The Obama administration acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that American citizens have been killed in U.S. drone strikes overseas.
Attorney General Eric Holder disclosed the four deaths in a letter to Congress in advance of a major national security speech that President Obama is scheduled to give on Thursday.
The four killings occurred in counterterrorism operations against Al Qaeda and other suspected terrorist forces.
In the letter, Holder said the administration targeted Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical cleric who died in a drone strike in Yemen on Sept. 30, 2011. The killing was widely reported at the time — but until now, the administration had not formally taken responsibility for it.
The other three Americans “were not specifically targeted by the United States,” Holder wrote.
Holder identified them as as Queens-raised propagandist Samir Khan, who was killed in the same drone strike as Awlaki; Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, who was killed two weeks later, also in Yemen; and Jude Mohammad, a Florida native who left the U.S. for Pakistan in 2008 to wage jihad
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