ACLU sues Obama over refusal to disclose assassination of citizens info

MOST TRANSPARENT ADMIN EVA.



by Karen DeYoung
Wednesday, February 1, 11:50 AM


http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...tack-records/2012/02/01/gIQArL6xhQ_story.html

The American Civil Liberties Union asked a federal court Wednesday to force the Obama administration to release legal and intelligence records related to the killing of three U.S. citizens in drone attacks in Yemen last year.

The <a href="http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/complaint_0.pdf">lawsuit</a>, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, charged the Justice and Defense departments and the CIA with illegally failing to respond to requests made in October under the Freedom of Information Act. It cited public comments made by President Obama, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and other officials in arguing that the government cannot credibly claim a secrecy defense.</p><p>&ldquo;The government&rsquo;s self-serving attitude toward transparency and disclosure is unacceptable,&rdquo; the ACLU said in a <a href="http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/aclu-sues-us-information-targeted-killing-program">statement</a>. &ldquo;Officials cannot be allowed to release bits of information about the targeted killing program when they think it will bolster their position, but refuse even to confirm [its] existence&rdquo; when asked for information &ldquo;in the service of real transparency and accountability.&rdquo;</p><p>In addition to statements by Obama and Panetta, the lawsuit notes that &ldquo;media reports about the targeted killing program routinely quote anonymous government officials describing details of the program.&rdquo;</p><p>The case comes as the administration has been engaged in an internal debate over whether to be more forthcoming about the drone program, and a range of lawmakers and international legal bodies have <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/secrecy-defines-obamas-drone-war/2011/10/28/gIQAPKNR5O_story.html">asked for more information and oversight</a>. The administration has argued in previous legal cases that the covert program cannot be discussed on national security grounds.</p><p>Wednesday&rsquo;s ACLU complaint referred to wide media coverage of the administration&rsquo;s 2010 decision to place <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/anwar-al-aulaqi-us-born-cleric-linked-to-al-qaeda-killed-yemen-says/2011/09/30/gIQAsoWO9K_story.html">Anwar al-Awlaki</a>, a U.S. citizen allegedly allied with Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, on &ldquo;kill lists&rdquo; compiled by the CIA and the military&rsquo;s Joint Special Operations Command. </p><p>Awlaki was killed in September in Yemen by a joint CIA-JSOC drone operation that similarly received wide publicity. </p><p>

<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/checkpoint-washington/post/a-proud-traitor-samir-khan-reported-dead-alongside-aulaqi/2011/09/30/gIQAYhcdAL_blog.html">Samir Khan</a>, also a U.S. citizen, was reported killed in the same attack. Awlaki&rsquo;s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, was <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/anwar-al-awlakis-family-speaks-out-against-his-sons-deaths/2011/10/17/gIQA8kFssL_story.html">reportedly killed in a JSOC drone strike</a> two weeks later.</p><p>At the time, public statements by Obama confirmed the elder Awlaki&rsquo;s death. News reports indicated that the operation had been carried out after the administration requested and received an opinion from the Justice Department&rsquo;s Office of Legal Counsel saying that targeting and killing U.S. citizens overseas was legal under domestic and international law.</p><p>Most recently, Obama <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/after-obamas-remarks-on-drones-white-house-rebuffs-security-questions/2012/01/31/gIQA9s2LgQ_story.html">made extensive comments Monday about the overall drone program</a> &mdash; which has included hundreds of strikes against non-U.S. citizens in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia &mdash; in an online town hall meeting. Panetta discussed it in a Sunday <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57367997/the-defense-secretary-an-interview-with-leon-panetta/?tag=strip">interview on CBS&rsquo;s &ldquo;60 Minutes</a>.&rdquo;</p><p>The ACLU case refers only to the three Yemen killings, the only known cases in which a U.S. citizen was intentionally targeted. </p><p>Despite FOIA requests filed by the ACLU in October for the expedited release of information, &ldquo;the government has refused to release its legal or evidentiary bases&rdquo; for the Yemen strikes, said the ACLU&rsquo;s District Court complaint. &ldquo;It has not explained whether Samir Khan and Abdulrahman al-Awlaki were killed &lsquo;collaterally&rsquo; or were targeted themselves. It has not said what measures, if any, it took to minimize the possibility that individuals not targeted would be killed incidentally.&rdquo;</p><p>The government defendants, including JSOC and Justice&rsquo;s Office of Legal Counsel, &ldquo;have provided varying responses&rdquo; to the FOIA request, &ldquo;either denying it or delaying a response to it,&rdquo; the ACLU complaint said. &ldquo;No agency has released any record in response.&rdquo;</p><p>&ldquo;The request relates to a topic of vital importance: the power of the U.S. government to kill U.S. citizens without presentation of evidence and without disclosing legal standards that guide decision makers,&rdquo; the complaint said.</p><p>In 2010, a federal judge in Washington dismissed a case filed by the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed by Awlaki&rsquo;s father contesting the ability of the American government to place a U.S. citizen on a &ldquo;kill list.&rdquo; The court ruled that the father had no standing in the issue.</p><p>Last year, the ACLU lost a case demanding drone information from the CIA when the same court said administration comments on the drone program were not specific enough to constitute public disclosure. Wednesday&rsquo;s case argues that more recent comments by Obama, Panetta and others make a mockery of that defense.

