From the article: "Having worked in the Justice Department for many years, I would be stunned if the desire to avoid embarrassment factored, even slightly, into the decision to kill Awlaki rather than capture him. Irregularities and worse happen in many investigations; government often acts reprehensibly in stonewalling efforts to discover incompetence and misconduct, but it does not kill people for that purpose. In a trial situation, the embarrassing details are disclosed; defendants try to exploit them, but to little effect; and the terrorists get convicted."

Reallllly? Stunned? "it does not kill people for that purpose" and Nixon wasn't a crook and 'Read my lips' and 'You can keep your Insurance and Doctor if you want'.

There's just a whole hell of a lot around 'terrorism' during the 90's and 2000's that we'll never know. And no one seems to want to address Alwaki's 16 year old son's murder.

Very interesting.

" it adds to the concerns over the circumstances of Awlaki’s death."
What is the author suggesting? He he saying the US gov't killed him b/c he wasn't cooperating and was a potential embarrassment?

I have never travelled to Yemen, so it's hard for me to understand the difficulty in apprehending criminal suspects there. The Yemeni gov't is supposed to somewhat friendly to the US, even though many people and officials in Yemen are not. But if the Yemeni gov't supports us and we knew where he was, why couldn't they have put together a joint operation to place him under arrest. Why instead have the US president keeping a kill list, which sounds like the something the bad guys do? The good guys arrest the bad guys to stand trial with rules of evidence by a jury of their peers.

Most likely the truth won't come out until we and all officials who could be embarrassed and/or ashamed are all gone, if it comes out at all.