DronesACLU lawsuit seeks disclosure of details of CIA drone program

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is continuing its campaign over CIA drone use with a lawsuit filed on Monday to force the CIA to turn over details about the U.S. clandestine drone war program.

The ACLU lawsuit, coming a week after some of details of the program were leaked, asks for summary data from the CIA on drone strikes, including the locations and dates of strikes, the number of people killed and their identities or status.

The ACLU is also asking for memos and other documents which outline the administration’s legal reasoning justifying the program.

Since the U.S. government does not reveal details about drone strikes, the public must rely on estimates compiled by analysts and journalists based on sketchy reports on the ground.

“The case is really about the public’s right to know, the right of access to information about this very controversial set of policies,” Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the ACLU, told the Guardian. “At this point the enemies of the United States already know that the CIA is carrying out drone strikes. The only effect of the kind of secrecy we’re seeing now is to keep Americans in the dark about their own government’s policies.”

Jaffer said that the ACLU lawsuit addresses both to the CIA drone program and any information it may have on a parallel program operated by the defense department.

The Intercept reports that in combination the two programs are believed to have killed thousands of civilians in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Afghanistan. Classified documents provided by an unidentified whistleblower to the Intercept and published last week show that the military labels unknown people it kills as “enemies killed in action.”

In June a judge with the U.S. district court for the District of Columbia set back the ACLU case when he ruled in favor of the CIA’s argument that the drone strike information and legal reasoning should remain secret.

On Monday, the ACLU appealed that ruling to the D.C. circuit appeals court, which had earlier ruled in favor of the ACLU in the case. In 2013, a three-judge panel on the court rejected a CIA argument that national security concerns prevented the agency from confirming or denying the possession of any pertinent records regarding the drone war.

In the past, the ACLU was partially successful with similar Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits. In 2009, for example, the ACLU won the release of four secret memos laying out the legal justifications for the CIA’s post-9/11 enhanced interrogation program.

“We are seeking [the drone memos] for precisely the same reasons we sought the torture memos,” Jaffer said. “They are the basis for the government’s most significant national security policy right now.

“We think that the public has a right to know both what the government’s purported legal justifications are for the drone strikes, and also of any limits that the government recognizes on its authority to carry out these kinds of strikes.”

The Intercept notes that the ACLU has also joined the New York Times in a second case involving drones transparency. The case is working its way through the 2nd U.S. circuit court of appeals in Manhattan.

That case last year led to the release of a Justice Department memorandum which outlined the legal reasoning behind the 2011 killing Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen who was one of the leaders of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

The legal memo said that the protection offered by U.S. citizenship was effectively stripped by the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), which launched the global war on terror.