Both the CIA and the JSOC maintain lists of individuals, called "High Value Targets" and "High Value Individuals," whom they seek to kill or capture.  The JSOC list includes three Americans, including [New Mexico-born Islamic cleric Anwar] Aulaqi, whose name was added late last year. As of several months ago, the CIA list included three U.S. citizens, and an intelligence official said that [Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al] Aulaqi's name has now been added.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/26/AR2010012604239.html?hpid=topnews  

The Obama administration acted on this targetting in the case of Anwar al Awlaki, by bombing his housing compound and/or village, killing many but not him.

Yemeni Cleric Says He Did Not Order Dec. 25 Attack, But Knew Suspect (Washn)
2/5/2010, 7:13 p.m. EST
Karen DeYoung
(AP)
WASHINGTON-Yemeni American cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi taught and corresponded with the suspect in the attempted Dec. 25 airline bombing but did not order the attack, Aulaqi said this week.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian, "is one of my students; yes, we were in correspondence" Aulaqi said in an interview published Tuesday in Arabic by al-Jazeera.net. "But I did not give (him) a fatwa in regards to this operation." In Islam, a fatwa is an order by a recognized religious authority. . . .

Aulaqi was thought to be meeting with regional al-Qaida leaders at a compound in Yemen targeted by a U.S. missile strike on Dec. 24, although he was not said to be the focus of the attack. Yemeni and U.S. officials have denied early reports that he was killed in the strike.

"The American missiles and raids killed 17 women and 23 children in my tribe," Aulaqi said in the interview, which was translated and distributed Friday by Evan Kohlmann, a senior investigator with the NEFA Foundation. "So don't ask me whether al-Qaida killed, or if it bombed an American civilian jet after all of that, as 300 Americans are nothing before the thousands of Muslims they killed," he continued. . . .