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That Secret Death Panel

October 10, 2011
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By now, dear readers, I dearly hope you have heard news of this report from Reuters about a secret panel of government officials and its power to compose, keep, and act upon a kill or capture list.  Mark Hosenball writes: “There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.”  Apparently the recently assassinated al-Awlaki was the first American put on this list, and, related to this, “one of the reasons for making senior officials principally responsible for nominating Americans for the target list was to ‘protect’ the president.”

I am grateful that news about this panel and its alleged operations has come out now, before it solidifies into permanent standard procedure that we all just accept, with cognitive dissonance dripping out of our ears, as the price to pay for living in a free society in the time of terror.   If we continue down this road, if we give President Obama (and others) a pass because we think him less frightening overall than his soon-to-be-decided challenger, and if we don’t insist on some clear time-tested standards of liberty, transparency, and accountability, then we will someday lose even minimal control over this grand experiment we call the United States.

Today a secret panel decides if an alleged terrorist merits an extra-judicial death sentence; tomorrow…who knows how this power will expand?  Government powers have a way of being applied beyond the scope for which they were originally established.  News of this panel isn’t time for “yeah, but” resignations; it’s time for speaking out and exercising what political power we possess.

from → Culture of Death, Death Penalty, Ethics, Kyle R. Cupp, Obama, Violence, War and Peace, War Strategy
11 Comments
  1. David Nickol permalink
    October 11, 2011 1:11 am

    I am grateful that news about his panel and its alleged operations has come out now, before it solidifies into permanent standard procedure that we all just accept . . . .

    This is really rather old news, and the “kill list” seems to have become a well established practice.

    THREATS AND RESPONSES: HUNT FOR AL QAEDA; BUSH HAS WIDENED AUTHORITY OF C.I.A. TO KILL TERRORISTS

    By JAMES RISEN and DAVID JOHNSTON
    Published: December 15, 2002 [The New York Times]

    The Bush administration has prepared a list of terrorist leaders the Central Intelligence Agency is authorized to kill, if capture is impractical and civilian casualties can be minimized, senior military and intelligence officials said.

    The previously undisclosed C.I.A. list includes key Qaeda leaders like Osama bin Laden and his chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, as well as other principal figures from Al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist groups, the officials said. The names of about two dozen terrorist leaders have recently been on the lethal-force list, officials said. ”It’s the worst of the worst,” an official said.

    President Bush has provided written legal authority to the C.I.A. to hunt down and kill the terrorists without seeking further approval each time the agency is about to stage an operation. Some officials said the terrorist list was known as the ”high-value target list.” A spokesman for the White House declined to discuss the list or issues involving the use of lethal force against terrorists. A spokesman for the C.I.A. also declined to comment on the list. . . .

    Intelligence officials said the presidential finding authorizing the agency to kill terrorists was not limited to those on the list. The president has given broad authority to the C.I.A. to kill or capture operatives of Al Qaeda around the world, the officials said. But officials said the group’s most senior leaders on the list were the agency’s primary focus.

    The list is updated periodically as the intelligence agency, in consultation with other counterterrorism agencies, adds new names or deletes those who are captured or killed, or when intelligence indicates the emergence of a new leader. . . .

    But the decision by the Bush administration to authorize, under certain circumstances, the killing of terrorist leaders threatens to thrust it into a murky area of national security and international law that is almost never debated in public because the covert operations are known only to a small circle of executive branch and Congressional officials.

    • Kyle R. Cupp permalink
      October 11, 2011 6:17 am

      A kill list, yes, but news of this panel, which allegedly can add American citizens to its kill list, and operates under the NSC, is new news, so far as I know.

      • Mark Gordon permalink*
        October 11, 2011 8:40 am

        Exactly, Kyle. This isn’t “old news” at all. It’s a breakthrough development. Some people are very comfortable resting in the warm, anesthetizing embrace of an all-consuming national security state, particularly if it’s administered by their preferred political party.

  2. Bruce in Kansas permalink
    October 11, 2011 9:23 am

    Astonishing, especially the public response, which is largely, “hooray!”
    Can we say “inverted totalitarianism” everyone?

  3. phosphorious permalink
    October 11, 2011 10:11 am

    This is the #1 reason to not vote for Obama in my mind, but it’s also a reason not to vote for anyone else; I don’t see any pushback from the GOP side on this one.

    Isn’t bi-partisanship grand!

  4. Anne permalink
    October 11, 2011 11:28 am

    The problem is, if you don’t vote for Obama (or anyone), you assure the election of those who have no scruples at all when it comes to doing such things, or worse. It may seem a small difference, but between overt and covert lies a world of shame, and shame is sometimes the only recourse, or resource, we have.

    • Kyle R. Cupp permalink
      October 11, 2011 12:41 pm

      I imagine if a good number of Democrats and Independents publicly warned the president that they would withhold their vote in 2012 if this panel were still in operation, President Obama would get rid of it in short order.

      • David Nickol permalink
        October 11, 2011 5:19 pm

        I don’t think you believe this, but it seems as if you object to there being a panel that draws up a “kill list,” and not to the fact of the “kill list” itself. Exactly what difference does it make how the “kill list” is drawn up? I really don’t see that anything of significance changed between 2002 and today. I think what you object to is clandestine operations to kill people the government has identified as particularly dangerous terrorists.

        If Obama wants to lose the election for sure, he should make it clear that from now on, the United States won’t deliberately kill terrorists. We’ll capture them, put them in prisons near our big cities, and try them in federal court.

  5. Agellius permalink
    October 11, 2011 11:47 am

    Kyle:

    I’ve got to hand it to you: If the current President were a Republican I might have assumed you were only commenting on this story for that reason. Clearly you will criticize either party where you think they’re wrong.

    However in your sentence that begins, “If we continue down this road, if we give President Obama (and others) a pass because we think him less frightening overall than his soon-to-be-decided challenger …”, I love the way you assume your readers are Democrats. : )

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