How many Americans are targeted for assassination?
BY GLENN GREENWALD
When The Washington Post's Dana Priest first revealed (in passing) back in January that the Obama administration had compiled a hit list of American citizens targeted for assassination, she wrote that "as of several months ago, the CIA list included three U.S. citizens." In April, both the Post and the NYT confirmed that the administration had specifically authorized the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki. Today, The Washington Times' Eli Lake has an interview with Obama's top Terrorism adviser John Brennan in which Brennan strongly suggests that the number of U.S. citizens targeted for assassination could actually be "dozens":

Dozens of Americans have joined terrorist groups and are posing a threat to the United States and its interests abroad, the president's most senior adviser on counterterrorism and homeland security said Thursday. . . . "There are, in my mind, dozens of U.S. persons who are in different parts of the world, and they are very concerning to us," said John O. Brennan, deputy White House national security adviser for homeland security and counterterrorism. . . .

"If a person is a U.S. citizen, and he is on the battlefield in Afghanistan or Iraq trying to attack our troops, he will face the full brunt of the U.S. military response," Mr. Brennan said. "If an American person or citizen is in a Yemen or in a Pakistan or in Somalia or another place, and they are trying to carry out attacks against U.S. interests, they also will face the full brunt of a U.S. response. And it can take many forms."

Nobody -- or at least not me -- disputes the right of the U.S. or any other country to kill someone on an actual battlefield during war without due process. That's just obvious, but that's not remotely what Brennan is talking about, and it's not remotely what this assassination program is about. Indeed, Brennan explicitly identified two indistinguishable groups of American citizens who "will face the full brunt of a U.S. response": (1) those "on the battlefield in Afghanistan or Iraq"; and (2) those "in a Yemen or in a Pakistan or in Somalia or another place." In other words, the entire world is a "battlefield" -- countries where there is a war and countries where there isn't -- and the President's "battlefield" powers, which are unlimited, extend everywhere. That theory -- the whole world is a battlefield, even the U.S. -- was the core premise that spawned 8 years of Bush/Cheney radicalism, and it has been adopted in full by the Obama administration (indeed, it was that "whole-world-is-a-battlefield" theory which Elena Kagan explicitly endorsed during her confirmation hearing for Solicitor General).

Anyone who doubts that the Obama administration has adopted the core Terrorism policies of Bush/Cheney should listen to the concession -- or boast -- which Brennan himself made in his interview with Lake:

Mr. Brennan toward the end of the interview acknowledged that, despite some differences, there is considerable continuity between the counterterrorism policies of President Bush and President Obama.

"There has been a lot of continuity of effort here from the previous administration to this one," he said. "There are some important distinctions, but sometimes there is too much made of those distinctions. We are building upon some of the good foundational work that has been done."

I would really like never to hear again the complaint that comparing Bush and Obama's Terrorism and civil liberties policies is unfair, invalid or hyperbolic given that Obama's top Terrorism adviser himself touts that comparison. And that's anything but a surprise, given that Brennan was a Bush-era CIA official who defended many of the most controversial Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies.

I've written at length about the reasons why targeting American citizens for assassination who are far away from a "battlefield" is so odious and tyrannical, and I won't repeat those arguments here. Suffice to say -- and I'm asking this literally -- if you're someone who believes, or are at least willing to acquiesce to the claim, that the U.S. President has the power to target your fellow citizens for assassination without a whiff of due process, what unchecked presidential powers wouldn't you support or acquiesce to? I'd really like to hear an answer to that. That's the question Al Gore asked about George Bush in a 2006 speech condemning Bush's claimed powers merely to eavesdrop on and imprison American citizens without charges, let alone assassinate them: "If the answer is yes, then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited? . . . If the president has th[is] inherent authority. . . . then what can't he do?" Can anyone defending this Obama policy answer that question?

