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Anti Federalist
10-05-2011, 12:19 AM
The Day America Died

by Paul Craig Roberts

4 Oct. 2011

http://lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts328.html

September 30, 2011 was the day America was assassinated.

Some of us have watched this day approach and have warned of its coming, only to be greeted with boos and hisses from "patriots" who have come to regard the US Constitution as a device that coddles criminals and terrorists and gets in the way of the President who needs to act to keep us safe.

In our book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, Lawrence Stratton and I showed that long before 9/11 US law had ceased to be a shield of the people and had been turned into a weapon in the hands of the government. The event known as 9/11 was used to raise the executive branch above the law. As long as the President sanctions an illegal act, executive branch employees are no longer accountable to the law that prohibits the illegal act. On the president’s authority, the executive branch can violate US laws against spying on Americans without warrants, indefinite detention, and torture and suffer no consequences.

Many expected President Obama to re-establish the accountability of government to law. Instead, he went further than Bush/Cheney and asserted the unconstitutional power not only to hold American citizens indefinitely in prison without bringing charges, but also to take their lives without convicting them in a court of law. Obama asserts that the US Constitution notwithstanding, he has the authority to assassinate US citizens, who he deems to be a "threat," without due process of law.

In other words, any American citizen who is moved into the threat category has no rights and can be executed without trial or evidence.

On September 30 Obama used this asserted new power of the president and had two American citizens, Anwar Awlaki and Samir Khan murdered. Khan was a wacky character associated with Inspire Magazine and does not readily come to mind as a serious threat.

Awlaki was a moderate American Muslim cleric who served as an advisor to the US government after 9/11 on ways to counter Muslim extremism. Awlaki was gradually radicalized by Washington’s use of lies to justify military attacks on Muslim countries. He became a critic of the US government and told Muslims that they did not have to passively accept American aggression and had the right to resist and to fight back. As a result Awlaki was demonized and became a threat.

All we know that Awlaki did was to give sermons critical of Washington’s indiscriminate assaults on Muslim peoples. Washington’s argument is that his sermons might have had an influence on some who are accused of attempting terrorist acts, thus making Awlaki responsible for the attempts.

Obama’s assertion that Awlaki was some kind of high-level Al Qaeda operative is merely an assertion. Jason Ditz concluded that the reason Awlaki was murdered rather than brought to trial is that the US government had no real evidence that Awlaki was an Al Qaeda operative.

Having murdered its critic, the Obama Regime is working hard to posthumously promote Awlaki to a leadership position in Al Qaeda. The presstitutes and the worshippers of America’s First Black President have fallen in line and regurgitated the assertions that Awlaki was a high-level dangerous Al Qaeda terrorist. If Al Qaeda sees value in Awlaki as a martyr, the organization will give credence to these claims. However, so far no one has provided any evidence. Keep in mind that all we know about Awlaki is what Washington claims and that the US has been at war for a decade based on false claims.

But what Awlaki did or might have done is beside the point. The US Constitution requires that even the worst murderer cannot be punished until he is convicted in a court of law. When the American Civil Liberties Union challenged in federal court Obama’s assertion that he had the power to order assassinations of American citizens, the Obama Justice (sic) Department argued that Obama’s decision to have Americans murdered was an executive power beyond the reach of the judiciary.

In a decision that sealed America’s fate, federal district court judge John Bates ignored the Constitution’s requirement that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law and dismissed the case, saying that it was up to Congress to decide. Obama acted before an appeal could be heard, thus using Judge Bates’ acquiescence to establish the power and advance the transformation of the president into a Caesar that began under George W. Bush.

Attorneys Glenn Greenwald and Jonathan Turley point out that Awlaki’s assassination terminated the Constitution’s restraint on the power of government. Now the US government not only can seize a US citizen and confine him in prison for the rest of his life without ever presenting evidence and obtaining a conviction, but also can have him shot down in the street or blown up by a drone.

