An American citizen who is a member of al-Qaeda is actively planning attacks against Americans overseas, US officials say.
The Obama administration is wrestling with whether to kill him with a drone strike and how to do so legally under its new stricter targeting policy issued last year.
The CIA drones watching him cannot strike because he's a US citizen and the Justice Department must build a case against him.
Four US officials said the American suspected terrorist is in a country that refuses US military action on its soil and that has proved unable to go after him.
President Barack Obama's new policy says American suspected terrorists overseas can only be killed by the military, not the CIA, creating a policy conundrum for the White House.
Two of the officials described the man as an al-Qaeda facilitator who has been directly responsible for deadly attacks against US citizens overseas and who continues to plan attacks against them that would use improvised explosive devices.
But one US official said the Defence Department was divided over whether the man is dangerous enough to merit the potential domestic fallout of killing an American without charging him with a crime or trying him, and the potential international fallout of such an operation in a country that has been resistant to US action.
Another of the US officials said the Pentagon did ultimately decide to recommend lethal action.
The senior administration official confirmed that the Justice Department was working to build a case for the president to review and decide the man's fate.
The official said, however, the legal procedure being followed is the same as when the US killed militant cleric and former Virginia resident Anwar al-Awlaki by drone in Yemen in 2011.
The Justice Department, the Pentagon and the CIA declined to comment.
