Article: http://news.yahoo.com/ex-pentagon-chief-gates-ok-drone-oversight-140205799–politics.html

Video: http://news.yahoo.com/video/lawmakers-consider-special-court-oversee-150411160.html

Special, secret courts will decide on executing US Citizens with drone strikes. How can this be legal?

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he finds merit in “some check” on a president’s ability to order drone strikes against American al-Qaida suspects overseas, lending support to creating a special court that would review such requests…

The issue gained momentum in the run-up to the confirmation hearing last week for John Brennan, Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser who helped managed the drone program, to be CIA director. Before the hearing, Obama directed the Justice Department to give the congressional intelligence committees access to classified legal advice providing the government’s rationale for drone strikes against American citizens working with al-Qaida abroad.

Demands for such information grew after the leak early last week of an unclassified memo on how decisions are made to target U.S. citizens abroad. The memo says it is legal for the government to kill U.S. citizens abroad if it believes they are senior al-Qaida leaders continually engaged in operations aimed at killing Americans, even if there is no evidence of a specific imminent attack…

He said the White House had considered the concept of the special courts, and he said he would be open to discussing it because “American citizens by definition are due much greater due process than anybody else by dint of their citizenship.”

Yeah right, except USPs abroad