Before some readers write to declare that Awlaki’s murder is no big deal because the US government has always had people murdered, keep in mind that CIA assassinations were of foreign opponents and were not publicly proclaimed events, much less a claim by the president to be above the law. Indeed, such assassinations were denied, not claimed as legitimate actions of the President of the United States.

The Ohio National Guardsmen who shot Kent State students as they protested the US invasion of Cambodia in 1970 made no claim to be carrying out an executive branch decision. Eight of the guardsmen were indicted by a grand jury. The guardsmen entered a self-defense plea. Most Americans were angry at war protestors and blamed the students. The judiciary got the message, and the criminal case was eventually dismissed. The civil case (wrongful death and injury) was settled for $675,000 and a statement of regret by the defendants.

The point isn’t that the government killed people. The point is that never prior to President Obama has a President asserted the power to murder citizens.

Over the last 20 years, the United States has had its own Mein Kampf transformation.

Terry Eastland’s book, Energy in the Executive: The Case for the Strong Presidency, presented ideas associated with the Federalist Society, an organization of Republican lawyers that works to reduce legislative and judicial restraints on executive power. Under the cover of wartime emergencies (the war on terror), the Bush/Cheney regime employed these arguments to free the president from accountability to law and to liberate Americans from their civil liberties. War and national security provided the opening for the asserted new powers, and a mixture of fear and desire for revenge for 9/11 led Congress, the judiciary, and the people to go along with the dangerous precedents.

As civilian and military leaders have been telling us for years, the war on terror is a 30-year project. After such time has passed, the presidency will have completed its transformation into Caesarism, and there will be no going back.

Indeed, as the neoconservative "Project For A New American Century" makes clear, the war on terror is only an opening for the neoconservative imperial ambition to establish US hegemony over the world.

As wars of aggression or imperial ambition are war crimes under international law, such wars require doctrines that elevate the leader above the law and the Geneva Conventions, as Bush was elevated by his Justice (sic) Department with minimal judicial and legislative interference.

Illegal and unconstitutional actions also require a silencing of critics and punishment of those who reveal government crimes. Thus Bradley Manning has been held for a year, mainly in solitary confinement under abusive conditions, without any charges being presented against him. A federal grand jury is at work concocting spy charges against Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange. Another federal grand jury is at work concocting terrorists charges against antiwar activists.

"Terrorist" and "giving aid to terrorists" are increasingly elastic concepts. Homeland Security has declared that the vast federal police bureaucracy has shifted its focus from terrorists to "domestic extremists."

It is possible that Awlaki was assassinated because he was an effective critic of the US government. Police states do not originate fully fledged. Initially, they justify their illegal acts by demonizing their targets and in this way create the precedents for unaccountable power. Once the government equates critics with giving "aid and comfort" to terrorists, as they are doing with antiwar activists and Assange, or with terrorism itself, as Obama did with Awlaki, it will only be a short step to bringing accusations against Glenn Greenwald and the ACLU.

The Obama Regime, like the Bush/Cheney Regime, is a regime that does not want to be constrained by law. And neither will its successor. Those fighting to uphold the rule of law, humanity’s greatest achievement, will find themselves lumped together with the regime’s opponents and be treated as such.

This great danger that hovers over America is unrecognized by the majority of the people. When Obama announced before a military gathering his success in assassinating an American citizen, cheers erupted. The Obama regime and the media played the event as a repeat of the (claimed) killing of Osama bin Laden. Two "enemies of the people" have been triumphantly dispatched. That the President of the United States was proudly proclaiming to a cheering audience sworn to defend the Constitution that he was a murderer and that he had also assassinated the US Constitution is extraordinary evidence that Americans are incapable of recognizing the threat to their liberty.

Emotionally, the people have accepted the new powers of the president. If the president can have American citizens assassinated, there is no big deal about torturing them. Amnesty International has sent out an alert that the US Senate is poised to pass legislation that would keep Guantanamo Prison open indefinitely and that Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) might introduce a provision that would legalize "enhanced interrogation techniques," an euphemism for torture.

