By Holly Gilbert Stowell
A federal court has released a previously secret memo, written by former Justice Department official David Barron, which advocates for the killing of terrorist Anwar Awlaki. A U.S. drone strike killed Awlaki in Yemen in 2011. The memo, written in 2010, concludes that “Awlaki could be killed as a leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula actively plotting attacks against the U.S. and its allies.” However, the memo stated that “there was no precedent for it, nor was there explicit authorization in federal statutes or the Constitution.” The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union sued for the document’s release by the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York under the Freedom of Information Act, but there remains an ongoing battle for public access to more documents related to the U.S. government’s targeted killing program.
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