Court Releases DOJ Memo Justifying Drone Strike On US Citizen

An anonymous reader writes in with news that the memo presenting a case for killing Anwar al-Awlaki has been released thanks to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Monday released a secret 2010 Justice Department memo justifying the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S citizen killed in a drone strike in 2011. The court released the document as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union to make the document public. Then-acting Assistant Attorney General David Barron, in the partially redacted 41-page memo, outlines the justification of the drone strike in Yemen to take out al-Awlaki, an alleged operational leader of al Qaeda.

Comments

Re:Lovely Latin

[ArcadeMan]

The history of warfare is subdivided into three phases: retribution, anticipation, and diplomacy. Thus, retribution: “I’m going to kill you because you killed my brother.” Anticipation: “I’m going to kill you because I killed your brother.” And diplomacy: “I’m going to kill my brother and then kill you on the pretext that your brother did it.”

Re:How does this not violate the 5th and/or 14th..

[sumdumass]

You should find it fascinating. Outside of moral grounds, there are bonds that empower the government of the US that also places limits on the government. One of those limits is the right to due process when you are in US jurisdiction. A US citizen is in US jurisdiction wherever they are. A terrorist or even a school teacher who looks like a terrorist in another country might not be. Put those same people in the US, and they have the same right to due process.

Now right may be the wrong words here. The bonds that empower the federal government, the Constitution, forbids the government from denying due process to "we the people" except in a narrow window in which habeas corpus can be suspended- but that requires custody of the person and does not allow extrajudicial punishment outside of holding a person.

So no matter how contrived they can make an excuse to execute a foreigner on foreign soil, the government is expressly forbidden to do so on a US citizen who has not been afforded due process or is not showing an imminent threat to others. Of course in one of these instances, it seems to be collateral damage. It would be like a cop shooting at a suspect shooting other people and in the process killing a citizen with a stray bullet 2 blocks away. Not a criminal act, but the state is still responsible.