 

From the ACLU's website

http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/aclu-sues-us-information-targeted-killing-program

<p>Today we <a href="http://www.aclu.org/national-security/aclu-v-department-justice-complaint-0">filed a lawsuit</a> under the Freedom of Information Act to demand that the government release basic &mdash; and accurate &mdash; information about the government&rsquo;s targeted killing program.</p>

​

<p>Our government&rsquo;s deliberate and premeditated killing of American terrorism suspects raises profound questions that ought to be the subject of public debate. Unfortunately the Obama administration has released very little information about the practice &mdash; its official position is that the targeted killing program is a state secret &mdash; and some of the information it has released has been misleading.</p>
<p>Our suit overlaps with the one recently <a href="http://www.medialaw.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Publications1/MLRC_MediaLawDaily/Attachments3/times_v_state_dept_complaint.pdf">filed by <em>The New York Times</em></a> insofar as it seeks the legal memos on which the targeted killing program is based. But our suit is broader. We&rsquo;re seeking, in addition to the legal memos, the government&rsquo;s evidentiary basis for strikes that killed three Americans in Yemen in the fall of 2011. We&rsquo;re also seeking information about the process by which the administration adds Americans to secret government &ldquo;kill lists.&rdquo; We think it&rsquo;s crucial that the administration release the legal memos, but we don&rsquo;t think the memos alone will allow the public to evaluate the lawfulness and wisdom of the program.</p>
<p>We know something about the fall 2011 strikes from media reports. On September 30, the CIA and the military&rsquo;s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) jointly carried out the targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen born in New Mexico, using missiles fired from unmanned drones in Yemen. A second U.S. citizen, Samir Khan, was killed in the same attack. Two weeks later, Anwar al-Awlaki&rsquo;s son, Abdulrahman, a 16-year-old U.S. citizen born in Colorado, was killed in another U.S. drone strike elsewhere in Yemen. The administration has not adequately explained the legal basis for these strikes, and it has not explained the factual basis, either.</p>
<p>Soon after the fall 2011 strikes, we submitted a <a href="http://www.aclu.org/national-security/foia-request-regarding-targeted-killing-anwar-al-awlaki">FOIA request</a> to the CIA, Department of Defense, and Department of Justice (DOJ). Three months later, we have yet to receive a single document in response. Outrageously, the <a href="http://www.aclu.org/national-security/central-intelligence-agency-response-al-awlaki-foia-request">CIA</a> and the DOJ <a href="http://www.aclu.org/national-security/doj-office-legal-counsel-response-al-awlaki-foia-request">Office of Legal Counsel</a> responded by refusing to confirm or deny the existence or nonexistence of records responsive to our request. Essentially, these agencies are saying the targeted killing program is so secret that they can&rsquo;t even acknowledge that it exists.</p>
<p align="center"><img src="http://www.aclu.org/files/images/safefree/cia-glomar-image-for-blog.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>This response is incredible, in the original sense of that word&mdash;it simply lacks credibility. The press has reported since early 2010 that Anwar al-Awlaki had been placed on &ldquo;kill lists&rdquo; maintained by the <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/06/world/la-fg-yemen-cleric7-2010apr07">CIA</a> and <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/26/AR2010012604239.html">JSOC</a>, and articles have discussed in detail the <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/05/us-cia-killlist-idUSTRE79475C20111005">secret process</a> by which he was placed there. After the killings of the three U.S. citizens last fall, newspapers reported extensive details about the strikes, including how the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/strike-on-aulaqi-demonstrates-collaboration-between-cia-and-military/2011/09/30/gIQAD8xHBL_story.html">CIA and JSOC</a> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/under-obama-an-emerging-global-apparatus-for-drone-killing/2011/12/13/gIQANPdILP_story.html">coordinated</a> and the number of drones involved. The <em>Times</em> described a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/world/middleeast/secret-us-memo-made-legal-case-to-kill-a-citizen.html">&ldquo;secret&rdquo; OLC memo</a> that lays out the Administration&rsquo;s legal justifications for placing al-Awlaki on the kill lists and killing him. Much of the reporting was based on statements by government officials, albeit officials who were unwilling to be quoted for attribution.</p>
<p>Some officials, including President Obama, have spoken on the record about the program. They have <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/09/30/remarks-president-change-office-chairman-joint-chiefs-staff-ceremony">publicly claimed responsibility</a> for <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/44/post/obama-on-tonight-show-with-jay-leno-full-video-and-transcript/2011/10/26/gIQAHXJjIM_blog.html">killing al-Awlaki</a>, and they have more generally defended the government&rsquo;s <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/obama-lawyers-citizens-targeted-war-us-154313473.html">right to kill citizens</a> after a secret non-judicial process. Just last week, <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7396830n">Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta acknowledged on 60 Minutes</a> that the U.S. can and does carry out targeted killings of U.S. citizens subject to the recommendations of the CIA Director and the Secretary of Defense and pursuant to the President&rsquo;s authorization. And this week, President Obama <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/world/middleeast/civilian-deaths-due-to-drones-are-few-obama-says.html?_r=2">publicly defended</a> the CIA targeted killing program in a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeTj5qMGTAI&amp;feature=channel_video_title">live internet interview</a> [starts at minute 26:30].</p>
<p>The government&rsquo;s <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/06/opinion/la-oe-jaffer-nationalsecurity-20110406">self-serving attitude</a> toward transparency and disclosure is unacceptable. Officials cannot be allowed to release bits of information about the targeted killing program when they think it will bolster their position, but refuse even to confirm the existence of a targeted killing program when organizations like the ACLU or journalists file FOIA requests in the service of real transparency and accountability. One news report indicates that the Obama administration <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/01/22/obama-team-to-break-silence-on-al-awlaki-killing.html">may be planning to release more information</a> about the targeted killing program. Let&rsquo;s hope that&rsquo;s true. The public has a right to know the evidence and legal basis for the deliberate targeted killing of U.S. citizens. So chilling a power must be opened to public scrutiny and debate.</p>