U.S. justified drones to kill Americans by citing al Qaeda law

NEW YORK -- The Obama administration justified using drones to kill Americans suspected of terrorism overseas by citing the war against al Qaeda and by saying a surprise attack against an American in a foreign land would not violate the laws of war, according to a previously secret government memorandum released Monday.

The memo provided legal justification for the September 2011 killing in Yemen of Anwar al-Awlaki, an al Qaeda leader who had been born in the United States, and another U.S. citizen, Samir Khan. An October 2011 strike also killed Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, al-Awlaki's teenage son and also a U.S. citizen.

The memo, written by a Justice Department official, said the killing of al-Awlaki was justified under a law passed by Congress soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The law empowered the president to use force against organizations that planned, authorized and committed the attacks.

Al-Awlaki had been involved in an abortive attack against the United States and was planning other attacks from his base in Yemen, the memo said. It said the authority to use lethal force abroad may apply in appropriate circumstances to a U.S. citizen who is part of the forces of an enemy organization.

The memo stated the Defense Department operation was being carried out against someone who was within the core of individuals against whom Congress had authorized the use of "necessary and appropriate" force. It said the killing was justified as long as it was carried out in accord with applicable laws of war.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan released the memo, portions of which were blacked out, after the American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking any documents in which Justice Department lawyers had discussed the highly classified "targeted-killing" program. The appeals court ordered the memo disclosed after noting that President Barack Obama and other senior government officials had commented publicly on the subject.

The memo's release follows a decision by the Obama administration not to appeal the 2nd Circuit ruling calling for it to be made public.

"The material being released is consistent with the administration's previous statements on this issue," Justice Department spokesman Brian Fallon said.

Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU lawyer who argued the case before the 2nd Circuit, said the memo will shed light on the administration's reasoning, but "the public still knows scandalously little about who the government is killing and why." He added, "There are few questions more important than the question of when the government has the authority to kill its own citizens."

David E. McCraw, vice president and assistant general counsel for the Times, called the memo "a critical addition to the public debate over targeted killings and should fuel a richer discussion of the legal and security issues that are at the heart of that debate."

The memo was written by David Barron, who at the time was acting chief of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. He was recently confirmed as a judge in the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

U.S. officials considered al-Awlaki to be an inspirational leader of al Qaeda, and they have also linked him to the planning and execution of several attacks targeting American and Western interests, including a 2009 attempt on Christmas Day on a Detroit-bound airliner.

Pardiss Kebriaei, a senior attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the memo's contents showed that the targeted killing program was built on "gross distortions of law."

Kebriaei, who worked with the ACLU on two lawsuits challenging al-Awlaki's killing, estimated that more than 4,000 people may have been killed by drone strikes since 2009.

As CBS News' Jere Van Dyk noted, Anwar al-Awlaki was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico and was called by some "the emir of the Internet" because of his abilities as an orator -- often seen with his hand raised, his finger pointing, his long, thin black beard, sitting-crossed legged behind a podium, preaching, lecturing and calling for jihad against America.

Samir Khan was born in Saudi Arabia in 1986 and grew up in Queens, New York, in a typical middle-class family. Van Dyk noted that his parents are said to have become worried that as a teenager he was becoming too religious. His family moved to North Carolina and he lived with them until at least 2007. It was during this time, U.S. officials say, that Khan began to help violent jihadist groups online, using his skills on the Web. He seemed to be operating on his own and didn't appear to be tied to any terrorist group.

Van Dyk reported that the killing of al-Awlaki's teenage son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was also a controversial extra-judicial killing. Some U.S. officials called it a mistake.