WASHINGTON—The U.S. government admits it killed four of its own citizens — one on purpose, three by accident — in its first formal accounting of drone strikes ordered under President Barack Obama.Though the attack on...
WASHINGTON—The U.S. government admits it killed four of its own citizens — one on purpose, three by accident — in its first formal accounting of drone strikes ordered under President Barack Obama.Though the attack on Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical propagandist killed in Yemen in 2011, was deliberate, the other three U.S. casualties were “not specifically targeted,” Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress in a letter http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/05/23/us/politics/23holder-drone-lettter.html?smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0The disclosures of U.S. drone deaths, widely reported but never before acknowledged by the White House, came as Obama readied to deliver a keynote address Thursday aimed at outlining — and making the case for — the future of U.S. counterterror operations. Obama’s speech, White House sources say, will follow through on promises of greater transparency on the legal framework guiding the controversial program of targeted killings that expanded dramatically since the president took office in 2009. But Obama is also expected to broach what may well be his last chance to close the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, where the majority of detainees have been on a hunger strike for more than 100 days. Though Obama pledged to mothball the facility during his first days in power, the effort proved intractable, with an obstructionist Congress blockading funds to transfer detainees and the White House ultimately spending its political capital elsewhere.The Holder letter disclosing four U.S. deaths by drone made no apologies in acknowledging the three unintended American casualties. They were named as Samir Khan, who was killed in the strike against Awlaki; Awlaki’s 16-year-old son Adbulrahman, who was killed in a separate strike in Yemen; and Jude Kenan Mohammad, who was killed in a drone strike in Pakistan.Without addressing the circumstances in which those three died, Holder’s five-page letter defended the administration’s legal right to strike Americans and others with deadly force outside the United States, echoing the reasoning of a Justice Department document on targeted killings leaked to the media in February.“It is clear and logical that United States citizenship alone does not make such individuals immune from being targeted,” Holder wrote.“Rather, it means that the government must take special care and take into account all relevant constitutional considerations, the laws of war, and other law with respect to U.S. citizens — even those who are leading efforts to kill their fellow, innocent Americans.”Critics of U.S. drone policy have urged greater openness, calling on Obama to precisely define the concept of “imminence” upon which the White House relies in deciding which suspected threats warrant death by unmanned aerial vehicle. Others have called on the CIA to be stripped of its drone capabilities and for all drone programs to be placed under Pentagon control in a bid for greater accountability.
