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| White House stonewalling drone inqu |
| White House stonewalling drone inquiry: US lawmakers
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| UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
, 28-February-2013
4:17:13 AM |
| US lawmakers have accused the White House of rebuffing their inquiries into CIA drone bombing raids abroad and vowed to assert more congressional oversight over the secretive drone war.
Both Republicans and Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday denounced President Barack Obama's administration for refusing to share key documents or details of the killings by armed, robotic aircraft.
"The need for oversight is clear," said Representative John Conyers, a Democrat and normally a staunch ally of the Obama administration.
Conyers and other members of the committee said it was unacceptable that the Attorney General, Eric Holder, or other officials from the Justice Department declined an invitation to appear at the hearing devoted to the drone campaign.
"I don't think the attorney general of the United States can decline to come before this committee on a subject that is so clearly within our jurisdiction," Conyers said.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers has asked the administration for a chance to review memos that outline the legal basis for killing Americans overseas suspected of having links to Al-Qaeda. But their requests have been mostly denied so far.
"The American people deserve to know and understand the legal basis under which the Obama administration believes it can kill US citizens, and under what circumstances," committee chairman Bob Goodlatte said.
Debate about the use of drones has been mounting following the September 2011 killing in Yemen of cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a senior Al-Qaeda operative who was an American citizen.
At the hearing, lawmakers asked legal experts how the drone strikes might be better regulated by Congress or the courts, to provide a check on what they called potentially excessive presidential power.
Several committee members, including Goodlatte, said they were open to imposing more congressional or even judicial oversight over the drone campaign,
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