Obama's assassination policy

This Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder defined due process for the execution of a US citizen as being a secret process in the Executive Branch to decide someone is a "terrorist" who should be killed. No indictments, no presentation of evidence to courts or the public, no fuss, no regrets, no accountability.

The President gave a press conference on Tuesday. None of the press questioners could rouse themselves to question him about it.

And, yes, this particular abusive and un-Constitutional use of Executive power is one that no even Dick Cheney claimed. This leads to a bad end. This disregard of Constitutional limitations on Executive power and warmaking are very much part of what lead Constitutional scholar and Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama to adopt the disastrous Look Forward, Not Back policy that gave Bush officials a pass on torture and assorted other crimes. This process leads only to worse and worse problems until its reversed. It's a breach of the Constitution, and a breach of the rule of law. The fact that any Republican President is likely to be worse doesn't mitigate the seriousness of Obama's policy; it only makes it worse, because it provides political and (to a certain extent) legal cover for more abusive practices in the future by both Republicans and Democrats. It's wrong. And the consequences are seriously bad.

Alyona Minkovski interviews human rights attorney and activist Scott Horton on the policy in The Obama Admins 'Death Committee' The Alyona Show 03/06/2012:



Here's a selection of critical commentary on this issue:

Emily Bazelon, Not-So-Innocent Abroad Slate 03/06/2012

Glenn Greenwald, Attorney General Holder defends execution without charges Salon 03/06/2012

Marcy Wheeler, Emptywheel: How Good Are DOJ’s Reasons for Burying Its Case against Anwar al-Awlaki? 03/05/2012; Eric Holder’s View on National Security: Three Branches. Except for When the Third becomes Inconvenient. 03/05/2012; Congress and Killing Oversight: Eric Holder v. Ron Wyden 03/05/2012; Holder’s Unproven Claims about Anwar al-Awlaki the AQAP Leader 03/05/2012

Abdon M. Pallasch, NU law profs’ questions for Attorney General Holder go unanswered Chicago Sun-Times 03/06/2012:

Professor Joseph Margulies has defended six detainees at Guantanamo and freed five of them.

When many of the professors, students and other listeners rose to give Holder a standing ovation before he spoke, Margulies remained seated, saying he wanted to hear what Holder said first.

"I was disappointed. I defy anyone to read that speech and show any differences between Obama and Bush on these issues," Margulies said. "They both say we are in a war not confined to particular battlefield. ... Both say we can target citizens without judicial oversight and that can happen anywhere in the world[.]"

Peter Van Buren, We Take Care of Our Own: Eric Holder and the End of Rights Huffington Post 03/07/2012:

Like most of the Bill of Rights, the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution is beautiful in its brevity and clarity. When you are saying something true, pure, clean and right, you often do not need many words: "... nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

There are no footnotes in the Fifth Amendment, no caveats, no secret memos, no exceptions for war, terrorism, mass rape, creation of concentration camps, acts of genocide, child torture or any evil. Those things are unnecessary, because in the beauty of what Lincoln offered to his audience as "a government of the people, by the people, for the people," the government would be made up of us, the purpose of government was to serve us, and the government would be beholden to us. Such a government would be incapable of killing its own citizens without care and debate and open trial.

With the excuse all tyrants proclaim, protecting the nation, on or about September 30, 2011 a U.S. drone fired a missile in Yemen and killed American Citizen Anwar al Awlaki, born in the United States and tragically devoted to al Qaeda. About a week later, the U.S. murdered al Awaki's 16 year old son. The U.S. had shot at the elder al Awlaki before, on May 7, 2011 under Obama's orders, and under the Bush administration. Before the U.S. government killed his son, attorneys for al Awlaki's father tried to persuade a U.S. District Court to issue an injunction preventing the government killing of al Awlaki. A judge dismissed the case, ruling the father did not have standing to sue. This was the first time in our nation's history that a father sought to sue to prevent the government from extra-legally killing his son. The judge in the case surrendered to his post-9/11 fear and wrote that it was up to the elected branches of government, not the courts, to determine whether the United States has the authority to murder its own citizens by decree.

