Thread: The “listâ€

[b]Kill or capture list

The “listâ€

Secret U.S. Memo Made Legal Case to Kill a Citizen

By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: October 8, 2011
267 comments

WASHINGTON — 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 memo, written last year, followed months of extensive interagency deliberations and offers a glimpse into the legal debate that led to one of the most significant decisions made by President Obama — to move ahead with the killing of an American citizen without a trial.

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 believed 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.

The deliberations to craft the memo included meetings in the White House Situation Room involving top lawyers for the Pentagon, State Department, National Security Council and intelligence agencies.

It was principally drafted by David Barron and Martin Lederman, who were both lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel at the time, and was signed by Mr. Barron. The office may have given oral approval for an attack on Mr. Awlaki before completing its detailed memorandum. Several news reports before June 2010 quoted anonymous counterterrorism officials as saying that Mr. Awlaki had been placed on a kill-or-capture list around the time of the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, 2009. Mr. Awlaki was accused of helping to recruit the attacker for that operation.

Mr. Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico, was also accused of playing a role in a failed plot to bomb two cargo planes last year, part of a pattern of activities that counterterrorism officials have said showed that he had evolved from merely being a propagandist — in sermons justifying violence by Muslims against the United States — to playing an operational role in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s continuing efforts to carry out terrorist attacks.

Other assertions about Mr. Awlaki included that he was a leader of the group, which had become a “cobelligerentâ€

The murder of Americans: Existence of secret kill lists now admitted by lawless White House

Tuesday, October 11, 2011
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

(NaturalNews) You know things are bad in the realm of tyranny when even Reuters runs a story that admits the White House openly engages in the outright murder of U.S. citizens whom the White House deems "enemies." In an article entitled, Secret panel can put Americans on "kill list", Reuters reported:

"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." http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/ ... 5C20111005

If that sounds like a report you'd usually read on NaturalNews or InfoWars.com, that's because we're usually the first to report on true conspiracies that exist in the corrupt, criminal government running rampant across America today. But this particular assassination conspiracy was so outrageous -- and so illegal -- that even Reuters had to cover it (to their credit, by the way).

The existence of this secret "kill list" means the U.S. government can now decide, completely outside of law, to brazenly murder any person it wishes. And this is all apparently A-OK with President Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner!

I wonder if the Nobel Peace Prize committee will consider revoking its peace prize from a recipient who now operates as part of a secret "kill list" murder squad. If not, then we ought to just rename the whole thing the Nobel Murder Prize, huh?

Orwell said it best: War is peace! Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength...

ABC News even went to bat on this issue

Reuters wasn't alone, by the way, in questioning the White House justification for this murder. ABC News Reporter Jake Tapper also had some hard-hitting questions for White House Press Secretary Jay Carney about the legal justification (ha!) for this killing of an American-born man.

Watch the jaw-dropping exchange between Jake Tapper and Jay Carney in the following video link. This will give you a deep (and disturbing) understanding of the astonishing lawlessness that has taken hold in America, where the term due process means absolutely nothing and the President's men can now simply order the murder of anyone he wants, for any reason, without presenting even a shred of evidence to support such actions: http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=1E3C8FBEA ... DBE8F2E451

The full transcript of this exchange is found below.

The quagmire of murderous government

How many laws and rights has President Obama violated in this executive murder of an American citizen?

Let's see: There are federal laws against murder. There are two amendments in the Bill of Rights that protect due process. There is an executive order on the books banning assassinations. Plus, there's is God's law (or natural law) under which the unjustified murder of another human being is a severe violation.

But the Obama administration says murder is right only as long as the U.S. government does it. This is equivalent to arguing that the King's word is law because the King says it is, which implies that the King is gifted some supernatural authority which the People themselves do not possess. And that stands in complete violation of the very founding principles of our nation which exists on the commonsense premise that All Men Are Created Equal -- i.e. there is no "King" among us whose actions or intentions are immune from the scrutiny of law.

Don't misunderstand me in all this: I'm not saying the target of all this -- Anwar al-Awlaki -- is innocent. But the point is that we don't really KNOW who is innocent or guilty until evidence is presented and a person has their day in court. One of the most fundamental principles of Common Law is that those accused of crimes may face their accusers and see the evidence presented against them. This is guaranteed under U.S. law as well as the Bill of Rights. Yet President Obama -- who has also seen fit to continue Bush's torture regime at Gitmo -- apparently believes all those laws and rights do not apply to the government itself. The King again, remember?

Friends, this is the very definition of tyranny. You are staring it in the face. Secret kill lists? Really? Why not just roll in the Stasi secret police or Nazi SS? This is how it starts: First the killing is "only" for real enemies. And then it's for political enemies. Then it's for journalists, entrepreneurs and academics... until you end up with a total police state tyranny where the government itself is held back by nothing other than the whims and fetishes of its own tyrants who operate under the delusion that they are granted power over the common people by God himself. This is what all kings and tyrants throughout world history have believed, by the way.

Jake Tapper from ABC News stood up to Carney over all this. That's why he asked these pointed questions which Jay Carney flippantly dismissed, almost as if to say, "How dare the slaves ask their King to explain his actions!"

