I have an essay on this topic in The New Republic. It begins:
When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg rose to speak to the American Constitution Society on June 15, many in the audience hoped she would hint at
Jack and Ben earlier noted the government’s long-awaited brief in support of its motion for summary judgment in New York Times Co. v. Department of Justice and ACLU v. Department of Justice, the consolidated FOIA actions now pending in the … Read more »
Like Jack, I am a little surprised by the government’s brief–filed late last night–in the ACLU/New York Times FOIA case on targeted killings. This was the brief, remember, for which the government received an extension after informing … Read more »
Here is the Government’s brief in support of its summary judgment motion in response to requests by the NYT and ACLU for records on targeted killings, especially with regard to U.S. citizens. This is the brief for which the USG … Read more »
Those following the Stuxnet/Flame story will be interested in this piece that just went up on the Washington Post website. In a sequel to David Sanger’s account attributing Stuxnet to an American-Israeli collaboration, today’s piece by Ellen Nakashima, Greg Miller, … Read more »
Craig Whitlock has a very interesting piece in the Washington Post today, the main thrust of which is to describe the military’s efforts to establish aerial surveillance capacity across wide swaths of Africa, in support of both counterterrorism and foreign … Read more »
Paul makes a good point that digital technology and data analytics make it easier for the government to track journalists’ movements and ascertain the persons in government with whom they communicate. Charlie Savage makes the same point in his story… Read more »
Jack has already posted, while I was in transit, Dan Klaidman’s account of the White House’s sponsoring of leaks in connection with the Baitullah Mehsud drone strike. The full account reads as follows:
When they finally took Mehsud out
Andy McCarthy has an interesting post on the just-opened leak investigations. He garners more reasons than I did to think that many of the recent high-profile leaks – not just on drones, but also on the Iranian cyber-operation – originated … Read more »
One item in Jack’s post on the upcoming leak investigations caught my eye — he noted that “It is hard to discover leakers without access to journalists’ testimony or notes (which are hard to obtain).”
My sense is that … Read more »
The scope of the leak investigations announced by Attorney General Holder yesterday remains unclear. Holder appointed U.S. Attorneys Ronald Machen and Rod Rosenstein to “direct[]separate investigations currently being conducted by the FBI.” But he did not say what those investigations … Read more »
Here is his statement:
“Today, I assigned U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ronald C. Machen Jr. and U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein to lead criminal investigations into recent instances of possible unauthorized disclosures
President Obama, today, on the possibility of leaks from the White House:
The notion that the White House would purposely release classified national security information is offensive, it’s wrong, and people, I think, need to have a better sense
The ACLU has filed its reply brief in the D.C. Circuit in its FOIA case against the government, which seeks information about CIA use of drones for targeted killing. I have discussed this case briefly here and here (the ACLU … Read more »
This morning, Paul flagged a Washington Post op-ed by Senators Coats, Rubio and Burr. The trio’s piece concerns the improper revelation of national security secrets. As one example, the authors cite the recent disruption, by the CIA and a foreign … Read more »
Let me add to the comments so far on David Sanger’s extensive report in today’s NYT about U.S.-Israeli cyber-attacks against Iran’s nuclear program. One of the most provocative paragraphs is this one (with my italics):
Mr. Obama, according to participants
The Washington Post has an interesting story today announcing that the CIA has opened an internal investigation into its prepublication review process:
The CIA has begun an internal investigation into whether a process designed to screen books by former employees
Excellent discussion of drone strikes on today’s Diane Rehm Show–which, unfortunately, is not embeddable. (Memo to the Diane Rehm Show: Make your episodes embedable!)
Guests include:
Scott ShaneReporter, The New York TimesJohn BellingerPartner, Arnold &
Both the NYT Becker-Shane “Kill List” story and the Klaidman book excerpt have implications for the pending ACLU FOIA suit in CADC, which seeks CIA records on CIA drone strikes. (It also has implications for the broader ACLU FOIA case … Read more »
A couple of months ago, Hugo Rosemont, a Security Policy Adviser to the UK security industry and a doctoral student, sent in this account of the controversy in Britain over a government proposal to allow secret evidence in certain civil … Read more »
Back in March, we shared the appellant’s brief in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals case of American Civil Liberties Union v. CIA. The Central Intelligence Agency has filed its respondent brief in that case. The CIA summarizes its … Read more »
A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed a District Court judgment in favor of the National Security Agency in a case brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center under the Freedom of Information Act. The … Read more »
I received the list below (of “Significant Cyber Attacks” on Federal systems since 2004) from sources on Capitol Hill last week. After reading through it and checking the data, it seemed worth making the list part of the public record. … Read more »
In connection with my post this morning on the Brennan speech and the ACLU FOIA litigation, Jameel Jaffer – who heads up the ACLU’s National Security Project – had this op-ed on the FOIA litigation (with Nathan Wessler) on Monday … Read more »
Very glad to have joined the Lawfare team. I look forward to more sustained blogging once the spring grading season is over. For now, I’ll offer just a quick thought on the speech John Brennan delivered yesterday, and on the … Read more »
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
EMBARGOED UNTIL DELIVERY
April 30, 2012
Remarks of John O. Brennan – As Prepared for Delivery
Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism
Woodrow Wilson International Center for … Read more »
Defense counsel for the five alleged 9/11 co-conspirators have filed several motions challenging the closed-door nature of some military commission proceedings.
