Glenn Greenwald on Obama’s Kill List

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – Glenn Greenwald has taken a day since the release of that memo that we talked about two days ago, the memo from the Obama administration alleging the legalities and implied powers used to assassinate American citizens.  That’s the terminology that Greenwald uses at The Guardian UK newspaper, that the president has claimed the power.  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

 

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Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Glenn Greenwald has taken a day since the release of that memo that we talked about two days ago, the memo from the Obama administration alleging the legalities and implied powers used to assassinate American citizens.  That’s the terminology that Greenwald uses at The Guardian UK newspaper, that the president has claimed the power.  Here’s how Greenwald puts it:

[reading]

The most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due process, far from any battlefield. The Obama administration has not only asserted exactly that power in theory, but has exercised it in practice. [Mike: Then he tells a story about how Anwar Awlaki and his 16-year-old son were both killed by drone strikes in Yemen.]

Since then, senior Obama officials including Attorney General Eric Holder and John Brennan, Obama’s top terrorism adviser and his current nominee to lead the CIA, have explicitly argued that the president is and should be vested with this power. Meanwhile, a Washington Post article from October reported that the administration is formally institutionalizing this president’s power to decide who dies under the Orwellian title “disposition matrix”.

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Mike:  I’m not familiar with this.  What is this disposition matrix of which you speak?  We talked about this, and have been talking about it for months, about the kill list and the claiming of power, with Obama institutionalizing it and now making it part of the president’s power.  As I said yesterday, don’t think for a second, even if he is succeeded by a Republican in 2016, unless it’s Ron or Rand Paul, that anyone is going to give that power back, that anyone is going to say: Yeah, we gave it some thoughtful consideration and we don’t want to use that power to execute any citizens, especially if it’s Mrs. Clinton.  She’ll be the first one to go, [mocking] “I can’t wait to use that power!”  You think she won’t find some flimflam bimbos Bill has been hanging out with?  [mocking] “Madam President, you can’t just designate the floozies your husband is, you know, as terrorists.” — “I can do whatever I want to do.”  Of course, I’m exaggerating to make a point.  Back to Greenwald:

[reading]

 

When the New York Times back in April, 2010 first confirmed the existence of Obama’s hit list, it made clear just what an extremist power this is, noting: “It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing.” The NYT quoted a Bush intelligence official as saying “he did not know of any American who was approved for targeted killing under the former president”. When the existence of Obama’s hit list was first reported several months earlier by the Washington Post’s Dana Priest, she wrote that the “list includes three Americans”.

What has made these actions all the more radical is the absolute secrecy with which Obama has draped all of this. Not only is the entire process carried out solely within the Executive branch – with no checks or oversight of any kind – but there is zero transparency and zero accountability. The president’s underlings compile their proposed lists of who should be executed, and the president – at a charming weekly event dubbed by White House aides as “Terror Tuesday” – then chooses from “baseball cards” and decrees in total secrecy who should die. The power of accuser, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner are all consolidated in this one man, and those powers are exercised in the dark.

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Mike:  My Lord in Heaven!  If what Greenwald is writing here is correct, can you just imagine this?  This is Idiocracy, the movie, on steroids: Why are you going to kill that guy? — Because that guy’s got electrolytes. — What are electrolytes?  Do you even know? — No, but that’s what we use to kill people. — Why do you use it to kill people? — Because that guy’s got electrolytes.  Let me read this to you one more time.  This is Glenn Greenwald, Guardian UK newspaper.  I guess now that he’s in London he can write these sorts of things.  He had to leave the United States in order to continue writing actual truths about the Obama administration.  Was he at Salon or Slate?  I think he was at Salon.  Are they kind of related, Salon and Slate?

AG:  Not sure what their relationship is.

Mike:  Anyway, this is a very lengthy piece and I won’t get into all of it.  This is one of the passages that just blew me away when I was reading it last night.  I almost wanted to write a letter to Glenn Greenwald and say: Sir, there’s a lot of stuff in here.  Where are you getting all this from?  I know part of it is from the New York Times story.  One more time for edification, see if this sounds like something that ought to be happening in the land of the free and the mobile home of the brave.  See if this sounds like something that a peace-loving, free market-loving, free people do behind closed doors in the most hallowed, powerful halls of justice and government.

[reading]

What has made these actions all the more radical is the absolute secrecy with which Obama has draped all of this. Not only is the entire process carried out solely within the Executive branch – with no checks or oversight of any kind – but there is zero transparency and zero accountability. The president’s underlings compile their proposed lists of who should be executed, and the president – at a charming weekly event dubbed by White House aides as “Terror Tuesday” – then chooses from “baseball cards” and decrees in total secrecy who should die. The power of accuser, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner are all consolidated in this one man, and those powers are exercised in the dark.

In fact, The Most Transparent Administration Ever™ has been so fixated on secrecy that they have refused even to disclose the legal memoranda prepared by Obama lawyers setting forth their legal rationale for why the president has this power. During the Bush years, when Bush refused to disclose the memoranda from his Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that legally authorized torture, rendition, warrantless eavesdropping and the like, leading Democratic lawyers such as Dawn Johnsen vehemently denounced this practice as a grave threat, warning that “the Bush Administration’s excessive reliance on ‘secret law’ threatens the effective functioning of American democracy” and “the withholding from Congress and the public of legal interpretations by the [OLC] upsets the system of checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches of government.”

But when it comes to Obama’s assassination power, this is exactly what his administration has done. It has repeatedly refused to disclose the principal legal memoranda prepared by Obama OLC lawyers that justified his kill list. It is, right now, vigorously resisting lawsuits from the New York Times and the ACLU to obtain that OLC memorandum. In sum, Obama not only claims he has the power to order US citizens killed with no transparency, but that even the documents explaining the legal rationale for this power are to be concealed. He’s maintaining secret law on the most extremist power he can assert.

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End Mike Church Show Transcript