(WASHINGTON POST) The Justice Department will publicly release a secret 2011 memo that provided the legal justification for the killing of American terrorism suspects overseas, according to a U.S. official, following extensive pressure on the administration to do so.
The department had been weighing whether to appeal a court order to disclose the memo but informed the White House on Tuesday that it would not, the official said. The decision came on the eve of a Senate vote on President Obama’s nomination of David J. Barron, one of the memo’s authors, to a federal appeals court judgeship.
A group of liberal and conservative senators had said they would fight the nomination unless the memo was made public, and others from both parties had called for its release. The White House allowed lawmakers to view copies of the memo last week in a secure Senate room.
