The US attorney general has acknowledged four US citizens were killed in drone strikes since 2011.
The US specifically targeted and killed Anwar al-Awlaki, Eric Holder wrote in a letter to the Senate judiciary panel.
Awlaki's 16-year-old son Abdulrahman, Samir Khan and Jude Mohammad were "not specifically targeted by the US".
The disclosure of the killings in Yemen and Pakistan marks the first formal public acknowledgement of the US citizen deaths in drone strikes.
"The president has directed me to disclose certain information that until now has been properly classified," Mr Holder wrote.
Awlaki, an al-Qaeda suspect born in the US state of New Mexico, was killed by an unmanned plane in Yemen September 2011. US officials announced his death but did not officially reveal he was killed by a drone.
Samir Khan, a naturalised US citizen who produced an online magazine promoting al-Qaeda's ideology, died in the same missile strike.
Awlaki's 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, who was born in Colorado, was killed in Yemen a month later.
Mohammad, a North Carolina resident with a Pakistani father and American-born mother, was arrested in Pakistan in 2008 after trying to enter a part of the country that is dominated by militants and off-limits to foreigners.
Isn't funny how the country which likes to wave its Constitution as a badge of honor continuously violates the tenits of that Constitution when it involves the due process of the citizens the document was designed to protect. Like the 16 year old son of Anwar al-Awlaki.
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