Instead of seeing the danger, most Americans will merely conclude that the government is getting tough on terrorists, and it will meet with their approval. Smiling with satisfaction over the demise of their enemies, Americans are being led down the garden path to rule by government unrestrained by law and armed with the weapons of the medieval dungeon.

Americans have overwhelming evidence from news reports and YouTube videos of US police brutally abusing women, children, and the elderly, of brutal treatment and murder of prisoners not only in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and secret CIA prisons abroad, but also in state and federal prisons in the US. Power over the defenseless attracts people of a brutal and evil disposition.

A brutal disposition now infects the US military. The leaked video of US soldiers delighting, as their words and actions reveal, in their murder from the air of civilians and news service camera men walking innocently along a city street shows soldiers and officers devoid of humanity and military discipline. Excited by the thrill of murder, our troops repeated their crime when a father with two small children stopped to give aid to the wounded and were machine-gunned.

So many instances: the rape of a young girl and murder of her entire family; innocent civilians murdered and AK-47s placed by their side as "evidence" of insurgency; the enjoyment experienced not only by high school dropouts from torturing they-knew-not- who in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, but also by educated CIA operatives and Ph.D. psychologists. And no one held accountable for these crimes except two lowly soldiers prominently featured in some of the torture photographs.

What do Americans think will be their fate now that the "war on terror" has destroyed the protection once afforded them by the US Constitution? If Awlaki really needed to be assassinated, why did not President Obama protect American citizens from the precedent that their deaths can be ordered without due process of law by first stripping Awlaki of his US citizenship? If the government can strip Awlaki of his life, it certainly can strip him of citizenship. The implication is hard to avoid that the executive branch desires the power to terminate citizens without due process of law.

Governments escape the accountability of law in stages. Washington understands that its justifications for its wars are contrived and indefensible. President Obama even went so far as to declare that the military assault that he authorized on Libya without consulting Congress was not a war, and, therefore, he could ignore the War Powers Resolution of 1973, a federal law intended to check the power of the President to commit the US to an armed conflict without the consent of Congress.

Americans are beginning to unwrap themselves from the flag. Some are beginning to grasp that initially they were led into Afghanistan for revenge for 9/11. From there they were led into Iraq for reasons that turned out to be false. They see more and more US military interventions: Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and now calls for invasion of Pakistan and continued saber rattling for attacks on Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. The financial cost of a decade of the "war against terror" is starting to come home. Exploding annual federal budget deficits and national debt threaten Medicare and Social Security. Debt ceiling limits threaten government shut-downs.

War critics are beginning to have an audience. The government cannot begin its silencing of critics by bringing charges against US Representatives Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich. It begins with antiwar protestors, who are elevated into "antiwar activists," perhaps a step below "domestic extremists." Washington begins with citizens who are demonized Muslim clerics radicalized by Washington’s wars on Muslims. In this way, Washington establishes the precedent that war protestors give encouragement and, thus, aid, to terrorists. It establishes the precedent that those Americans deemed a threat are not protected by law. This is the slippery slope on which we now find ourselves.

Last year the Obama Regime tested the prospects of its strategy when Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence, announced that the government had a list of American citizens that it was going to assassinate abroad. This announcement, had it been made in earlier times by, for example, Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan, would have produced a national uproar and calls for impeachment. However, Blair’s announcement caused hardly a ripple. All that remained for the regime to do was to establish the policy by exercising it.

Readers ask me what they can do. Americans not only feel powerless, they are powerless. They cannot do anything. The highly concentrated, corporate-owned, government-subservient print and TV media are useless and no longer capable of performing the historic role of protecting our rights and holding government accountable. Even many antiwar Internet sites shield the government from 9/11 skepticism, and most defend the government’s "righteous intent" in its war on terror. Acceptable criticism has to be couched in words such as "it doesn’t serve our interests."

Voting has no effect. President "Change" is worse than Bush/Cheney. As Jonathan Turley suggests, Obama is "the most disastrous president in our history." Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate who stands up for the Constitution, but the majority of Americans are too unconcerned with the Constitution to appreciate him.

