On August 30, the Eleventh Circuit decisively dismissed a classic lawfare lawsuit — an Alien Tort Statute suit brought against the former President and former Defense Minister of Bolivia (Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada and Jose Carlos Sanchez Berzain) in connection … Read more »
That’s what somebody in the government is saying today, on reading this Washington Post story about a contract dispute between two aviation companies involved in CIA renditions–a dispute that seems to involve airing a lot of material in public. Money … Read more »
The Washington Post has an interesting article this morning on a website that posts rankings of hackers. The concept is that hackers earn points based on level of difficulty of the hack, as well as the identity of the targeted … Read more »
The new Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, Alan Krueger, challenged the Bush administration’s assertion that invading Iraq would reduce world-wide terror, Nancy Scola at the Atlantic writes.
Amnesty International continues to lobby for an investigation of Dick … Read more »
Business Insider is reporting:
According to Twitter users set a record on Sunday night when Beyonce revealed her baby bump to the record-breaking VMA audience.
From @twitterglobalpr: “Last night at 10:35pm ET, Beyonce’s big MTV #VMA moment gave Twitter
And we’re back.
Ibrahim al-Rubeish, a senior member of Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia, who is also a former Guantanamo detainee has recommended to UAE interior minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud to expel non-Muslims from the country, reports… Read more »
The Triple Agent: The Al-Qaeda Mole who Infiltrated the CIA, by Washington Post reporter Joby Warrick, ranks among the very best pieces of narrative journalism I have read related to the history of America’s conflict with Al Qaeda. Like … Read more »
If you apply for this job, you probably should refrain from mentioning that you read about it on Lawfare:
Counsel, Liberty and National Security Program
Location: Washington, DC
Department: Liberty and National Security Program
Type: Temporary to Full Time
Min.
In kicking off Lawfare’s 9/11 10th anniversary project devoted to laying bare our own non-trivial errors of analysis or understanding over the last decade, I have a number from which to choose. All, however, pale in comparison to my vacillations … Read more »
Over at the Council on Foreign Relations web site, Matthew Waxman offers a brief essay on lessons learned on detention policy from the last ten years:
An important lesson since the 9/11 attacks is that detention decisions and practices have
Over at the Weekly Standard’s blog, Thomas Joscelyn has this piece critiquing a CNN report on Fayiz Mohammed Ahmed Al Kandari, whose habeas case we have covered here. I haven’t dissected the CNN piece about which Joscelyn links, but having … Read more »
Another Mark Mazzetti story from the past week that deserves your attention: this piece, which sheds some additional light on the intelligence and logistical support that the United States is providing to Mexico’s conflict with the cartels. The story … Read more »
Mark Mazzetti had a piece yesterday in the Times covering the important news that CIA once again has located and killed al Qaeda’s top officer for operational planning (Atiyah abd al-Rahman, who took over that position after a drone killed … Read more »
The 10th anniversary of September 11 is, as everyone knows, coming up soon, and it promises a veritable orgy of selective memory. America’s debate over law and security is, in general, characterized by an overabundance of certainty; everyone is way … Read more »
The New York Times is reporting that the CIA has demanded “extensive cuts from the memoir of a former F.B.I. agent who spent years near the center of the battle against Al Qaeda.” Ali Soufan has been a vocal critic … Read more »
Thomas Drake, the former NSA employee who was charged with leaking classified information, in a case that collapsed last month, has this oped in the Washington Post today. Money quote:
From 2001 through 2008, I was a senior executive at
The New York Time’s Charlie Savage has obtained a copy of former Vice President Cheney’s forthcoming memoir. Not a lot in his story about the book that will surprise on matters of interest to readers of this site. Here’s they … Read more »
I just had a meeting with a thoughtful European journalist who was working on a September 11 10th anniversary feature. Much to my surprise, she did not want to talk about Guantanamo, or interrogation, or rendition, or any other of … Read more »
Matt Dahl is a 2009 graduate of the University of Richmond School of Law who works on legal and policy issues for a cybersecurity company in Virginia. We are pleased to welcome his guest post, which discusses the potential application … Read more »
Another interesting legal issue touched upon in Joby Warrick’s The Triple Agent concerns the difficulty of defining the set of groups or networks against which force lawfully may be used. This issue has several dimensions. One concerns the difficulty of … Read more »
The AP’s Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman have a long story out today, focused on the NYPD’s Intelligence Division & Counter-Terrorism Bureau. The story paints NYPD as having developed an unchecked intelligence-collection capacity over the past decade, emphasizing (i) … Read more »
This should be of interest to a great many Lawfare readers:
Experienced Attorney
United States Department of Justice
National Security Division
Office of Law and Policy
Appellate Attorney
GS-15
About the Division: The National Security Division (NSD) leads the
In November 2009, the ACLU brought a suit on behalf of an American citizen–Amir Meshal–against two FBI agents and two unnamed officials, alleging the following: that he went to Somalia in 2006, that he fled the fighting there … Read more »
In prior posts such as this one, I’ve noted that the United States eventually will transfer control over the Detention Center in Parwan to Afghan authorities. The most recent goal for that transfer was January 2012, but that goal … Read more »
The discussions of drone strike decision-making in Warrick’s The Triple Agent sheds light on the proportionality debate in several respects.
