Yesterday I
noted that President Obama has not acknowledged any geographic
limit on his purported power to kill people he believes to be
members or allies of Al Qaeda, although in practice his
administration has treated suspected terrorists within the United
States as criminal defendants rather than enemy combatants. At
yesterday’s
confirmation hearing for John O. Brennan, the counterterrorism
adviser Obama has picked to run the CIA, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)
had the following exchange
with Brennan:
Wyden: I’m also convinced there are parts
of drone policy that can be declassified consistent with national
security, and I hope that you will work with me on that if you are
confirmed.
Let me ask you several other questions with regard to the
president’s authority to kill Americans. I’ve asked you how much
evidence the president needs to decide that a particular American
can be lawfully killed and whether the administration believes that
the president can use this authority inside the United States. In
my judgment, both the Congress and the public need to understand
the answers to these kind of fundamental questions.
What do you think needs to be done to make sure that members of
the public understand more about when the government thinks it’s
allowed to kill them, particularly with respect to those two
issues, the question of evidence and the authority to use this
power within the United States?
Brennan: I have been a strong proponent of
trying to be as open as possible with these programs as far as our
explaining what we’re doing. What we need to do is optimize
transparency on these issues but at the same time optimize secrecy
and the protection of our national security. I don’t think that
it’s one or the other. It’s trying to optimize both of them. And so
what we need to do is make sure we explain to the American people
what are the thresholds for action, what are the procedures, the
practices, the processes, the approvals, the reviews?
The Office of Legal Counsel advice establishes the legal
boundaries within which we can operate. It doesn’t mean that we
operate at those…boundaries. And in fact, I think the American
people would be quite pleased to know that we’ve been very
disciplined, very judicious and we only use these authorities and
these capabilities as a last resort.
It is striking that Brennan, who just before this exchange
complained that people “are reacting to a lot of falsehoods” about
Obama’s “targeted killing” program, did not take this opportunity
to declare that the president does not think he has
the authority to order the summary execution of suspected
terrorists within the United States. Is that a secret too?You might surmise from the scenario described in
the Justice Department white paper
that was leaked this week—a senior, operational leader of Al Qaeda
or an allied group who poses an “imminent threat” and whose capture
is “infeasible”—that targeted killings within the United States are
out of bounds. But the white paper itself
makes it clear that there may be other circumstances where
killing an American citizen is OK. There clearly are other
circumstances where
killing foreigners is OK.Brennan’s idea of open and transparent government boils down to
this: Trust us. That is what he means when he talks about
explaining “the procedures, the practices, the processes, the
approvals, [and] the reviews” that precede one of the president’s
death warrants. Once people understand the “extensive
process” that’s involved—behind closed doors and entirely
within the executive branch—they will stop worrying about the Fifth
Amendment and go back to their reality shows. The one thing Brennan
and his boss adamantly refuse to discuss is the evidence that leads
them to convict someone of a crime punishable by death. You just
have to take their word that in any given case they have
plenty. The New York Times reports
that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence (which held yesterday’ s hearing), “said
she would review proposals to create a court to oversee targeted
killings.” Yet Feinstein herself does not seem to think any sort of
judicial review is necessary:
She defended the agency’s record on the strikes, saying the
number of civilians killed each year has been “in the single
digits.” A reporter pointed out that she has accused the agency of
lying for years about its interrogation program and asked how she
could have such confidence in its claims on casualties in the drone
program. “I am confident of those figures until I am not confident
of them,” she said.
That’s not terribly reassuring, especially coming from a
legislator who is still confident that
banning barrel shrouds will stop mass shootings. The Bureau of
Investigative Journalism counts
hundreds of civilians killed by U.S. strikes in Pakistan, Yemen,
and Somalia during the last decade, which casts doubt on
Feinstein’s claim that the annual toll is “in the single digits.”
More to the point, Feinstein simply assumes that the people who are
deliberately killed by drones had it coming—the very claim
that due process is supposed to establish.
This article is from:
Does Obama Think He Can Order Hits on Americans Inside the U.S.?
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