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A Predator drone owned by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection sits on the tarmac Nov. 3, 2015, at Grand Forks Air Force Base operations in North Dakota. Obama to release drone 'playbook'

The White House has agreed to release a redacted version of a policy President Barack Obama issued in 2013 that laid out basic principles for lethal U.S. drone operations overseas.

The administration disclosed its plans to release the Presidential Policy Guidance document in a court filing Friday in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.

In May 2013, the White House released a fact sheet about the Obama directive but refused to release any portion of the actual memo.

Last month, Manhattan-based U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon issued an order requiring the Justice Department to produce the PPG document (sometimes called the Playbook), as well as two others, for in camera review by her.

In a letter to the judge Friday, government lawyers said officials had long been debating making an edited version of the policy public and they have now decided to do so.

"Before receiving the Court’s February 25, 2016 Order, the Government was engaged in extensive discussions regarding the possibility of discretionarily releasing portions of the PPG. Lengthy, high-level,inter-agency coordination was necessary to ensure that the sensitive national security classification equities contained in that document remain protected. Following those deliberations, the Government has determined to waive privilege," Justice Department attorneys wrote.

The government has dropped its claims of attorney-client privilege and deliberative process privilege with respect to the drone-related memo — claims McMahon signaled in her order that she was inclined to reject. Instead, the administration is claiming protection for portions of the memo under an exemption for classified information and another for intelligence sources and methods.

In the past, the Obama administration has run into difficulty with overly broad privilege claims. In 2013, a federal judge in Washington rejected a White House effort to keep secret an unclassified foreign aid and development directive sent to numerous government agencies. The government chose not to appeal the ruling and released the order.

But Justice Department lawyers in the drone case also said they want to assert another exemption to prevent disclosure of the positions of government officials making key decisions in the process. The lives of officials in those jobs could be at risk if that information were made public, the government’s letter to the judge said.

The White House had no formal comment on the decision, but a senior administration official confirmed plans to release the redacted drone directive after the judge rules on the government’s requests to keep portions of it under wraps.

“Once the Court has issued its ruling, the Government intends to produce a copy of the PPG with appropriate redactions to protect information that continues to be properly withheld. The Government is committed to protecting properly classified national security information, as well as law enforcement information, where disclosure could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual,” said the official, who asked not to be named.

ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer said Friday he hoped the decision to release the so-called playbook on drones indicated a new willingness to allow more public scrutiny of the program.

“The release of the Presidential Policy Guidance is long overdue, and we are gratified that the administration has agreed with us that much of it should finally be made public,” Jaffer said. “We hope that the administration’s decision to release this critical document reflects a broader commitment to make the lethal drone program more transparent. In that spirit, the administration should also release the legal memos that are the foundation for the program, basic information about those killed in past drone strikes and detailed investigative files relating to strikes that killed bystanders.”

UPDATE (Friday, 8:52 p.m.): This post has been updated with comment from the ACLU.