A President Barack Obama nominee to a federal appeals court is mired in controversy amid revelations that the former Justice Department lawyer had written government memos legally justifying the killing of an American overseas with a drone.

In response to concerns from senators and the American Civil Liberties Union, the White House agreed this week to allow lawmakers to review at least one of the memos from David Barron, now a Harvard Law School scholar, in a classified setting.

The bruhaha over the nominee to the US First Circuit Court of Appeals is reminiscent of the flap over a President George W. Bush nominee to the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals. Before Bush elevated Jay Bybee to the Ninth Circuit, Bybee, as an assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel, had signed off on John Yoo's now-famous torture memos authorizing waterboarding and other torture methods in 2002.

That was not disclosed until 2004. But the Senate had confirmed Bybee the year before.

Is the Barron flap just politics? Does it matter what a judge's background is? Last year, for example, Judge Bybee reversed a US prisoner's lawsuit accusing his jailers of torture for keeping his cell with continuous light, removing a mattress, and other allegations. In his 2 to 1 ruling, Bybee wrote that prison guards "did not have fair notice that their actions were unconstitutional." The dissenting voice on the opinion wrote that "it was clearly established law that conditions having the mutually reinforcing effect of depriving a prisoner of a single basic need, such as sleep, may violate the Eighth Amendment."

The Senate Judiciary Committee forwarded Barron's nomination to the full Senate in January. Committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said committee members had, in private, reviewed the memo the White House is releasing to all senators. The Democrat from Vermont said the Barron affair is politics, pure and simple.

"Senate Republicans have consistently blocked most of President Obama’s judicial nominees so it comes as no surprise that they continue to do so with this nominee. David Barron is a brilliant lawyer who is committed to public service," said Leahy. "Based on his entire career as a lawyer, I am confident he will be an excellent judge on the First Circuit. I supported David Barron’s nomination in the Judiciary Committee and I look forward to supporting his confirmation on the Senate floor."

But it's not just the right who is questioning Barron. The ACLU said the Office of Legal Counsel memos "written or signed by Mr. Barron helped form the purported legal foundation for a large-scale killing program that has resulted in, as Senator Lindsey Graham [R-SC] stated last year, as many as 4,700 deaths by drone attacks, including the deaths of four American citizens ..."

The Barron flap, meanwhile, comes two weeks after a federal appeals court ordered the Obama administration to disclose publicly the legal basis for targeting Americans with drones.

The Second US Circuit Court of Appeals, ruling in a Freedom of Information Act claim by The New York Times and the ACLU, said the administration must disclose the legal rationale behind its claims that it may kill enemies who are Americans overseas.

The so-called targeted killing program—in which drones from afar shoot missiles at buildings, cars, and people overseas—began under the Bush administration. The program, which sometimes kills innocent civilians, was broadened under Obama to include the killing of Americans.

The Obama administration has yet to comply with that ruling as it considers its next legal options.

The Barron memo the administration is letting senators review concerns Anwar Al Awlaki, a New Mexico native and radical cleric who the authorities said was an al-Qaida recruiter along the Arabian Peninsula and was associated with the September 11 hijackers. He was killed by an American drone strike in Yemen two years ago.

Barron did not immediately respond for comment.