WASHINGTON — Oregon’s U.S. senators weighed in Wednesday on lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times, urging the court to require the Obama administration to release its legal justification for lethal drone strikes.

Both the ACLU and the Times requested the legal justifications produced by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Council under the Freedom of Information Act in 2011. The following year, after the administration refused to release the opinions and memos, citing FOIA exemptions designed to protect national security, the organizations sued in federal court. The court required the release of some legal opinions, but sided with the government against releasing all of the requested documents.

The ACLU and Times have appealed that ruling.

Four senators, including Oregon Democrats Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, filed an amicus brief in the case Wednesday, calling for the documents to be made public. An amicus brief, sometimes called a “friend of the court” brief, allows interested parties who are not involved in a case to offer their input.

The brief maintains that because the government released some documents to support its claims that it may unilaterally conduct deadly drone strikes against U.S. citizens without first giving them a trial, it can’t argue against the release of additional documents because they contain some information not in the previous disclosures. This would allow the government to pick and choose what information it provided to the public, possibly cherry-picking the documents that put the targeted killing program in the best light, the senators argued.

“Having launched a public relations campaign to build support for its drones program, the Executive Branch’s assertions that it must maintain the confidentiality of the OLC Memos should be carefully scrutinized, lest the courts inadvertently authorize the very type of selective disclosures that FOIA was intended to prevent,” the brief reads.

Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., joined Wyden and Merkley in submitting the amicus brief.

In various ways, all of the senators have called upon the administration to release additional information about its justification for its targeted killing program for years, sometimes in letters to the executive branch. Wyden threatened to block the nomination of CIA Director John Brennan in February 2013 unless the administration shared certain OLC memos with Congress, and Paul filibustered on the Senate floor for 13 hours a month later to draw attention to the drone issue.

Wyden has directly urged the administration to release the documents, and has filed amicus briefs in other cases as well, said spokesman Keith Chu.

“There’s obviously more that needs to be done, which is why he’s pursuing several avenues simultaneously,” Chu said.

Merkley spokeswoman Martina McLennan said Merkley believes that all Americans have the right to know how the law is being interpreted and applied when it comes to their rights. “This case provided a unique opportunity to seek disclosure of the legal analysis that is governing whether or not the government can target American citizens with drones and, if so, under what circumstances,” she said. “By lending his voice as a senator to the amicus brief, he can add further weight and support to the legal case for secret law to be appropriately declassified and disclosed.”

The Department of Justice did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

In May 2009, Obama gave a speech on national security at the National Archives, saying: “Whenever we cannot release certain information to the public for valid national security reasons, I will insist that there is oversight of my actions, by Congress or the courts.”

In a prepared release, ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer said the drone memos should be made public. “While the government has a legitimate interest in protecting intelligence sources and methods, it has no legitimate interest in creating a body of secret law. As the senators rightly point out, the secrecy surrounding the drone program makes it impossible for the public to assess the lawfulness of one of the government’s most controversial national security policies.”

The FOIA requests and subsequent lawsuits came after at least three U.S. citizens were killed in drone strikes in Yemen in 2011, although The New York Times reported that only one, Anwar al-Awlaki, was specifically targeted. Samir Khan, a magazine editor from North Carolina, was inadvertently killed in the strike that killed al-Awlaki, and two weeks later, al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son Abdulrahman was also killed.

— Reporter: 202-662-7456, aclevenger@bendbulletin.com