The Spooks' New License To Kill

21OCT24 NOTE: Robert Barnes has a different take on this that needs to be considered. Basically it is that this change only serves to elevate the approval level for an authority that already exists. That said, I see parallels to the COVID military vaccine mandate where authority for mandating vaccines already existed, but was applied illegally with SECDEF guidance. Mind you, the SECDEF guidance was legal, but the way that it was executed wasn’t. Anyway, I remain concerned that nobody has a really good explanation for the change (although Barnes does provide some speculation). I won’t speculate further, but I will say that it is pretty clear this authority already existed, and I think it probably shouldn’t exist because it will probably be abused and violate Constitutional constraints in application, but it isn’t readily clear how explicitly reserving approval to SECDEF is inherently problematic. Here’s the video:

I’ll leave the article up for posterity —END NOTE—

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Last night I came upon this disturbing news highlighting the importance of Constitutional Gnosis:

I verified from the plain language within the updated DoD Directive 5240.01 that this is accurate. The relevant change is on this page:

Do you see what I see? From paragraph 3.3.a(2)(c):

“Assistance in responding with assets with potential for lethality, or any situation in which it is reasonably foreseeable that providing the requested assistance may involve the use of force that is likely to result in lethal force, including death or serious bodily injury.”

This provision essentially allows the prohibition against assassination to be “legally” circumvented. The intelligence community (IC) can’t plan an operation to explicitly assassinate an American they deem to be an “insider threat” but they now have a permission slip¹ to plan an operation where the use of lethal force is “reasonably foreseeable.”

So now the IC can put together hit squads² to kill Americans that, say, undermine public confidence in the mainstream news media (a democratic institution). After causing the death of their target (that a reasonable person would expect given the plan), our government can wield its whole-of-society censorship apparatus to ensure nobody ever hears about it (under the predicate that the story would undermine public trust in our Department of Defense, another “democratic institution”).

How long before SCOTUS addresses this issue? It probably won’t be challenged until the “authority” is used, someone is wrongfully killed, and a surviving party with “standing” files suit and it works its way up. In the meantime, how many operations that look-like-assassinations-but-totally-aren’t-assassinations will occur? What kind of people work in the intelligence community? Are they patriotic enough to balk at this development, or do most of them think this is a completely reasonable authority to have over their fellow citizens? Do the few who might have a problem with this have the moral courage to do their duty to disobey unlawful and unconstitutional orders without a SCOTUS ruling to certify them? I’m concerned that they don’t. At the very least I’d like to see more publicity on this updated directive and for these concerns to be addressed.

1. As long as a SECDEF who thinks “extremism” from “insider threats” is the biggest threat to our Armed Forces approves.

2. They’ve probably already come up with another name for such a prospective operation that meets the criteria outlined in the directive.