Report: US to offer legal backing for 'targeted killings' of Americans overseas

Dec. 8, 2011: Attorney General Eric Holder testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington before the House Judiciary Committee. (AP)

WASHINGTON – Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to outline the legal framework for the use of lethal force in targeted killings of Americans overseas in a major speech at Northwestern University law school, an Obama administration official said Sunday night.

Holder's speech Monday comes five months after the killing of U.S.-born Al Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in a drone attack.

The official said the attorney general plans to say that lethal force is legal under a Sept. 18, 2001, joint congressional resolution. The Authorization for Use of Military Force enacted a week after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks authorizes the use of all necessary force in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States.

The official said Holder also will address how the Obama administration reformed military commissions and how both the Obama and the George W. Bush administrations have successfully used civilian courts to convict and sentence terrorists. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the contents of the speech haven't been released.

In recent months, the Obama administration has engaged in an internal debate about how much to reveal about the legal justification for the al-Awlaki killing.

At least three recently filed lawsuits have sought to force the Obama administration to publicly release its legal justification for the drone strike that killed al-Awlaki. The justification is contained in a secret Justice Department memo.

The administration has provided some details about what al-Awlaki was doing that made him so dangerous to the United States. In that vein, the Justice Department disclosed that a Nigerian man who tried to blow up an international flight on Christmas 2009 told FBI agents that his mission was approved after a three-day visit with al-Awlaki.

The man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was sentenced last month to life in prison after admitting he attempted to blow up the plane with a bomb in his underwear as the plane approached Detroit.