 A map of YemenThe U.S. killed Anwar al-Awlaki's innocent American son like they killed al-Awlaki: without trial, without due process, and using a highly-classified but front-page-news drone strike. Before people try to justify the killing by asserting that al-Awlaki's son was not "innocent," be reminded that had the U.S. given al-Awlaki's son his constitutionally-guaranteed right to due process, he would have had a criminal trial and been presumed innocent until proven guilty. But we've reversed the usual presumption.
Al-Awlaki's family is speaking out about the U.S. killing another American member of their family. Al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was born in Denver. His family has set up a memorial Facebook page, WaPo reported:
The pictures on the Facebook page show a smiling kid out and about in the countryside and occasionally hamming it up for the camera.
In a still secret – yet described in detail in the New York Times – memo, the Justice Department justified assassinating American citizen al-Awlaki despite the myriad laws and the Constitution such a killing would violate. As New York Times journalist Charlie Savage pointed out, there exists
an executive order banning assassinations, a federal law [that prohibits Americans from murdering other Americans abroad], protections in the Bill of Rights [the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee that a “person” cannot be seized by the government unreasonably, and the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee that the government may not deprive a person of life “without due process of law”], and various strictures of the international laws of war...
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Here's what my son just learned in 7th grade civics:
The Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment is in many ways the backbone of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Due process is the simple notion that the Constitution requires governmental procedures to be fundamentally fair before a person may "be deprived of life, liberty or property."
The Obama administration's "justification" for the targeted assassination of Anwar al-Aulaqi--an American radical cleric who was killed by a U.S. drone strike yesterday--is that "What constitutes due process in this case is a due process in war," which is apparently no process at all.
If any presidential administration is going to commit controversial, and by all standards I can find, illegal, acts (like the targeted killing of an American citizen outside the United States who is suspected of terrorism), then it should be forced to articulate publicly its rationale, not hide behind some secret memo--that's so George W. Bush.
Under the Bush administration, and now the Obama administration, the due process guarantee is losing force as it has historically in times of national security crises.
"Due process in war" means no due process. Once again, anonymous government officials roll out the meme that governmental excesses are reasonable and necessary during times of war.
How's that been working for us? During World War I, the government imprisoned people for years for speaking out against the war effort. During World War II, the infamous and shameful Korematsu case endorsed the internment of more than 110,000 persons based solely on their Japanese ancestry. During the Cold War thousands of innocent people lost their jobs, were the subject of congressional investigations, or were incarcerated for their association with the Communist Party.
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 An Associated Press story is making the rounds right now (appearing in scores of outlets across the country) about how one of the members of an infamous Stryker Brigade (which killed Afghans for sport) is going to accept a plea deal, and go to prison for less than eight years. The text of this article seems factually solid. We rely on AP stories all the time for government accountability, civil liberties, and whistleblower stories. It's a great organization.
But sometimes, because the Associated Press keeps it brief, important aspects of stories get lost in the shuffle. In this case, it would have been nice if the story text – or more importantly, the headline – had not made it seem like this was the sole whistleblower on the case. Because a very different whistleblower from this Stryker brigade, who is not being charged with murder or any sort of killing, came forward to investigators about these undeniably immoral acts. That whistleblower was severely beaten by his fellow troops. In fact, in reading the Rolling Stones piece about this rogue death squad, that whistleblower wasn't far from being killed (in retaliation) himself.
This is an important distinction, because there are still numerous individuals in America, and the world, who attempt to tar whistleblowers with negative connotations like rats, snitches, finks or whatnot. This headline (and story, to an extent, by its omission) makes it seem like the only whistleblower in the case also had a hand in murder. Which then can raise questions over true intentions of the whistleblower, his personal moral code, etc. In short, this helps keep negative stereotypes going.
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NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake and two other former NSA employees (Bill Binney and Kirk Wiebe) gave stunning interviews on 60 Minutes last night.
In a hard-hitting, on-point report, they told Scott Pelley that NSA had technology---a program called ThinThread--that was ready to deploy in January 2001 and could have picked up critical intelligence prior to 9/11. NSA management rejected ThinThread, and embarked on a billion-dollar boondoggle, Trailblazer, a proposal designed figure how to do what ThinThread could do (collect and analyze massive amounts of data) on a massive and far more invasive scale. NSA also tossed ThinThread's privacy protections, leaving Americans vulnerable to illegal surveillance.
Drake called the failure to gather critical intelligence prior to 9/11
one of the great tragedies in the history of NSA
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Former Attorney General John Ashcroft
In solid accountability news, the Supreme Court agreed yesterday to hear a case to determine whether former Attorney General John Ashcroft can be held personally liable for his actions (while in that position) in overseeing the arrest of a “U.S. citizen who claims he was illegally detained and treated as a terrorist.” The case revolves around actions the government took in 2003 against an muslim-American named Abdullah al-Kidd, who was arrested trying to board a plane to Saudi Arabia. From the Washington Post:
He was held for 15 nights in three states under the federal material-witness statute, which allows prosecutors to take custody of key witnesses to ensure that they testify at trial. But al-Kidd alleges that was simply a pretext for a larger plan approved by Ashcroft to sweep up Muslim men the government could not prove had any ties to terrorism.
…
The government had convinced a federal judge to issue a warrant for al-Kidd's arrest by saying he was necessary to the investigation of Sami Omar al-Hussayen, who was eventually indicted on charges of supporting terrorism.
Of course, al-Kidd wasn’t charged with anything at all. Nor was he ever called to testify against al-Hussayen. Who, as it turns out, was “acquitted of the most serious charges against him.” (WaPo)
Oh, and there’s more. al-Kidd had actually been cooperating with the FBI before this, and the FBI ‘misinformed’ the judge about the circumstances of the case – information which led to the judge’s ordering of the arrest itself. From the LA Times):
[al-Kidd] had cooperated with the FBI after the Sept. 11 attacks and answered questions about another Muslim man in Idaho who was under investigation in connection with his website.
Several months had elapsed since Kidd had heard from the FBI, but when he bought a round-trip ticket to travel to Saudi Arabia, where he had a scholarship to study, the FBI moved to have him arrested.
An FBI agent wrongly told a magistrate that Kidd had bought a one-way, first-class ticket. The magistrate ordered Kidd arrested and held as a witness. A few days later, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III testified in Congress and mentioned Kidd's arrest as one of the bureau's successes.
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Last night, Wikileaks released more than 91,000 classified documents related to the Afghan war, which reveal in excruciating detail the uphill battle American troops have faced in battling the Taliban and in working with Pakistani "allies" who are also helping the Afghan insurgency.
Our country needs to have a serious conversation about supposedly classified documents (under classification laws, you can't classify something to hide its illegality or to avoid embarrassment) vs. the public's right to know.
Because the Obama administration can't catch Wikileaks.org (its founder is the target of a worldwide manhunt launched by the Pentagon), it is bound and determined to make an example out of Thomas Drake, James Risen and other whistleblowers who supposedly "leaked."
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 The Government Accountability Project has a long, storied history of working with whistleblowers within the nuclear industry to bring public awareness to the most serious of safety threats.
With that in mind, GAP is partnering with other public interest organizations to raise awareness about an important new film. Countdown to Zero is a documentary about the escalating global nuclear arms crisis, making clear that the nuclear threat is very real – and not a bygone issue that died with the Cold War.
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