US memo justifying ‘targeted killings’ released by court

NEW YORK—A secret US government memo outlining the justification for the use of drones to kill American terror suspects abroad was released by court order on Monday, yielding the most detailed, inside look yet at the legal underpinnings of the Obama administration’s program of “targeted killings.”

The 41-page memo—whose contents had previously been summarized and released piecemeal—was heavily redacted for national security reasons, with several entire pages and other passages whited out.

It specifically provided the legal justification for the September 2011 killing in Yemen of Anwar Al-Awlaki, an al-Qaida leader and one-time cleric at a Vir- ginia mosque who had been born in the United States, and another US citizen, Samir Khan, who edited al-Qaida’s Internet magazine. An October 2011 strike also killed Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, al-Awlaki’s teenage son and also a US citizen.

The federal appeals court released the document following a lawsuit from the New York Times and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) demanding to know the basis for the killing of three Americans—none of them ever charged with a crime.

So-called “targeted killings” are the leading tactic in the US war on suspected terrorists in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, but activists say the assassination program is too secret and lacks legal limits.

The memo argues among other things that a targeted killing of a US citizen is permissible under a 2001 law passed by Congress soon after 9/11. That law empowered the president to use force against organizations that planned and committed the attacks.

Jameel Jaffer, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who argued for release of the memo, said the document contains the first formal acknowledgment by the government that the Central Intelligence Agency is involved in the program.

The July 2010 memo was written by a justice department official who is now a federal appeals court judge. It was released after a yearlong legal battle by the New York Times and the ACLU.

Pardiss Kebriaei, a senior attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the memo’s contents showed that the targeted killing program was built on “gross distortions of law.”

Kebriaei estimated that more than 4,000 people may have been killed by drone strikes since 2009.

The lawyer said that although the United States, England and Israel are the only countries that have used drones to kill, other countries soon will have such aircraft of their own.

“The United States loosening and redefining international rules governing the use of force and war is ultimately not going to make anyone any safer,” the lawyer said.