<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/14328819681/">Pete Souza</a>/The White House
In September 2011, Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical US-born cleric, was killed ??in an American drone strike in Yemen. His death was the first public example of the US government targeting and killing one of its own citizens abroad based on the suspicion of terrorist activities, though the names of other Americans also appear on the Obama administration’s “kill list.”
Last year, NBC’s Michael Isikoff published a Justice Department “white paper” that details the legal rationale for targeting American citizens. Now, as the result of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits brought by the New York Times and the ACLU, the public has access to a redacted version of the full 2010 memo from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel justifying the Obama administration’s controversial Awlaki assassination. You can read it below: