The notion that any presidential administration or Executive Branch agency can keep secret official interpretations of the law is indefensible. A few members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives understand this and are pushing to find out information about President Barack Obama’s targeted killing program that the public has a right to know.

As Democratic Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) says, “Every American has a right to know when their government believes it has a right to kill them.”

Sourced to current and former legal and counterterrorism officials in the United States government, the New York Times published a story on Sunday on the killing of US-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was targeted by a CIA drone without charge or trial on September 30, 2011.

Much of the material in the story from anonymous individuals could be considered sensitive or classified government information. These selective disclosures, which the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) condemned in a statement, functioned as propaganda.

President Barack Obama’s administration, according to the New York Times, is reportedly in talks with Republicans on providing more information on the attack on a US diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. Administration officials hope this will secure enough votes so John Brennan can be confirmed to the position of CIA chief without the administration having to provide all the memos on the targeted killing program to Democratic senators demanding to see them.

A classified intelligence assessment shows the United States is “the target of a massive, sustained cyber-espionage campaign that is threatening the country’s economic competitiveness,” according to the Washington Post.

Nobody doubts that Obama’s counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, who has been serving as an assassination czar developing a targeted killing program, will be confirmed to the position of CIA chief. In that sense, Jeremy Scahill was completely right to describe what the press and public saw yesterday during the confirmation hearing as “kabuki oversight.”

A confirmation hearing for President Barack Obama’s national counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, who Obama nominated to head the CIA, took place yesterday and lasted for more than three hours. Senators on the Select Committee for Intelligence questioned him about targeted killings and the use of drones, the CIA’s interrogation program under President George W. Bush and national security leaks.

As rare as it is for the Senate to have anything resembling a debate on a civil liberties issue such as privacy and government surveillance, there was a minimal amount of coverage in the establishment press of the reauthorization of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA). The law, which allows warrantless surveillance, was reauthorized for five more years on December 28.

Minimal coverage of a topic often means that a wire service’s report becomes one of the more widely circulated accounts of what transpired.

The United States Senate reauthorized a surveillance law that grants the government expanded authority to collec communications of foreign persons outside the US. It also is believed to permit the government to engage in dragnet surveillance of Americans’ communications. The program under the FISA Amendments Act is shrouded in immense secrecy, with there being very little information on whether safeguards against eavesdropping on citizens’ communications are being followed by intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency.

A surveillance law that granted the government expanded authority to collect the communications of foreign persons outside the United States four years ago is set to expire in four days unless reauthorized. On Thursday, senators concerned about how the law has been interpreted in secret and how these secret interpretations permit the collection or interception of Americans’ communications put forward amendments to the reauthorization and were permitted to engage in what passes for debate in Congress these days.

Lawyers involved in bringing a lawsuit against an indefinite detention provision in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) have expressed outrage over a Congressional conference committee decision to remove an amendment offered by Sen. Dianne Feinstein that she thought would ban the indefinite detention of US citizens.