Anwar Awlaki

Amid all the self-congratulation over the killing of Anwar Awlaki and the confident assertion that the world is a better place as a result, it is worth remembering that the secret, unilateral, targeted assassination of a U.S. citizen far from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan is hardly something to celebrate. If Awlaki was in fact the architect of terrorism attacks inside the United States, as officials maintain he was, then perhaps his demise is to be welcomed. But we don't really know, do we?

In the divided world of American politics, it's not easy to find an issue on which the legal affairs correspondent for the Nation and the former chairman of the American Conservative Union agree. But we've found one: the crucial importance of transparency in government, especially when the president claims the power to kill us without charges or trial, by directing the launching of a remote-control drone. As this is Sunshine Week, a national initiative to promote dialogue about the importance of open government, what better time for the president to make good on his promise to lead the most transparent administration ever and tell us what's up with the drone policy?

Death from the sky Re "Targeted for death," Editorial, Oct. 2 The editorial was right on target as far as the civil liberties questions are concerned. There does indeed need to be some judicial finding that certain individuals (citizens or not) are in fact a mortal threat to the United States and therefore can be targeted for death. But The Times did not go into the question of national sovereignty. What is the constitutional authority for one of our drones to invade the airspace of a neutral country (Pakistan or Yemen)

WASHINGTON   - The Senate voted Thursday to confirm John Brennan as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, ending weeks of delay as lawmakers sought access to secret Obama administration documents about the targeted killing of militants overseas and the Sept. 11 attacks last year that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya. The 63 to 34 vote came a day after Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) launched a rare and dramatic form of filibuster - talking for nearly 13 hours Wednesday on the Senate floor  - to express concerns that the Obama administration had not categorically ruled out authority to use a drone to target an American on U.S. soil.

U.S. Predator drone aircraft armed with Hellfire missiles carried out the targeted killing in northern Yemen of Anwar Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who was a U.S. citizen, and also killed another American who produced virulent propaganda for Al Qaeda. The lethal strike, a CIA-led covert operation that relied on U.S. special operations forces and Yemeni authorities, marks the first time since in the anti-terrorism campaign began after the Sept. 11 attacks a decade ago that the U.S. government deliberately tracked and killed an American citizen.

While living in San Diego in the late 1990s, Anwar Awlaki regularly fished for albacore and shared his catch with a neighbor. At the local mosque where he preached, he delighted in playing soccer with young children and taking the teenagers paint-balling. "He had an allure. He was charming," Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, outreach director of an Islamic center in Falls Church, Va., where Awlaki later gave sermons, told reporters in 2009. With his fashionable eyeglasses and fluent English, the U.S.-born radical cleric also had been called a "Pied Piper of jihadists," an Internet phenomenon who produced video and audio recordings to lure Westerners to his extremist ideologies.

Anyone who is still not sure whether Anwar Awlaki is a bitter, fulminating, implacable enemy of the United States should check out the video posted online Monday. In it, the U.S.-born radical Islamic cleric urges his followers to kill Americans even when there is no religious fatwa in place calling on them to do so. "Don't consult with anybody in killing the Americans," Awlaki says. "Fighting the devil doesn't require consultation or prayers seeking divine guidance. " Not only is he repugnant, but he's dangerous too, according to U.S. officials.

A U.S. military drone strike killed a top Al Qaeda operative in Yemen and the son of Anwar Awlaki, the American-born cleric killed in a similar strike two weeks ago, Yemeni security officials said. As political unrest continues to roil Yemen, the U.S. has escalated its attacks against Al Qaeda's affiliate in the country. Yemeni officials told reporters that nine members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula were killed in the strike near the town of Azzan in southeastern Yemen, including Awlaki's 21-year-old son, Abdul-Rahman Awlaki, and Egyptian-born Ibrahim Banna, whom officials described as the media chief of the Al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen.

WASHINGTON - President Obama, who has championed lethal drone strikes as a major part of U.S. counter-terrorism efforts, bowed to pressure Wednesday and agreed to allow the Senate and House intelligence committees to review classified legal memos used to justify a drone strike against a U.S. citizen in Yemen in 2011. Senators had demanded for months to see the Justice Department opinions that provided the White House legal authority to order the targeted killing of Anwar Awlaki, a New Mexico native who became an Al Qaeda leader.

