In the coming weeks, according to four participants in the debate, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. is planning to make a major address on the administration’s national-security record. Embedded in the speech will be a carefully worded but firm defense of its right to target U.S. citizens… .
An early draft of Holder’s speech identified Awlaki by name, but in a concession to concerns from the intelligence community, all references to the al Qaeda leader were removed. As currently written, the speech makes no overt mention of the Awlaki operation, and reveals none of the intelligence the administration relied on in carrying out his killing.
So basically, the Obama administration is going to make the claim that the US government is completely within its power in targeting American citizens (aka taking them out via drones without any due process whatsoever). And they’re going to make this case without providing a single piece of evidence to back the claim that Awlaki was guilty of anything in the first place. They won’t even mention his name.
