“Don’t Charge Wikileaks,” say my beloved former colleagues at the Washington Post editorial page this morning. The Post argues that,
Such prosecutions are a bad idea. The government has no business indicting someone who is not a spy
Sen. Lindsey Graham has called for a halt to transfers from Guantanamo in light of the recidivism rate reported by the Director of National Intelligence. A few thoughts on this general subject:
First, we have a wholly underdeveloped political vocabulary … Read more »
You have to read to the bottom of Charlie Savage’s New York Times story on Attorney General Holder’s letter to get to this bit:
Meanwhile, officials were bracing for the possibility that WikiLeaks may release yet another cache of leaked
One of many reasons why America’s digital networks are so insecure is that so many ordinary computers users do not take computer security – firewalls, up-to-date anti-virus software, and the like – seriously. Insecure computers can be infiltrated by stealth … Read more »
“Follow the Money” reads the headline of today’s New York Times editorial, which–along with the news story that inspired it–rank among the most hypocritical journalism I have read in a while. The editorial laments that,
Nine years
Attorney General Holder has sent this letter to Senators Reid and McConnell, objecting to the GTMO-transfer restrictions in the pending Continuing Resolution bill as an “extreme and risky encroachment on the authority of the Executive branch to determine when and … Read more »
Yesterday, Lyle Denniston posted a recap of all eight currently pending detainee cert. petitions over at SCOTUSblog. Three of those eight cover what we might call transfer and release issues. Petitioners filed the last of those three yesterday, making it … Read more »
Reacting to the decision yesterday in al-Aulaqi, Human Rights Watch has sent a letter to President Obama, in the name of HRW’s President Kenneth Roth, setting forth HRW’s views on the legal issues associated with targeted killing. A … Read more »
A while back, Jeff Rosen and I started a project at Brookings trying to imagine areas in which technology threatens to render constitutional principles or values obsolete and how judges, legislators, and the political system generally might respond. The project, … Read more »
Well, this no doubt will contribute the burgeoning conversation about the pros and cons of sting operations. The criminal complaint is here. From the press release:
BALTIMORE – Antonio Martinez, aka Muhammad Hussain, age 21, of Baltimore, a U.S.
Rounding out the public merits briefs in Uthman v. Obama, yesterday the government’s public reply brief became available. Below we link to that brief, the other two public merits briefs, and Judge Henry Kennedy’s district court opinion. Oral argument … Read more »
(hat tip: Charlie Dunlap) OFAC has issued a final rule amending the TSR and GTSR sanction regimes to expand the options for designated entities to pay for certain legal services. Presumably this is at least indirectly responsive to issues that … Read more »
[Update: Josh Gerstein at Politico reports that the White House has now expressed its opposition at least to section 1116, raising a question as to whether this will sail through easily after all.]
Jack notes below that the chances that … Read more »
I have a bit more information regarding the Defense Department’s bizarre efforts to stop people from reading Lawfare on grounds that we may be hosting Wikileaks cables (which we are not). I am told that readers in Afghanistan are not … Read more »
Five thoughts on Judge Bates’ Al Aulaqi decision:
First, as far as I’m concerned, there is really only one surprising thing about the decision, whose holdings any Lawfare reader could have anticipated relatively precisely. The surprise is that Judge … Read more »
Earlier this year Congress required the DNI to make publicly available unclassified summaries of information about the recidivism of released GTMO detainees as well as an assessment of such detainees’ likely future terrorist activity. The DNI issued a report on … Read more »
Judge Bates wrote a solid, careful, and in my view persuasive opinion in al-Aulaqi. The opinion is clearly a victory for the government. But it was not without small victories for ACLU, CCR, and others who want to establish … Read more »
Don’t have time to read the 83-page opinion in Al-Aulaqi? Here are the key points in outline format, sans commentary:
I wonder how many media outlets that misleadingly made the government’s invocation of the state secrets privilege the central feature of their coverage of its arguments will eat crow in light of Judge Bates’ refusal (at the government’s urging… Read more »
Jacob Bronsther, a third-year student at NYU Law School, who spent time as a Fulbright Scholar studying the the Muslim community in Mauritius, sent Brig. Gen. Mark Martins comments on his guest posts, which Gen. Martins encouraged him to submit … Read more »
Opinion here. More to come after we’ve had a chance to digest the full opinion.
UPDATE: Below are selected excerpts from the opinion (footnotes omitted).