To expect salvation from an election is delusional. All you can do, if you are young enough, is to leave the country. The only future for Americans is a nightmare.

iamse7en
10-05-2011, 12:51 AM
Bravo. Excellent article. Read it all!

Anti Federalist
10-05-2011, 10:35 AM
PCR bump

Kylie
10-05-2011, 12:20 PM
That article states everything ive been thinking.

Brian4Liberty
10-05-2011, 12:43 PM
Good stuff.

Very interesting part here. They have been very successful at painting this guy as an Al-Qaeda mastermind. So much so that this is the first time I have ever heard the official story questioned:


All we know that Awlaki did was to give sermons critical of Washington’s indiscriminate assaults on Muslim peoples. Washington’s argument is that his sermons might have had an influence on some who are accused of attempting terrorist acts, thus making Awlaki responsible for the attempts.

Obama’s assertion that Awlaki was some kind of high-level Al Qaeda operative is merely an assertion. Jason Ditz concluded that the reason Awlaki was murdered rather than brought to trial is that the US government had no real evidence that Awlaki was an Al Qaeda operative.

Having murdered its critic, the Obama Regime is working hard to posthumously promote Awlaki to a leadership position in Al Qaeda. The presstitutes and the worshippers of America’s First Black President have fallen in line and regurgitated the assertions that Awlaki was a high-level dangerous Al Qaeda terrorist. If Al Qaeda sees value in Awlaki as a martyr, the organization will give credence to these claims. However, so far no one has provided any evidence. Keep in mind that all we know about Awlaki is what Washington claims and that the US has been at war for a decade based on false claims.

phill4paul
10-05-2011, 12:54 PM
It will either be remember as the day America died or the day that the final line has been drawn in the sand. Get ready boyos these are gonna be interesting times now that the government has decided it is well within it's power, TO OPENLY and BRAGGINGLY, kill a citizen w/out due process. Yes sir. Interesting times indeed.

heavenlyboy34
10-05-2011, 02:03 PM
Fucking awesome article. I don't entirely agree with the last line, though. (All you can do, if you are young enough, is to leave the country. The only future for Americans is a nightmare.) The MIC is a world-wide racket. Worse than the mafia. At least the mafia provide people with things they want (drugs, etc). The MIC is just a bunch of murderers and thugs. If the MIC really wants you, they'll find you.The primary advantage of leaving would be to find better economic and lifestyle prospects. Plus, if you're living abroad, they can kill you in extremely violent ways without upsetting Boobus too much. You would be just a statistic-a soundbite at most. :(

Anti Federalist
10-05-2011, 02:08 PM
Fucking awesome article. I don't entirely agree with the last line, though. (All you can do, if you are young enough, is to leave the country. The only future for Americans is a nightmare.) The MIC is a world-wide racket. Worse than the mafia. At least the mafia provide people with things they want (drugs, etc). The MIC is just a bunch of murderers and thugs. If the MIC really wants you, they'll find you.The primary advantage of leaving would be to find better economic and lifestyle prospects. Plus, if you're living abroad, they can kill you in extremely violent ways without upsetting Boobus too much. You would be just a statistic-a soundbite at most. :(

I agree, after giving it much thought over the past few days.

There ain't nowhere to run, there ain't nowhere to hide.

pcosmar
10-05-2011, 02:29 PM
there ain't nowhere to hide.
;)

In plain sight.
I have always found it to be the very best hiding place.

noneedtoaggress
10-05-2011, 04:35 PM
Yeah I don't necessarily agree with that last paragraph, but I think you guys are justifying your decisions regarding his point by blowing it out of proportion. :P

TheTexan
10-05-2011, 04:45 PM
Our constitutional rights & liberties have been pushed aside one by one by "interpretive reading" of the "grey areas" of the Constitution. Our eyes are open now though. We see what's going on here.

No more grey. Not anymore.

flightlesskiwi
10-05-2011, 04:48 PM
Our constitutional rights & liberties have been pushed aside one by one by "interpretive reading" of the "grey areas" of the Constitution. Our eyes are open now though. We see what's going on here.

