President Obama will release the Justice Department memo on drones to select lawmakers. (Official U.S. Navy Imagery/Flickr)

The documents will be made available to members of the House and Senate intelligence committees in advance of the scheduled confirmation hearings for the president's nominee to head the CIA, current administration official John Brennan. Drone strikes have been used with great frequency by the Obama administration, particularly in Yemen, where one was responsible for the killing of anti-American preacher Anwar al-Awlaki. As Bloomberg reports:

"The Obama administration’s policy on strikes by unmanned aircraft, pursued with little oversight by Congress or the judiciary, has angered lawmakers who have pressed for its legal justification. Questions about the policy have emerged as a potential obstacle to Senate confirmation of John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser and an architect of the drone policy, as the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

During a hearing tomorrow on his nomination before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the 57-year-old Brennan will confront questions on the use of the remotely piloted planes."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chair of the intelligence committee and a loyal ally of President Obama, praised the president's move to release the documents, according to Bloomberg:

"'I am pleased that the president has agreed to provide the Intelligence Committee with access to the OLC opinion regarding the use of lethal force in counterterrorism operations,' Feinstein said in a statement. 'It is critical for the committee’s oversight function to fully understand the legal basis for all intelligence and counterterrorism operations.'"

The president's drone policy has long been one of the more controversial aspects of his time in office and has been thrust squarely back in the spotlight with NBC's release this week of an administration white paper on extrajudicial assassinations. This white paper gave senior administration officials significant leeway in deciding to proceed with targeted assassinations, outside of the due process of law, and was termed a "chilling document" by Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the ACLU

Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden issued a statement Tuesday calling for the president to release more information on his drone policy, saying "every American has the right to know when their government believes that it is allowed to kill them." Wyden, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has pledged to question Brennan on that issue at his confirmation hearing, according to TPM.

Read more of Neon Tommy's coverage of drones here.

Reach Executive Producer Matt Pressberg here.