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The Obama administration released a redacted version of its 2013 policy guidance that spells out the interagency review process for determining whether a suspected terrorist should be targeted in an overseas drone strike.
The guidance described a process for directing a strike against a "high value target" only if there was "near-certainty" of the target's identity and no civilians would be killed. It said capturing the individual was the preferred policy. The document was turned over to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) after the group sued under the Freedom of Information Act.
"Lethal action should not be proposed or pursued as a punitive step or as a substitute for prosecuting a terrorist suspect in a civilian court or a military commission," according to the policy.
The ACLU said in a statement that questions remain about where the guidance applies, "whether the president has waived its requirements in particular instances," and how its "relatively stringent standards can be reconciled with the accounts of eyewitnesses, journalists, and human rights researches who have documented large numbers of bystander casualties."
The document was turned over on Friday to the ACLU, which released it publicly on Saturday.
Between 64 and 116 civilians were killed in 473 US strikes outside Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria between the beginning of Obama's presidency in 2009 and the end of 2015, the government said last month in its first accounting of non-combat deaths. The strikes killed as many as 2,581 combatants, the White House said.
The figures include casualties from strikes by drones and by manned aircraft, but don't include casualties inflicted by US personnel on the ground.
National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said on Saturday in a statement that the memo's standards "offer protections for civilians that exceed the requirements of the law of armed conflict."
The guidance "provides that, in general, the United States will use lethal force outside areas of active hostilities against a lawful target that poses a 'continuing, imminent threat to US persons,'" Price said.
The May 2013 Presidential Policy Guidance, once known as the "playbook," spells out an interagency review process that would be triggered after the Defence Department or intelligence agencies nominated targets in instances where capture wasn't feasible or where the target was determined to be an imminent threat.
A Pentagon request would be reviewed by the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then a counterterrorism advisory group that included the department's general counsel.
