Authors: Mickey Huff
R. Clifton Spargo, “The Illuminator: Helen Benedict and the Journalistic Investigation that Inspired
The Invisible War,” Huffington Post,
April 3, 2013,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/r-clifton-spargo/the-illuminator-helen-ben_b_3001042.html
.
Bill Briggs, Jim Miklaszewski, and Courtney Kube, “Defense Secretary Hagel Demands Rape Reform in Military,” NBC News, April 8, 2013,
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/08/17658388-defense-secretary-hagel-demands-rape-reform-in-military
.
Liesl Gerntholtz, “It's Not Just About Sexual Violence,”
Huffington Post,
April 9, 2013,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/liesl-gerntholtz/its-not-just-about-sexual_b_3045633.html
.
Abby Zimet, “Air Force Sexual Assault Prevention Chief Arrested for . . . Sexual Assault,” Common Dreams, May 6, 2013,
http://www.commondreams.org/further/2013/05/06-3
.
Kevin Baron, “Air Force Fights Sexual Assault with Lip Balm, Hand Sanitizer, Breath Mints,”
Foreign Policy,
April 24, 2013,
http://e-ring.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/04/24/air_force_fights_sexual_assault_with_lip_balm_hand_sanitizer_breath_mints
Kumar Ramanathan , “What The Military Is Doing To Address Its Sexual Assault Crisis,”
ThinkProgress,
June 14, 2013,
http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/06/14/2150351/military-address-sexual-assault
.
Censored 2012 #3
Obama Authorizes International Assassination Campaign
SUMMARY
: Advancing a policy set forth by the George W. Bush administration, the Obama administration created an “international assassination program” to carry out “targeted killings” of suspected terrorists. Under this program, the president has authorized the high-profile killing of Osama bin Laden, as well as the killings of US citizens, such as Anwar al-Awlaki. The Obama administration has gone even further by leading covert drone wars in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.
UPDATE
: Despite coverage from both corporate and independent media outlets, the Obama administration's targeted killing program remains shrouded in secrecy. In January 2013, a federal judge dismissed a parallel Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, by the
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the
New York Times,
that would have required the government to disclose documents that justify with evidence the targeted killing of US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki. Judge Colleen McMahon stated in response to her ruling, “I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret.” Both the ACLU and
New York Times
appealed this decision, while the ACLU filed another FOIA lawsuit requesting information to be released on who and how many people have been killed in targeted drone strikes. The number is currently estimated to be around 4,000 casualties.
On February 4, 2013, NBC News published a “white paper” leaked by the Department of Justice, which meant to give legal justification for the US government to carry out the extrajudicial killing of a US citizen. The document, which is not an official legal memo, offers the broad explanation that a citizen can be targeted if “an informed, high-level official” determines the person to be “an imminent threat,” “capture is infeasible,” and the killing is carried out within “applicable law of war principles.” More examples of the white paper's vague language include the targeted individual being a part of al-Qaeda or “associated forces,” with little definition of what an associated force is.
As a journalist whose sources include members of groups such as the Taliban, Chris Hedges is concerned that, under the guidelines of the DOJ white paper, the US might consider him included among those “associated” who could be targeted. The memo offers no geographical restrictions as to where these killings can occur. Furthermore, it effectively eliminates due process by stating there is no court that can evaluate the constitutional issues because “matters intimately related to foreign policy and national security are rarely proper subjects for judicial intervention.” As a response to the overly broad language,
Mother Jones
reported that members of the House sent a letter to President Obama requesting further clarification on several points of the white paper.
On March 6, 2013, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky performed a thirteen-hour filibuster during the nomination hearings on John
Brennan's appointment to become director of the CIA. Paul sought to encourage the Obama administration to release information concerning its drone program. The next day, Paul stated that he had received the desired information from the White House. On Fox News, he read a brief letter of response from Attorney General Eric Holder, which stated, “It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: âDoes the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?' The answer to that question is no.” Attorney General Holder's response in effect further stalled the corporate media's coverage of the topic.
Then, on March 10, 2013, a lengthy
New York Times
article chronicled the events leading to the Obama administration's decision to kill Anwar al-Awlaki. Citing interviews with legal and counterterrorism officials, the report described a decade of investigation of al-Awlaki by the FBI, alleging that he “was clearly a direct plotter, no longer just a dangerous propagandist,” and which concluded by declaring that al-Awlaki posed sufficient threat to US security that “his constitutional rights did not bar the government from killing him without a trial.”
The Times
came under criticism for its coverage from multiple outlets, with Glenn Greenwald in the
Guardian
stating that the article only “summarizes the unverified justifications” of officials, and expressing concern that the
Times'
account allowed government officials to present evidence after the fact without having “done the same thing in a court of law prior to killing him.” The ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights called the report “the latest in a series of onesided, selective disclosures that prevent meaningful public debate and legal or even political accountability for the government's killing program, including its use against citizens.”
While the issue of drone strikes is now covered by the corporate media, the issue has still oft been framed in ways that do not highlight the many civilian deaths associated with the program, or what appear to be clear violations of due process. In President Obama's national security speech on May 23, 2013, which corporate media covered extensively, he stated that America could not be on a permanent war footing, and that the government needed to close Guantanamo, curtail drone strikes, and have more oversight of such matters. Conservatives decried the
talk as a “victory for terrorists,” while many liberals tried to support the president's strong reformist rhetoric. Meanwhile, ACLU executive director Anthony Romero's remarks were covered in some independent online sources, but not much was covered elsewhere besides cursory mentions on the
Washington Post
blog and in
USA Today.
