Killing al Awlaki "legal" only if it wasn't possible to take him alive

charlie savage in the nyt...

The Obama administration’s secret legal memorandum that opened the door to the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical Muslim cleric hiding in Yemen, found that it would be lawful only if it were not feasible to take him alive, according to people who have read the document.

[...]

The secret document provided the justification for acting despite an executive order banning assassinations, a federal law against murder, protections in the Bill of Rights and various strictures of the international laws of war, according to people familiar with the analysis. The memo, however, was narrowly drawn to the specifics of Mr. Awlaki’s case and did not establish a broad new legal doctrine to permit the targeted killing of any Americans deemed to pose a terrorist threat.

The Obama administration has refused to acknowledge or discuss its role in the drone strike that killed Mr. Awlaki last month and that technically remains a covert operation. The government has also resisted growing calls that it provide a detailed public explanation of why officials deemed it lawful to kill an American citizen, setting a precedent that scholars, rights activists and others say has raised concerns about the rule of law and civil liberties.

But the document that laid out the administration’s justification — a roughly 50-page memorandum by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, completed around June 2010 — was described on the condition of anonymity by people who have read it.

The legal analysis, in essence, concluded that Mr. Awlaki could be legally killed, if it was not feasible to capture him, because intelligence agencies said he was taking part in the war between the United States and al Qaeda and posed a significant threat to Americans, as well as because Yemeni authorities were unable or unwilling to stop him.

The memorandum, which was written more than a year before Mr. Awlaki was killed, does not independently analyze the quality of the evidence against him.

The administration did not respond to requests for comment on this article.

of course, they don't want to comment... they'd be commenting on a crime...

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Accountability...? What's that...? An emptywheel rant...

this is a follow-on to the previous post and this one...

marcy is righteously indignant over the unbelievable cover-up of our country's worst excesses and the apparent lack of any accountability whatsoever...

Of course no one will be charged for destroying the evidence of torture! Our country has spun so far beyond holding the criminals who run our country accountable that even the notion of accountability for torture was becoming quaint and musty while we waited and screamed for some kind of acknowledgment that Durham had let the statute of limitations on the torture tape destruction expire.

[...]

I think it’s clear. We cannot say we live under the rule of law.

lord help me, i am SO-O-O-O-O-OOO sick of posting about a lack of accountability...

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Sometimes, reading the news is just a flat-out bummer

'specially when all it does is show that there's absolutely no accountability ANYWHERE for ANYTHING that matters... now, if somebody falls a month or two behind in house payments, well, gee, that's an ENTIRELY different story...

No Charges Over Destruction of Interrogation Tapes, Justice Dept. Says

A federal prosecutor will not bring criminal charges against any of the Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in destroying videotapes depicting the brutal interrogation of Al Qaeda detainees, Justice Department officials said on Tuesday.

After an investigation spanning nearly three years, John H. Durham, the special prosecutor assigned to the case, has decided to clear the C.I.A. undercover officers and top lawyers at the agency for their roles in the destruction of the tapes.

Jose A. Rodriguez, the former head of the agency’s clandestine service, ordered his staff in 2005 to destroy tapes of the interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The tapes had been kept in a safe in the agency’s station in Thailand, where the interrogations were conducted in 2002.

Mr. Rodriguez took responsibility for the destruction of the tapes, according to current and former government officials, and said that C.I.A. lawyers had authorized his order. The agency withheld the fact that the tapes had been destroyed from Congressional oversight committees, federal courts and the Sept. 11 Commission, which had asked the agency for records of the interrogations.

The announcement that there will be no charges in the destruction of the tapes leaves unanswered whether Mr. Durham will bring other charges related to the death or mistreatment of detainees in the hands of the agency, or to any false statements made by officials to investigators about harsh interrogations. The anti-torture act has an eight-year statute of limitations, and there is no time limit for murder charges.

Documents released earlier this year in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union showed that the C.I.A. destroyed the tapes on the morning of Nov. 9, 2005. The five-year statute of limitations for filing charges of obstruction of justice related to their destruction expired on Tuesday.

Robert S. Bennett, Mr. Rodriguez’s attorney, said in an interview that he was pleased that the Justice Department “did the right thing.”

Mr. Rodriguez is “a hero and a patriot, who simply wanted to protect his people and his country,” Mr. Bennett said.

In August 2008, when Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. expanded Mr. Durham’s mandate to include looking into whether crimes were committed in the interrogation program, he also stressed that the Justice Department would “not prosecute anyone who acted in good faith and within the scope of the legal guidance given by the Office of Legal Counsel regarding the interrogation of detainees.”

"a hero and a patriot...?" fuck me...

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