Obama administration hiding info on targeted killings of Americans - senator (Ron Wyden)

RT ^ | 1/15/13

[Libloather]

A US senator has accused the Obama administration and the Justice Department for not being “adequately forthcoming” with information on the targeting and potential killing of Americans suspected of terrorism.

Ron Wyden, the Democratic senator from Oregon and a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, wrote an open letter to John Brennan, the frontrunner for the post of Director of the CIA, asking Brennan to provide Congress with the secret legal opinions defining the government’s capacity to pursue and kill US citizens suspected of involvement in terrorist activities.

Members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence by law have access to classified legal opinions – but, Wyden writes, the Obama administration has denied him access to the opinions governing targeted assassinations of American citizens.

Wyden stressed that it is vital that the legal opinions guiding such conduct be distributed so that Congress and the public can “have full knowledge of how the executive branch understands the limits and boundaries of this authority,” the letter reads.

Wyden has tried for more than two years to gain access to the information, but has received either unsatisfactory responses or no response at all.

[generally]

How interesting that at the same time the gun-grabbing government is gearing up to disarm the law-abiding citizens of this country they are also busy conducting secret killings and ramping up their ability to kill people, including American citizens, in high-tech ways with no trial, no jury.

[DBrow]

“are on foreign soil and conducting terrorist operations or supporting terrorist activities “

Yep that would be the best of a worst case, going after US citizen al Quaeda members in Yemen.

I don’t think a citizen gives up his rights to a speedy trial with a jury of his peers just because he’s in France when the drone targets him, but I am not a lawyer.

There was once an EO directing the CIA and other similar agencies to not do assassinations. Singling someone out who is not actively engaged in combat and killing them is assassination, in my book, and doing that to a US citizen needs some close scrutiny.

Killing someone on US soil because they are in the way of some administration goal or if someone “thinks” the target is a troublemaker is just wrong, which is why I think someone with the correct clearance needs to look at who is being assassinated and where.

[research99]

Is this Operation Blackbriar? Where is Jason Bourne?