Romero remained skeptical of Obama's claims and added,
To the extent the speech signals an end to signature strikes, recognizes the need for congressional oversight, and restricts the use of drones to threats against the American people, the developments on targeted killings are promising. Yet the president still claims broad authority to carry out targeted killings far from any battlefield, and there is still insufficient transparency. We continue to disagree fundamentally with the idea that due process requirements can be satisfied without any form of judicial oversight by regular federal courts.
SOURCES
:
“Court Dismisses Most of FOIA Lawsuit on Targeted Killings of U.S. Citizens,” American Civil Liberties Union, January 2, 2013,
http://www.aclu.org/national-security/court-dismisses-most-foia-lawsuit-targeted-killings-us-citizens
.
Adam Liptak, “Secrecy of Memo on Drone Killing is Upheld,”
New York Times,
January 2, 2013,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/03/us/judge-rules-memo-on-targeted-killing-can-remain-secret.html
.
Martin Michael, “Obama Signs 2013 NDAA into Law, Preventing Gitmo Closure,”
Mint Press News,
January 5, 2013,
http://www.mintpressnews.com/federal-judge-permanently-strikes-down-ndaa-provision-upholds-previous-rulings/
.
Michael Isikoff, “Justice Department Memo Reveals Legal Case for Drone Strikes on Americans,” NBC News, February 4, 2013,
http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/04/16843014-justice-department-memo-reveals-legal-case-for-drone-strikes-on-americans?lite
.
Jameel Jaffer, interview with Amy Goodman, “Kill List Exposed: Leaked Obama Memo Show Assassination of U.S. Citizens âHas No Geographic Limit,'”
Democracy Now!,
February 5, 2013,
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/2/5/kill_list_exposed_leaked_obama_memo
.
Adam Serwer, “Obama Targeted Killing Document: If We Do It, It's Not Illegal,”
Mother Jones,
February 5, 2013,
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/02/obama-targeted-killing-white-paper-drone-strikes
.
Carrie Dan, “Rand Paul Gets His Answer,” NBC News, March 7, 2013,
http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/07/17226153-rand-paul-gets-his-answer
. Department of Justice White Paper, “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S.
Citizen who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al-Qa'ida or an Associated Force,” NBC News,
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/1/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf
. Mark Mazetti, Charlie Savage, and Scott Shane, “How a U.S. Citizen Came to Be in America's Cross Hairs,”
New York Times,
March 9, 2013,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/world/middleeast/anwar-al-awlaki-a-us-citizen-in-americas-cross-hairs.html
. “ACLU and CCR Comment on New York Times Article on Killing of Anwar al-Aulaqi”, American Civil Liberties Union, March 10, 2013,
http://www.aclu.org/national-security/aclu-and-ccr-comment-new-york-times-article-killing-anwar-al-aulaqi
.
Glenn Greenwald, “The NYT and Obama Officials Collaborate to Prosecute Awlaki After He's Executed,”
Guardian,
March 11, 2013,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/11/nyt-obama-awlaki
.
Jon Queally, “House Democrats Demand Answers from Obama about Drone Killings,” Common Dreams, March 12, 2013,
https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/03/12-3
.
Peter Hart, “Killing a Citizen, NYT, Awlaki, and âMuddying the Moral Clarity,'” Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, March 12, 2013,
http://www.fair.org/blog/2013/03/12/killing-a-citizen-nyt-awlaki-and-muddying-the-moral-clarity/
.
Anthony D. Romero, “ACLU Comment on President's National Security Speech,” America Civil Liberties Union, May 23, 2013,
http://www.aclu.org/national-security/aclu-comment-presi-dents-national-security-speech
.
Greg Sargent, “Obama's Speech: An Imperfect Effort to Reconcile National Security with American Values,”
Washington Post, Plum Line
blog, May 23, 2013,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/05/23/obamas-speech-an-imperfect-effort-to-reconcile-national-security-with-american-values/
.
David Jackson, “Obama Outlines Counterterrorism Policy,”
USA Today,
May 23, 2013,
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/05/23/obama-counter-terrorism-speech-drones-guantanamo-bay/235400i/
.
Notes
1.
Aldous Huxley, “A Case of Voluntary Ignorance,”
Esquire Magazine,
October 1956.
2.
See Peter Phillips and Andrew Roth, eds.,
Censored 2009,
(New York: Seven Stories, 2008), 2025; and Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff, eds.,
Censored 2010
(New York: Seven Stores, 2009), 121â122. For more on this theme, see the Censored News Cluster, “Technologies and Ecologies of War,” in this volume. In fact, not only has the corporate media not addressed the significance of Iraqi casualty rates, organizations like the Associated Press have repeated grossly under-counted figures of 87,000, which dips well below even the most conservative counts of academic studies on the matter. So in this case, it's not just under reporting, it's willful ignorance coupled with misinformation at best, if not outright disinformation to mislead the American public.
3.
Mickey Huff and Project Censored,
Censored2012
(New York: Seven Stories, 2011), 46â48.
4.
All previous Project Censored stories, and their original sources, are available online at
http://www.projectcensored.org
.
5.
Bethania Palma Markus, “Welcome to the Freakshow: Media Gets Targeted by Obama, Discovers No One Cares Except the Media,”
Counterpunch,
May 29, 2013,
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/29/media-gets-targeted-by-obama-administration-discovers-no-one-cares-except-the-media/
.
6.
Ken Klippenstein, “Holder's Justice: Worse than The AP Phone Scandal,”
Counterpunch,
May 17, 2013,
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/17/worse-than-the-ap-phone-scandal/
.
7.
Glenn Greenwald, “NSA Collecting Phone Records of Millions of Verizon Customers Daily,”
Guardian,
June 5, 2013,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-ve-rizon-court-order
. See also Glenn Greenwald, et al., “Edward Snowden: The Whistleblower behind the NSA Surveillance Revelations,”
Guardian,
June 9, 2013,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance
.