Brian Williams - Predators

This suit was also thrown out in September 2011 by a federal judge who stated that the ACLU did not have the right to access information on the CIA’s secret programs.

Then, on September 30, 2011, news came from Yemen that made headlines around the world. Awlaki and five companions had been tracked down and killed by a CIA Predator missile while they traveled across the north Yemeni desert in a truck. An eyewitness gave the following account of their assassination: “The witness said Awlaki was travelling in a pick-up with six other people on their way to neighboring Marib province. They stopped for breakfast in the desert and were sitting on the ground to eat when they spotted drones, so they rushed to their truck. A Hellfire missile fired from a drone struck the truck, leaving it a charred husk and killing all of those inside.” 80

Because his vehicle had been carbonized in the attack, Yemeni sources were “100% sure” Awlaki was dead. Killed alongside him was another American who had thrown in his lot with al Qaeda, the Pakistani-born Samir Khan. Khan was naturalized in his youth as a U.S. citizen and grew up in New York. He was the editor of Inspire and had once proclaimed, “I am proud to be a traitor to America.” 81Among other articles he published in the magazine was “How to Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.”

Awlaki’s assassination revived the controversy surrounding the drone strikes, and Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU’s deputy legal director, said the killing violated U.S. and international law. He said, “As we’ve seen today, this is a program under which American citizens far from any battlefield can be executed by their own government without judicial process, and on the basis of standards and evidence that are kept secret not just from the public, but from the courts.” 82Samir Khan’s family released a statement that asked, “Was this style of execution the only solution? Why couldn’t there have been a capture and trial?” 83

Libertarians and Muslim advocates further claimed that Awlaki and Khan had been denied their Fifth Amendment rights to protection from governmental legal abuse, including their right to due process. Republican presidential contender Congressman Ron Paul, a libertarian, said, “He was never tried or charged with any crime…. If the American people accept this blindly and casually that we now have an accepted practice of the president assassinating people who he thinks are bad guys, I think it’s sad.” 84

His son, Senator Rand Paul, also a libertarian, would go even further by launching a thirteen-hour filibuster in March 2013 in an attempt to delay the hearing on Obama’s nominee for CIA director, John Brennan. Paul said, “I will speak as long as it takes until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important…. That your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty.” 85Paul summed up his aims saying, “I’m here to filibuster John Brennan’s nomination to be director of CIA…. I will speak for as long as it takes. I will speak today until the president says, ‘no’ he will not kill you at a café.” 86In a statement critics called fear mongering, but that was applauded by the Code Pink antidrone movement, Paul said, “That Americans could be killed in a café in San Francisco or in a restaurant in Houston or at their home in Bowling Green, Kentucky, is an abomination.” 87

Paul’s comments were sharply criticized by Republicans senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain as alarmist and hypocritical considering his silence during Bush’s drone campaign. Referencing the mounting criticism of Obama’s drone campaign by Fox News and many Republicans, Graham said, “To my Republican colleagues, I don’t remember any of you coming down here suggesting that President Bush was going to kill anybody with a drone, do you? They had a drone program back then, all of a sudden this drone program has gotten every Republican so spun up. What are we up to here?” He added, “People are astonished that President Obama is doing many of the things that President Bush did. I’m not astonished. I congratulate him for having the good judgment to understand we’re at war. And to my party, I’m a bit disappointed that you no longer apparently think we’re at war.” 88For his part McCain said, “We’ve done, I think, a disservice to a lot of Americans by making them think that somehow they’re in danger from their government. They’re not. But we are in danger from a dedicated, longstanding, easily replaceable-leadership enemy that is hellbent on our destruction.” 89

As the Paul filibuster demonstrated, no issue related to the drone campaign caused more consternation among Americans than the notion that drones could be used to kill Americans. Writing for the Huffington Post , columnist Anthony Gregory expressed the concerns of Paul and many other Americans in both parties over the precedent of an American president ordering the killing of an American without a trial:

It was actually something special when President Obama ordered the drone killing of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki….

Obama’s summary execution of these Americans, conducted as a military operation through the CIA, would indeed seem to break with precedent and qualify as one of those watershed moments in America’s long retreat from the rule of law. While liberals criticized the Bush administration for warrant-less wiretapping and detentions without trial, one would think that the outright killing of an American citizen without due process would qualify as a greater offense. 90

Journalist David Cole, writing for the New York Review of Books , expressed his concerns as well: “As American citizens we have a right to know when our own government believes it may execute us (and others) without a trial.” 91

For his part, President Obama said that Awlaki had been “planning and directing efforts to murder innocent Americans.” His death demonstrated that terrorists “will find no safe haven anywhere in the world.” 92Most Americans seemed to agree with Obama. According to a subsequent poll, a full 69 percent of Americans who were asked if the strike on Awlaki was justified agreed that it was. 93

To further gain legitimacy for the strikes, on March 5, 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder gave a talk on the issue at Northeastern University, saying that “the unfortunate reality is that our nation will likely continue to face terrorist threats that—at times—originate with our own citizens. We must take steps to stop them—in full accordance with the Constitution. In this hour of danger, we simply cannot afford to wait until deadly plans are carried out—and we will not.” He further said, “Given the nature of how terrorists act and where they tend to hide, it may not always be feasible to capture a United States citizen terrorist who presents an imminent threat of violent attack. In that case, our government has the clear authority to defend the United States with lethal force.” 94

Holder continued, “Any decision to use lethal force against a United States citizen—even one intent on murdering Americans who has become an operational leader of Al Qaeda in a foreign land—is among the gravest that government leaders can face.” He then laid out a three-part formula for determining whether the targeted killing against a U.S. citizen is legally justified. He said the government must determine that the citizen in question poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States, capture is not possible, and the killing would be consistent with laws of war. 95The drone strikes against those posing an imminent threat would be limited to American terrorists abroad. In March 2013 Holder stated, “The government has no intention to carry out any drone strikes in the United States. It’s hard for me to imagine a situation in which that would occur.” 96