American Civil Liberties Union

Today, nine organizations submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking records about the CIA's use of drones to carry out targeted killings around the world.  The organizations work on a diverse array of issues that don't always overlap, including international human rights and rule of law, government transparency, investigative journalism, civil liberties and national security policy.  Although some of these groups seldom have occasion to collaborate, they joined together to urge the court to reject the CIA's position that it can't confirm whether it has a drone strike program at all.

In "Crime or War: Execution or Assassination?" David Shipler of The Shipler Report writes about why due process — even for terrorism suspects who have admitted to plotting against the U.S. — is important:

So, why bother to bring the guilty man in for a fair trial? For thorough truth-finding, one could say, or to uphold the pageantry of constitutional justice, which is a crown jewel of our democracy. To lend unquestioned legitimacy to the ultimate sentence, even if it is death, so the world does not look upon America with repugnance. To keep the trappings of civilized order so that we do not become a vigilante state. To stop ourselves from taking a step down a long slope whose ends might be oppression very different from anything we can now imagine…

Shipler also calls for the Obama administration to reveal the standards under which Americans are placed on the CIA's "kill lists," information we seek in our Predator Drone Freedom of Information Act request and lawsuit. But the government has mostly stonewalled our attempts to uncover basic information about targeted killings.  The CIA refuses to confirm or deny whether it has any records at all relating to targeted killings using drones, even though the CIA’s involvement in the drone program is widely acknowledged.  And other government agencies flatly refuse to release documents explaining the government’s asserted legal basis for conducting targeted killings — including against U.S. citizens — using drones.

Today, researchers at the law schools of New York University and Stanford University published an important and comprehensively documented report about the human and strategic costs of the United States’ drone program in Pakistan. The report marshals research based on interviews of victims, witnesses, medical experts, and journalists in Pakistan, and a review of thousands of pages of documents and media reports, to arrive at its chief conclusions:

Originally posted on The Guardian.

A story in last week's New York Times painted a remarkably detailed picture of the US government's so-called "targeted killing" campaign, a campaign that involves the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) to kill suspected insurgents and terrorists and, it turns out, many, many others, as well. The story, written by Jo Becker and Scott Shane, discussed the CIA's choice of munitions, its efforts to avoid civilian casualties, and its method for calculating the number of civilians killed in any given strike. The story also underscored the extent to which President Obama himself is involved in overseeing the campaign – and even in selecting its targets.