Tags: obama administration, targeted assassination, war powers

The Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan assassinations (5)

Scott Horton appeared on RT's The Alyona Show talking about the Awlaki/Khan assassination (the video is dated 10/04/2011 at the show's YouTube channel):



He comments on it at his blog, The Secret Al-Awlaki Memo No Comment 10/03/2011:

The major questions following al-Awlaki’s death are simple: Why has the Obama Administration failed to make public its rationale for the strike, including the considerations that led it to the conclusion that it can use lethal force against a U.S. citizen under such circumstances? And why has it kept the Justice Department memorandum a secret?

This practice of the Obama Administration, continuing the policy of the previous Cheney-Bush Administration, is very dangerous. The RT video at around 7:15 shows Dick Cheney demanding an apology from the Obama Administration for criticizing their illegal policies because he's continuing so many of them. And, so far as we know, event he Cheney-Bush Administration never ordered a specific hit on an American citizen.

Tags: anwar al-awlaki, assassination, targeted assassination, samir khan

The Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan assassinations (4)

Reuters has a report from Mark Hosenball on the extralegal process the President uses to decide which American citizens should be assassinated without so much as the pretence of legal process, Secret panel can put Americans on "kill list' 10/05/2011:

American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.

There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House's National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.

The panel was behind the decision to add Awlaki, a U.S.-born militant preacher with alleged al Qaeda connections, to the target list. He was killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen late last month.

The role of the president in ordering or ratifying a decision to target a citizen is fuzzy. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to discuss anything about the process.

This last is most likely a Mob-like legal dodge designed to minimize the potential legal liability of the President if the participants in this for-real "death panel" ever get caught up in the rule of law. Hosenball reports further:

Several officials said that when Awlaki became the first American put on the target list, Obama was not required personally to approve the targeting of a person. But one official said Obama would be notified of the principals' decision. If he objected, the decision would be nullified, the official said.

A former official said one of the reasons for making senior officials principally responsible for nominating Americans for the target list was to "protect" the president.

It's hard to put any good face on this. It's lynch law, which the Republican are glad to have the African-American President validate, even as they smear him as a Kenyan Marxist Islamunofascist who hates America and white people. As Scott Lemieux puts it (The Star Chamber Lawyers Guns and Money 10/06/2011):

If you think this process isn’t an invitation for the worst sort of abuses, you must have been in a coma for most of the last decade. And it is striking how spotty and lacking in specifics about actual terrorist activity even the unrebutted, unchecked case against Awlaki is.

The latter comment may refer to the discussion of the allegations in the Reuters article.

Glenn Greenwald asks the obvious rhetorical question (Execution by secret WH committee Salon 10/05/2011):

So a panel operating out of the White House — that meets in total secrecy, with no known law or rules governing what it can do or how it operates — is empowered to place American citizens on a list to be killed by the CIA, which (by some process nobody knows) eventually makes its way to the President, who is the final Decider. It is difficult to describe the level of warped authoritarianism necessary to cause someone to lend their support to a twisted Star Chamber like that; I genuinely wonder whether the Good Democrats doing so actually first convince themselves that if this were the Bush White House’s hit list, or if it becomes Rick Perry’s, they would be supportive just the same. Seriously: if you’re willing to endorse having White House functionaries meet in secret — with no known guidelines, no oversight, no transparency — and compile lists of American citizens to be killed by the CIA without due process, what aren’t you willing to support? [my emphasis]

Obviously, someone who supports this is operating on an authoritarian assumption under which there can be no legal or moral objection to Presidential assassination orders. In the case of Democratic supporters, they are presumably doing so out of loyalty to the Democratic President and in deference to the national security establishment.