No more grey. Not anymore.

No One But Paul!!!!

QueenB4Liberty
10-05-2011, 05:30 PM
Good article.

heavenlyboy34
10-05-2011, 05:41 PM
I agree, after giving it much thought over the past few days.

There ain't nowhere to run, there ain't nowhere to hide.
Aye. Welcome to Prison Planet. :(

Seraphim
10-05-2011, 07:15 PM
Exactly.

Where else is there?

Authoritarian Tyranny A or B OR C or D.

At least in Canada and the USA there is still a large segment of the population that truly understands the founding tenants of our countries.

Might as well stay and fight. The grass is NOT greener onthe other side...sadly...


I agree, after giving it much thought over the past few days.

There ain't nowhere to run, there ain't nowhere to hide.

Anti Federalist
10-05-2011, 07:19 PM
"So, ma'am, what type of tyranny do you actually, umm have, here?"

"Oh, we've got both kinds: socialism and war."


Exactly.

Where else is there?

Authoritarian Tyranny A or B OR C or D.

At least in Canada and the USA there is still a large segment of the population that truly understands the founding tenants of our countries.

Might as well stay and fight. The grass is NOT greener onthe other side...sadly...

AuH20
10-05-2011, 07:23 PM
It's largely this fucker's fault. Warmongering, fabian socialist piece of garbage..............


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUZGkNAUSvY&feature=related


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1cX_Fr3qyQ

Must read sheet about FDR and his high crimes:
http://www.givemeliberty.50megs.com/FDR%20Fact%20Sheet.htm

flightlesskiwi
10-05-2011, 07:35 PM
It's largely this fucker's fault. Warmongering, fabian socialist piece of garbage..............


FDR scum of the earth douchebag sh*tface.

+rep

but it is the lack of eternal vigilance that really has done us in.

AuH20
10-05-2011, 07:45 PM
FDR scum of the earth douchebag sh*tface.

+rep

but it is the lack of eternal vigilance that really has done us in.

Until recently I never knew that a Warburg was one of the chief architects of the New Deal. Imagine the same family being involved in two of the most destructive creations of the last century. Coincidence? I think not.

http://wwx2.tripod.com/hellbent.html


Later the same James P. Warburg became adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on domestic and international monetary affairs. The Warburg's deep interest in the NRA program is reflected in a 1933 Warburg memorandum to FDR:

Memorandum for the President:

Domestic Currency Problem.

The Administration has, in my judgment, never faced a more serious situation than it does today. The entire recovery program, which is the heart of its policy, is jeopardized by uncertainty and doubt in the monetary field. The National Recovery Act cannot possibly function to any useful end if there is fear of currency depreciation of an unknown amount and fear as to monetary experimentation. There has already been a tremendous flight of capital, and this flight will continue at an increasing pace so long as uncertainty prevails. [19]

Then, following the Warburg proclivity for monopoly, James Warburg recommended to FDR that all monetary ideas, actions, and decisions be centralized in the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Board.

Obviously, this proposal would ensure that all monetary decisions were made by the elitist group associated with the International Acceptance Bank and the Federal Reserve System. The Secretary of the Treasury in July 1933, when James Warburg wrote his memorandum to FDR, was William H. Woodin, who had been director of FRB of New York from 1925 to 1931.

We can also cite FDR's own associations with the Federal Reserve System. His "favorite uncle" Frederic Delano was appointed vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914, and from 1931 to 1936 Delano served as chairman of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Virginia. FDR appointed Delano chairman of the National Resources Planning Board in 1934.

(Delano was also a founder of the Brookings Institution. --ed)

In 1933-34 the United States faced the greatest financial crisis in its history. And what did FDR do? He called in as the financial doctors the very operators responsible for the crisis -- as sensible a policy as allowing the lunatics to run the asylum.

