Obama administration invokes state secrets privilege to block lawsuit to bar the government from carrying out targeted killings

The Obama administration has invoked the state secrets privilege to block a lawsuit on behalf of US-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an alleged terrorist targeted for assassination under a US government program. In a court filing, the Justice Department said that the issues in the case are for the executive branch of government to decide rather than the courts.

The ACLU disagrees, saying in a statement that “The idea that courts should have no role whatsoever in determining the criteria by which the executive branch can kill its own citizens is unacceptable in a democracy… In matters of life and death, no executive should have a blank check.”

The lawsuit seeks to have courts declare that the Constitution and international law bar the government from carrying out targeted killings, seeks to block the targeted killing of al-Awlaki, and seeks to force the U.S. government to disclose the standards for determining whether U.S. citizens can be targeted for death.

Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller says in a statement that “It strains credulity to argue that our laws require the government to disclose to an active, operational terrorist any information about how, when and where we fight terrorism.”