Obama yields in drone dispute
Senators get secret memo
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama yielded Wednesday to congressional demands that he provide access to a secret legal memo on the targeted killing of American terrorism suspects overseas, avoiding a confrontation that threatened the confirmation of John Brennan as his new CIA director.
Obama directed the Justice Department to hand over the document
to the Senate Intelligence Committee “as part of the president’s ongoing commitment to consult with Congress on national security matters,” an administration official said.
Senate Democrats and Republicans, including several on the Intelligence Committee, had threatened to delay, if not derail, Brennan’s confirmation in a Thursday hearing.
Committee chairman Dianne Feinstein, D- Calif., said she was “pleased” with the decision. “It is critical for the committee’s oversight function to fully understand the legal basis for all intelligence and counterterrorism operations,” Feinstein said.
The memos, written by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, provided the administration’s legal basis for a 2011 CIA drone attack in Yemen that killed U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Obama described Awlaki as the chief of “external operations” for al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.
The administration had described the memo as an internal “work product” that does not have to be shared with Congress.
Lawmakers accused the administration of a lack of transparency and likened its handling of the issue to the refusal of the George W. Bush administration to provide access to legal memos justifying the use of harsh interrogation methods against terrorism suspects. Obama publicly released those memos shortly after taking office in 2009.
Last summer, the Justice Department provided members of the Intelligence and Judiciary committees with a summary of the legal opinion on U. S. citizen killings. But key lawmakers said it was not enough.
In written answers to the Intelligence Committee released by the panel Wednesday in advance of the hearing, Brennan said the CIA should not be in the killing business.
However, he also defended the “astonishing precision” of the armed drones operated by both the intelligence agency and the military.
Asked about the CIA’s expanded role in lethal operations, Brennan replied that the agency needs to maintain a paramilitary capability, but said, “I would not be the director of a CIA that carries out missions that should be carried out by the U.S. military.”
Despite those views, the CIA expanded into a covert air force of remotely piloted planes during Brennan’s tenure as Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser over the past four years.