Over at Mother Jones, Nick Baumann accuses me of arguing against straw terrorists. Quoting a Lawfare post from a little while back in which I posited that the alternative to reserving the option of lethal force against Anwar Al Aulaqi … Read more »
Larkin and I were planning to post a detailed account of what the Wikileaks cables say about Guantanamo resettlement efforts, but Charlie Savage and Andrew Lehren of the New York Times have beaten us to the punch with an excellent … Read more »
I’m surprised this statistic does not get more attention. The Pentagon’s annual report to Congress on “Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan” ( required by § 1230 of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY08), states:
The
Representative Peter King has urged the State Department to consider designating Wikileaks a “foreign terrorist organization,” which among other things would implicate 18 USC 2339B (the 1996 material support statute, criminalizing the provision of any form of support or resources … Read more »
Another interesting hypothetical raised by the Wikileaks situation is whether Wikileaks counts as a “foreign power” for purposes of FISA. 50 USC 1801(a) defines “foreign power” as any of the following:
The decision by Wikileaks to expose a massive collection of classified State Department cables, and the fact that Wikileaks seems today to be experiencing a DDOS attack, creates an occasion to think hypothetically about an array of legal issues that … Read more »
Responding to my suggestion that Lawfare readers debate the parameters of a new AUMF–a discussion thread for which I have started over at our Facebook page–John Bellinger III writes in with the following:
I’ve been a bit surprised by the
The latest issue of Inspire, the glossy English-language in-house magazine of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is available here, courtesy of a web site entitled Public Intelligence. The first issue is here; the second is here… Read more »
It is hardly a surprise that John Bellinger III is being attacked (here and here, for example) for his modest suggestion in the Washington Post the other day that Congress should update the AUMF. (Attacking the moderate and … Read more »
Late Saturday night the State Department released a strongly worded letter from Legal Advisor Harold Koh to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and his attorney concerning the apparently imminent publication of 250,000 secret State Department documents. The letter says that the … Read more »
Here at Lawfare, we don’t take comments. Being very old-fashioned, we started this blog to express our opinions to a group of readers, not to create a bulletin board for those readers. We have gotten any number of complaints about … Read more »
Back on November 17, the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative held an excellent forum on legal issues surrounding targeted killing. The panel consisted of me and Gary Solis, author of the recent book, The Law of Armed Conflict: International Humanitarian … Read more »
John Bellinger argues in today’s Washington Post for new framework legislation relating to counterterrorism – that is, for a new statute to supersede the AUMF. John concludes:
Nearly 10 years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Obama administration, congressional Republicans
Marc Thiessen has taken a lot of heat for this argument in the course of defending TSA screening procedures:
Can any of us imagine the debate we’ve had in recent weeks unfolding in the days immediately following Sept. 11, 2001?
I’m going to take a break from blogging for the next twenty-four hours, but before I go dark, I want to wish Lawfare readers all over the world a wonderful holiday. In particular, in light of Brig. General Mark Martins’ … Read more »
Parwan, Friday, November 19, 2010 — The week’s posts up until now—written on a Blackberry while we moved or found small spaces of time between engagements—position me finally to move from the definitional and philosophical matters I pondered yesterday in … Read more »
For the past three years, Geoff Corn and I have had the great pleasure of putting on a unique workshop event loosely directed toward a combination of JAGs and junior civilian scholars working on national security law issues. The basic … Read more »
I received the following note from Andy Worthington in response to my earlier post about his article. I appreciate very much his clarifications, which read in relevant part:
My intention was not to describe you and Jack and Robert
United States v. Kashmiri, a recent decision by a district judge in Illinois, provides a nice illustration of the process by which defendants in criminal cases may object to the admission of evidence derived from Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act … Read more »
This is how the always-entertaining British journalist, Andy Worthington describes critics of federal court trials, including–it seems–Jack and Bobby and me, which is kind of funny considering that we are not really critics of federal court trials at all. Worthington … Read more »
Gabor Rona of Human Rights First sent me yesterday the following thoughts on Linda Moreno’s earlier comments concerning military commissions from a defense perspective:
“How is my client best served?” is what Linda Moreno, a criminal defense lawyer, says about
Khost, Thursday, November 18, 2010 — Having outlined, in theory as well as in practice, the military’s and ROLFF’s proper counterinsurgency (COIN) role in Afghanistan, it is time to blog more pointedly—to “drill down,” as the great 101st… Read more »
It will come as a surprise to nobody who has followed the many exchanges between us Lawfare folks and Steve Vladeck that Steve has written a thoughtful objection to Jack and my oped and series of posts arguing against bringing … Read more »
Today in Uthman v. Obama, a habeas merits appeal before the D.C. Circuit, the detainee’s merits brief became available. The government is the appellant in this case, appealing Judge Henry Kennedy’s decision granting Uthman’s petition for habeas corpus. Readers
My post yesterday on Israeli airline security prompted the following response from reader Steve Checkoway, a computer science PhD candidate specializing in security issues:
Mr. Wittes is incorrect to write that a great deal of the criticism of the
A few days ago, in response to comments by David Remes, I asked for thoughts from criminal defense lawyers as to whether they would rather defend a terrorist case in federal court or in a a military commission. Yesterday, Linda … Read more »
Kandahar City, Wednesday, November 17, 2010 — Counterinsurgency (COIN) theory—for that is what my last post describes—is only that: theory. The current reality in Afghanistan is that the rule of law remains mostly just a worthy goal. To evaluate whether … Read more »
A few days ago, Judge Dennis Jacobs (Second Circuit) gave the 10th Annual Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture at the 2010 Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention. His core claim is that a variety of elite legal institutions–bar associations, law schools … Read more »
Jack’s post yesterday on TSA crystalized a thought over which I have been stewing passively as this debate has unfolded. While I do not hold myself out as an expert in any sense of airline security, Jack has encouraged me … Read more »
Commenting on the Ghailani prosecution a few nights ago on PBS Newshour, former Attorney General Mukasey criticized the use of a civilian court rather than a military commission. He observed that the verdict
illustrate[s] the dangers and the —
Here, via the excellent Secrecy News, and just in time for General Martins’ posts on the subject, is a new CRS Report entitled: Afghanistan: U.S. Rule of Law and Justice Sector Assistance.