So we find associations between Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Warburg family, and the Warburg-inspired central banking system ranging from childhood to Warburg's appointment as a key monetary adviser to FDR. We shall see later that it was Warburg who determined the final shape of the National Industrial Recovery Administration. On the other hand, the Warburg family and their Wall Street friends controlled the private monopoly money supply known as the Federal Reserve System and through the International Acceptance Bank exploited that monopoly for their own purposes.

Sounds awfully similar to Obama when he recruited the cannibals Summers and Geithner.

flightlesskiwi
10-05-2011, 07:49 PM
Until recently I never knew that a Warburg was one of the chief architects of the New Deal. Imagine the same family being involved in two of the most destructive creations of the last century. Coincidence? I think not.

http://wwx2.tripod.com/hellbent.html

tomatobubble.com = invaluable for connecting the dots.

heavenlyboy34
10-05-2011, 08:06 PM
Exactly.

Where else is there?

Authoritarian Tyranny A or B OR C or D.

At least in Canada and the USA there is still a large segment of the population that truly understands the founding tenants of our countries.

Might as well stay and fight. The grass is NOT greener onthe other side...sadly...
Aye. You're never going to be able to escape TPTB (at least, not in the foreseeable future). Just pick somewhere you like and hunker down. At least here TPTB at least pretend to respect the citizenry for show. If they didn't, there would probably be riots in one form or another, and the regime would not have such strong control over Boobus' mind. People abroad don't have that luxury. If I were in Europe or someplace, they could snuff me out easily and it wouldn't make headlines here at all. It would be as if I never existed. Lots of places to "disappear" bodies over there.

Philhelm
10-05-2011, 10:58 PM
I agree, after giving it much thought over the past few days.

There ain't nowhere to run, there ain't nowhere to hide.

For some reason I can't help but think, "Hide yo kids. Hide yo wife. 'Cause they be assassinating errybody up in hea!"

heavenlyboy34
10-06-2011, 11:10 AM
Yeah I don't necessarily agree with that last paragraph, but I think you guys are justifying your decisions regarding his point by blowing it out of proportion. :PConsidering the actions of the regime in recent years and decades, I don't think so.

Anti Federalist
10-06-2011, 05:35 PM
///

heavenlyboy34
10-06-2011, 05:47 PM
AF-this broke today, and may be of interest to you.

