At least not when we're talking about ordering the death of an American citizen the administration believes to be associated with Al Qaeda.

That's the conclusion of a Department of Justice "white paper" obtained by NBC's Michael Isikoff, who published it Monday night. The paper outlines the Obama administration's legal rationale for the targeted killing of US citizens suspected of terrorism abroad. Administration officials have previously defended such killings as lawful in public. But the white paper, which according to NBC was provided to members of the Senate intelligence and judiciary committees last June, lays out those arguments in greater detail.