Gary Johnson, Ron Paul criticize killing of alleged terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki by U.S. drone attack

The drone attacks that killed Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen have sparked renewed talks of due process for U.S. born citizens alleged to have been involved in terrorist activity.

Awlaki was born in New Mexico, and two presidential candidates, along with a host of civil liberties writers, More…

Intel Report: al-Qaeda in Yemen Determined to Strike in U.S.

Mark Hosenball gets a hold of a report from a northern California-based “fusion center” of federal, state and local homeland security and law enforcement organizations. Looking at al-Qaeda’s Yemen affiliate, which provided the training for failed Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the fusion center views the threat from More…

Justice Dept., CIA Decline Our FOIA Request About Killing U.S. Citizens

Descend for a moment, won’t you, into a bureaucratic labyrinth with me, in pursuit of constitutional rights and government transparency.

In April, anonymous administration officials claimed to reporters that they possessed the right to kill an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, because of Awlaki’s apparent connections to al-Qaeda. There was More…

Intel Chief Dodges on Killing American Citizens

I spent my morning attending the fifth birthday of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the management organization dedicated to marshaling the 16 intelligence agencies toward a coherent, unified goal. Surrounded by the heads of all those agencies, retired Adm. Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, gave More…

Did Harold Koh Just Defend Assassination?

Adam Serwer reads through the State Department legal adviser’s recent defense of why drone strikes outside Afghanistan are legal and observes that the rationale Harold Koh offered could be used to argue that assassinations of people like Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S. citizen-turned-extremist who has argued that Muslims More…

The National Security Case Against Killing Anwar al-Awlaki

For a moment, leave aside the legal questions about the Obama administration’s apparent decision that it possesses the legal authority to order the extra-judicial killing of American citizen and possible al-Qaeda affiliate Anwar al-Awlaki. Karen Greenberg, director of New York University’s Center on Law and Security and the person More…

Are Anwar al-Awlaki’s Ties to 9/11 Strong Enough for the Government to Kill Him?

In an interview with Adam Serwer of The American Prospect, Ken Gude of the Center for American Progress says that the September 14, 2001 congressional Authorization to Use Military Force in response to 9/11 provides the Obama administration with the legal authority to launch the extra-judicial killing of an American More…

Why Is It Legal to Kill Anwar al-Awlaki?

In February, the director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, told a congressional panel that there were certain counterterrorism cases that could involve killing an American citizen. That, he cautioned, required a special process through the National Security Council — for safeguards.

Anwar al-Awlaki is an American citizen, born in New More…

U.S. Citizen Awlaki Issues New Call for Attacks on U.S.

Via Robert Mackey at The New York Times, CNN obtains a new audiotaped message from Yemen-based Anwar al-Awlaki. He aims a section of the tape at challenging American Muslims to choose between their country and their faith.

John Yoo on Stripping Citizenship for Americans Who Work for U.S. Enemies

This is a bit flashbacky, but in June 2002, John Yoo, then the deputy chief of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, considered the question of what acts a U.S. citizen might commit that would indicate an implicit renunciation of his or her citizenship. Apropos of my More…