NGO Letter to the President on Targeted Killing
Last week a group of major human rights NGOs sent this letter to the President on U.S. targeted killing practices. It calls on the Obama administration to “publicly disclose key targeted killing standards and criteria; ensure that U.S.
Published by The Lawfare Institute
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Last week a group of major human rights NGOs sent this letter to the President on U.S. targeted killing practices. It calls on the Obama administration to “publicly disclose key targeted killing standards and criteria; ensure that U.S. lethal force operations abroad comply with international law; enable meaningful Congressional oversight and judicial review; and ensure effective investigations, tracking and response to civilian harm.”
Some of the specific steps it calls for are non-starters, but as Scott Shane reports in this New York Times story on the letter, the President has committed to greater transparency in this area. Several of us have also discussed on this blog reports that the White House may be planning to shift the CIA's lethal targeting program to the Defense Department. As I discussed here, such a move would make possible some of the steps outlined in this letter.
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.
