A federal judge has ruled that President Barack Obama's administration doesn't have to publicly disclose its legal justification for the drone attacks and other methods it has used to kill terrorism suspects overseas.
Two New York Times reporters and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a 2011 request under the Freedom of Information Act that sought any documents in which Department of Justice lawyers had discussed the highly classified "targeted-killing" program.
The requests followed a drone strike in Yemen that killed an al-Qaida leader, Anwar Al-Awlaki, who had been born in the U.S. That attack prompted complaints from some law scholars and human rights activists that, away from the battlefield, it was illegal for the U.S. to kill American citizens without a trial.
Those demands for documents were turned down, on the grounds that releasing any details about the program, or even acknowledging that documents on the subject existed, could harm national security.
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them."- Galileo Galilei
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Wed Jan 02, 2013 6:54 pm
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