeda role arguably made him a combatant, the government apparently lacked control over the area in question, and there evidently was no reasonable law enforcement alternative. Indeed, eighteen Yemeni soldiers had reportedly been killed in a prior attempt to arrest al-Harethi. However, the U.S. government made no public effort to justify this use of its war powers or to articulate the legal limits to such powers. It is Human Rights Watch's position that even someone who might be classified as an enemy combatant should not be subject to military attack when reasonable law enforcement means are available. The failure to respect this principle would risk creating a huge loophole in due process protections worldwide. It would leave everyone open to being summarily killed anyplace in the world upon the unilateral determination by the United States (or, as the approach is inevitably emulated, by any other government) that he or she is an enemy combatant.
<...>
The appropriate line between war and law enforcement was crossed in the case of Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen who the Bush administration claimed had flown from Pakistan to the United States to investigate creating a radiological bomb. The Bush administration arrested him as he arrived in the United States, but instead of charging him with this serious criminal offense and bringing him to trial, it unilaterally declared him an "enemy combatant." That designation, it claimed, permitted it to hold him without access to counsel and without charge or trial until the end of the war against terrorism, which may never come. With no link to a discernible battlefield, that assertion of power, again, threatens to create a giant exception to the most basic criminal justice guarantees. Anyone could be picked up and detained forever as an "enemy combatant" upon the unverified claim of the Bush administration or any other government. As the year ended, the U.S. courts were considering this radical claim.
(emphasis added)
Evidently, Derwish wasn't the primary target, but it illustrates the problem with claiming that a U.S. citizen actively engaged with al Qaeda can be simply served with an arrest warrant.
ACLU Lens: American Citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi Killed Without Judicial Process Today in Yemen, U.S. air strikes killed American citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi. Al-Aulaqi has never been charged with a crime. Last year, the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights represented Al-Aulaqi's father in a
lawsuit challenging the government's asserted authority to carry out "targeted killings" of U.S. citizens located far from any armed conflict zone. We argued that such killings violate the Constitution and international law, but the case was dismissed in federal court last December.
In response to today's killing of Al-Aulaqi, ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer said:
The targeted killing program violates both U.S. and international law. As we've seen today, this is a program under which American citizens far from any battlefield can be executed by their own government without judicial process, and on the basis of standards and evidence that are kept secret not just from the public but from the courts. The government's authority to use lethal force against its own citizens should be limited to circumstances in which the threat to life is concrete, specific, and imminent. It is a mistake to invest the President — any President — with the unreviewable power to kill any American whom he deems to present a threat to the country.
<...>
(emphasis added)
Secret U.S. memo sanctioned killing of AulaqiThe Justice Department wrote a secret memorandum authorizing the lethal targeting of Anwar al-Aulaqi, the American-born radical cleric who was killed by a U.S. drone strike Friday, according to administration officials.
The document was produced following a review of the legal issues raised by striking a U.S. citizen and involved senior lawyers from across the administration. There was no dissent about the legality of killing Aulaqi, the officials said.
<...>
The Obama administration has spoken in broad terms about its authority to use military and paramilitary force against al-Qaeda and associated forces beyond “hot,” or traditional, battlefields such as Iraq or Afghanistan. Officials said that certain belligerents aren’t shielded because of their citizenship.
<...>
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights argued on behalf of Aulaqi’s father last year that there is no “battlefield” in Yemen and that the administration should be forced to articulate publicly its legal standards for killing any citizen outside the United States who is suspected of terrorism.
<...>
That's basically the ACLU's argument, that there is no "battlefield" in Yemen, and that's
debatable. That argument is also the basis of the claim that Obama has expanded the policy, but, again, it requires accepting that there is no battlefield in Yemen.
When Clinton bombed a target in Afghanistan in an attempt to get Osama bin Laden in 1998, was the country a battlefield?
Any member of al Qaeda can surrender, but it's clear that members of the group risk death because of their ongoing activities. That's not a novel concept, nor is it one limited to post 2001 counterterrorism.
From the 2001
Authorization for Use of Military Force<...>
SEC. 2. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES. (a) IN GENERAL.—That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
<...>
In 1996, Clinton signed the
Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996<...>
The Congress finds that—
(1) international terrorism is among the most serious transnational threats faced by the United States and its allies, far eclipsing the dangers posed by population growth or pollution;
(2) the President should continue to make efforts to counter international terrorism a national security priority;
(3) because the United Nations has been an inadequate forum for the discussion of cooperative, multilateral responses to the threat of international terrorism, the President should undertake immediate efforts to develop effective multilateral responses to international terrorism as a complement to national counter terrorist efforts;
(4) the President should use all necessary means, including covert action and military force, to disrupt, dismantle, and destroy international infrastructure used by international terrorists, including overseas terrorist training facilities and safe havens;
(5) the Congress deplores decisions to ease, evade, or end international sanctions on state sponsors of terrorism, including the recent decision by the United Nations Sanctions Committee to allow airline flights to and from Libya despite Libya’s noncompliance with United Nations resolutions; and
(6) the President should continue to undertake efforts to increase the international isolation of state sponsors of international terrorism, including efforts to strengthen international sanctions, and should oppose any future initiatives to ease sanctions on Libya or other state sponsors of terrorism.
<...>
(emphasis added)
Are training facilities and safe havens battlefields?
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