Critics express concern over potential abuse of executive power in the United States after intelligence director’s testimony.

In an admission that took the intelligence community and its critics by surprise, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair acknowledged in a congressional hearing that the US may, with executive approval, target and kill US citizens who are suspected of being involved in terrorism.

Civil liberties advocates and legal authorities struck back on Friday 5 February at what they describe as the "deliberate targeted killing of US citizens far away from any active hostilities, as long as the executive branch determines unilaterally that they meet a secret definition of who the enemy is." The American Civil Liberties Union is among those expressing serious concern about the lack of public information about the policy and the potential for abuse of unchecked executive power.

Attorney George Brent Mickum, who has defended a number of Guantanamo Bay detainees, told IPS, "I guess my sense is that it's just more fear mongering. They kill somebody and don't need to offer any justification." Another constitutional scholar, Professor Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois Law School, told IPS that "this extrajudicial execution of human beings" violates both international human rights law and the fifth amendment of the US constitution. "The US government has now established a 'death list' for US citizens abroad akin to those established by Latin American dictatorships during their so-called dirty wars," he said.

Civilians protected by law

The human rights advocacy community was equally forceful in its pushback. Daphne Eviatar, an attorney with Human Rights First, told IPS, "The short answer is that combatants can be targeted and civilians cannot under international law. Their citizenship isn't relevant. But just being a 'suspected terrorist' doesn't necessarily mean they're combatants." She added, "The key question, and where there may be serious disagreement, is whether the person targeted is 'directly participating in hostilities'. If not, and they're targeted, it's a war crime."

Chip Pitts, president of the Bill of Rights Defence Committee, told IPS, "As with its embrace of the [George W.] Bush approach to indefinite detention, the Obama administration's even greater reliance on targeted extra-judicial killing – including of US citizens – is a tragic legal, moral, and practical mistake."

"Even for those who accept the legitimacy of the death penalty, this further undermines the rule of law that is our best weapon in the fight against true terrorists, while completely subverting due process and constitutional rights of US citizens," he said.

Licence to kill

Testifying before the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, Blair said, "We take direct action against terrorists in the intelligence community." He said US counterterrorism officials may try to kill US citizens embroiled in extremist groups overseas with "specific permission" from higher up. In response to questions Republican representative Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, Blair said, if "we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that."

Blair's remarks followed a Washington Post article reporting that US President Barack Obama had embraced his predecessor's policy of authorising the killing of US citizens involved in terrorist activities overseas.

Blair said he was offering such unusually detailed information in public because "I just don't want other Americans who are watching to think that we are careless." He didn't specifically articulate the standards he used, saying only that "We don't target people for free speech. We target them for taking action that threatens Americans."

Hoekstra cited an incident in 2001 in which Peru's air force shot down a plane carrying US missionaries, killing a woman and her seven-month-old daughter, after the aircraft was misidentified as a drug-smuggler. "We were careless and we were reckless," Blair replied. "I want to make sure that this committee does everything that it can and within its power that it does not allow the community to be reckless and careless again."

WILLIAM FISHER
IPS