Im-mi-nent: (Adj, DOJ) 20 Months

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Michael Isikoff has obtained and posted the white paper DOJ gave to the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committees to stave off giving them the OLC memos that actually authorized Anwar al-Awlaki’s killing. I noted its mention in an SJC markup last year.

While the memos they are hiding are almost certainly far more damning (as I’ll lay out tomorrow), this is utterly damning in itself.

It effectively defines imminence so as to have no meaning.

First, the condition that an operational leader present an “imminent” threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future. Given the nature of, for example, the terrorist attacks on September 11, in which civilian airliners were hijacked to strike the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, this definition of imminence, which would require the United States to refrain from action until preparations for an attack are concluded, would not allow the United States sufficient time to defend itself. The defensive options available to the United States may be reduced or eliminated if al-Qa’ida operatives disappear and cannot be found when the time of their attack approaches. Consequently, with respect to al-Qa’ida leaders who are continually planning attacks, the United States is likely to have only a limited window of opportunity within which to defend Americans in a manner that has both a high likelihood of success and sufficiencly reduces the probabilities of civilian casualties.

[snip]

By its nature, therefore, the threat posed by al-Qa’ida and its associated forces demands a broader concept of imminence in judging when a person continually planning terror attacks presents an imminent threat, making the use of force appropriate. In this context, imminence must incorporate considerations of the relevant window of opportunity, the possibility of reducing collateral damage to civilians, and the likelihood of heading off future disastrous attacks on Americans.

[snip]

With this understanding, a high-level official could conclude, for example, that an individual poses an “imminent threat” of violent attack against the United States where he is an operational leader of al-Qa’ida or an associated force and is personally and continually involved in planning terrorist attacks against the United States. Moreover, where the al-Qa’ida member in question has recently been involved in activities posing an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States, and there is no evidence suggesting that he has renounced or abandoned such activities, that member’s involvement in al-Qa’ida’s continuing terrorist campaign against the United States would support the conclusion that the members is an imminent threat.

Even assuming this is the justification they used to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, they killed him about 20 months after the alleged attacks (the UndieBomber and plotting against British Airways) in which they sort of have evidence against him (though DOJ has always managed to make sure that evidence was not challenged in an antagonistic setting).

If you measure from the toner cartridge plot — in which other AQAP members seem to have been the operational leaders — it was a year between the plot and the killing.

Anwar al-Awlaki may have been dangerous and surely was a hateful man. But it appears clear that DOJ had no evidence he was an imminent threat — at least as traditionally defined.

So they just redefined it.

Update: See Opino Juris for an assessment of this definition from an IHL and IHRL perspective.

Update: I’ve corrected my transcription of the imminent passage above (I had had “Second” instead of “Moreover”).

 

Will Senators Filibuster Chuck Hagel’s Nomination to Get the Targeted Killing Memo?

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Eleven Senators just sent President Obama a letter asking nicely, for at least the 12th time, the targeted killing memo. They remind him of his promise of transparency and oversight.

In your speech at the National Archives in May 2009, you stated that “Whenever we cannot release certain information to the public for valid national security reasons, I will insist that there is oversight of my actions — by Congress or by the courts.” We applaud this principled commitment to the Constitutional system of checks and balances, and hope that you will help us obtain the documents that we need to conduct the oversight that you have called for. The executive branch’s cooperation on this matter will help avoid an unnecessary confrontation that could affect the Senate’s consideration of nominees for national security positions. 

And asks — yet again — for “any and all memos.”

Specifically, we ask that you direct the Justice Department to provide Congress, specifically the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, with any and all legal opinions that lay out the executive branch’s official understanding of the President’s authority to deliberately kill American citizens.

But perhaps the most important part of this letter is that it refers not just to John Brennan’s nomination, but to “senior national security positions.”

As the Senate considers a number of nominees for senior national security positions, we ask that you ensure that Congress is provided with the secret legal opinions outlining your authority to authorize the killing of Americans in the course of counterterrorism operations.

There are just 11 Senators on this list:

  • Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)
  • Mike Lee (R-Utah)
  • Mark Udall (D-Colo.)
  • Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)
  • Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.)
  • Susan Collins (R-Maine)
  • Dick Durbin (Ill.)
  • Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.)
  • Tom Udall (D-N.M.)
  • Mark Begich (D-Alaska)
  • Al Franken (D- Minn.)

And just three of these — Wyden, Mark Udall, and Collins — are on the Intelligence Committee. That’s not enough to block Brennan’s confirmation.

But it may be enough to block Hagel’s confirmation, given all the other Republicans who are opposing him.

Our Illegal Drone Program

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Here’s Daniel Klaidman’s idea of a rule book that represents restraint.

And then there is “the playbook”—an ambitious attempt to create explicit rules and procedures for when lethal force is justified. The initiative began more than a year ago. It is highly detailed and lays out, for example, criteria for the so-called disposition-matrix, which prescribes whether terrorist suspects should be killed, captured, or dealt with in some other way. Embedded in the document are the legal authorizations for pursuing the enemy away from conventional battlefields in places like Yemen, Somalia, and now Mali—a crucial check on a war without defined boundaries. The playbook also toughens the standard for when a targeted killing is justified. Simply being a threat to “United States interests,” for example, no longer meets the threshold. That standard is too elastic, according to officials who have been involved in writing the new rules. And the document makes finely grained distinctions about where one must be in the chain of command of a terrorist organization to be targetable. A driver or cook, who can be easily replaced, may not represent the kind of unique threat that would warrant lethal action. A bomb maker, on the other hand, would.

Mind you, as described, the Rule Book does represent an improvement. I’ve noted that the disposition matrix may or may not be a good thing; while legal process is better than drone killing, we may still have the trigger for that set too low.

But the real news in this passage seems to be both what was permitted and what still is.

Klaidman reveals, for example, that the standard for killing has been nothing more than threatening US interests, which may or may not even equate to a physical threat. We’re killing people because they represent a threat to our interests? Isn’t that cheating?

He strongly suggests we’ve been targeting all manner of alleged terrorists, including cooks and drivers. And we’ve changed that practice not because of the dubious legality of targeting non-combatants, but because cooks are easily replaced.

But even still the drone program seems to be illegal. Consider this passage.

Embedded in the document are the legal authorizations for pursuing the enemy away from conventional battlefields in places like Yemen, Somalia, and now Mali—a crucial check on a war without defined boundaries.

As Jack Goldsmith has recently noted, AQIM is not covered in the AUMF.

This framework is becoming obsolete because some newly threatening Islamist terrorist groups do not plausibly fall within the AUMF.  Many of these groups—such as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (in Northern Africa) or the al-Nusra Front (a rebel group in Syria associated with al Qaeda in Iraq)—have no direct links to al Qaeda and unclear ones to al Qaeda affiliates.  Regardless of where the precise outer boundaries of the AUMF lie, there is a growing gap between the threats posed by Islamist terrorist groups and the president’s legal authority to meet the threats under the AUMF.

So if we’re targeting people in Mali as part of a war, whose authorization are we using for that war?

And as Klaidman notes and was reported earlier by the WaPo, these rules will not even go into place universally. We’ve built in an exception for Pakistan (which, unless the Senate does something totally unexpected, means for John Brennan at CIA). Which means presumably these things — targeting cooks for being a threat to our interests — will continue in Pakistan at least until we withdraw from Afghanistan.

Brennan Approved Signature Strikes in Yemen because of “Personal Appeals”

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Daniel Klaidman has what must be intended as a defense of John Brennan. Given that it (once again) fails to mention Abdulrahman al-Awlaki,  accepts Brennan’s claims to have opposed torture on its face, and makes no mention of Brennan’s assault on Americans’ privacy, it fails to make the case it tries to, that Brennan would rein in the war on terror at CIA.

Nevertheless, I find it fascinating for the way in which Klaidman updates his earlier work to explain why Brennan approved signature strikes in Yemen.

First, Klaidman explains that Brennan’s deep knowledge of Yemen stems from his years as CIA Station Chief … in Saudi Arabia.

Nowhere were the subtleties in Brennan’s worldview more obvious than in Yemen, a country he had long personal ties to from his days as CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia.

That’s a really funny claim. After all, while many of the tribes are the same and the Saudis have really close ties to the Yemenis, the description makes it clear (as if it weren’t already) that Brennan sees and understands Yemen through a Saudi lens.

As Gregory Johnsen tweeted,

If you rely on the Saudis to explain Yemen to you, then you are asking to be deceived.

Which is what we have demonstrably been in Yemen, since Brennan took over.

So when Brennan says things like,

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, we see little evidence that these actions are generating widespread anti-American sentiment or recruits of AQAP.

We should remember, then, that even according to Brennan’s own description (as parroted by Klaidman) he understands Yemen from a Saudi perspective.

Consider what that means for Klaidman’s admission that Brennan reversed his celebrated opposition to signature strikes in Yemen because of personal ties. Ties, to the Yemenis, Klaidman says.

The military wanted to conduct broad-based signature strikes in the country. But Obama was worried about getting embroiled in a domestic conflict—and he and Brennan said no. Then, in the spring of 2011, with bin Laden dead, the military again proposed massive signature strikes in Yemen, thinking that the time was right to deliver a knockout blow to al Qaeda and its most dangerous affiliate, AQAP.

But Obama and Brennan, fearful of getting sucked into a wider war, remained opposed. Brennan employed his best bureaucratic weapon to brush back the generals: Obama. He told the president that it was time to make an “unequivocal statement,” which would go out through the “interagency,” that he was opposed to such signature strikes. Soon thereafter, at one of his weekly counterterrorism briefings—the so-called Terror Tuesday meetings—Yemen was on the agenda. When one of the president’s military advisers made a reference to the ongoing “campaign” in Yemen, Obama, according to two participants in the meeting, abruptly cut him off. There’s no “campaign” in Yemen, he said sharply, reminding the general that the goal there was to protect the homeland by going after members of al Qaeda, not to get involved in a civil war.

[snip]

Then, in the spring of 2012, with Yemen falling into chaos and AQAP gaining more and more territory, Yemeni officials—with whom Brennan had close ties going back to his days as a CIA station chief in the region—beseeched Brennan to help. The Yemeni Army was collapsing under the brutal assault; soldiers were being crucified and beheaded by the jihadis. By April 2012, Brennan and Obama finally relented and permitted signature strikes in the country.

Those who defend this decision point out that it would have been a catastrophe for U.S. security if significant parts of the country had fallen to AQAP, which was intent on attacking the American homeland. Yet some inside the administration were critical. Says one senior administration official of Brennan’s history in Yemen: “He responded to the personal appeals because he has a long history with these guys.” In other words: Brennan’s lawyerly preference for rules and constraints may sometimes have taken a backseat to emotion.

On at least two occasions, Obama and Brennan agreed that getting involved in Yemen would amount to taking sides in a civil war. And then, when Yemenis (was it really just Yemenis?) made a personal appeal to Brennan, he reversed course, and agreed to get involved in a civil war.

I guess all those claims — which were obviously false on their face — that we only use signature strikes because of a risk to American interests are no longer operative?

Which makes it all the more curious that Klaidman makes no mention of the Saudi created bomb plot that directly preceded the decision to use signature strikes. It seems rather pertinent, no?