Government Killings

May 14, 2010

The New York Times

By Scott Shane

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s decision to authorize the killing by the Central Intelligence Agency of a terrorism suspect who is an American citizen has set off a debate over the legal and political limits of drone missile strikes, a mainstay of the campaign against terrorism. The notion that the government can, in effect, execute one of its own citizens far from a combat zone, with no judicial process and based on secret intelligence, makes some legal authorities deeply uneasy.

To eavesdrop on the terrorism suspect who was added to the target list, the American-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is hiding in Yemen, intelligence agencies would have to get a court warrant. But designating him for death, as C.I.A. officials did early this year with the National Security Council’s approval, required no judicial review.

“Congress has protected Awlaki’s cellphone calls,” said Vicki Divoll, a former C.I.A. lawyer who now teaches at the United States Naval Academy. “But it has not provided any protections for his life. That makes no sense.”

Administration officials take the view that no legal or constitutional rights can protect Mr. Awlaki, a charismatic preacher who has said it is a religious duty to attack the United States and who the C.I.A. believes is actively plotting violence. The attempted bombing of Times Square on May 1 is the latest of more than a dozen terrorist plots in the West that investigators believe were inspired in part by Mr. Awlaki’s rhetoric.

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  William E. Word


  The hatred just keeps climbing, when you come to the point you are killing American citizens, we all need to be afraid. For this is not the first time a nation has taken this path, and it never ends being good. It starts with great speeches with patriotic words and the waving of flags, then the pride sets in, then they move to killing and war, then to killing their own people, then mass graves. It has been done over and over again, but we never learn. Even now it is being done in Africa and has been for over a hundred years, Germany did it and killed millions until their total claps. Russia did until their claps, Yugoslavia until their claps, just to name a few. Be afraid, be very afraid, because all the sines of our claps is at the door.