The Attorney General was responding to a
question posed to the administration by Senator Rand Paul, who demanded to know whether the current administration believed that it had the authority to conduct drone strikes inside America, targeting American citizens without a trial as has happened abroad.
In
response, Holder wrote the following:
"It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States"
So just what are those possible extraordinary circumstances? Holder writes:
The President conceivably have no choice but to authorize the military to use such force if necessary to protect the homeland in the circumstances of a catastrophic attack like the ones suffered on December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001.
The admission by the Obama administration, in that it doesn't rule out drone strikes against U.S. citizens on American soil, will be sure to worry several civil liberty groups who have already spoken out against drone attacks being conducted outside American soil.