Secret panel can put Americans on "kill list'
(http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/05/us-cia-killlist-idUSTRE79475C20111005)
(Reuters) - American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.
There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House's National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.
The panel was behind the decision to add Awlaki, a U.S.-born militant preacher with alleged al Qaeda connections, to the target list. He was killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen (http://www.reuters.com/places/yemen) late last month.
The role of the president in ordering or ratifying a decision to target a citizen is fuzzy. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to discuss anything about the process.
Current and former officials said that to the best of their knowledge, Awlaki, who the White House said was a key figure in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda's Yemen-based affiliate, had been the only American put on a government list targeting people for capture or death due to their alleged involvement with militants.
The White House is portraying the killing of Awlaki as a demonstration of President Barack Obama's toughness toward militants who threaten the United States. But the process that led to Awlaki's killing has drawn fierce criticism from both the political left and right.
In an ironic turn, Obama, who ran for president denouncing predecessor George W. Bush's expansive use of executive power in his "war on terrorism," is being attacked in some quarters for using similar tactics. They include secret legal justifications and undisclosed intelligence assessments.
Liberals criticized the drone attack on an American citizen as extra-judicial murder.
Conservatives criticized Obama for refusing to release a Justice Department legal opinion that reportedly justified killing Awlaki. They accuse Obama of hypocrisy, noting his administration insisted on publishing Bush-era administration legal memos justifying the use of interrogation techniques many equate with torture, but refused to make public its rationale for killing a citizen without due process.
Some details about how the administration went about targeting Awlaki emerged on Tuesday when the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Dutch Ruppersberger, was asked by reporters about the killing.
The process involves "going through the National Security Council, then it eventually goes to the president, but the National Security Council does the investigation, they have lawyers, they review, they look at the situation, you have input from the military, and also, we make sure that we follow international law," Ruppersberger said.
LAWYERS CONSULTED
Other officials said the role of the president in the process was murkier than what Ruppersberger described.
They said targeting recommendations are drawn up by a committee of mid-level National Security Council and agency officials. Their recommendations are then sent to the panel of NSC "principals," meaning Cabinet secretaries and intelligence unit chiefs, for approval. The panel of principals could have different memberships when considering different operational issues, they said.
The officials insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive information.
They confirmed that lawyers, including those in the Justice Department, were consulted before Awlaki's name was added to the target list.
Two principal legal theories were advanced, an official said: first, that the actions were permitted by Congress when it authorized the use of military forces against militants in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001; and they are permitted under international law if a country is defending itself.
Several officials said that when Awlaki became the first American put on the target list, Obama was not required personally to approve the targeting of a person. But one official said Obama would be notified of the principals' decision. If he objected, the decision would be nullified, the official said.
A former official said one of the reasons for making senior officials principally responsible for nominating Americans for the target list was to "protect" the president.
Officials confirmed that a second American, Samir Khan, was killed in the drone attack that killed Awlaki. Khan had served as editor of Inspire, a glossy English-language magazine used by AQAP as a propaganda and recruitment vehicle.
But rather than being specifically targeted by drone operators, Khan was in the wrong place at the wrong time, officials said. Ruppersberger appeared to confirm that, saying Khan's death was "collateral," meaning he was not an intentional target of the drone strike.
When the name of a foreign, rather than American, militant is added to targeting lists, the decision is made within the intelligence community and normally does not require approval by high-level NSC officials.
'FROM INSPIRATIONAL TO OPERATIONAL'
Officials said Awlaki, whose fierce sermons were widely circulated on English-language militant websites, was targeted because Washington accumulated information his role in AQAP had gone "from inspirational to operational." That meant that instead of just propagandizing in favor of al Qaeda objectives, Awlaki allegedly began to participate directly in plots against American targets.
"Let me underscore, Awlaki is no mere messenger but someone integrally involved in lethal terrorist activities," Daniel Benjamin, top counterterrorism official at the State Department, warned last spring.
The Obama administration has not made public an accounting of the classified evidence that Awlaki was operationally involved in planning terrorist attacks.
But officials acknowledged that some of the intelligence purporting to show Awlaki's hands-on role in plotting attacks was patchy.
For instance, one plot in which authorities have said Awlaki was involved Nigerian-born Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound U.S. airliner on Christmas Day 2009 with a bomb hidden in his underpants.
There is no doubt Abdulmutallab was an admirer or follower of Awlaki, since he admitted that to U.S. investigators. When he appeared in a Detroit courtroom earlier this week for the start of his trial on bomb-plot charges, he proclaimed, "Anwar is alive."
But at the time the White House was considering putting Awlaki on the U.S. target list, intelligence connecting Awlaki specifically to Abdulmutallab and his alleged bomb plot was partial. Officials said at the time the United States had voice intercepts involving a phone known to have been used by Awlaki and someone who they believed, but were not positive, was Abdulmutallab.
Awlaki was also implicated in a case in which a British Airways employee was imprisoned for plotting to blow up a U.S.-bound plane. E-mails retrieved by authorities from the employee's computer showed what an investigator described as " operational contact" between Britain and Yemen.
Authorities believe the contacts were mainly between the U.K.-based suspect and his brother. But there was a strong suspicion Awlaki was at the brother's side when the messages were dispatched. British media reported that in one message, the person on the Yemeni end supposedly said, "Our highest priority is the US ... With the people you have, is it possible to get a package or a person with a package on board a flight heading to the US?"
U.S. officials contrast intelligence suggesting Awlaki's involvement in specific plots with the activities of Adam Gadahn, an American citizen who became a principal English-language propagandist for the core al Qaeda network formerly led by Osama bin Laden.
While Gadahn appeared in angry videos calling for attacks on the United States, officials said he had not been specifically targeted for capture or killing by U.S. forces because he was regarded as a loudmouth not directly involved in plotting attacks