Although the filings haven’t been released (they need to be reviewed and redacted first), the defense attorneys released two … Read more »
Peter Margulies responds to Jameel Jaffer’s response:
I appreciate Jameel’s response to my earlier post, as I appreciate the work that he and the ACLU have done in promoting transparency. However, Jameel’s response largely reinforces my argument. First, Jameel
The ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer responds to Peter Margulies’ post yesterday on “moving the goal posts”:
Peter is mistaken. We filed that suit because we thought the photos would help the public understand what had happened in the detention centers. We
Peter Margulies writes in with this response to my request for examples of NGOs moving the goalposts in their demands about counterterrorism legal policy.
Administration critics “moved the goal posts” in responding to the Obama administration’s successful efforts to prevent
Following up on his post yesterday on secret evidence in civil cases in Britain, Hugo Rosemont writes in this morning with a brief update:
In other recent developments….
i. The Secretary of State for Justice has this morning outlined in
John Kiriakou was previously arrested, and charged via criminal complaint, on grounds relating to disclosure of classified information. He has now been indicted (here). I believe the charges are the same as before, except there are now three … Read more »
In Today’s Headlines and Commentaries, Raffaela notes the controversy in Britain that has erupted over the possibility of using secret evidence in certain civil cases. Hugo Rosemont, a Security Policy Adviser to the UK security industry and a doctoral … Read more »
The former counterterrorism czar reaches this conclusion because the operation had lawyers’ fingerprints on it. From an interview with Ron Rosenbaum in Smithsonian Magazine:
“I think it’s pretty clear that the United States government did the Stuxnet attack,” [Clarke] said
Peter Margulies of Roger Williams School of Law has this article on proposed amendments to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). It opens:
The Obama administration asked Congress to amend the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) last week to respond
In earlier posts I’ve written generally about the information sharing provisions of the Lieberman-Collins cybersecurity bill and the McCain bill. Today I want to begin drilling down in comparing the two bills on a more detailed basis. I’ve chosen … Read more »
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed its opening brief in its appeal of the District Court of the District of Columbia’s granting of a motion for summary judgment for the Central Intelligence Agency. The case stems from a FOIA … Read more »
Tomorrow the Senate Judiciary Committee will be holding a hearing on the relationship between the Freedom of Information Act, and the protection of critical infrastructure. One aspect of the hearing will be the proposal (contained in the Lieberman-Collins bill and … Read more »
Attorney General Eric Holder will apparently give a public address on Monday that will provide a fuller explanation and justification for the government’s policies on targeted killings, including for the targeted killing of an American citizen in Yemen. Other administration … Read more »
In his NYT column today, Bill Keller argues that Wikileaks “was a hell of a story and a wild collaboration, but it did not herald, as the documentarians yearn to believe, some new digital age of transparency. In fact, if … Read more »
Friday afternoon, the Obama Administration filed a cert. petition in Clapper v. Amnesty International, the constitutional challenge to 50 U.S.C. § 1881a (added by the FISA Amendments Act of 2008), which authorizes “the targeting of persons reasonably believed to … Read more »
Oh boy. Former CIA officer John Kiriakou has been arrested and charged with leaking classified to a journalist concerning interrogation at GTMO, including the identity of persons involved in interrogation sessions (information which was given to the defense team, allegedly, … Read more »
Back in October, we linked to a very interesting “green paper” produced by the UK Ministry of Justice addressing issues associated with secrecy, intelligence, security, and justice. Clive Walker (Leeds) has now produced an equally interesting critique, which … Read more »
Peter Margulies of Roger Williams University School of Law has sent in two accounts of panel discussions at the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Schools. Here is the first:
Federal Courts and National Security: A D.C. Circuit
The New York Times and columnists Charlie Savage and Scott Shane have filed suit under the Freedom of Information Act against the Department of Justice for access to the OLC memo authorizing the targeted killing of Anwar Al-Aulaqi.
Read the … Read more »
Some things are just too ridiculous to be anything other than true. From Steve Aftergood over at Secrecy News:
Open Source Works, which is the CIA’s in-house open source analysis component, is devoted to intelligence analysis of unclassified, open
The UK for some time has been wrestling with the problem of civil litigation that implicates states secrets. Foreign Minister William Hague addressed the issue eloquently in this speech, which in relevant part takes up the possibility of using … Read more »
Speaking of the oddly-named Bmaz–which I was briefly yesterday–he has flagged an incredible snippet of a Politico interview with White House chief of staff Bill Daley on the subject of leaks. For those readers who thought Jack and I … Read more »
Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker of the NYT report that the Obama administration considered using offensive cyber-weapons in the war in Libya, but in the end did not use them. Schmitt and Shanker give several reasons why the USG declined … Read more »
I want to put discussion of whether the government should publicly disclose the full legal framework behind its targeted killings program, including the killing of Al-Aulaqi, an American citizen, in a larger and more general philosophical and political context. Across … Read more »
Monday, May 20, 2013
As Jack posted yesterday—and as everyone is buzzing about—President Obama will give a major counterterrorism speech on Thursday at the National Defense University. The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and Politico all report on the talk, and subjects that the President will likely address.
Speaking of Jack, he noted another of today’s big stories: the Washington Post’s piece on the FBI’s search, a few years… Read more »
