Officials report that the Obama administration is struggling over a decision to attack a U.S. citizen allegedly working overseas in the service of Al-Qaeda. SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

A U.S. citizen who is allegedly a member of Al-Qaeda is actively planning attacks against Americans overseas, U.S. officials said, and the Obama administration is wrestling with the question of whether to kill him with a drone strike – and how to do so legally under its new and stricter targeting policy announced last year.

Two officials described the man as an Al-Qaeda facilitator who has been directly responsible for deadly attacks against U.S. citizens overseas, and who continues to plan attacks against them using improvised explosive devices.

He is being watched by CIA drones, but they cannot strike because President Barack Obama’s new policy says only the military could take such actions; because the country where he resides has refused to allow U.S. military action on its soil; and because the Justice Department has not yet built a case against him that shows his killing would be “legal and constitutional” under enemy combatant laws.

Meanwhile, the unnamed country where he resides is reportedly proven to be unable to capture or kill the alleged Al-Qaeda operative itself.

According to a third U.S. official, the Defense Department is divided over whether the man is dangerous enough to merit the potential domestic fallout from killing an American without charging him with a crime or trying him, and the potential international fallout from such an operation in a country that has been resistant to U.S. action.

A fourth U.S. official said the Pentagon ultimately decided to recommend lethal action.

One human rights organization, Britain-based Reprieve, denounced the idea of extra-judicial killings by drone.

"It is a very sad day when U.S. officials are squabbling in public over whether they should murder an American," Reprieve's director Clive Stafford Smith told Al Jazeera.