White House Defends Targeted Drone Killings

The White House yesterday defended targeted drone killings of Americans overseas who are involved with terrorists, after NBC News released a leaked Justice Department memo that lays out broader circumstances for their use than had been thought. White House press secretary Jay Carney said, "We conduct those strikes because they are necessary to mitigate ongoing actual threats -- to stop plots, prevent future attacks and, again, save American lives. These strikes are legal, they are ethical, and they are wise."

The leaked memo says that in order for a targeted drone strike to be ordered, a, quote, "informed, high-level official of the U.S. government" must decide that the person is a senior operational leader of al-Qaida or associated forces, poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the U.S., and that it's not feasible to try to capture the person.

Such attacks on a U.S. citizen are ordered without oversight from Congress or the courts, and for the imminent threat requirement to be met, the memo states that the U.S. doesn't have to have clear evidence that a specific attack will take place in the immediate future. Instead, the high-level official can determine the target was recently involved in activities that pose a threat of attack, and there's no evidence they've renounced or abandoned those activities. It states, "Targeting a member of an enemy force who poses an imminent threat of violent attack to the United States is not unlawful. It is a lawful act of self-defense."

Hina Shamsi, the director of the ACLU's National Security Project, had harsh words about the memo, stating, "This is a profoundly disturbing document, and it's hard to believe that it was produced in a democracy built on a system of checks and balances. It summarizes in cold legal terms a stunning overreach of executive authority -- the claimed power to declare Americans a threat and kill them far from a recognized battlefield and without any judicial involvement before or after the fact."