The legal justification for the Obama Administration assassinating American citizens abroad has continued to be a closely guarded secret, with Department of Justice (DOJ) officials insisting that such a justification totally exists, but that it must remain secret on national security grounds.

That may soon be challenged, however, as House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R – VA) has announced that he is subpoenaing the memos detailing that justification after the administration ignored previous requests to provide them to the panel.

The committee has been asking for the memos for months, but while the DOJ reportedly allowed a handful of senators to secretly see them, they have spurned all efforts by the House to get access to it.

So far the only information they have seen has come from leaked documents through the US media, and the Obama Administration maintains that while they sympathize with the committee wanting some oversight of a law (that doesn’t appear to actually exist), they won’t back down on keeping it secret.