In the case of Republicans, their primary loyalty seems to be to the Party itself, as well as to the national security establishment, although they expect the latter to be subordinate to the Party, as well. What Dick Cheney need to establish his Unilateral Executive firmly as official practice was a successor President to validate it. As Greenwald also asks:

Even for those deeply cynical about American political culture: wouldn’t you have thought a few years ago that having the President create a White House panel to place Americans on a CIA hit list — in secret, without a shred of due process — would be a bridge too far?

The process has worked like this, with some of the steps occurring simultaneously:

• Cheney and Bush establish the torture policy, which included murdering prisoners and torturing American citizens (e.g., John Walker Lindh and José Padilla)

• Cheney and Bush establish a kangaroo court system outside the official civilians and military courts

• Cheney and Bush practice indefinite detention

• Cheney and Bush defend the torture policy under a effectively unlimited theory of Presidential power (the Unitary Executive, aptly called the Unilateral Executive by Al Gore)

• Cheney and Bush Make federal legal officials complicit in the crimes

• Cheney and Bush claim very expansive Executive secrecy claims

• The Obama Administration avoids prosecution of the torture crimes

• The Obama Administration continues key elements of the policy like the secret prisons, which virtually guarantee that torture will occur

• The Obama Administration makes even more expansive secrecy claims than the Cheney-Bush Administration

• The Obama Administration claims the right to assassinate American citizens accused of being enemies of the US with no legal process or judicial review

• The Obama Administration carries out such an assassination

Of course, all of this takes place in the context of the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, now the Libya War and the wide range of domestic and international activities known as the War on Terror.

Samir Khan was apparently not on that secret hit list of American citizens. But he was an American citizen and he is dead, killed in the attack on Awlaki. The Charlotte Observer reports on Khan's family's public reaction to his killing in U.S. actions 'appall' family of slain al-Qaida blogger by Tim Funk 10/06/2011. They released the following statement which, whatever kind of person Khan actually was and whatever he may have done, are entirely valid questions:

"We, the family of Samir Khan, in our time of grief and mourning, request that the media let us have our peace and privacy during this difficult time. It has been stated in the media that Samir was not the target of the attack; however no U.S. official has contacted us with any news about the recovery of our son's remains, nor offered us any condolences. As a result, we feel appalled by the indifference shown to us by our government.

"Being a law abiding citizen of the United States our late son Samir Khan never broke any law and was never implicated of any crime. The Fifth Amendment states that no citizen shall be 'deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law' yet our government assassinated two of its citizens. Was this style of execution the only solution? Why couldn't there have been a capture and trial? Where is the justice? As we mourn our son, we must ask these questions."

Funk's report notes what a landmark the Awlaki-Khan assassination was:

Friday's drone attack is thought to be the first instance in which a U.S. citizen was tracked and killed based on secret intelligence and the president's say-so. Al-Awlaki was placed on the CIA "kill or capture" list by the Obama administration in April 2010 - the first American to be so targeted.

This isn't an obscure procedural issue. The President has no authority to order an American citizen assassinated. In fact, it's illegal. No formal charges were ever brought against the two Americans summarily executed. Nor does the evidence in the public record indicate that they committed a capital crime, if indeed they committed a capital crime at all.

My understanding is that both men did advocate the killing of innocent Americans. If so, that's obviously wrong and contemptible. But under American law advocating the use of political violence in the abstract, even advocating criminal action like killing innocents in the abstract, is not a crime. But the sketchiness of the actual evidence in the public record can be seen in the Reuters report. Greenwald elaborates on that point in his column:

What's crucial to keep in mind is that nobody can see this "evidence" which these anonymous government officials are claiming exists. It's in their exclusive possession. As a result, they're able to characterize it however they want, to present it in the best possible light to support their pro-assassination position, and to prevent any detection of its flaws. As any lawyer will tell you, anyone can make a case for anything when they're in exclusive possession of all the relevant evidence and are the only side from whom one is hearing; all evidence becomes less compelling when it's subjected to adversarial scrutiny. Yet even given all those highly favorable pro-government conditions here, it’s obvious — even these officials admit — that the evidence is "partial," "patchy," based on "suspicions" rather than knowledge. [emphasis in original]

This assassinating American citizens is bad stuff. And this assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan sets a seriously, seriously bad precedent for far more deadly and abusive actions by this and future Presidents.

