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Home Front: Politix
CIA: Americans not immune if they act against U.S.
2011-12-02
American citizens are not immune from being treated like an enemy if they take up arms against the United States, the CIA general counsel said on Thursday.

CIA General Counsel Stephen Preston was responding to a question at an American Bar Association national security conference about the killing of Americans overseas without presenting evidence of wrongdoing.

A CIA drone strike killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric linked to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, earlier this year.

He was linked to failed plots to blow up a U.S.-bound passenger plane in 2009 and cargo planes headed for the United States in 2010, U.S. officials say.

Preston said he would not discuss Awlaki or any specific operations.

"I will make this observation that citizenship does not confer immunity on one who takes up arms against his own country. It didn't in World War Two when there were American citizens who joined the Nazi army and it doesn't today," Preston said.

Jeh Johnson, Defense Department general counsel, said he echoed Preston's comments "in terms of those who are combatants, part of the congressionally declared enemy, who also happen to be U.S. citizens."

But he said the same view would not apply to someone who was not considered an enemy combatant.

"We go down a slippery slope if an individual who wants to do harm to Americans and who is inspired in his own basement by the writings he has read from al Qaeda and he hasn't interacted with a single other individual in that group, yet he has decided to do violence against America based on what he read, in my view is not part of the congressionally declared enemy and we have to be careful not to go down that landscape," Johnson said.

He said it was not feasible to take decisions made on enemy combatants to courts each time.

"Courts are not equipped to make those types of decisions which very often are based moment-by-moment on an intelligence picture that constantly evolves," Johnson said.
Anwar Al-Awlaki was an evolving situation?
There is a very old word for his type: Traitor.
There is an even older way to deal with the situation: Kill them.
Sticking their head on a pike outside the city gates is optional.
Ancient wisdom.
Still good today.
Posted by:gorb

#6  I would think the other part of "evolving situation" was finding the clever gentleman in the middle of his protective Yemeni tribal hosts, then following him with a Predator until he evolved himself into a place where it could reach out and touch him.
Posted by: trailing wife   2011-12-02 23:37  

#5  And thanks for the insight, lotp. It sounds like the government was waiting for him to step over some line before they went after him. In my mind, it happened as soon as he got off the plane.
Posted by: gorb   2011-12-02 14:22  

#4  He went from encouraging to aiding to participating in planning attacks on the US and US citizens.

My thoughts: From the moment he stepped off the plane (if not before) whatever he did fell under "Aiding and Abetting". It's my understanding he was recruiting for Al Qaeda. That's basically the same as hiring hit men to murder Americans. And I would really hate to let a bunch of terrorists gain American citizenship just to shield them from getting what's coming to them. He needed to be killed just as surely as any other recruiter, bombmaker, bagman, or financier.

I'm sure the vast majority of Americans feel this way. The rest can move to Pakistan if it's so wrong.
Posted by: gorb   2011-12-02 14:21  

#3  Anwar Al-Awlaki was an evolving situation?

Yes. He went from encouraging to aiding to participating in planning attacks on the US and US citizens.

Also evolving was the intelligence picture that determined those facts. It's the latter to which DOD's Johnson referred.
Posted by: lotp   2011-12-02 10:59  

#2  The trouble is, that now *most*, not just many, of the Patriot Act laws that neutralized the 4th Amendment, radically increased surveillance and search of innocent people with warrantless searches and wiretaps, and led to many federal agencies now having "SWAT-like" law enforcement powers for minor and administrative accusations of crime, are now used EXCLUSIVELY for NON-terrorism related crimes.

In other words, we sold our birthright for a mess of empty paranoia and authoritarianism.

And now, military "agencies", not necessarily who we think of as soldiers, will be able to secretly detain American citizens indefinitely, without arrest or trial.

Assuming that sane congressmen in the House-Senate conference committee do not kill this monster, or that, God help us all, Obama does not keep his promise, and fails to veto it.

Why should this authoritarian nightmare be any different than any of these other unconstitutional and horrific abuses?

This is as un-American as if we were a nation occupied by a hostile foreign power, imposing a martial law state on us.

Do not confuse "military" detention with our armed service branches. These "military" personnel would almost certainly be non-uniformed employees of other federal police and intelligence agencies, in a combined task force organization that does not answer to the Pentagon, yet receives DoD funding.

The very principle is obscene, to suggest that there is any need, ever, for Americans to be detained in America without arrest or trial, or that courts are unable to try such cases.

The police should detain if they must, but then citizens, at least, must be subject to arrest and its concomitant rights, indictment by a grand jury, and trial by a jury of their peers. Any excuse that this is "too burdensome", is utter nonsense.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2011-12-02 10:27  

#1  American citizens are not immune from being treated like an enemy if they take up arms against the United States

A lot of people found that out between 1861 and 1865.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2011-12-02 08:30  

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