May the U.S. government kill one of its own citizens without first convicting him of a crime? A court may have the opportunity to answer that important question. After being sued by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Treasury Department has issued a license allowing the civil liberties groups to provide legal services to the father of Anwar Awlaki, an American-born Muslim cleric who is reportedly on a list of individuals targeted for assassination by the military or the CIA. Awlaki's father insists that his son is not a terrorist.

WASHINGTON - Can the president legally order a drone strike to kill an American on U.S. soil? Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. wrote this week in a letter to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) that he could envision "an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate" to use such lethal force. Those words touched off a heated debate Wednesday in the Senate over when and where the president can order the killing of U.S. citizens designated as "enemy combatants. " President Obama and his aides have said that targeted killings of Americans must be governed by some due process.

Tujunga resident Zareh Delanchian took issue with Yale Law School professor Peter Schuck's discussion of dual citizenship and Al Qaeda recruitment in his Feb. 17 Op-Ed article on drone strikes and due process . Delanchian wrote: "I am a dual citizen of the United States and Britain but have lived in America most of my life. I want to thank Schuck for warning me that I could be more easily swayed by terrorists. In fact, I love America and its way of life, but maybe there is some kind of switch in my head that may activate my desire to kill.

Re "Drones and due process," Opinion, Feb. 17 I was pleased to read three lawyers' views on due process and targeting U.S. citizens in drone strikes. However, as a former prosecutor and practicing lawyer, I was dismayed by two of the opinions. All three questioned whether a citizen who has not physically menaced any U.S. soldier or been charged with a crime can be lawfully killed by the government without a court's intervention. Only Vicki Divoll, a former legal advisor to the CIA, answered the question directly.

The idea that the federal courts should play some role in deciding whether the government may kill U.S. citizens abroad allied with Al Qaeda has suddenly gained traction in Washington. During confirmation hearings for John Brennan, President Obama's nominee to head the Central Intelligence Agency, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chair of the Intelligence Committee, said she would be considering legislation to establish a court to "review the conduct" of U.S. drone strikes. Brennan himself, asked by Sen. Angus King (I-Maine)

An open debate over using drones to target individual terrorists is long overdue. Many Americans object to the killing in Yemen of Anwar Awlaki, a fellow citizen, without affording him due process. But the Supreme Court has ruled that the particular "process" that is constitutionally "due" varies with context and competing interests. So how much process was Awlaki due? My answer is some, but not in a court. Our constitutional principles ordain that all citizens shall be treated alike.

In 2011, Anwar Awlaki, a U.S. citizen, was reportedly targeted and killed by our government in a drone attack. Ever since, a chorus of scholars, lawyers and civil and human rights activists has been asking about due process. Now we know they were right to be concerned. The Obama administration's lawyers have gotten it wrong. The Justice Department "white paper" leaked early this month raises many troubling legal, ethical and policy questions, but none is more fundamental to our democracy than the way it deals with the 5th Amendment's admonition: No American citizen shall "be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. " The administration memo concludes that there are no due process problems with a drone program that targets Americans, and it relies primarily on Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld, a 2004 Bush-era Supreme Court decision, to justify that conclusion.

A U.S. drone attack in Yemen was an attempt to kill Anwar Awlaki, an American-born militant suspected of involvement in multiple terrorist plots against the United States, but he eluded the missiles, a U.S. official said Friday. The strike Thursday, less than a week after U.S. Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, was the first U.S. drone strike in Yemen since 2002. The timing suggests that Bin Laden's death may be prompting the U.S. to carry out operations that it might have passed up in the past, as well as edging Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh toward allowing such strikes after resisting them for the last year.

On Christmas Day 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab flew into Detroit allegedly trying to detonate a bomb in his underwear in what authorities said was a terrorist mission inspired by Anwar Awlaki, a U.S.-born Muslim radical killed last week in a U.S. missile strike. On Tuesday, as jury selection began in his federal trial, Abdulmutallab shouted in court, "Anwar is alive!" Abdulmutallab, 24, is the latest foreign radical to be tried in a U.S. courtroom under American laws they reject.

Some survivors of the 2009 Fort Hood massacre say the government has neglected them. On Tuesday, the same night President Barack Obama gave his State-of-the-Union speech, ABC's "Nightline" was to broadcast interviews with disgruntled survivors, including a Fort Hood civilian police officer who accuses the government of betrayal. "Not to the least little bit have the victims been taken care of," former Sgt. Kimberly Munley, who was shot three times, told ABC News. "In fact, they've been neglected.