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Subscribe to RSSAndrea Mitchell talks with Rachel Maddow about the breaking news that the Department of Justice, with the confirmation hearing for John Brennan to head the CIA looming, will share their legal reasoning for extrajudicial targeting of Americans with drone strikes with the intelligence committees in Congress.
Updated at 9:44 p.m. ET -- Reversing its course, the White House will now brief members of Congress on the legal justifications for drone strikes against U.S. citizens, an administration official said Wednesday night.
"Today, as part of the president's ongoing commitment to consult with Congress on national security matters, the president directed the Department of Justice to provide the congressional intelligence committees access to classified Office of Legal Counsel advice related to the subject of the Department of Justice White Paper," the official said.
The Justice Department paper, first obtained by NBC News, concluded that the United States can legally order the killing of American citizens believed to be al-Qaida leaders.
Until Wednesday, the administration would not even confirm these memos existed.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement Wednesday night she was pleased with the White House's decision.
"I am pleased that the president has agreed to provide the Intelligence Committee with access to the OLC opinion regarding the use of lethal force in counterterrorism operations. It is critical for the committee's oversight function to fully understand the legal basis for all intelligence and counterterrorism operations," Feinstein's statement read.
Earlier Wednesday, the Associated Press reported that White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama was engaged in an internal process deliberation to determine how to balance the nation's security needs with its values. He said Obama was committed to providing more information to Congress, even as he refused to acknowledge whether the drone memo even existed.
"He thinks that it is legitimate to ask questions about how we prosecute the war against al-Qaida," Carney said. "These are questions that will be with us long after he is president and long after the people who are in the seats that they're in now have left the scene."
Some legal experts warned that the secret memo threatened constitutional rights and dangerously expanded the definition of national self-defense and of what constitutes an imminent attack.
The administration’s decision to give the memo to the congressional intelligence committees comes a day before the Senate confirmation hearing Thursday for John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s pick to lead the CIA. Brennan was an architect of the administration’s controversial escalation of drone strikes to take out suspected militants.
Members of Congress have expressed serious reservations about the memo. On Wednesday, Rep. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. and a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told NBC News Radio that the memo “doesn’t answer the central questions” revolving around an important policy decision: "When does the government have the legal right to kill an American?"
"The administration has essentially been stonewalling the committee and myself and others for over two years by not actually making that memo available with someone willing to answer questions about it," Wyden said.
Related:
Wyden vows to 'pull out all the stops' to get 'actual legal analysis' on drones
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Anyone think either Hagel or Brennin will be confirmed?
Me thinks obama picked a couple losers!
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Its appalling to see Americans turning on Americans because of political views, while the true villains fiddle.
Our forefathers were of various political parties and views and created the greatest country on earth. Have we become so petty that we have become blinded by the fiddlers bling, to not realize the moral basics of our country are being assaulted?
Look close, for no nation can stand against itself and survive.
I understand your point but political views are key if we are talking about the government killing citizens of the US.
Maybe this nation, as it is, should not stand and survive. Maybe we need some real changes.
Exactly my point!
Hooray. Get your posts in quickly folks. The freedom to speak your mind will probably be diasappearing soon as well. Heck if your government can now kill you without due process maybe free speech will stick around, after all it becomes a pretty pointless right?
I'm as concerned about terrorism as the next person. What concerns me about terrorism most is our willingness to tuck tail and give up the freedoms that make us great just so we can feel "safe".
One of our governments first actions after the attacks on 9/11? Create a new set of laws that do serious damage to our constitutional rights to keep us "safe". Apparently from ourselves as the Patriot Act is almost exclusively focused on the US public.
The idea that our government can kill a citizen without dues process and representation should be revolting to us, regardless of the circumstances. Those of you claiming this is acceptable to keep America safe need to take a minute to think about that. It is acceptable to kill Americans without due process and representation to keep Americans "safe". Isn't killing someone, especially an American citizen, the perfect definition of unsafe?
The founding fathers are rolling over in their graves.
Don't forget, over 30,000 drones will be utilized in the US by 2020. Conspiracy theory? Don't think so.
http:// www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/7/coming-to-a-sky-near-you/?page=all
If I were an elected political opponent of obama I might think twice about this crap. They might take a trip and never make it back!
We have target acquisition Mr. President. OK take the bastard out!
BOOM!
Direct hit Mr. President, who's next?
"Well, lets see.....I have finished with my appointee's in key positions...."
"Maybe I could....hmmm, let me look at the Congressional roster."
We have started the next mini-series here.....first pages of the new show "Obamica" starting this March on all 'newly acquired' government stations.
Iran shows footage 'extracted from US drone'
3:28PM GMT 07 Feb 2013
Iran has long claimed it managed to reverse-engineer the RQ-170 Sentinel, seized in December 2011 after it entered Iranian airspace from its eastern border with Afghanistan, and that it's capable of launching its own production line for the unmanned aircraft.