Excerpt from introduction:
This is a unique and extraordinary case. Both the threshold and
I met Adam Klein, then a first year law student, sometime back, when his professor, Matthew Waxman, sent him my way. Matt had suggested that Adam work with me for his 1L summer and told me he was exceptional–which turned … Read more »
Today, Omar Khadr and fellow habeas petitioners filed a cert. petition in one of a number of non-merits Guantanamo matters. The petition challenges the D.C. Circuit’s September decision to vacate several 2008 orders issued by Judge Thomas Hogan in the … Read more »
We are very pleased to present this guest post by Professor Tom Nachbar, who teaches antitrust, communications law, and constitutional law at the University of Virginia. Tom is also an Army Reserve judge advocate, and has worked on both … Read more »
Senators Joseph Lieberman, John Ensign, and Scott Brown have introduced a bill to amend the Espionage Act in order to facilitate the prosecution of folks like Wikileaks. The bill is confusingly called the SHIELD Act, though it is anything but … Read more »
This past week two detainees who lost their habeas merits appeals before the D.C. Circuit filed petitions for certiorari—Ghaleb Nassar Al Bihani and Adham Mohammed Ali Awad.
Broadly speaking, Al Bihani’s challenge involves several arguments about the substantive … Read more »
In light of the recent discussion on Lawfare of WikiLeaks and the Espionage Act, some readers might be interested in Jennifer Elsea’s October 2010 CRS Report on Criminal Prohibitions on the Publication of Classified Defense Information. The report focuses on … Read more »
A piece in today’s Washington Post opens with the claim that the government has been caught up in illegal surveillance: “The federal government has repeatedly violated legal limits governing the surveillance of U.S. citizens . . . .” The piece … Read more »
Those of you concerned about the Wikileaks disclosures will be reassured to know that the military IT folks are on the case and are aggressively cracking down on–drum-roll, please–us. That’s right, folks, Wikileaks, Lawfare. It’s all the same. They’re both … Read more »
The other day I posted some data on the recidivism rate among detainees in Afghanistan, culled from a report DOD recently submitted to Congress. That same day, it turns out, Vice Adm. Robert Harward, commander of CJIATF-435, participated in a … Read more »
There are 48 proferred amendments to the FY 2011 Defense Authorization Act, and I’m not going to pretend to have read through them all. But I’m pretty sure that if I did, Amendment 4704–the only one I have read–would … Read more »
Can an Iraqi citizen sue the U.S. government to get financial relief when U.S. forces in Iraq damage his private property for military purposes? Not surprisingly, the answer is no. So said the United States Court of Federal Claims on … Read more »
I was unaware when I wrote my post this morning that my frequent sparring partner Steve Vladeck had given testimony on the Espionage Act and related statutes this past spring. It is an excellent primer on the subject. Reading it … Read more »
Two weeks ago, I posted a question for Atlantic blogger Jeffrey Goldberg in light of some remarks he made to Nick Baumann of Mother Jones objecting to the targeting of Anwar Al Aulaqi. Goldberg had expressed admiration for the pure … Read more »
Amid the proliferating cries for prosecuting Julian Assange and shutting down Wikileaks–an undertaking for which, I should note, I harbor no small sympathy–a few people have noted that the Espionage Act has, well, some problems as a legal instrument for … Read more »
…then you’ll want to keep up with Tung Yin (Lewis & Clark Law), a good friend and colleague who has established a channel on his always-interesting blog for just this purpose. A sampling of his coverage so far:
“The … Read more »
Michael Leiter, the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, gave an important speech today at CSIS that touched on many topics, including an overview of the foreign and homeland terrorist threat, what the government is doing about it, and how … Read more »
Over at Mother Jones, Nick Baumann offers a thoughtful response to my post yesterday, which in turn responded to his earlier post on Al Aulaqi. I don’t mean to respond further, since I think the exchange as it … Read more »
Secretary of Defense Gates on the significance of the latest wikileaks disclosures (via SWJ):
But let me – let me just offer some perspective as somebody who’s been at this a long time. Every other government in the
Friday, May 24, 2013
Coverage of President Obama’s speech yesterday is plentiful: Here are Peter Baker of the New York Times, Karen DeYoung and Greg Miller of the Washington Post, and Mark Mazzetti of the Times with an analysis of the key points of the speech. Scott Wilson of the Post also provides a rundown of the speech, and cites Ben. The Associated Press reports on lifting the transfer ban on Yemeni detainees, and Colleen McCain Nelson, Adam Entous, and Julia E. Barnes… Read more »
