- Aug 18, 2012
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....re Venezuela:
Many of the lawyers and other career officials at the White House National Security Council, Pentagon and Justice Department who had over the preceding months raised concerns about using lethal force against narcotraffickers had either left government or were reassigned or removed.
Proposed findings are typically reviewed by lawyers at the CIA and other agencies, including the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and Justice, State and Defense departments. Then an interagency review is conducted, usually overseen by the NSC’s legal adviser.
But by summer, the NSC’s entire full-time legal staff of about half a dozen was gone. Some left when their details ended and others — including the shop’s top lawyer, former Pentagon general counsel Paul Ney — were let go in a May staff shake-up, three former officials said. Ney had been among the lawyers who had raised concerns about the legality of lethal strikes, the former officials said.
A senior administration official said that Ney left because “the original NSC legal versus White House Counsel’s Office structure never worked,” and praised the moves as achieving efficiency that gives the president “more visibility into his foreign policy agenda.”
......
The NSC legal adviser vacancy in particular is significant, said Carrie Cordero, a national security lawyer in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, who is now a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. “The absence of a seasoned national security lawyer serving in that role means that the principals in the White House are not getting the best national security legal advice that they can.”
Meanwhile, career civilian lawyers at the Defense Department had largely been cut out of cartel strike discussions by the political leadership.
IOW, the legal framework that normally reviews a President's propsective orders.....no longer exist.
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