AG Holder Letter on Targeting
Yesterday, Bobby and I wrote this post about what the President could say in his speech tomorrow on counterterrorism, and we highlighted as one important element the President's repeated pledges of greater transparency on targeting.
As another move in that direction, Attorney General Holder today sent this letter to Senator Leahy. Among other things, it declassifies the fact of the al Awlaki strike and some details about it, as well
Published by The Lawfare Institute
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Yesterday, Bobby and I wrote this post about what the President could say in his speech tomorrow on counterterrorism, and we highlighted as one important element the President's repeated pledges of greater transparency on targeting.
As another move in that direction, Attorney General Holder today sent this letter to Senator Leahy. Among other things, it declassifies the fact of the al Awlaki strike and some details about it, as well as the standards the government uses in U.S. citizen-targeting cases. It also previews a document institutionalizing the "standards and processes for reviewing and approving operations to capture or use lethal force against terrorist targets outside the United States and areas of active hostilities," including some of the substantive standards that govern when and how such operations are conducted.
Matthew Waxman is a law professor at Columbia Law School, where he chairs the National Security Law Program. He also previously co-chaired the Cybersecurity Center at Columbia University's Data Science Institute, and he is Adjunct Senior Fellow for Law and Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. He previously served in senior policy positions at the State Department, Defense Department, and National Security Council. After graduating from Yale Law School, he clerked for Judge Joel M. Flaum of the U.S. Court of Appeals and Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter.