Tags: anwar al-awlaki, assassination, targeted assassination, samir khan

The Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan assassinations (3)

The Presidential-ordered assassination of American citizens Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan in Yemen, neither of them so much as indicted for actual crimes, is a further serious corruption of the US Constitutional system. The Executive Branch has neither the legal nor Constitutional authority to target individual Americans for assassinations, within or outside the borders of the country. The idea that the President can order a hit on anyone he pleases, including an American citizen, goes to the heart of the rule of law, just as does the torture policy initiated by the Cheney-Bush Administration.

Michael Ratner, the president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, writes on The Extrajudicial Drone Murder of US Citizen Anwar al-Awlaki Alternet 10/02/2011:

The claim, after the fact, by President Obama that Awlaki "operationally directed efforts" to attack the United States was never presented to a court before he was placed on the "kill" list and is untested. Even if President Obama's claim has some validity, unless Awlaki's alleged terrorists actions were imminent and unless deadly force employed as a last resort, this killing constitutes murder.

We know the government makes mistakes, lots of them, in giving people a "terrorist" label. Hundreds of men were wrongfully detained at Guantánamo. Should this same government, or any government, be allowed to order people's killing without due process?

The dire implications of this killing should not be lost on any of us. There appears to be no limit to the president's power to kill anywhere in the world, even if it involves killing a citizen of his own country. Today, it's in Yemen; tomorrow, it could be in the UK or even in the United States. [my emphasis]

Daphne Evitar back last December noted the problematic nature of the federal court decision that blocked a challenge by Awlaki's father to the assassination order in Al-Awlaki Decision Leaves Key Questions Unanswered Human Rights First 12/07/2011:

"How is it that judicial approval is required when the United States decides to target a U.S. citizen overseas for electronic surveillance, but ... judicial scrutiny is prohibited when the United States decides to target a U.S. citizen overseas for death?"

That's just one of many intriguing questions raised - but not answered - by the D.C. District Court today in its decision dismissing the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, a challenge to the government's authorization to kill a U.S. citizen allegedly tied to Al Qaeda overseas. Ultimately, the court won’t answer any of these critical questions because it decided that Al-Awlaki's father lacks standing to sue, since he’s not directly harmed by the U.S. action.

Significantly, though, Judge John Bates did not dismiss the case on the merits. Instead, he went out of his way to write that the case raises important legal questions regarding whether the government can target its own citizen for death in a foreign country without so much as a hearing to determine that he's done anything wrong. [my emphasis]

Neither the torture crimes nor the assassination policy are going away. There has to be a real accounting for both. And an end to both.

Tags: anwar al-awlaki, assassination, targeted assassination, samir khan

Presidential hit lists for American citizens

Glenn Greenwald weighs in on the Obama Administration failed assassination attempt on the American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in U.S. tries to assassinate U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki Salon 05/07/2011. Such a power was always implicit in Dick Cheney's Unitary Executive theory of Presidential power. But it was the Obama Administration, so far as we know, that first made it operational for the President to decide to execute American citizens without a trial or formal legal charges. As Greenwald says, "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." A Presidential hit list of four American citizens was first reported by the Washington Post in 2010.

There are certain civil liberties debates where, even though I hold strong opinions, I can at least understand the reasoning and impulses of those who disagree; the killing of bin Laden was one such instance. But the notion that the President has the power to order American citizens assassinated without an iota of due process -- far from any battlefield, not during combat -- is an idea so utterly foreign to me, so far beyond the bounds of what is reasonable, that it's hard to convey in words or treat with civility. ...

