New York Times Exposes Obama's Kill List and Terror Tuesday Assassination Meetings

The New York Times publishes an explosive investigation revealing that President Obama personally approves every name on a secret “kill list” for drone strikes during regular Tuesday National Security Council meetings dubbed “Terror Tuesdays.” The article exposes how the president reviews biographical dossiers of suspected terrorists, weighs intelligence evidence, and makes final decisions on who will be assassinated by CIA drones or Special Operations forces. The disclosure provides unprecedented insight into America’s extrajudicial killing program and Obama’s personal role in selecting targets for assassination without trial, judicial review, or public accountability.

The Times reports that Obama has embraced targeted killing as his primary counterterrorism tool, personally reviewing intelligence “baseball cards” containing photos, biographies, and alleged evidence against proposed targets. The Tuesday sessions involve Obama, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, counterterrorism advisor John Brennan, CIA Director Leon Panetta, and other senior officials debating which individuals should be killed. Obama is described as insisting on approving every strike, even declining to delegate authority when on vacation. The article portrays the president as “a realist” who overcame early qualms about targeted killing to embrace assassination as necessary for national security.

The investigation reveals the administration’s controversial counting methodology that dramatically understates civilian casualties. A “neat logic” is applied: count “all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants…unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.” This Orwellian standard presumes guilt and ensures most civilian deaths are classified as enemy combatants, allowing the administration to claim minimal civilian casualties despite substantial evidence to the contrary from independent investigators. The policy effectively makes being a military-age male in certain regions a capital offense without trial.

The article documents Obama’s role in authorizing the September 2011 assassination of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen without charges or trial, based on secret intelligence of his operational role in al-Qaeda. While Awlaki was undoubtedly a terrorist propagandist, his killing without judicial process raises profound constitutional questions about executive power to kill American citizens. The Times reveals Obama personally approved Awlaki’s placement on the kill list despite Justice Department legal concerns about killing a citizen without trial. Two weeks later, a drone strike kills Awlaki’s 16-year-old son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, also a U.S. citizen, in what officials claim was a targeting error.

The Terror Tuesday disclosures spark intense debate about executive power, due process, and the president’s authority to order assassinations. The administration’s legal framework claims authorization from the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, self-defense principles, and the theory that the entire world is a battlefield against al-Qaeda. Critics argue this constructs a legal architecture for unlimited presidential authority to kill anyone anywhere in secret based on classified evidence never subject to judicial review. Senator Ron Wyden calls for more transparency, stating Americans have a right to know the legal basis for killings conducted in their name.

The article normalizes what would have been considered shocking just years earlier: the president of the United States personally selecting people for assassination without trial, based on intelligence that may be flawed, in countries where the U.S. is not at war. Obama’s embrace of the kill list contradicts his 2008 campaign promises to restore constitutional constraints and rule of law after Bush-era abuses. Instead, Obama expands executive power to kill, institutionalizes secret assassination programs, and establishes precedents that future presidents will exploit. The Terror Tuesday revelations demonstrate how easily a constitutional law professor can become a systematic killer when power combines with fear, secrecy shields accountability, and the public accepts “terrorism” as justification for abandoning fundamental legal principles. The kill list becomes normalized policy rather than scandal, illustrating how extrajudicial killing transforms from taboo to routine when conducted by popular presidents against demonized enemies with minimal transparency or oversight.