John Podesta, an influential Democratic Party leader and former White House Chief of the Staff, on Thursday asked the Obama administration to reveal its legal rationale for drone operations that kill terrorism suspects including Americans in foreign countries.
In one of the most emphatic calls for transparency on the controversial drone program, Podesta argued the administration is “wrong to withhold these documents from Congress and the American people.”
“I say this as a former White House chief of staff who understands the instinct to keep sensitive information secret and out of public view,” he wrote in an opinion piece in The Washington Post. Podesta is currently chairman of the Center for American Progress and a visiting professor of law at Georgetown University.
While, it is beyond dispute that some information must be closely held to protect national security and to engage in effective diplomacy, he argued, protecting technical means, human sources, operational details and intelligence methods “cannot be an excuse for creating secret law to guide our institutions.”
Podesta’s writing appears in the backdrop of growing calls for oversight of the drone program including a 13-hour speech in the Senate by Republican legislator Rand Paul in which he sought assurance from the Obama administration that it would not use drone strikes against non-combatant Americans on US soil. Paul was able to extract the assurance from Attorney General Eric Holder as a result of the filibustering speech. He also made to delay confirmation of Obama’s pick for CIA Director, John Brennan, who has been described in the American media as a lead architect of the US drone policy.
In the recent past, the Obama administration has defended its secret targeted killing program on foreign soils beyond traditional war theatres including Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, claiming drones have been an effective tool in taking out against al-Qaeda militants.
However, in his argument Podesta, who served as White House chief of staff in the Bill Clinton era, wrote that “by refusing to release to Congress the rules and justifications governing a program that has conducted nearly 400 unmanned drone strikes and killed at least three Americans in the past four years, President Obama is ignoring the system of checks and balances that has governed our country from its earliest days.”
More significantly, he noted that in keeping this information from the American people, Obama is “undermining the nation’s ability to be a leader on the world stage and is acting in opposition to the democratic principles we hold most important.”
Meanwhile, according to US media reports, President Barack Obama has defended his stance in response to some Democratic lawmakers’ demand for greater transparency on drone strikes, arguing in a private meeting that the executive branch has the right to keep such information secret.
