"The president himself does not have to sign off on kill orders."
That’s the most striking line from the most recent post from Mark Hosenball, in which he tries to understand the process by which US citizens are placed on a list to be assassinated. Here’s Hosenball’s fuller explanation.
…strikes specifically targeting Americans must first be approved by a secret committee made up of senior intel officials and members of the president’s cabinet (it’s not known which ones). The president himself does not have to sign off on kill orders.
It’s handy, isn’t it, the way the President gets to retain plausible deniability for the killing of a US citizen? And the way Obama has conveniently wrapped himself in the same plausible deniability that Bush (or, more likely, Cheney) created? That way you can kill US citizens without ever worrying about the President going to jail for it. And if you’re really good at hiding the identities of those who do sign off on the killings, then no one can sue!
Also note that Hosenball seems to be looking closely at the same loophole that I have been thinking about: the ability to knowingly kill Americans so long as the purported target of that assassination is the guy sitting next to the American in the car that’s about to blow up.
The sources say that committee approval is required only if the specific target of the assassination is an American—not if an American happens to be in the vicinity of a foreign target at the time of the strike. At least once, U.S. forces have killed an American this way. In November 2002 a missile attack targeting a Yemeni terrorist also killed Kamal Derwish, an American citizen associated with an alleged terrorist cell in Lackawanna, N.Y. U.S. forces almost did it again last Christmas Eve, with an airstrike against another Yemeni terrorist; he was believed to be hiding with Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born radical cleric who advised both the suspected Fort Hood shooter and the alleged Christmas Day bomber. Al-Awlaki is believed to have escaped.
It would add another convenient level of plausible deniability, of course. “Oh, we weren’t actually targeting Kamal Derwish! We were targeting Harithi, even at precisely the time we targeted him, we had the guy who did what we claim he did in custody.”
I can’t wait until this gets to the courts.
How? No employee of the DOJ will touch it during this administration. A civil suit on a colateral damage combat death will go nowhere.
A civil suit from a targetted persons estate would have to go through all the hoops the Al-H case is going through and I imagine the government will be a lot more careful during discovery.
Boxturtle (Or did you think the president would be impeached over targetting a ticking time bomb?)
Hmm. Good point. Maybe Awlaki’s parents sue the government after it kills their son?
I bet they could get a court to issue an order NOT to kill their son. ObamaCo would have to fight that as out of the courts jurisdiction, there’s no way they’d try to justify an extrajudicial killing of an American.
Boxturtle (Your Honor, in solution of this the Government proposes adding YOUR name to the list)
That’s brilliant! Like a restraining order for a person with an abusive spouse. I wonder what the local police would do if Awlaki’s parents strolled into their local police station to file a complaint and ask for a restraining order?
They’d have to file in federal court. ObamaCo would ask the court to reject it due to lack of jurisdiction.
If the court allowed the filing, it would likely issue a restraining order at once. After all, the party can show irreparable harm (death) if the order isn’t issued.
Boxturtle (Odds are the Supremes would not support the restraining order, even if lower court does)
Isn’t the accepted kill ratio 30/1. So one target and one targeted American leaves 28 innocents before we have a problem with this procedure?
So, where are we at so many years after the establishment of the CIA (I know, I know, these may be JSOC kills… but all possible feuds aside, they are both secretive parts of the U.S. government, and the CIA and JSOC types changes badges more than you would think, when convenient)?
Consider this gem from the past, declassified a few years before 9/11 (bold emphases added):
Looks like it took them 47-48 years to fulfill the latter prediction, when Dick Cheney informed us the U.S. was going over to the “dark side”. Of course, they’d made their infernal choice decades ago, and the U.S. citizenry is still catching up with the ramifications of those hidden decisions and multiple crimes.
Also, now the enemy is not world communism, but the forces of Al Qaeda, who (supposed) wish to found a world-wide Islamic Caliphate. Of course, tomorrow the enemy may be world communism again, when the war drive against China is activated in earnest, or perhaps it will be the “Asian hordes” once again.
Poor world. Poor us.
I think this is the kind of thing that Gary Wills writes about in his new book, Bomb Power.
In the present political context, it is not just Obama and his DOJ vs. the excesses of the rogue Bush-Cheney regime; it is Obama and his DOJ vs. 50 years of increasing executive power. It’s gonna take more than a trim tab to turn this ship of state around.
Bob in AZ
I just wanted to emphasize that, let it sink in. That is still operational.
I think the president should be required to sign off on kill orders. He wants the job, it involves being commander-in-chief of the military, so he damned well ought to sign orders like that, just so he knows what’s being done in the name of the US.
In a case like this, rather than waiting for a court case, Congress should immediately hold hearings and demand to know exactly who has the “license to kill”. And those people with the power to authorize killing American citizens without indictment or trial should be compelled to reveal just what their kill criteria are, and how they justify such an extra-judicial process. Right now, the administration is saying to us, once again, “just trust us.” Yeah, right.
Bob in AZ
“Committee” sign-off is meant to be corporate authorization that takes the place of the OK’s given by each individual personally. It’s not.
As for the president, he either authorized such a structure or negligently or recklessly let it continue despite having knowledge of it, which puts him on the hook for it and the consequences of its decisions. Or, he knew nothing about it, which puts him on the hook for lack of curiosity and incompetence – not traits ordinarily associated with Barack Obama.
Either way, there’s just that little problem about its constitutionality that I hope someone from Congress will peer into. Not holding my breath in this bipartisan, post-racial, post-constitutional America, but I can dream.
The Principals committee rides again.
Its like a pretext stop where the cops make up some crap to conveniently pull over the drug dealer the detective bureau has been investigating for months. Except they kill him.
All these loopholes and PD clauses just to let the war criminals of the last administration slide into prosperous dotage and their own hagiographies.
It’s a pity the same energy isn’t applied to the tangible benefit of We, the People.
First reaction: I didn’t know we have a president, we seem leaderless.
Second reaction: Isn’t it an outrageously and useless idea to kill our own; have we our moral compass way before we lost our financial compass?
It’s been suggested that the previous White House occupant’s still-classified National Security Presidential Directives contain the instructions as to who the committee may be which authorizes termination of American citizens.
The public has not yet seen the texts of NSPDs 5, 6, 7 and 26, all of which are believed to pertain to counterterrorism functions and related intelligence operations.
Which suggests there are findings that are also not public, from which George Bush would have formulated his directives (or by which David Addington would have written the directives for Bush). There’s also the chance that the findings are right there in front of us, but have been interpreted in such a way that rational Americans would never draw a straight line from the finding to the classified NSPD.
In any case, the committee is likely a subset of the NSC since a substantive number of the NSPDs which are unclassified/declassified are addressed to members of the NSC and affect decision-making by the NSC.
It’s time to demand the NSPDs are declassified as they may constitute lawmaking by the White House, a function which is not the purview of the White House but of Congress. Worse, this is secret lawmaking; this cannot be countenanced in a democracy let alone tolerated under this nation’s Constitution.
Further, the question of David Margolis’ downgrading of John Yoo’s and Jay Bybee’s behavior deserves greater scrutiny; if Yoo and Bybee were operating under classified directives which violate the Constitution, they were not merely guilty of poor judgment but parties to criminal behavior.
Well, in one party system of rule, anything is possible!No governance to date had achieved what US governance had achieved: best ever system of rule by far for control of US non-ruling classes and ‘aliens’: domestics by ‘laws’, verbal brilliancies, and other words; ‘aliens’ by misssiling, bombings, invasions, cia terrorism, occupations,threats of invasions, etc.
And we can expect a worsening;especially if US warlords get frustrated enough with iraqis, and pashtuns.
At home, the worse economy gets, the worse it becomes for the masses.
That’s the change i expect! tnx
Crickey! This is dark stuff!
Exactly the kind of stuff one would expect in a one party state like ours.
Here’s an older item I found:
So, once again, the current admin is invoking precedents set by the prior one as part of a continuum.
That sounds like maybe she was asking him about me.
I declared political war on her after my black helicopter incident and there were lots of things I was complaining about. It had been over a year since my BIL installed spyware in my computer, my life was going seriously whack. I hold her responsible for it and I think it amounted to state sponsored torture. I was blogging about it the whole time.
I don’t care if she is a Senator, I think she has a serious legal problem on her hands. That kind of stuff they were/are doing is just not legal. Or, this sure isn’t the country I thought it was. Finding that out, especially the hard way was torture for me. Psychological torture.
I want my country back.
My country is one where even the president is not above the law. I hope that makes it clear to the whiny complainers asking “what does take back your country mean?” I guess none of them are even familiar with the idea of rule of law.
This sounds like your run-of-the-mill terrorist organization.
Agreed, I have been saying it for some time now.
The Bush administration is a terrorist organization. I had a bumper sticker on my car that said ‘terrorists’ with Bush’s face on it and somebody removed it off of my car. I have lots of stickers, that was the only one that was torn off. I always wonder who did that.
There are lots of victims. The idea they should be allowed to just get away with it is completely ridiculous.
Once again:
The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
January 20, 2010
Message to Congress on Annual Renewal of Emergency Authorities
TO THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES:
Section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C.1622(d)) provides for the automatic termination of a national emergency unless, prior to the anniversary date of its declaration, the President publishes in the Federal Register and transmits to the Congress a notice stating that the emergency is to continue in effect beyond the anniversary date. In accordance with this provision, I have sent to the Federal Register for publication the enclosed notice stating that the emergency declared with respect to foreign terrorists who threaten to disrupt the Middle East peace process is to continue in effect beyond January 23, 2010.
The crisis with respect to the grave acts of violence committed by foreign terrorists who threaten to disrupt the Middle East peace process that led to the declaration of a national emergency on January 23, 1995, has not been resolved. Terrorist groups continue to engage in activities that have the purpose or effect of threatening the Middle East peace process and that are hostile to United States interests in the region. Such actions constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. For these reasons, I have determined that it is necessary to continue the national emergency declared with respect to foreign terrorists who threaten to disrupt the Middle East peace process and to maintain in force the economic sanctions against them to respond to this threat.
BARACK OBAMA
THE WHITE HOUSE,
January 20, 2010.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/message-congress-annual-renewal-emergency-authorities
that does lead down a rabbit hole, doesn’t it?
Executive Order 12947 of January 23, 1995. Prohibiting Transactions With Terrorists Who Threaten To Disrupt the Middle East Peace Process underpins the whole mess.
And:
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
___________________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release September 10, 2009
NOTICE
– – – – – – –
CONTINUATION OF THE NATIONAL EMERGENCY WITH RESPECT
TO CERTAIN TERRORIST ATTACKS
Consistent with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act, 50 U.S.C. 1622(d), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency declared on September 14, 2001, in Proclamation 7463, with respect to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks on the United States.
Because the terrorist threat continues, the national emergency declared on September 14, 2001, and the powers and authorities adopted to deal with that emergency, must continue in effect beyond September 14, 2009. Therefore, I am continuing in effect for an additional year the national emergency the former President declared on September 14, 2001, with respect to the terrorist threat.
This notice shall be published in the Federal Register and transmitted to the Congress.
BARACK OBAMA
THE WHITE HOUSE,
September 10, 2009.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Notice-of-continuation-from-the-President-regarding-the-emergency-declared-with-respect-to-the-September-11-2001-terrorist-attacks
Thanks for pointing us to these. I wonder how much these so-called emergencies have been used in various legal docs or pleadings to justify all the crimes.
The only national emergency this country has had (unless you want to consider the robbery of the treasury by Wall Street, who went on strike by withholding their capital) was the accession of the war party, and the substitution of constitutional rule by rule via presidential order. As close to a coup as you can get, without fully having one.
So, what with a national emergency and all, Obama could declare Martial Law at any time, right?
Color me glad that President Cheney never made any such declaration.
Bob in AZ
Well, that’s been the $64 question all along, hasn’t it? Let me ask, just from a pure-logic perspective: is there any reason for your assumption that martial law didn’t get declared? I mean that, if this modern world is one in which NSPDs and OLC opinions of this apparent gravity can be kept secret, then why couldn’t even a martial law declaration similarly be kept secret, and used as a “legal” basis for who knows what secret horrors? Among the many great dangers of any secret extralegal governmental adventuring along any of these lines is that once word of it gets out, as it inevitably does either through leaks or via reporting on visible signs, then everything else the government does becomes subject to exactly these kinds of suspicion. The people’s confidence that their country stands for good, ebbs.
Exactly. There are far too many classified directives and orders, ones which may constitute making of law without the consent of the governed. We have no idea what kind of system we are being governed by at this point in time.
I can recall being at the second YearlyKos event in Chicago during summer of 2007 and reading about an executive order declaring a state of emergency with regard to Lebanon. To the best of my knowledge, that state of emergency has never been rescinded. WTF was that all about? it’s never been clear to me that this was necessary, and now we see these other fingerprints years later suggesting other darker reasons.
Revival (or continuation) of the venerable Star Chamber
democracts rebublicans and the military industrial complex–THE AXIS OF EVIL
We’re in Pogoland
“We have met the enemy, and he is us”
i have moved from a howard dean democrat to a ron paul advocate–i realize that the the true evil is the MIC and corporatism-and i accept that we the people will never be able to compete against the corrupting power corps exercise over the fed–bring the federal government back to the constitution and the wars all but end and we can still fund at the state level – thanks for the comment
My understanding is that Ron Paul wants to entirely eliminate the Federal Reserve. As opposed to putting it back under the authority of Congress.
Merely eliminating the Federal Reserve would entirely free the banks to do as they please, much as they did 100 years ago at the height of the Gilded Age.
Basically I fear that Ron Paul’s solution would hand the big banks more power, not less.
that is a misunderstanding- the power of the fed is to print money out of thin air and give it to the banks and government– without that ability(the secret tax- inflation)they could never fund the wars the people would not support the tax– if we had to pay for the wars now through taxes we would be out in a year
Oh yes, I do agree that that it is very possible to abuse the FED. Especially since it’s not entirely subject to public oversite.
But frankly we cannot run our economy without a banking system. And I think the best reform compromise is to place the power back into the hands of Congress. No more of this Fed Chair refusing to answer questions posed by our elected officials.
the banks would have much less power because they would be using their money– not a 40 to 1 ratio with the taxpayer picking up the down side–the fed has bought 300 billion of crap assets from citigroup, we can not find out what they paid for what– trillions to other governments and banks –they a government unto themselves
Yes, excessive leverage ratio’s are very dangerous and need to be prevented. We had a massive leverage problem in the 1929 crash too, and back then the FED didn’t bail out the culprits. That didn’t end any better than what we are currently facing.
What should have happened in our current crash was for the bankrupt institutions to go thru a recievership process that would replace top management, wipe out the shareholders, potentially wipe out the bondholders(certainly before taxpayer money was used), erase fictional assets (like AIG’s credit default swaps) but protect legitimate accounts. And then take the company back into the public sphere recapitalized under new management.
As for the banks using thier own money, are you recommending a zero leverage policy? Banks would have no reason to take deposits because they could not make money by relending it. Personally I think that 10-1 ratio is reasonable but 40-1 is insane.
Anyway, back to the topic. Sure, eliminating the FED would hurt the MIC but wouldn’t touch the root problems which bring about a perceived need for all these assassinations and wars. Heck, the war in Nicaragua was funded off budget by drug and gun smuggling.
Pappa Bush’s CIA doesn’t need the FED to destroy the world.
well put, but a diagree they would not lend- you merely pay less interest than you lend out at–at present the zero interest money received by the top 20 banks screws seniors or anyone else looking to save money– without the fed, banks would have to offer a reasonable market based interest for your money– but you need a central bank you are correct–but more impotantly you need sound money and the fedis in the process of destroying ours
Well, the zero interest rate policy of the FED is criminal, it works against the interests of the general public. And Bernanke is ignoring much of his Congressional mandate and should not have been reappointed.
But honestly, we used to have a reasonable financial system before they started tearing away FDR’s reforms. Same goes for the international trade system, it didn’t used to promote currency speculators(George Soros types). Our current problems pretty much date back to Nixon going off the gold standard and have gotten progressively worse as we eliminate more and more of the new deal.
If we want to fix things we should look at the policies of some of our better presidents. JFK’s silver dollars – fight with the steel industry – recalling troops from Vietnam to avoid perpetual war, Lincoln’s greenbacks, and much of FDR’s new deal. It’s probably no accident that they all died in office. No good deed goes unpunished.
i do not see any democrat or republican taking us in that direction- on ron paul, i am willing to give on some issues because he seems to be the only one with a path out of the woods, if not the preferred path
money out of thin air and that priveldge that is extended to a select few but would be a felony if your not part of the select group is indicative of its short comings thanks for the response, you seem well informed
These two Executive Order renewals are a very short list of the whole which only serve to underline the very precariousness, and seeming lack, of republican democracy.
The subordination of Constitutional safeguards to the executive has been an ongoing process which has perverted the inalienable rights of the citizen to become rights conferred by the Constitution as presented in the current framing.
Sounds like they’ve put to paper an unwritten policy which has been in effect since 1963.