First, the book is shot through with references to the concerns that CIA Directors (first Hayden, then Panetta) have with … Read more »
Joby Warrick (of the Washington Post) provides a number of fascinating nuggets regarding CIA activities in Pakistan in his just-published book The Triple Agent: The al-Qaeda Mole Who Infiltrated the CIA, which I strongly recommend. I’m not aware of … Read more »
Stuff.co.nz, a New Zealand news web site, usefully informs us that:
It’s not quite corporal punishment, but Wellington [New Zealand] High School pupils have had a first-hand taste of Guantanamo Bay.
Three teachers and two pupils donned Guantanamo-style fatigues yesterday
Yesterday the Justice Department filed a memorandum (h/t Charlie Savage) in support of its motion to dismiss the lawsuit by ten members of Congress against President Obama over the Libya operation. The main argument, and the probable winner, is that … Read more »
Stepping out of his persona as a Guantanamo habeas lawyer, David Remes writes in with the following comments in response to my recent post on fears that Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula is working on refining ricin:
Last Saturday,
Esquire magazine has this lengthy feature on Guantanamo detainee and convicted war criminal Noor Uthman Muhammad. It’s a sympathetic account, one that treats Uthman chiefly as a victim. But it contains enough facts about the case that many readers will, … Read more »
The Congressional Research Service’s Charles Doyle reviews proposals in the 112th Congress to amend National Security Letter authority in this report.
I spent the other day at the ruined Roman city of Ephesus, on the Aegean Coast of what is now Turkey. Ephesus, unlike a great many other ancient cities, was not sacked or destroyed in war or built upon by … Read more »
Benjamin Friedman has an interesting and thoughtful piece at the National Interest this afternoon, commenting on Dennis Blair’s recent criticism of the current approach to drone strikes in Pakistan. One point he makes stood out to me as worth a … Read more »
In 1077, St. Anselm of Canterbury offered an analysis that has come to be known as the ontological argument for the existence of God. God, posited Anselm, was “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.” Since, in Anselm’s view, … Read more »
This is a nice illustration of the fact that in at least some circumstances, the United States simply must use civilian criminal courts if it wants to have its hands on a terrorism-related suspect–not to mention the fact that this … Read more »
The New York Times reports that Chinese military engineers may have been allowed to examine a scuttled American stealth helicopter after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Dennis Blair, the former DNI (2009-2010) writes in the Times that drones … Read more »
…and guess what? This post is not about any gross factual errors in either of them concerning the legality of detention. Perhaps that’s because neither editorial really deals with the legality of detention, but never mind. I’ll take factually decent … Read more »
Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula is working on a ricin attack:
WASHINGTON — American counterterrorism officials are increasingly concerned that the most dangerous regional arm of Al Qaeda is trying to produce the lethal poison ricin, to be
The Washington Post is reporting, in what is hardly a surprise, that we shouldn’t expect the United States to give up the Bagram detention facility any time soon:
BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan — The United States will remain in control
This case may have almost nothing to do with national security law. But it has infuriated me ever since, as a Post editorial writer some years back, I spent a lot of time writing about criminal justice issues in Virginia … Read more »
Julian Barnes and Evan Perez have an interesting piece today in the Wall Street Journal, suggesting that at least some military officers are increasingly concerned about the lack of a clear option for detaining terrorism suspects (other than prosecution). This … Read more »
As Raff notes, the Washington Post has an editorial this week drawing attention to the important case of Ali Mussa Daqduq, the Lebanese Hezbollah commander who entered Iraq to participate in the insurgency, who allegedly orchestrated the execution of … Read more »
Scott Shane has an important story in the New York Times on the controversy over the number of civilian deaths caused by the CIA’s drones program outside of Afghanistan. Shane reports that,
The civilian toll of the C.I.A.’s drone campaign,
The Department of State is indirectly financing private security firms to train African soldiers to fight al Shabab in Somalia, reports the New York Times.
The Washington Post has this editorial which presses the U.S. to not hand over … Read more »
Cybersecurity studies distinguish between a cyber-attack, which alters, degrades, or destroys adversary computer systems or the information in or transiting through those systems, and cyber-expolitation, which involves no disruption of an adversary computer system, but rather merely monitoring … Read more »
A grand jury yesterday returned an indictment in the case of Naser Abdo, the guy recently arrested in connection with an alleged bomb plot in relation to Killeen (the same guy who shouted “Major Nidal Hassan 2009!” in the courtroom … Read more »
During the early months of the Arab Spring phenomenon, there was much discussion of the role that technology played in undermining the capacity of authoritarian regimes to suppress political dissent. Social media platforms and ubiquitous smart phones (or at least … Read more »
Earlier we posted Ramzi Kassem’s criticism of commentary from Ben and Tom Joscelyn concerning the al-Alwi case. Tom has asked us to share the following response:
Ramzi Kassem is bothered by the use of the words “evidence” and “intelligence” to
Emerson Begolly pled guilty today, ending what would otherwise likely have been a very interesting First Amendment case involving the constitutionality of charging solicitation based on online incitement to terrorism (as well as the constitutionality of prosecuting for the publication … Read more »
I was trying to formulate my mixed feelings about the Vance and Doe decisions when I received the following email from a Lawfare reader. It so totally represents my own uncertainty about the cases that I thought I would just … Read more »
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 »
