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Secrecy of Memo on Drone Killing Is Upheld
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of New York Times
Posted: January 15th, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/03/us/judge-rules-memo-on-tar...
A federal judge in Manhattan refused on [January 2] to require the Justice Department to disclose a memorandum providing the legal justification for the targeted killing of a United States citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, who died in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011. The ruling, by Judge Colleen McMahon, was marked by skepticism about the antiterrorist program that targeted him, and frustration with her own role in keeping the legal rationale for it secret. I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret, she wrote. The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me, Judge McMahon wrote, adding that she was operating in a legal environment that amounted to a veritable Catch-22. Judge McMahons opinion included an overview of what she called an extensive public relations campaign by various government officials about the American role in the killing of Mr. Awlaki and the circumstances under which the government considers targeted killings, including of its citizens, to be lawful. The governments public comments were as a whole cryptic and imprecise, Judge McMahon said. Even as she ruled against the plaintiffs, the judge wrote that the public should be allowed to judge whether the administrations analysis holds water.
Note: For analysis of the significance of this reluctant court ruling upholding continued secrecy of the drone assassinations, click here.
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