Obama’s Worst-Kept Secret

Last week, the Obama administration submitted a Motion for Summary Judgment in response to a lawsuit filed by the New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that demanded government agencies release documents on its alleged programme of targeted killings.

As early as June 2011, the Times and the ACLU had filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests that the government blocked in the name of national security. In its brief, the government argues for the continuation of complete secrecy surrounding its reported assassination programme. In fact, the government goes further, claiming that whether the programme even exists is "classified" information.

In light of last month's Times exposé that drew an intimate – and fawning – portrait of the inner chambers of the US president’s counterterrorism programme and his process of drawing up the "kill list", it is baffling that, in court, the administration argues that the programme may not actually exist.

But it appears that the president of the United States will attempt the impossible: to have his cake and eat it too. He will appear like a tough-talking cowboy to the public, and then hide behind "national security needs" to dodge responsibility for his policies that decimate villages and destroy thousands of lives.

In case readers are wondering, the contradiction around US involvement does indeed apply to the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen by a drone attack on September 30, 2011.

In the words of the brief itself: "Whether or not the United States government conducted the particular operations that led to the deaths of Aulaki [sic] and the other individuals named in the FOI requests, and whether or not the CIA has the authority to be, or is in fact, directly involved in targeted lethal operations remains classified."

The government maintains its innocence, despite the fact that, upon the announcement of Awlaki’s death, Obama publically stated:

"The death of Awlaki marks another significant milestone in the broader effort to defeat al-Qaeda and its affiliates. Furthermore this success is a tribute to our intelligence community … We will be deliberate, we will be relentless, we will be resolute in our commitment to destroy terrorist networks that aim to kill Americans and to build a world in which people everywhere can live in greater peace, prosperity and security." [emphasis my own]

Yet the brief claims that this statement – and any other government statement made thus far – does not confirm or deny that the US was involved in a lethal operation against Awlaki. In fact, the only lethal operation in which the government is willing to admit involvement is the assassination of Osama bin Laden, about which the brief states there are no written legal opinions.

Nathan Wessler, a National Security Fellow with the ACLU and actively involved in the suit, explained to me that the government has had to go to extraordinary lengths to argue that statements made in the past by Attorney General Eric Holder, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John Brennan, and even President Obama himself were not in fact confirmations of the existence of a US policy of targeted killings.

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