Targeted Killings & the Right to Know When Your Government Can Kill You
Targeted Killings & the Right to Know When Your Government Can Kill You
By: Kevin Gosztola Thursday March 14, 2013 12:18 pm
Senator Ron Wyden during CIA director John Brennan’s confirmation hearing
The notion that any presidential administration or Executive Branch agency can keep secret official interpretations of the law is indefensible. A few members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives understand this and are pushing to find out information about President Barack Obama’s targeted killing program that the public has a right to know.
Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, at a Sunshine Week event at George Washington University, declared, “Every American has a right to know when their government believes it has a right to kill them.”
He highlighted how he had worked for the past two years to obtain information on the legal basis for targeting and killing alleged terror suspects, both US citizens and foreign persons, and had submitted at least seven requests for information. Access to documents, which he had a right to read as a lawmaker (especially one on the Senate Select Committee of Intelligence), was obstructed while, at the same time, Obama continued to talk about valuing transparency and openness in government. Only when the administration needed to confirm a nominee did senators have power to force documents to be provided.
Wyden said he intends to try and have a “significant portion” of the Office of Legal Counsel opinions on when the US can legally authorize targeted killing operations released to the public. He does not accept the argument in favor of secrecy that asserts the legal interpretation is intertwined with details of secret operations. After reading them, “It’s pretty clear now they involve the law.”
The senator put the need for the official interpretation of the law to be made public into perspective:
If the CIA or the NSA interprets a law in an unusual fashion, it might well stay secret for years and that is what has happened in the past. If you look at the scandals of the ’60s and ’70s, the spying scandals as well as Iran-Contra, the warrantless wiretapping and coercive interrogation programs of the past decade—Much of that involves officials secretly deciding that the law didn’t mean what most people thought it meant, and, in order to prevent mistakes and abuses from occurring, I believe that Congress and the public have to insist that the Executive Branch’s official interpretation of the law be publicly known.
People in the Executive Branch, he suggested, are “worried that providing the documents” may set a precedent “that would undermine the president’s ability to get candid legal advice.” That concern is not valid because what senators and those in the public are seeking is the official policy that is being relied upon to justify and authorize decisions made in secret operations.
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/03/14/targeted-killings-the-right-to-know-when-your-government-can-kill-you/
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