In a First, U.S. Admits Drones Have Killed 4 Americans
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
WASHINGTON — One day before President Obama is due to deliver a major
speech on national security, his administration on Wednesday formally
acknowledged that the United States had killed four American citizens in
drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan.
In a letter to Congressional leaders
obtained by The New York Times, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.
disclosed that the administration had deliberately killed Anwar
al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who was killed in a drone strike in
September 2011 in Yemen.
The American responsibility for Mr. Awlaki’s death has been widely
reported, but the administration had until now refused to confirm or
deny it.
The letter also said that the United States had killed three other
Americans: Samir Khan, who was killed in the same strike; Mr. Awlaki’s
son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was also killed in Yemen; and Jude
Mohammed, who was killed in a strike in Pakistan.
“These individuals were not specifically targeted by the United States,” Mr. Holder wrote.
While rumors of Mr. Mohammed’s death had appeared in local news reports
in Raleigh, N.C., where he lived, his death had not been confirmed by
the United States government until Wednesday.
According to former acquaintances of Mr. Mohammed in North Carolina, he
appears to have been killed in a November 2011 drone strike in South
Waziristan, in Pakistan’s tribal area. Mr. Mohammed’s wife, whom he had
met and married in Pakistan, subsequently called his mother in North
Carolina to tell her of his death, the friends say.
Mr. Holder, in a speech at Northwestern University Law School last year,
laid out the administration’s basic legal thinking that American
citizens who are deemed to be operational terrorists, who pose an
“imminent threat of violent attack” and whose capture is infeasible may
be targeted. That abstract legal thinking — including an elastic
definition of what counts as “imminent” — was further laid out in an
unclassified white paper provided to Congress last year, which was
leaked earlier this year.
But Mr. Holder’s letter went further in discussing the death of Mr.
Awlaki in particular, an operation the administration had previously
refused to publicly acknowledge. He said it was not Mr. Awlaki’s words
urging violent attacks against Americans that led the United States to
target him, but direct actions in planning attacks.
Mr. Holder alleged that Mr. Awlaki not only “planned” the attempted
bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, 2009, a claim that has
been widely discussed in court documents and elsewhere, but also “played
a key role” in an October 2010 plot to bomb cargo planes bound for the
United States, including taking “part in the development and testing” of
the bombs.
“Moreover, information that remains classified to protect sensitive
sources and methods evidences Awlaki’s involvement in the planning of
numerous other plots against U.S. and Western interests and makes clear
he was continuing to plot attacks when he was killed,” Mr. Holder wrote.
He added, “The decision to target Anwar al-Awlaki was lawful, it was considered, and it was just.”
Mr. Obama announced the death of Mr. Awlaki on Sept. 30, 2011, and credited United States intelligence agencies, but he did not explicitly acknowledge that Mr. Awlaki had been killed by an American strike.
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