The Obama drone memo is a brazen executive power grab

While there is much we still don't know about the legal rationale to target Anwar al-Awlaki, it's clear the administration blew off basic judicial oversights

The case against Awlaki is still up in the air.
(Image credit: (AP/SITE Intelligence Group))

After years of legal wrangling, the Department of Justice this week finally released the so-called drone memo — the legal justification for the killing of Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki by drone missile attack — to the ACLU and The New York Times in heavily redacted form. While there is still a lot we don't know about the rationale to assassinate this American citizen, the memo does affirm that the Obama administration was eager to grant itself extraordinary powers that appear to be in direct conflict with the Constitution.

The release of the memo has been a long time coming. At first, DOJ convinced courts in New York that the killing of Awlaki on Sept. 30, 2011, was a classified secret, despite the fact that it had been widely reported in the media. But after a stream of White House officials discussed such drone activities — and especially after the government officially released a "white paper" that summarized the memo — the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled the government had to release the memo, as well as other materials relating to the killing.

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Marcy Wheeler

Marcy Wheeler is an independent journalist who covers national security and civil liberties. She writes as emptywheel at her eponymous blog, publishes at outlets including The Guardian, Salon, and The Progressive, and is the author of Anatomy of Deceit, a primer on the Scooter Libby CIA leak investigation.