Excessive inequality at home and abroad, that is the root problem. Extreme inequality can only be maintained via extreme violence. Thus the increased need for assassinations, private armies, gated communities etc…
We’re better off striking at the root problem rather than it’s offshoots.
Couple this with the knowledge that the CIA (and by implication, Xe) are making decisions on where and when to send predator bombs, and you have a very depressing reality coming ever more clearly into view.
Dam. We have to win this one. There must be some mainstream journalists who can publicize this illegal Executive power. Suppose Palin gets in, and a radical leftie is at an Israeli-Palestinian conference? I’m hoping for some well-publicized outrage, but it’s probably just the last vestige of hope that is curling into a ball inside me.
I fully concur. How disappointing it is to once again be the unwelcome recipent of yet another pig-n-a-poke poser of a president. Its time we wire the wannabees permanently to a lie detector on the campagin trail and let the strip chart be the judge.
I guess Hosenball:
mostly jives with Miller’s LAT piece, but his sources seemed to try harder to put the killing Americans decision in the WH.
There
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-cia-awlaki31-2010jan31,0,5531619,full.story
he puts out this process:
The National Security Council has “oversight” of the program, except that it doesn’t really pay much attention to it
The “list” is usually signed off on by CIA execs
The selections are reviewed, “not just by policy people but by attorneys” (which goes to explain that much more about Obama’s GC pick for CIA and the way the whole “torture review” process on every front has exempted out CIA attorneys from any oversight of any kind.
The assassination factory is very self contained, “Almost every key step takes place within the Langley, Va., campus, from proposing targets to piloting the remotely controlled planes.”
While those who signed off conspiracies and directives to kill (and who have direct responsiblity for the ooopses as well) have to put their name in
bloodink, “All memos are circulated on paper, so those granting approval would “have to write their names in ink,” they don’t generally bother the CIA director (sounds like it is more a Kappes project) with the new names – just the LAWYERS SIGNING OFF (although, of course, as the OPR report will tell us, it’s not like the lawyers play an operational role intortureassassination ” analysts typically submit several new names each month to high-level officials, including the CIA general counsel and sometimes Director Leon E. Panetta”However, if they are going to add an American citizen name to the list, supposedly there is agreement that “The only exception [to not needing White House approval], officials said, would be when the name [added to the assassination list] is a U.S. citizen’s”
So where and how does the WH – but not Presidential – approval come from for that? If it’s the NSC, the President is the actual chair of the NSC. Hosenball says it is a secret committee – but nothing about whether the NSC has oversight of that secret committee although it sounds as if it might be put together as a subset of certain NSC members, along with the “7th floor” CIA guys who are “signing off” anyway. Maybe a lot like the subset of persons put together by Cheney when they wanted to cut Taft and Powell out of the loop and when it seems problematic to have the Sec of Treasury so involved in decisions involving torture and blacksites.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/nsc/
It would be interesting to know what kind of NSC “oversight” there is of the assassination programs and the American Assassinations committee, what with there being such name confusion rampant in the intel services. In any event, if the NSC really is exercising oversight of any kind, then everytime Blair or Mullens or Gates or any of them pipe up on national security issues – from torture to trials – they are men and women who are involved in assasination programs. Men and women who are ok with being involved in assassination programs. That might should be something that would be beneficial for MSM to mention when they ask them for input (DNI Blair, a member of the NSC which oversees Executive branch run assassination programs …, Sec of State Clinton, a member of the NSC which oversees Exec branch run assassination programs …, etc.)
I guess you’d get pretty wedded to your NSC picks if they shared torture and assassination secrets with you.
And I guess if the President’s COS was knee deep in assassination programs, he might have an opinion about torture investigations.
Oh well – the thing that strikes me the most is that, with their already used “out” of being able to kill Americans who were in the “wrong place’ but weren’t listed as targets, then if Awlaki is indeed so knee deep in al-Qaeda operational programs as opposed to just spewing rhetoric, it seems like they could have used their existing pathway – blow up a guest house or camp where he is visiting – without adding him to the list directly.
Unless, of course, he isn’t really all that involved in operational aspects and they can’t use that option.
I still think Congress should hold hearings on these extra-judicial killings, and demand to know exactly who has authority to put American citizens on the “kill” list, and on what grounds the decisions are made. What is the legal basis for these decisions?
Bob in AZ
****what is the basis****
If the President does it, it’s not illegal?
Obama and Nixon don’t just share China trips.