[Peace-discuss] Obama kills with deniability

[C. G. Estabrook]

	“The president himself does not have to sign off on kill orders.”
	By: emptywheel Saturday February 6, 2010 1:43 pm

That’s the most striking line from the most recent post from Mark Hosenball, in 
which he tries to understand the process by which US citizens are placed on a 
list to be assassinated. Here’s Hosenball’s fuller explanation.

…strikes specifically targeting Americans must first be approved by a secret 
committee made up of senior intel officials and members of the president’s 
cabinet (it’s not known which ones). The president himself does not have to sign 
off on kill orders.

It’s handy, isn’t it, the way the President gets to retain plausible deniability 
for the killing of a US citizen? And the way Obama has conveniently wrapped 
himself in the same plausible deniability that Bush (or, more likely, Cheney) 
created? That way you can kill US citizens without ever worrying about the 
President going to jail for it. And if you’re really good at hiding the 
identities of those who do sign off on the killings, then no one can sue!

Also note that Hosenball seems to be looking closely at the same loophole that I 
have been thinking about: the ability to knowingly kill Americans so long as the 
purported target of that assassination is the guy sitting next to the American 
in the car that’s about to blow up.

The sources say that committee approval is required only if the specific target 
of the assassination is an American—not if an American happens to be in the 
vicinity of a foreign target at the time of the strike. At least once, U.S. 
forces have killed an American this way. In November 2002 a missile attack 
targeting a Yemeni terrorist also killed Kamal Derwish, an American citizen 
associated with an alleged terrorist cell in Lackawanna, N.Y. U.S. forces almost 
did it again last Christmas Eve, with an airstrike against another Yemeni 
terrorist; he was believed to be hiding with Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born 
radical cleric who advised both the suspected Fort Hood shooter and the alleged 
Christmas Day bomber. Al-Awlaki is believed to have escaped.

It would add another convenient level of plausible deniability, of course. “Oh, 
we weren’t actually targeting Kamal Derwish! We were targeting Harithi, even at 
precisely the time we targeted him, we had the guy who did what we claim he did 
in custody.”

I can’t wait until this gets to the courts.

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/

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