Obama Seeks to More Heavily Censor Drone Killing Memo
Justice Dept Ditches Previous Promise to Comply With Court Order
by Jason Ditz, May 29, 2014
During last week’s confirmation votes on David Barron, the Justice Department was promising to comply with a court order to release a partially redacted version of the Barron Memo, which offers the administration’s legal justification for killing Americans overseas with drone strikes.
Now that the Senate has confirmed Barron, the administration has changed its mind, and is pushing the court to give them permission to even more heavily censor the document.
The initial court order had allowed the censorship of certain “facts based on classified intelligence,” but insisted the legal justification had to remain intact. The Justice Department now says there are other passages that should be censored based on “other legal protections” the court forgot about.
In addition to the motion seeking to keep more of the memo secret, the Justice Department also filed a motion asking to be allowed to keep the first motion a secret. The court rejected this, but said it will allow the motion to also be redacted before being made public.
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