Obama to limit targets of drones

White House admits 4 Americans killed in strikes by U.S.

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama plans to open a new phase in the nation’s long struggle with terrorism today by restricting the use of unmanned drone strikes that have been at the heart of his national security strategy and shifting control of them away from the CIA to the military, according to people briefed on White House plans.

In his first major speech on counter terrorism of his second term, Obama hopes to refocus the epic conflict that has defined U.S. priorities since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and even foresees an unspecified day when the so called war on terror might all but end, the people said.

As part of the shift in approach, the administration Wednesday formally acknowledged for the first time that it had killed four U.S. citizens in drone strikes outside the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, arguing that its actions were justified by the danger to the United States. Obama approved providing new information to Congress and the public about the rules governing his attacks on al-Qaida and its allies.

A new classified policy guidance signed by Obama will sharply curtail the instances when unmanned aircraft can be used to attack in places that are not overt war zones, countries like Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, the people briefed on the plans said. The rules will impose the same standard for strikes on foreign enemies now used only for U.S. citizens deemed to be terrorists.

Lethal force will be used only against targets who pose “a continuing, imminent threat to Americans” and cannot feasibly be captured, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a letter to Congress, suggesting that threats to a partner like Afghanistan or Yemen alone would not be enough to justify being targeted.

In the speech he will give today at the National Defense University, Obama is also expected to renew his long stalled effort to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Yet even as he moves the counter terrorism effort to a next stage, Obama plans to offer a robust defense of a continued role for targeted killings, a policy he has generally addressed only in passing or in interviews rather than in a comprehensive speech, a White House official said.

The CIA, which has overseen the drone war in the tribal areas of Pakistan and elsewhere, will generally cede its role to the military after a six-month transition period as forces draw down in Afghanistan, officials said.

Drone strikes have already been decreasing in the past few years as targets have been killed and opposition has grown. John Brennan, the new CIA director, has been eager to shift the agency more toward espionage, intelligence gathering and analysis and away from the paramilitary mission it has adopted since Sept. 11.

In his letter to congressional leaders, Holder confirmed the administration had deliberately killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who died in a strike in September 2011 in Yemen. Holder also wrote that U.S. forces had killed three other Americans who “were not specifically targeted.”

The U.S. involvement in al-Awlaki’s death has been widely reported, but the administration until now had refused to confirm it.

Likewise, Holder confirmed the government’s role in the deaths of Samir Khan, who was killed in the same strike, and al-Awlaki’s son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who died in another strike. The letter disclosed the death of a fourth American named Jude Kenan Mohammad but gave no further details.

Holder defended the actions, saying they were consistent with U.S. law and taken only after careful consideration. “Based on generations-old legal principles and Supreme Court decisions handed down during World War II, as well as during the current conflict, it is clear and logical that United States citizenship alone does not make such individuals immune from being targeted,” he wrote.

Critics disagreed.

“The Obama administration continues to claim authority to kill virtually anyone anywhere in the world under the ‘global battlefield’ legal theory and a radical redefinition of the concept of imminence,” said Zeke Johnson of Amnesty International. “President Obama should reject these concepts in his speech tomorrow and commit to upholding human rights, not just in word but in deed.”

Front Section, Pages 3 on 05/23/2013

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