One other thing that is truly amazing: the U.S. tried to import this same due-process-free policy to Afghanistan. There, the U.S. last year compiled a "hit list" of 50 Afghan citizens whose assassination it authorized on the alleged ground (never charged or convicted) that they were drug "kingpins" or funding the Talbian. You know what happened? This:

A U.S. military hit list of about 50 suspected drug kingpins is drawing fierce opposition from Afghan officials, who say it could undermine their fragile justice system and trigger a backlash against foreign troops. . . .

Gen. Mohammad Daud Daud, Afghanistan's deputy interior minister for counternarcotics efforts . . . said he worried that foreign troops would now act on their own to kill suspected drug lords, based on secret evidence, instead of handing them over for trial . . . "They should respect our law, our constitution and our legal codes," Daud . "We have a commitment to arrest these people on our own" . . . .

The U.S. military and NATO officials have authorized their forces to kill or capture individuals on the list, which was drafted within the past year as part of NATO's new strategy to combat drug operations that finance the Taliban.. . . . "There is a constitutional problem here. A person is innocent unless proven guilty," [Ali Ahmad Jalali, a former Afghan interior minister] said. "If you go off to kill or capture them, how do you prove that they are really guilty in terms of legal process?"

In other words, Afghans -- the people we're occupying in order to teach about Freedom and Democracy -- are far more protective of due process and the rule of law for their own citizens than Americans are who meekly submit to Obama's identical policy of assassination for their fellow citizens. It might make more sense for Afghanistan to invade and occupy the U.S. in order to spread the rule of law and constitutional values here.

What makes all this most remarkable is the level of screeching protests Democrats engaged in when Bush merely wanted to eavesdrop on and detain Americans without any judicial oversight or due process. Remember all that? Click here and here for a quick refresher. Yet here is Barack Obama doing far worse to them than that without any due process or judicial oversight -- he's targeting them for assassination -- and there is barely a peep of protest from the same Party that spent years depicting "mere" warrantless eavesdropping and due-process-free detention to be the acts of a savage, lawless tyrant. And, of course, Obama himself back then joined in those orgies of condemnation, as reflected by this December, 2008, answer he gave to Charlie Savage, then of The Boston Globe, regarding his views of executive power:

5. Does the Constitution permit a president to detain US citizens without charges as unlawful enemy combatants?

[Obama]: No. I reject the Bush Administration's claim that the President has plenary authority under the Constitution to detain U.S. citizens without charges as unlawful enemy combatants.

So back then, Obama said the President lacks the power merely to detain U.S. citizens without charges; indeed, when asked if "the Constitution permit[s]" that, he responded: "no." Yet now, as President, he claims the power to assassinate them without charges. Could even his hardest-core loyalists try to reconcile that with a straight face? As Spencer Ackerman documented in April, not even John Yoo claimed that the President possessed the power Obama is claiming here. Given Brennan's strong suggestion that there are not merely three but "dozens" of Americans who are being targeted or at least could be ("they also will face the full brunt of a U.S. response") -- and given the huge number of times the Government has falsely accused individuals of Terrorism and its demonstrated willingness to imprison knowingly innocent detainees -- is it time yet to have a debate about whether we think the President should be able to exercise a power like this?

The administration defends its assassination program
BY GLENN GREENWALD
In the wake of Leon Panetta's public defense of the targeting of American citizens suspected (but never charged or convicted) of Terrorism, Obama officials are now apparently going around the country and, with chest-beating rhetoric, overtly defending their right to target Americans for assassination with no due process of any kind:

"If someone like Anwar al-Awlaki is responsible" for part of a plot "to kill more than 300 people over the city of Detroit," [director of the National Counterterrorism Center Michael] Leiter said, "I think it would be wholly irresponsible for citizens like me, Leon Panetta, Defense Secretary (Robert) Gates, and ultimately the president, not to at least think about and potentially direct all the elements of national power to try to defend the American people" . . .

A woman in the crowd who identified herself as an American Civil Liberties Union member asked why there was no judicial review of such kill orders, citing the standard warrant requirements facing a policeman before entering a citizen's home.

Leiter explained that while "a police officer does need a court order to go after a house," the lawman "has a right of self-defense if someone pulls out a gun." The U.S. government, Leiter insisted, has the same right. He added that there is congressional oversight of such actions.

