On Friday, US District Court Judge Colleen McMahon ordered the Obama Administration to hand over three documents related to the targeted assassination program for the court’s review and possible release to the public. The three documents relate to the law and policy that govern the controversial program.
Judge McMahon said she will give the government “time to vet opinions and orders for classification issues that might escape the notice of a reader of news media in which information that the Government considers to be classified routinely appears.”
The first document relates to the Presidential Policy Guidance, or PPG, “a classified record that sets out the law and policy that the government must follow when it carries out targeted killings,” according to the ACLU. President Obama issued the PPG in May 2013, but did not make the document public, instead only releasing some of its most general standards.
The ACLU writes:
Those vague standards raise as many questions as they answer: When does an individual pose a “continuing and imminent threat” to the United States? How does the government decide when capture of a target is “feasible”? What informs the government’s determination that there is a “near certainty that non-combatants will not be injured or killed”? As the government has described it, the PPG answers these questions. And as we’ve argued to the court, the government has no right to withhold this kind of document — one that regulates government officials by providing substantive and procedural rules that govern their actions — from the public.
The other two documents are reports from the Department of Defense which were submitted to Congress in 2014. The two reports detail the legal and policy standards of the PPG, as well as an assessment of groups that the U.S. government is waging war against. The reports also explain the legal differences between “associated forces,” “affiliates,” and “adherents” of al-Qaeda.
The ACLU was provided these documents in the past, albeit heavily redacted versions, and is now seeking to learn more about what the Obama Administration is hiding.
https://archive.is/2ctN4
http://www.activistpost.com/2016/03/federal-judge-may-release-new-documents-related-to-obamas-targeted-assassination-program.html