Obama, Koh, and the “Business of Secret Killings”

Harold Hongju Koh, dean of Yale Law School and one of the most highly regarded experts on international human rights, became the legal advisor to the State Department shortly after President Obama was inaugurated. He was one of the most vocal critics of the George W. Bush administration’s policies on detention, “enhanced interrogations,” and other issues relating to the global war on terror, as the conflict was known at the time. In fact, he was so outraged by US government actions and their questionable legal justification that he was one of the leading members in a movement of academics and international-law experts publicly opposed to the White House officials and their policies. In a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in January 2005, Koh spoke about the legal memos written by the George W. Bush administration lawyers that defended the use of harsh interrogation methods on detainees. Koh described the memo as “perhaps the most clearly erroneous legal opinion I have ever read,” claiming that it “grossly over-reads the president’s constitutional power.” Yet as a high-level adviser to the President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton, he provided legal and policy support for the US government’s substantial expansion of the use of armed drones.

When Barack Obama was elected president, liberals in the United States were thrilled that a former community activist – one of their own, they thought – would take control of the White House. They believed that he would roll back the counterterrorism excesses of the Bush administration and would restore the reputation of the United States around the world. Obama promised his supporters that he would engage in many corrective policies, from closing the detention center in Guantanamo Bay to outlawing the use of harsh interrogation methods and torture. In addition, he said that he would hold his deputies to the highest standards and would work hard to make amends with those in other countries who were appalled by US policies under the Bush White House, often viewing them as both morally reprehensible and illegal.