White House Trades Targeted-Killing Memos for a New CIA Director

Updated, 3:30 p.m.

John Brennan is now overwhelmingly likely to become the next CIA director. To speed his Senate confirmation, the White House agreed to let senators view its top-secret legal memoranda authorizing the targeted killing of U.S. citizens who've never been charged with a crime. You, however, still can't read them.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California), the chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, announced on Tuesday that she'd struck an agreement with the White House to allow senators 'access to all' of the Justice Department memoranda about targeted killing of U.S. citizens. A summary of some of those opinions, leaked to NBC last month, showed an expansive definition of the concept of an 'imminent' threat posed by an American 'senior operational leader' of al-Qaida. Access to the memoranda ' it's not clear how many ' 'will pave the way for the confirmation of John Brennan to be CIA director,' Feinstein said in a press release.

'The executive branch's goal is to disclose as much information publicly as possible,' said Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for the National Security Council, 'and this administration has taken an unprecedented series of steps to disclose, consistent with the requirements of national security, the details of our counterterrorism policies and the legal justifications for them.'

The deal set up Brennan's nomination sailing through the Senate intelligence committee on Tuesday afternoon by a 12-3 vote. Brennan still faces varied opposition on the Senate floor: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) has threatened to hold up the nomination until he clarifies whether the CIA has the power to authorize a drone strike on U.S. soil; others are using him as leverage to get more Benghazi information. But the White House deal on the memos won Brennan the support of the intelligence panel's civil libertarian wing.

'We are pleased that we now have the access that we have long sought and need to conduct the vigilant oversight with which the committee has been charged,' Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), Mark Udall (D-Colorado) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) announced in a joint statement. 'We anticipate supporting the nomination of John Brennan to be Director of the CIA and we appreciate that the executive branch has provided us with the documents needed to consider this nomination.'

But you still can't read the Justice Department memoranda, which are still classified and which, according to the summary, unilaterally declare themselves exempt from any judge's review. Amnesty International's Zeke Johnson said the White House/Senate deal was 'far from sufficient to ease concerns about extrajudicial executions.' (Memos on the targeted killing of non-Americans aren't part of the deal, according to the Washington Post.) The three civil-libertarian senators said the 'next step' would be to 'bring the American people into this debate and for Congress to consider ways to ensure that the president's sweeping authorities are subject to appropriate limitations, oversight, and safeguards.'

It remains unclear whether the American people will get to read the memoranda that outline the Obama administration's asserted authorities to potentially kill them without trial. It also remains unclear whether any senator will push for the memos' declassification. Wyden, Udall and Collins declared themselves 'particularly pleased that the administration will provide public, unclassified answers to questions about whether these lethal authorities can be used within the United States.'

That may be enough to gain Brennan, the architect of the Obama administration's targeted killing efforts, the top job at the CIA. 'The confirmation process should be about the nominees and their ability to do the jobs they're nominated for,' Hayden said.