The Assassination Bureau Ramps Up
The Assassination Bureau Ramps Up
Written by Gary North on March 8, 2012
The Assassination Bureau is an unfinished short story begun by Jack London over a century ago. He could not figure out an ending for it. It is now becoming an official aspect of American government. I can see what ending is planned by the government.
The notion that the White House can target Americans for summary execution by merely claiming that they are associated with terrorism is chilling given the fact that Americans who engage in political activism or even banal behaviors have been characterized as potential terrorists by U.S. authorities.
The White House has asserted the right to carry out state-sponsored assassination anywhere in the world without having to provide any evidence or go through any legal process. The administration merely has to state that the target is a terrorist and it doesn’t matter whether they are an American citizen or not, as we saw in the case of American-born Anwar al-Awlaki and his son, who were both killed last year.
In December, Obama administration lawyers reaffirmed their backing for state sponsored assassination, claiming that “U.S. citizens are legitimate military targets” and do not have the right to any legal protection against being marked for summary execution.
During a CBS 60 Minutes interview in January, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta revealed that Obama himself personally approves the policy to kill American citizens suspected of terrorism without trial on a case by case basis.
“So it’s the requirement of the administration under the current legal understanding that the president has to make that declaration, not you?” Panetta was asked, to which he replied, “That is correct.”
This is being done in full public view. This is public policy. There are no organized protests. It’s business as usual.
The Attorney General of the United States has publicly defended this policy. He did so at the Law School of Northwestern University.
Judge Andrew Napolitano has warned us of what the implications are. Few people care.
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Holder To Justify Killing Americans On Foreign Soil
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Obama administration firms up support for state-sponsored assassination
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Monday, March 5, 2012
Attorney General Eric Holder will today attempt to justify the Obama administration’s policy of state-sponsored assassination, as he prepares to give a speech explaining how the U.S. government can arbitrarily kill U.S. citizens on foreign soil.
“Holder plans to say in a major speech on Monday at Northwestern University law school in Chicago that lethal force is legal under a Sept. 18, 2001, joint congressional resolution,” reports the Associated Press.
The notion that the White House can target Americans for summary execution by merely claiming that they are associated with terrorism is chilling given the fact that Americans who engage in political activism or even banal behaviors have been characterized as potential terrorists by U.S. authorities.
The White House has asserted the right to carry out state-sponsored assassination anywhere in the world without having to provide any evidence or go through any legal process. The administration merely has to state that the target is a terrorist and it doesn’t matter whether they are an American citizen or not, as we saw in the case of American-born Anwar al-Awlaki and his son, who were both killed last year.
In December, Obama administration lawyers reaffirmed their backing for state sponsored assassination, claiming that “U.S. citizens are legitimate military targets” and do not have the right to any legal protection against being marked for summary execution.
During a CBS 60 Minutes interview in January, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta revealed that Obama himself personally approves the policy to kill American citizens suspected of terrorism without trial on a case by case basis.
“So it’s the requirement of the administration under the current legal understanding that the president has to make that declaration, not you?” Panetta was asked, to which he replied, “That is correct.”
The administration’s support for state-sponsored assassination without a shred of legal oversight puts into context the worthlessness of an Obama ‘policy directive’ last week that promised the White House would not indefinitely detain American citizens under the National Defense Authorization Act, which Obama signed on New Years Eve.
As we documented at the time, it was the administration itself which demanded the controversial detention without trial provisions of the NDAA be applied to American citizens.
The NDAA defines the entire planet, including America, as a “battlefield,” meaning Americans could also hypothetically be assassinated without any legal process on U.S. soil under the legal framework that has been codified under Obama.
The recent announcement that up to 30,000 drones will be in American skies within ten years, allied to the DHS plan to spend up to $50 million dollars on a spy system that has been used to hunt insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan for the purposes of “emergency and non-emergency incidents” within the United States, makes it clear that Americans are being targeted as terrorists at both home and abroad.
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.
The Assassination Bureau Ramps Up
also this article
The Assassination Bureau Is Now Open for Business
Written by Gary North on February 6, 2012
The Assassination Bureau was a late 1960s movie. Now it’s for real.
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In an interview with CBS 60 Minutes‘ Scott Pelley, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta revealed more about the secret process the Obama administration uses to kill American citizens suspected of terrorism without trial. According to Panetta, the president himself approves the decision based on recommendations from top national security officials.
“[The] President of the United States obviously reviews these cases, reviews the legal justification, and in the end says, go or no go,” Panetta said.
“So it’s the requirement of the administration under the current legal understanding that the president has to make that declaration, not you?” Pelley asked. Panetta replied, “That is correct.”
The process by which national security officials determine whether or not American citizens suspected of terrorism can be killed remains opaque. The administration has leaked information about certain targets, but it has never released the legal justification for doing so, nor has it explained the system by which members of the National Security Council reportedly decide to put an American citizen on a so-called “kill list.” In October, Reuters’ Mark Hosenball wrote that the president doesn’t necessarily explicitly approve strikes—instead, the attacks go forward unless the president objects.
Panetta’s explanation of why he believes killing an American citizen without due process is legal wasn’t exactly comforting. Here’s the exchange:
PANETTA: Without getting into the specifics of the operation, if someone is a citizen of the United States, and is a terrorist who wants to attack our people and kill Americans, in my book that person is a terrorist. And the reality is that under our laws, that person is a terrorist. And we’re required under a process of law, to be able to justify, that despite the fact that person may be a citizen, he is first and foremost a terrorist who threatens our people, and for that reason, we can establish a legal basis on which we oughta go after that individual, just as we go after bin Laden, just as we go after other terrorists. Why? Because their goal is to kill our people, and for that reason we have to defend ourselves.
PELLEY: They’re not entitled to due process of law under the Constitution of the United States? They lose their citizenship if this administration decides they’re a terrorist?
PANETTA: If this person wanted to suddenly raise questions about whether or not they’re a terrorist, and they were to return to the United States, of course they would be entitled to due process. That’s something we provide any US citizen. And for that matter frankly any terrorist who is arrested; we provide due process to that individual as well. But if a terrorist is out there on the battlefield, and the terrorist is threatening this country, that person is an enemy combatant, and when an enemy combatant holds a gun at your head, you fire back.
Panetta’s explanation isn’t much more complex than “when we say someone is a terrorist, then we can kill them, because they’re a terrorist.” The entire point of due process, however, is to determine whether or not someone is actually guilty. The defense secretary’s metaphor—that you can fire back when someone “holds a gun to your head”—might justify killing an American citizen who is fighting on an actual battlefield, like Afghanistan. But it suggests violence as an appropriate response to an imminent threat, rather than the actual circumstances under which say, radical cleric and American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki appears to have been killed.
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Now that the NDAA is the law of the land, the Assassination Bureau is legally a possibility. We will not know when it is a reality. People will just have fatal accidents.
Read more. It gets worse.
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