Kandahar, Tuesday, November 16, 2010 – Whether contemporary U.S. counterinsurgency operations (COIN) and legal institution-building are “an attractive form of lawfare,” as Jack proposed in his 8 September post, is a question of both theory and practice. A good … Read more »
Kabul, Monday, November 15, 2010 – Jack Goldsmith invited me more than two months ago to write in this space about our military’s involvement in efforts to build the rule of law in Afghanistan. In his initial post, Jack wondered … Read more »
(By Benjamin Wittes, Jack Goldsmith, and Robert Chesney)
We are thrilled to be joined this week by a guest blogger: Brigadier General Mark Martins. General Martins commands the Rule of Law Field Force–Afghanistan, which is a military operation of unique … Read more »
I assume that TSA’s intrusive patdowns are not cost-effective, that some TSA employees will abuse the new body scanners, and that the TSA on the whole focuses too much on “security theater” and not enough on targeted interrogation. But I … Read more »
Responding to my earlier post objecting to CCR’s statement on the Ghaliani verdict, David Remes–one of the key Guantanamo habeas lawyers–wrote me a very interesting letter. It is interesting, in my view, less for its defense of CCR’s statement … Read more »
Today in Esmail v. Obama, a habeas merits appeal before the D.C. Circuit, the petitioner’s public brief became available. The petitioner, Yasein Khasem Mohammad Esmail, appeals from Judge Henry Kennedy’s April 2010 decision denying his petition and June 2010 … Read more »
Rounding out the public merits briefs in Al Warafi v. Obama, today the petitioner’s public reply brief became available. Below we link to the brief, the other two public merits briefs, and Chief Judge Lamberth’s district court opinion. Oral … Read more »
Many of us have been eagerly anticipating the revised edition of DOD’s Law of War Manual. Yesterday, Hays Parks delivered an address to the ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security breakfast series in which he gave a fascinating … Read more »
There has been a lot of debate about whether the result in the Ghailani trial would have been different in a military commission–and specifically about whether a witness Judge Kaplan excluded on grounds that the government knew of him because … Read more »
Over at the New York Times Room for Debate forum, Andy McCarthy, Orin Kerr, Diane Marie Aman, and I are engaged in an exchange of views about what lessons if any to draw from the Ghailani verdict. So far there’s … Read more »
Jack and I have written this oped in the Washington Post on the Ghailani verdict. It begins:
The Obama administration’s critics are missing the point on Ahmed Ghailani. Their reaction to his acquittal this week on 284 criminal counts and
In my post earlier today concerning CCR’s terrible statement on the Ghalani verdict, I noted that Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights First had seemed to endorse it on Twitter and wondered if HRF really meant to embrace CCR’s claim that … Read more »
(Benjamin Wittes & Robert Chesney)
Debra Burlingame, a co-director of Keep America Safe and the sister of September 11 pilot Charles Burlingame III, sent the following in response to our post on Ghailani yesterday:
I find your Ghailani verdict analysis
The Center for Constitutional Rights has issued what I think is a genuinely shocking statement on the Ghailani verdict–one which really lays bare the group’s position on terrorist trials:
CCR questions the ability of anyone who is Muslim to receive
I agree with Ben and Bobby that the disappointing Ghailani verdict does not imply that the prosecution should have been brought in a military commission. As they argue, most if not all of the challenges of Ghailani’s trial would have … Read more »
(Benjamin Wittes & Robert Chesney)
The Ghailani verdict is going to play badly–very badly–in the political arena. It won’t matter that he will receive a minimum of a 20-year prison sentence and could well spend the rest of his life … Read more »
Ahmed Ghailani, charged with some 280 counts of conspiracy and murder in relation to the 1998 East African Embassy Bombings, has been convicted on one conspiracy count–but otherwise acquitted on all charges.
Ghailani was convicted of violating 18 USC 844(f)(3) … Read more »
I have a lot of regard for Jeffrey Goldberg, and partly for that reason, I’m a little taken aback by these comments made to Mother Jones concerning Anwar Al-Aulaqi. Goldberg has been on overdrive recently about new airport security … Read more »
Responding to my earlier post on Buck McKeon’s detention bill, Adam Serwer says the following, on which I cannot improve:
I still maintain that there’s less difference between Republican and administration priorities than there appears to be, and
Friday, May 17, 2013
The Department of Justice’s Inspector General released an interim report on the Department’s handling of “known or suspected” terrorists who have entered the government’s witness protection program. The report found, among other things, that information on some program participants had not been turned over to no-fly list authorities; and, that two such people could not be located—though one… Read more »
