Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will

A look at the Obama Administration’s process for approving drone strikes on Al Qaeda suspects. Insiders say President Obama is personally approving the final decisions:

“President Obama, overseeing the regular Tuesday counterterrorism meeting of two dozen security officials in the White House Situation Room, took a moment to study the faces. It was Jan. 19, 2010, the end of a first year in office punctuated by terrorist plots and culminating in a brush with catastrophe over Detroit on Christmas Day, a reminder that a successful attack could derail his presidency. Yet he faced adversaries without uniforms, often indistinguishable from the civilians around them.

“‘How old are these people?’ he asked, according to two officials present. ‘If they are starting to use children,’ he said of Al Qaeda, ‘we are moving into a whole different phase.’

“It was not a theoretical question: Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret ‘nominations’ process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical.”

Published: May 29, 2012
Length: 25 minutes (6,301 words)

Inquiry Grew Into Concerns of a Cover-Up

Officials at the Second Mile, the charity for at-risk children that Sandusky founded and that prosecutors say he used to target victims, reported that several years of the organization’s records were missing and had perhaps been stolen. The missing files, investigators worry, may limit their ability to determine if Sandusky used charity resources — expense accounts, travel, gifts — to recruit new victims, or even buy their silence, according to two people with knowledge of the case.

And in 2002, after McQueary had reported what he had seen to the university’s senior officials, those officials not only never told the police, but they also never even informed the university’s top lawyer. That lawyer, Wendell Courtney, said in an interview this week that he would have been duty bound to report to law enforcement officials any allegations of inappropriate conduct toward children by Sandusky.

Most disturbingly, investigators continued to identify possible victims — young men who had been boys when Sandusky befriended them through his foundation for troubled youngsters.

Author: Jo Becker
Published: Nov 16, 2011
Length: 11 minutes (2,867 words)