After initially saying only that a drone had been lost near the Afghan-Iran border, American officials eventually confirmed the Sentinel had been monitoring Iran's military and nuclear facilities. Washington asked for it back but Iran refused, and instead released photos of Iranian officials studying the aircraft.
The video aired late on Wednesday on Iranian TV shows an aerial view of an airport and a city, said to be a US drone base and Kandahar, Afghanistan. The TV also showed images purported to be the Sentinel landing at a base in eastern Iran but it was unclear if that footage meant to depict the moment of the drone's seizure.
In addition, the TV also showed images of an Iranian helicopter transporting the drone, as well as its disassembled parts being carried on a trailer.
In another part of the video, the chief of the Revolutionary Guard's airspace division, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, said that only after capturing the drone, Iran realised it "belongs to the CIA."
"We were able to definitively access the data of the drone, once we brought it down," said Gen Hajizadeh.
He described the Sentinel's capture as a huge scoop for Iran, saying that at the time, Tehran did not rule out a possible punitive US air strike over the drone.
Iranian officials have accused the US of stepping up its espionage activities against Iran as part of intensified Western efforts to force Tehran to abandon its uranium enrichment programme, a key aspect of its disputed nuclear programme. The US and its allies suspect Iran may be trying to develop atomic weapons, a charge Tehran denies.
In an attempt to embarrass Washington, Iran has claimed to have captured several American drones, most recently in December, when Tehran said it seized a Boeing-designed ScanEagle drone – a less sophisticated aircraft – after it entered Iranian airspace over the Persian Gulf.
US officials said there was no evidence that the latest claims were true
Murder by drone...Obama has murdered American citizens and foreigners with drones...when will America figure out that Obama belongs in the big house and not in the White House...Obama's a murdering savage...
The issue isn't whether an American citizen who's become a literal traitor should or should not be killed. The question isn't moral. It's legal.
How, under the Constitution, can an American citizen be deprived of due process as outlined in the Fourth Amendment? How can he legally be deprived of his right to a trial, represented by counsel, and not given an opportunity to surrender. How can the US legally kill him instead of kidnapping him? Where is the evidence against him? Is it sufficient to amount to an automatic death sentence without his being given an opportunity to defend himself?
Who decides whether someone -- citizen or not -- deserves to be killed, although he may never have worn a uniform, carried a weapon, and lives in a country not in a state of war with America? The memo says the decision is made by "a well informed person." How nice.
A memo from the president's Office of Legal Counsel, saying it's okay, won't cut it. That's what Bush did with torture. Gonzales provided Bush with the flimsiest of legal reasoning. A similar memo from one of Obama's staff has the same murky legal status.
Further, this is being run by the CIA, not the military, meaning that "national security" can be invoked to keep the operations secret. For what it's worth, the CIA were forbidden by Congress to kill anyone in another country after their involvement in the assassination of the constitutionally elected president of Chile in the early 1970s. They kidnapped an American citizen from the streets of Milan. (Charges are still pending in Italy against the agents involved.) What's to stop anyone from sending a lethal drone to Milan next time around, or Paris, or London?
There is a lot of unjustified anger about Obama's "slippery slope" towards demagoguery, socialism, Fascism, and the rest of the name-calling nonsense. But this really IS a slippery slope! Wyden just wants the administration, of which the CIA is a part, to explain its legal reasoning, not its operations. It's a perfectly legitimate question in a democracy.
The only problem I have with giving congress classified information is that they can't keep their mouths shut about anything but crap they pull and sometimes they can't even do that. It would be safer just giving it to the television networks and newspapers right away. That way we wouldn't have to worry about as much political spin on it. Oh, I forgot the media hates conservatives so I guess the only way they can get "fair and balanced" news is on the internet from each other.
Bingo, "Ron Brock" - right on the money. When government becomes FUBAR like ours, why debate much of anything it does? It's like trying to find a black hat in a totally dark room that isn't there - hat or room.
Chaos is chaos, the only thing being revealed is that since disorder means what it does, there must be order somewhere...
I'm less concerned with drones killing terrorists & linked groups, but what they are doing is SO much worse than that! You need to know about 2 things...
1. They won't answer the questions about whether this power gives them the authority to use those drones IN America, and the exact requirements to become a target.
2. This ties in well with Obama's new litmus test for our military leaders in regard to the 2nd amendment: Will you shoot Americans that won't lay down their arms?
ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS GOOGLE THIS: "Obama to Top Brass: Will you fire on American Citizens?"
This channel 9 WHDT news interview with a civil rights hero is on youtube also...it's about 20 minutes long & deeply troubling! I've been sharing this with people & trying to debunk this for better than a week now because it's TOO IMPORTANT to dismiss out of hand!
To all conservatives: Boycott the following and watch most of them rot:
* msnbc (where the butchy women have balls and weak, lispy men are awash in estrogen)...dead last in cable news and gets raked by sponge bob in time slot.
* cbs, abc, nbc - terrible, boring programing and slowly sinking in ratings vs cable. NEVER, EVER WATCH THESE CHANNELS
* CNN -near death as a news station, and relying on human crap like bloated Morgan to survive - constantly reshuffled station is a dead duck...BOYCOT IT AND KILL IT FOR GOOD.
