The Obama administration acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that four American citizens have been killed in drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen since 2009, the Associated Press reported. The disclosure to Congress comes before the president is due to make a major national security speech, with plans to pledge more transparency to Congress in his counter-terrorism policy.
It was already known that three Americans had been killed in U.S. drones strikes in counter-terrorism operations overseas, but Attorney General Eric Holder disclosed details that had remained secret and also that a fourth American had been killed.
In a letter written to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, Holder said that the government targeted and killed U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki and that the U.S. "is aware" of the killing of three others who were not targets of counter-terror operations. Al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric, was killed in a drone strike in September 2011 in Yemen.
The other two known cases are Samir Khan, who was killed in the same drone strike as al-Awlaki and al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, also was killed in Yemen.
Jude Kenan Mohammed, is the newly revealed case, one of eight men indicted by federal authorities in 2009. Mohammed was accused of being part of a plot to attack the U.S. Marine Corps base at Quantico, Virginia. Mohammad fled the country to join jihadi fighters in the tribal areas of Pakistan before he was due to be arrested. He was among those killed by a U.S. drone soon thereafter.
"Since entering office, the president has made clear his commitment to providing Congress and the American people with as much information as possible about our sensitive counterterrorism operations," Holder said in his letter to Leahy.
"To this end, the president has directed me to disclose certain information that until now has been properly classified. The administration is determined to continue these extensive outreach efforts to communicate with the American people," Holder wrote.
There is a gradual shift for the bulk of the U.S. drone strikes from the CIA to the military, the AP reported. The move would largely divide the strikes on a geographical basis, with the CIA continuing to conduct operations in Pakistan, while the military takes on the operations in other parts of the world, according to reports.
The White House said Obama's national security speech Thursday coincides with the signing of new "presidential policy guidance" on when the U.S. can use drone strikes, though it was unclear what that guidance was, and also whether Obama intends to outline its specifics in his remarks.
Obama's speech Thursday at the National Defense University is expected to reaffirm his national security priorities, but is not expected to institute sweeping policy pronouncements.
Obama is also expected to say the U.S. will make a renewed effort to transfer detainees out of Navy-run detention center for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to other countries. Obama recently restated his desire to close Guantanamo, a pledge he made shortly after his inauguration in January 2009. That effort, however, has been stymied because many countries do not want the detainees, or no assurance that their threats will not go away.
The discussion of national security enables the president to deflect some of the domestic political scandals his administration is no experiencing, most notably concerning the I.R.S. and the seizure of a news agency's phone records. Eric Holder, specifically, has been on the hotseat for the last month.
