The CIA, Lawyers, and Targeting Decisions: Glimpses Behind the Curtain

Tara Mckelvey at Newsweek has a story about her interview of former CIA acting general counsel John Rizzo, regarding the internal CIA process associated with decisions to kill specific individuals.  The details are tantalizing but limited.  In brief, Rizzo describes a process in which as many as ten high-level attorneys vet targeting packages, frequently rejecting the proposals.  But the story does not address what substantive standard these attorneys employ in making this decision, whether these attorneys apply law of armed conflict concepts (the story indicates that they adhere to Justice Department guidance, but does not elaborate as to what that guidance might be), or whether there is an interagency element to the decison-making process.   As it happens, these questions came up (to a limited extent) here in Austin last Thursday night when Ambassador Hank Crumpton appeared as the keynote speaker for the annual symposium of the Texas International Law Journal (on the HPCR Air and Missile Warfare Manual).  I hope to be able to post the video from the event shortly, but in light of the Newsweek piece I thought it worth mentioning an exchange that occurred during the Q&A.  Professor Mike Lewis (Ohio Northern) raised the question of CIA compliance with the law of armed conflict, and Ambassador Crumption replied that CIA reached out to CENTCOM after 9/11 and that Judge Advocates eventually became directly involved.  He did not spell out just what this meant in practical terms, and was not purporting to speak of current practices.  It was very interesting nonetheless, as I've not seen other public discussions of this particular question.  I'll make a point of posting the full text of the exchange once the video is available; in the meantime, I strongly recommend Ken Anderson's post-symposium comments, posted here and here.