And if someone is willing to vest in the President the power to assassinate American citizens without a trial far from any battlefield -- if someone believes that the President has that power: the power of unilaterally imposing the death penalty and literally acting as judge, jury and executioner -- what possible limits would they ever impose on the President's power? There cannot be any. Or if someone is willing to declare a citizen to be a "traitor" and demand they be treated as such -- even though the Constitution expressly assigns the power to declare treason to the Judicial Branch and requires what we call "a trial" with stringent evidence requirements before someone is guilty of treason -- how can any appeals to law or the Constitution be made to a person who obviously believes in neither? [emphasis in original]

This is one of the biggest reasons to be skeptical on the prospect of Obama taking the opportunity of Bin Laden's death to withdraw from Afghanistan and otherwise dial back the War On Terror. Glenn Greenwald is also extremely skeptical on that point:

A civil liberties lawyer observed by email to me last night that now that Obama has massive political capital and invulnerable Tough-on-Terror credentials firmly in place, there are no more political excuses for what he does (i.e., he didn't really want to do that, but he had to in order not to be vulnerable to GOP political attacks that he's Weak). In the wake of the bin Laden killing, he's able to do whatever he wants now -- ratchet down the aggression or accelerate it -- and his real face will be revealed by his choices (for those with doubts about what that real face is). Yesterday's attempt to exterminate an American citizen who has long been on his hit list -- far from any battlefield, not during combat, and without even a pretense of due process -- is likely to be but a first step in that direction. [emphasis in original]

Tags: glenn greenwald, targeted assassination

American citizen Dangerous terrorist almost assassinated

Margaret Coker, et al, reported for Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal that the Obama Administration just tried but failed to assassinate US citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki: Strike Marked Yemeni Cleric 05/06/2011. Despite the Murdoch-y headline, Al-Awlaki is a US citizen. Here's how they report it, relying on an anonymous "Yememi account," whatever that may mean:

According to a Yemeni account of Thursday's strike, the U.S. launched two separate attacks aimed at Mr. Awlaki in the southern province of Shebwa, which is considered an AQAP [Al Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula] stronghold.

The missiles killed two suspected AQAP members but missed their intended target, Mr. Awlaki. Although the strike was conducted by the military, the operation—like the bin Laden raid—appears to be the result of close cooperation between the Department of Defense, the CIA and Yemeni officials.

Yemen officials said the U.S. fired twice at Mr. Awlaki in two attacks spread over about 45 minutes. In the first, the U.S. fired three rockets at a pickup truck in which Mr. Awlaki and a Saudi national and suspected al Qaeda member were traveling outside the village of Jahwa, located some 20 miles away from the Shebwa provincial capital, according to local residents and the Yemeni security official.

Two Yemeni brothers, who were known by local residents for giving shelter to al Qaeda militants, rushed to the scene of the attack. Mr. Awlaki switched vehicles with them, leaving the two Yemenis in the pickup. A single missile from the U.S. rocket then hit the pickup truck, killing the Yemenis inside.

Mr. Awlaki escaped in the other vehicle.

The writers draw this conclusion:

The strike sends a clear message that despite turmoil in the Middle East and the success of the bin Laden operation, the U.S. is resolved to ratchet up an aggressive campaign targeting Mr. Awlaki and other members of his group.

They repeat the US claims about Al-Awlaki and his supposed role with the so-called Al Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula group.

But this is problematic, to put it mildly. This is an American citizen who has been sentenced to death by assassination by the US government, with no trial and no judicial vetting of the evidence by which he has been sentenced to death.

And not to worry about the two brothers who were erroneously killed instead. According to the Journal, they were "known by local residents for giving shelter to al Qaeda militants," so they obviously deserved to die anyway. At least that's the logic of the targeted-assassination world. If we believe the anonymous "Yememi account." And the US government's un-vetted evidence against Al-Awlaki.

For now, the Global War On Terror goes forward!

Tags: anwar al-awlaki,, global war on terror, targeted assassination