Wartime Presidential Power
Can The President Order A Killing On U.S. Soil?According to Steven Bradbury, acting head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, he can. This came out in a closed-door Senate Intelligence Committee meeting about the controversial NSA wiretaps.
Bradbury's remarks were made during an "academic discussion" of theoretical contingencies. In real life, the official said, the highest priority of those hunting a terrorist on U.S. soil would be to capture that person alive and interrogate him.
These remarks were prompted by a question from California senator Dianne Feinstein, a member of the Intelligence Committee.
At first, this seems completely beyond the pale, but "one former official noted that before Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania, top administration officials weighed shooting down the aircraft if it got too close to Washington, D.C." I think this would have been a justified course of action. This situation presents an image of many advisors involved in "weighing" the decision, rather than some individual knee-jerk offing, conceived by the president alone.
The fact that there is no precedent or established process (we assume) to an executive killing confounds the issue. On one hand, a lack of formal process means that such a strike would be difficult to carry out. Who would complete it, and how would they get the order? Would a few FBI agents deal the blow, via the Department of Justice? Would it be Delta Force, through the DoD? Some type of Homeland Defense team? Maybe the president would pass the order directly through the secret service, and avoid his cabinet altogether. Getting this together would take time, which I assume would be precious in any situation in which some terrorist had to be killed rather than captured, and it would probably be rather hard to conceal from watchdogs as it was being cobbled together.
On the other side, this lack of procedure gives this kind of operation the potential for abuse. If the killing was pulled off secretly, but erroneously, where would be the oversight and accountability? Members of the military know not to follow illegal orders, and, with few exceptions, don't. However, they also know to follow legal orders efficiently and, when such orders are classified, to keep them secret.
Tasia Scolinos, a Justice Department spokeswoman, told NEWSWEEK: "Mr. Bradbury's meeting was an informal, off-the-record briefing about the legal analysis behind the president's terrorist-surveillance program. He was not presenting the legal views of the Justice Department on hypothetical scenarios outside of the terrorist-surveillance program."In the case that Bradbury's legal views are correct, some form of formal process would need to be established to facilitate and document that action. If the USA PATRIOT Act does indeed give the president the power to kill terrorists when the nation's security depends on it, then it also gives him the power to conceal that action. In such an extreme instance of homeland defense, though, who has the power to make sure it is done correctly, honorably, and only when necessary?
posted by Patrick Sauncy @ 00:38
2 Comments:
I choose you, Kyle Wade. But your presidential portrait must be the one you use as your profile.
Patrick Sauncy, I think you're smart.
And good looking
And agile
And cuddly.
nate
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