CIA Drone Strikes on Americans: What if they already did it?

Is there any policy in place to prevent the president or the CIA from targeting a U.S. citizens on American soil with drone strikes? This is one of the questions that Senator Rand Paul is demanding to have answered by President Obama’s nominee for CIA director, John Brennan. Short of an answer, Sen. Paul is threatening to prevent Brennan’s nomination by “putting a hold” on his nomination. Twenty days have passed since Sen. Paul put this question to Brennan. The silence is deafening.

A hold is a parliamentary procedure permitted by the Rules of the Senate which allows one or more Senators to prevent a motion from reaching a vote on the Senate floor. – Wikipedia

Senator Paul has additional questions for Brennan–all fascinating–that I will post below, but I want to deal with a point the media is missing. Isn’t the real story the ongoing silence from the Obama administration and Brennan?  And doesn’t this silence have far reaching consequences? What if the CIA has already used drones to kill American citizens–citizens who are not even actively engaged in violent actions? (They already have.) And even if they haven’t used them yet over American soil, what if any answers to these questions could open up an extra-judicial pandora’s box that would cause the whole framework of the president’s extra-judicial killing policy to crumble?

The following is a list of questions sent by Sen. Paul to Brennan. Here’s one of my favorites:

Would you agree that it is paradoxical that the federal government would need to go before a judge to authorize a wiretap on a U.S. citizen overseas, but possibly not to order a lethal drone strike against the same individual?

Two separate letters, here and here, filled with questions for John Brennan, CIA director nominee. Excerpts: