Court Deadline Arrives in FOIA Campaign to Make Obama Administration Provide Details on Drone Wars

The CIA's covert targeted killing programme will come under fresh scrutiny on Wednesday, the deadline for Barack Obama's administration to respond to a lawsuit over the agency's refusal to confirm or deny its existence.

The federal lawsuit is part of a three-year battle by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union for details of the drone programme, one of the US government's most important security operations in the war against al-Qaida.

Under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed in 2010, ACLU seeks the legal memo underlying the killing programme, the basis for drone strikes that have killed American citizens and the process by which individuals are placed on a kill list.

The administration has until Wednesday to produce papers in the suit, filed in New York, to either hand over the requested documents or to explain why they are being held. ACLU hopes it will be the first formal acknowledgment of the programme. If so the CIA would then have to respond to ACLU's FOIA request.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/20/drone-strikes-targeted-killings-case