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AMY GOODMAN: In Syracuse, New York, four people were arrested outside the Hancock Air National Guard Base Friday at a nonviolent protest against the U.S. drone assassination program. Demonstrators marked the Christmas holiday by dressing as biblical figures and erecting a 20-foot-long nativity scene at the gates of the air base, which is home to the 174th Attack Wing of the National Guard's Reaper drone program. Mary Anne Grady Flores is with Ithaca Catholic Worker.

MARY ANNE GRADY FLORES: No drone assassinations in our name. And today we say, we remember the message of Jesus, which was the message of nonviolence.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to look at what will happen when Donald Trump takes over President Obama's drone war program. Joining us now, Jameel Jaffer, founding director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, previously the deputy legal director at the ACLU. His new book, The Drone Memos: Targeted Killing, Secrecy, and the Law.

So, what foundation has President Obama built that President Trump will inherit?

JAMEEL JAFFER: Yeah, well, when President Obama started escalating the use of armed drones in—early in his first term, you know, he had to build a legal and bureaucratic infrastructure for the use of targeted killing, for the practice of targeted killing. And that infrastructure now exists for the next president, for President Trump, to use. And the real concern is that the lines that the Obama administration drew are lines that can be swept aside by the next administration. These are rules that the Obama administration adopted for itself, and it fought very hard to keep the courts from enforcing those rules or even asking whether the rules were the right ones, whether they reflected international law or reflected constitutional law. And so, in some ways, the Obama administration, I think, was very successful in carving out this authority, this really unchecked authority to use lethal force against suspected enemies. And that power will now be available to President Trump.

AMY GOODMAN: You begin your book, the introduction, "Chekhov's Drones," with a very powerful paragraph about what happened in just one period in February of 2016 in a number of different countries. Explain.

JAMEEL JAFFER: Yeah. So, you know, I think that at this point, most Americans don't even notice the drone campaign. You know, this is something that has faded into the background. But in a period of just a few weeks earlier this year, the Obama administration authorized drone strikes in seven different countries and expanded its authority to use drones or its ability to use drones, armed drones, in Libya. So, this is a—this is a campaign now that extends beyond conventional battlefields. It extends to—not just to Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq and Syria, but also Yemen and Somalia and Libya.

And, you know, there's no—there's no legal reason. I mean, there's no—there's no line that the Obama administration has drawn that the Trump administration will have to honor. I think that, you know, for the last eight years, Americans have invested very broad powers in the presidency because they trusted the president. But the problem with doing that is that the powers that you invest in the presidency will be available to every president after this one, even if you think President Obama has used these powers wisely—you know, and I have real complaints about some of the ways that the administration has used the powers. But even if you think that the Obama administration has used the powers wisely, those powers may be used very differently by President Trump or by whoever comes after him.

AMY GOODMAN: The subtitle of The Drone Memos, Targeted Killing, Secrecy, and the Law. Explain just what these memos are and how you obtained them.

JAMEEL JAFFER: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: How difficult they were also to obtain.

JAMEEL JAFFER: Yeah, so these—the memos that are collected in the book include memos that were released only because of litigation. The litigation was brought by the ACLU, in some cases by The New York Times, in some cases by other journalists. And the administration, the Obama administration, fought very hard to keep some of that information secret. And ultimately—you know, in fact, at the beginning, the position that the Obama administration took was that even acknowledging the existence of the drone campaign, exists—acknowledging the CIA's role in the drone campaign would cause harm to national security. That was a proposition that the courts ultimately rejected. And as a result, some of these memos were released.

AMY GOODMAN: In an interview with the Daily Mail earlier this year, Donald Trump said he would continue Obama's policy of carrying out drone strikes overseas.

PRESIDENT-ELECT DONALD