necessary
On Oct 11, 4:52 am, excalliber stevens
<excalibur.stevens.bis...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Secret panel can put Americans on "kill list'
> By Mark Hosenball
> WASHINGTON | Wed Oct 5, 2011 7:59pm EDT
> (Reuters) - American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a
> kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government
> officials, which then informs the president of its decisions,
> according to officials.
> There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel,
> which is a subset of the White House's National Security Council,
> several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law
> establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is
> supposed to operate.
> The panel was behind the decision to add Awlaki, a U.S.-born militant
> preacher with alleged al Qaeda connections, to the target list. He was
> killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen late last month.
> The role of the president in ordering or ratifying a decision to
> target a citizen is fuzzy. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor declined
> to discuss anything about the process.
> Current and former officials said that to the best of their knowledge,
> Awlaki, who the White House said was a key figure in al Qaeda in the
> Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda's Yemen-based affiliate, had been the only
> American put on a government list targeting people for capture or
> death due to their alleged involvement with militants.
> The White House is portraying the killing of Awlaki as a demonstration
> of President Barack Obama's toughness toward militants who threaten
> the United States. But the process that led to Awlaki's killing has
> drawn fierce criticism from both the political left and right.
> In an ironic turn, Obama, who ran for president denouncing predecessor
> George W. Bush's expansive use of executive power in his "war on
> terrorism," is being attacked in some quarters for using similar
> tactics. They include secret legal justifications and undisclosed
> intelligence assessments.
> Liberals criticized the drone attack on an American citizen as extra-
> judicial murder.
> Conservatives criticized Obama for refusing to release a Justice
> Department legal opinion that reportedly justified killing Awlaki.
> They accuse Obama of hypocrisy, noting his administration insisted on
> publishing Bush-era administration legal memos justifying the use of
> interrogation techniques many equate with torture, but refused to make
> public its rationale for killing a citizen without due process.
> Some details about how the administration went about targeting Awlaki
> emerged on Tuesday when the top Democrat on the House Intelligence
> Committee, Representative Dutch Ruppersberger, was asked by reporters
> about the killing.
> The process involves "going through the National Security Council,
> then it eventually goes to the president, but the National Security
> Council does the investigation, they have lawyers, they review, they
> look at the situation, you have input from the military, and also, we
> make sure that we follow international law," Ruppersberger said.
> LAWYERS CONSULTED
> Other officials said the role of the president in the process was
> murkier than what Ruppersberger described.
> They said targeting recommendations are drawn up by a committee of mid-
> level National Security Council and agency officials. Their
> recommendations are then sent to the panel of NSC "principals,"
> meaning Cabinet secretaries and intelligence unit chiefs, for
> approval. The panel of principals could have different memberships
> when considering different operational issues, they said.
> The officials insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive information.
> They confirmed that lawyers, including those in the Justice
> Department, were consulted before Awlaki's name was added to the
> target list.
> Two principal legal theories were advanced, an official said: first,
> that the actions were permitted by Congress when it authorized the use
> of military forces against militants in the wake of the attacks of
> September 11, 2001; and they are permitted under international law if
> a country is defending itself.
> Several officials said that when Awlaki became the first American put
> on the target list, Obama was not required personally to approve the
> targeting of a person. But one official said Obama would be notified
> of the principals' decision. If he objected, the decision would be
> nullified, the official said.
> A former official said one of the reasons for making senior officials
> principally responsible for nominating Americans for the target list
> was to "protect" the president.
> Officials confirmed that a second American, Samir Khan, was killed in
> the drone attack that killed Awlaki. Khan had served as editor of
> Inspire, a glossy English-language magazine used by AQAP as a
> propaganda and recruitment vehicle.
> But rather than being specifically targeted by drone operators, Khan
> was in the wrong place at the wrong time, officials said.
> Ruppersberger appeared to confirm that, saying Khan's death was
> "collateral," meaning he was not an intentional target of the drone
> strike.
> When the name of a foreign, rather than American, militant is added to
> targeting lists, the decision is made within the intelligence
> community and normally does not require approval by high-level NSC
> officials.
> 'FROM INSPIRATIONAL TO OPERATIONAL'
> Officials said Awlaki, whose fierce sermons were widely circulated on
> English-language militant websites, was targeted because Washington
> accumulated information his role in AQAP had gone "from inspirational
> to operational." That meant that instead of just propagandizing in
> favor of al Qaeda objectives, Awlaki allegedly began to participate
> directly in plots against American targets.
> "Let me underscore, Awlaki is no mere messenger but someone integrally
> involved in lethal terrorist activities," Daniel Benjamin, top
> counterterrorism official at the State Department, warned last spring.
> The Obama administration has not made public an accounting of the
> classified evidence that Awlaki was operationally involved in planning
> terrorist attacks.
> But officials acknowledged that some of the intelligence purporting to
> show Awlaki's hands-on role in plotting attacks was patchy.
> For instance, one plot in which authorities have said Awlaki was
> involved Nigerian-born Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, accused of trying to
> blow up a Detroit-bound U.S. airliner on Christmas Day 2009 with a
> bomb hidden in his underpants.
> There is no doubt Abdulmutallab was an admirer or follower of Awlaki,
> since he admitted that to U.S. investigators. When he appeared in a
> Detroit courtroom earlier this week for the start of his trial on bomb-
> plot charges, he proclaimed, "Anwar is alive."
> But at the time the White House was considering putting Awlaki on the
> U.S. target list, intelligence connecting Awlaki specifically to
> Abdulmutallab and his alleged bomb plot was partial. Officials said at
> the time the United States had voice intercepts involving a phone
> known to have been used by Awlaki and someone who they believed, but
> were not positive, was Abdulmutallab.
> Awlaki was also implicated in a case in which a British Airways
> employee was imprisoned for plotting to blow up a U.S.-bound plane. E-
> mails retrieved by authorities from the employee's computer showed
> what an investigator described as " operational contact" between
> Britain and Yemen.
> Authorities believe the contacts were mainly between the U.K.-based
> suspect and his brother. But there was a strong suspicion Awlaki was
> at the brother's side when the messages were dispatched. British media
> reported that in one message, the person on the Yemeni end supposedly
> said, "Our highest priority is the US ... With the people you have, is
> it possible to get a package or a person with a package on board a
> flight heading to the US?"
> U.S. officials contrast intelligence suggesting Awlaki's involvement
> in specific plots with the activities of Adam Gadahn, an American
> citizen who became a principal English-language propagandist for the
> core al Qaeda network formerly led by Osama bin Laden.
> While Gadahn appeared in angry videos calling for attacks on the
> United States, officials said he had not been specifically targeted
> for capture or killing by U.S. forces because he was regarded as a
> loudmouth not directly involved in plotting attacks.
>
> http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/05/us-cia-killlist-idUSTRE7947...
>
> www.realindianews.blogspot.com
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