We are about to lose the Republic to total tyranny

That's where things are in America today: Your rights have been overrun. The laws that were once meticulously constructed to place limits on the government itself have been utterly abandoned by that government even as the complacent People watched and did nothing for far too long.

Tyrants in the government today now run surveillance on raw milk distribution centers http://www.naturalnews.com/033822_Kelly ... Foods.html threaten home gardeners with prison time and bring guns to the front steps of innocent moms http://www.naturalnews.com/032960_Julie ... ening.html
to force their children to take psychiatric medications http://www.naturalnews.com/032091_Marya ... ights.html
Government now murders Americans using secret kill lists, and then does not even feel it has any obligation whatsoever to present any evidence at all supporting its actions!

If there are no limits on this government power, and the government itself willfully violates the law at every opportunity, then where do you suppose this is all headed? It can only end with the total concentration of power into the hands of tyrants. If you disagree with that, I ask you: What will stop that from happening? Huh? What will stop it?

The zombies in Atlanta sure won't stop it. They're too engaged in their hypnotic collectivist chant to think for themselves http://www.naturalnews.com/033830_Occup ... mbies.html The Democrats and Republicans sure won't stop it. They all worship Big Government, after all, because that's from where they both draw their power. And the executive branch of the government itself won't stop it -- they're the ones who gain power from all this tyranny!

There is no one who can stop this other that We the People -- People who take to the streets and resist tyranny, speak out against criminality in the government, and nip at the heels of tyrants at every opportunity.

Run the tyrants out of town, I say. Demand the restoration of our Republic, which means that ALL MEN (and woman) must abide by the same laws and recognize the same rights of others. There are no exceptions to these rules. Those who violate them are operating outside the law and are therefore criminals who should be arrested and prosecuted.

Mark my words, friends: If we allow our own government to run a secret kill list targeting "guilty" Americans, then it won't be long before we find ourselves on it.

There are times in history when the criminality of the government is so outrageous, and so inexcusable, that it is not merely the right but the duty of the People to intervene and restore the rule of law upon those who falsely believe they are above it.

Transcript of exchange between Jake Tapper and Jay Carney
See the video at: http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=1E3C8FBEA ... DBE8F2E451

TAPPER: You said that Awlaki was demonstrably and provably involved in operations. Do you plan on demonstrating --

MR. CARNEY: I should step back. He is clearly -- I mean "provably" may be a legal term. I think it has been well established, and it has certainly been the position of this administration and the previous administration that he is a leader in -- was a leader in AQAP; that AQAP was a definite threat, was operational, planned and carried out terrorist attacks that, fortunately, did not succeed, but were extremely serious -- including the ones specifically that I mentioned, in terms of the would-be Christmas Day bombing in 2009 and the attempt to bomb numerous cargo planes headed for the United States. And he was obviously also an active recruiter of al Qaeda terrorists. So I don't think anybody in the field would dispute any of those assertions.

TAPPER: You don't think anybody else in the government would dispute that?

MR. CARNEY: Well, I wouldn’t know of any credible terrorist expert who would dispute the fact that he was a leader in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and that he was operationally involved in terrorist attacks against American interests and citizens.

TAPPER: Do you plan on bringing before the public any proof of these charges?

MR. CARNEY: Again, the question makes us -- has embedded within it assumptions about the circumstances of his death that I’m just not going to address.

TAPPER: How on earth does it have -- I really don't understand. How does -- he’s dead. You are asserting that he had operational control of the cargo plot and the Abdulmutallab plot. He’s now dead. Can you tell us, or the American people -- or has a judge been shown...

MR. CARNEY: Well, again, Jake, I’m not going to go any further than what I’ve said about the circumstances of his death and --

TAPPER: I don't even understand how they're tied.

MR. CARNEY: -- the case against him, which, again, you’re linking. And I think that...

TAPPER: You said that he was responsible for these things.

MR. CARNEY: Yes, but again --

TAPPER: Is there going to be any evidence presented?

MR. CARNEY: I don't have anything for you on that.

TAPPER: Do you not see at all -- does the administration not see at all how a President asserting that he has the right to kill an American citizen without due process, and that he’s not going to even explain why he thinks he has that right is troublesome to some people?

MR. CARNEY: I wasn’t aware of any of those things that you said actually happening. And again, I’m not going to address the circumstances of Awlaki’s death. I think, again, it is an important fact that this terrorist, who was actively plotting -- had plotted in the past, and was actively plotting to attack Americans and American interests, is dead. But I’m not going to -- from any angle -- discuss the circumstances of his death.

TAPPER: Do you know that the Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU tried to get permission to represent Awlaki? And his father had asked them to do that. But they needed to get permission from the Treasury Department so that they could challenge his being on this targeted killing list. And the administration, the Obama administration refused to let them represent him, to not even -- he couldn't even have the ACLU representing him.

MR. CARNEY: Well, I would send those questions, or take those questions to Treasury or Justice. I don't have anything on that for you.

TAPPER: What do you think constitutional law professor Barack Obama would make of this?

MR. CARNEY: I think he spoke about it today.

http://www.naturalnews.com/033835_White ... _list.html

and NO ... no one gives a RATS ASS about Anwar al-Awlaki

Thats not what this argument is about