* newsweak - someone bought it for a dollar and way over-paid...will be first major lib toilet paper diguised as a magazine to die, and good riddence.. I will throw a huge party when this trash death-spirals into its coffin of bankrupcy.
time -another crappy publication that pretends to be important..so near death that going to enet wont save it
* NY slimes - once if goes mostly to the net its dead...but it dead already but doesnt t know it yet. Pure biased, opining slop to the point of being unreadable let alone uninformative.
* scientific american - not science anymore, just opining faux-reasearch whores trying to justify their reasearch grants..once great but now PURE LIBERAL ARTS GARBAGE.
* entertainment weakly...told my fam that I pay the bills and dont want a political rag disguised as a girly pop magazine in my house,..worse yet its stupid girl politicing.
* Your local newspaper (if you live on the west coast or northeast...a moderate boycott by just the hard right in these states will kill these bird cage liners once and for all. newspapers are already paper thin and only bulked up with advertisement for junk you dont wnt to buy.
LET THE OBAMA-LEG-HUMPING, LIBERAL LAMESTREAM MEDIA KNOW THAT CONSERVATIVES PAY A DISPORPORTIONATE AMOUNT FOR THESE SUBSCRIPTIONS...IF YOU BOYCOTT THESE FINANCIAL MESSESS THEY WILL ROT.
IF YOU ARE SICK OF BIASED OPINERS WHO LIE AND CALL THEMSEVES JOURNALIST, THEN PUT THEM OUT OF BUSINESS...THE ABOVE ARE BARELY HANGING ON...SHOW THEM WHERE THE REAL POWER OF THE RIGHT IS.
LET THE LIBERALS SUBSIDZE THE ABOVE SLOP ON THEIR OWN ...and watch them die for lack of sales
***Copy and paste this on 25 blogs as I have done...and watch the butterfly effect that has alredy begun to hit near critical mass***
I've renamed them the "state-run-media" myself because they are merely political arms of the democratic party anymore! Consider it posted :-)
I started to ask still another time, "how stupid can you get," saw Andrea Mitchell's photo at the top, then read the "thread" following it. No need for any questions.
Just curious, though - does any extremist nowadays ever support with facts or logic anything he says? Is his religious or ideological mindset such that everyone must believe as he does, such that anyone who doesn't must be wrong? Does anyone here recognize without looking it up the term "Bare Assertion Fallacy?" Or is it just that on "forums" like this one can say anything they like, no matter how nonsensical, without shame?
And just for instance, "Amunaka," do you have anything, anything at all beyond the Bare Assertion Fallacy, that logically or forensically supports anything you say? "More right wing blogesphere nonsense that makes stuff up then feeds on and off each other..." for instance. Do you have any data that would support that? It happens that I have (I'm researching for a book): during the last election campaign, a check of facts concerning what was stated by the parties reveals a statistical skewing of the truth by the left that was almost three to one more mendacious than that of the right. Of all the opinion "blogs" and e-mail missives I checked (both leftwing and rightwing oriented) - one, "Media Matters," stood out for blatant propagandist falsehood, fact-twisting, and out-of-context misrepresentation. One claim in ten was completly factual. Television and televison new "analysts" - Andrea Mitchell among the worst - was bad, too. How do you explain that?
I'm very hopeful that you'll reply. As I said, I'm doing research for a book ("U.S. History during One Man's Lifetime?). And, by the way, I'm totally apolitical - have no reason to be otherwise.
Ooops - P.S. The most mentally-cripping thing about liberalism is that it becomes so enmeshed in all its special definitions that it can't remember what they are. Living in a reality that is not only virtual, but one of their own construction, their thought processes must eventually become chaotic. The definition of "Liberal" - one much propounded and promulgated during the sixties when it metastasized into what it is today - is 'without rules, situational only." Everyone my age can remember the post-modern and liberal idea that nothing was certain; more, anything certain must be false. "You're okay, I'm okay," and all the rest. It was all recorded - liberalism demanded it - and now its progeny is stuck with it. So, all new definitions.
Orwell wrote about it. He called it all "Newspeak."
One more thing for "Amunaka." Is there in your mind some justification for all the mendacity and falsehood? Do you think that proof the other side has lied justifies lying by the other ("tu quoque")? Is it a case of the end justifying the means? Can one by proving to himself that his opposition is evil (or just opposed) then justify anything said or done in the argument? How does a lie or bare assertion become the truth?
I really do hope you respond (and I'm not picking on you specially - I've asked these questions of more than two hundred people chosen at random - several of them people like Andrea Mitchell - and on both political sides of the issue).
Where is all of the GOP "constitutionalist" outrage over the Obama (inherited from Bush but promulgated by Obama) over this OBVIOUS attack on American's rights?
I am personally outraged at two things:
First and foremost, the Obama admin pursuing this TOTAL BS.
Secondly, MSNBC (as well as other "news" sources) lack of coverage on this OUTRIGHT attack on American civil liberties.