For several reasons, this is misleading in the extreme. First, nobody disputes the military's right (or the police's) to use force if they seek to apprehend someone and that person begins shooting at them. That situation has nothing whatsoever to do with the presidential assassination program, which authorizes targeted killings without any attempt at apprehension and no matter what the person is doing at the time: i.e., sleeping, riding in a car, watching television with their children, etc. (indeed, the administration has already tried to kill Awlaki in exactly this fashion without trying to apprehend him). If, as Leiter deceitfully suggests, this were only about the military or CIA's use of force in the event that a suspect starts using violence during an attempted apprehension, then no presidential order would be needed because they already have that right, and there'd be no controversy. That's just obvious. Instead, "[t]he Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing [] targeted killing" of Americans. The police don't have the right to put a bullet in the back of a suspect's head while he sleeps or by sneaking up behind him while he walks on the street, which is the actual Police analogy to what the Obama administration is doing.

Second, Leiter's claim "that there is congressional oversight of such actions" is both irrelevant and materially false. It's irrelevant because the President does not have the right to assassinate American citizens without due process just as long as he tells a few member of Congress what he's doing (that was always the Bush excuse for its lawless behavior: well, we told Congress what we were doing). And it's false because, as Time's Massimo Calabresi reports, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is "in the middle of an ugly fight with the President -- as well as the CIA . . . about Congress's watchdog powers over the U.S. intelligence services." As Calabresi writes -- using the term "center" to mean "copying Bush/Cheney policies" -- "the battle is turning into the biggest confrontation yet over Executive power between the liberal House Speaker and a White House that has moved steadily to the center on national security matters." As Russ Feingold explained, "the Obama administration is continuing some of the stonewalling practices of the George W. Bush administration when it comes to providing full intelligence briefings to the relevant committees in Congress."

Specifically, Pelosi is demanding -- and the White House is vowing to veto -- a new intelligence law to require "the CIA and other intelligence agencies to inform all members of the House and Senate intelligence committees when they launch any covert action or other controversial program" and to allow "the Government Accountability Office (GAO) [] to audit[] any intelligence program, . . . a power the GAO has for classified Pentagon programs but not for the intelligence agencies." That's because the current process -- which the White House is fighting desperately to maintain -- provides no meaningful oversight of the "most sensitive" intelligence programs, which is how the Bush administration was able to claim it "briefed" members of Congress (including Pelosi) on its torture and eavesdropping programs while telling them very little that would enable meaningful review. As Richard Clarke and so many others have explained, the intelligence "oversight" system in place now is a sham and (quoting Clarke) a "farce." The suggestion that someone whom the President targets for assassination is given anything resembling meaningful due process all because a few members of Congress are told by the CIA about it is so ludicrous as to be insulting.

Finally, note Leiter's decree -- for which no evidence has been offered and which has never been reviewed by any court -- that Awlaki "had a 'direct operational role' in the plot that allegedly sent Christmas Day bombing suspect Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab to attack a Detroit-bound airliner packed with nearly 300 passengers." Could the individuals who trust the U.S. Government to essentially convict people of Terrorism and impose a death penalty through imperial decree (i.e., without any trials or judicial review, and based solely on the unchecked say-so of the Executive Branch) please identify themselves, and particularly explain the basis for that trust in light of this disgraceful and error-plagued record? We really are talking about a President who believes he has the right to send the CIA to murder American citizens based purely on allegations and suspicions of wrongdoing; to describe the seized power is to illustrate its perversity.

* * * * *

As the first commenter notes, we also find here the central justification for most of what was done under the Bush administration: anything and everything is justified if it can be cast as helping to "protect the American people," as though Security is the overarching presidential duty. In fact, the actual oath taken by the President as compelled by the Constitution -- that irritating, purist, Far Leftist document which he incessantly told us he studied and taught -- is this: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." To fulfill that duty, he might want to begin by looking here: "No person shall . . .be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."