President Obama appointed John Brennan as the sole person in charge of designating people to be assassinated on Tuesday.
Most recently he publicly spoke about the drone program calling it moral, ethical and just and has been known in the past to back the use of CIA torture to extract information from alleged terrorists.
According to a report from the Associated Press, John Brennan has now seized the lead in choosing who will be targeted for drone attacks and raids.
The report revealed that President Obama has delegated him the sole authority to designate people for assassination under the United States top-secret assassination program.
As the Associated Press describes it, “The effort concentrates power over the use of lethal U.S. force outside war zones within one small team at the White House,” following criticism that sometimes the C.I.A. kills people whose identities it doesn’t even know.
In the video embedded on the left of this article, Russia Today criticizes the corporate media for failing to cover the story and inform the public about the appointment.
On Wednesday, further criticism about the decision came from the Atlantic in an article that revealed that the new assassination czar has a questionable past.
The ACLU recently filed a Freedom of Information request for information on the program.
The government used the National Security claim to deny the Freedom of Information request claiming the program was so top-secret they could neither could neither confirm nor deny the program even existed.
The ACLU responded to the denial of the request by filing lawsuits against the government arguing it was unfair for the government to deny the existence of the program while at the same time openly discussing details of the program with select members of the press.
The latest details of the progam reveal that under the Obama’s new plan, Brennan’s staff compiles the potential target list and runs the names past agencies such as the State Department at a weekly White House meeting.
After gathering responses from other agencies and debating it with his staff, Brannan has the sole authority to target people for assassination.
The news comes as a the NDAA provision allowing the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens has been temporarily blocked due to a federal court ruling it unconstitutional.