Kill Americans Memo Full Document Text

Below is the full document of the reported “Kill Americans Memo” from the Justice Department, which states that the U.S. government can use lethal force against an American citizen overseas if the person is a senior operational leader of al Qaeda or one of its affiliates. The document was first posted on the NBC News website.

Is the memo constitutional? Attorney General Eric Holder endorsed the constitutionality of targeted killings of Americans, saying they could be justified if government officials determine the target poses “an imminent threat of violent attack.”

“This is a chilling document,” said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the ACLU. “Basically, it argues that the government has the right to carry out the extrajudicial killing of an American citizen… It recognizes some limits on the authority it sets out, but the limits are elastic and vaguely defined, and it’s easy to see how they could be manipulated.”

Read the full text below.