As I noted yesterday, I have an essay at CFR on the President’s speech. I don’t write the headlines or the summaries of my pieces, and I was surprised and dismayed when someone at CFR summarized my piece by saying: … Read more »
Ryan Goodman and Sarah Knuckey maintain that the new targeting framework announced by the President “raises some troubling questions and leaves important older questions completely unanswered.” Their list is long, but here are the first two:
Where do the rules
This post draws on material from my current book project, the concluding chapter of which considers the legal architecture of counterterrorism in a “postwar” setting…and advances the argument that we already have largely crossed into that world.
In yesterday’s speech, … Read more »
Ben Emmerson, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counterterrorism—who Ben and I interviewed for a special edition of the Lawfare Podcast—issued the following statement on President Obama’s speech at the National Defense University:
Ben Emmerson, UN Special Rapporteur
Along with President Obama’s speech yesterday on counterterrorism policy, the White House released a document titled Fact Sheet: U.S. Policy Standards and Procedures for the Use of Force in Counterterrorism Operations Outside the United States and Areas of Active Hostilities… Read more »
As Wells reported this morning, the D.C. Circuit has affirmed the habeas denial in Al Warafi. Mukhtar Yahia Naji Al Warafi unsuccessfully argued that even if he was a member of the Taliban, he was entitled to protected status … Read more »
My reactions to the President’s speech can be found in this essay at the CFR page. The headline writers gave it the title of Obama Passes the Buck: The President’s Empty Rhetoric on Counterterrorism. The subtitle captures the basic … Read more »
Judge David Sentelle wrote today’s majority opinion in this long-running habeas case, in which Mukhtar Yahia Naji Al Warafi had claimed (among other things) that even if he was a Taliban member, he served the group as a permanent medic … Read more »
There are a number of areas in the president’s speech yesterday in which Obama publicly aligns himself with critics of his administration, while promising in hard terms very little. As I described yesterday, he spent a lot of time criticizing … Read more »
The President’s speech was a dog’s breakfast: some good parts, some bad parts, and some ugly parts.
The Good. The most significant part of the speech was the President’s description of clearer standards for use of force against terrorists, including … Read more »
Perhaps the most puzzling and opaque aspect of President Obama’s speech today involves the question of whether he did, or didn’t, narrow the criteria for targeting in drone strikes. The wording of the speech on this point is incredibly careful, … Read more »
President Obama made two important announcements about aspects of Guantanamo and its detainees in his speech today. These are worth flagging before I pivot and harp on the big problem with the President’s comments about the base and those … Read more »
One week ago, a senior Pentagon official went before the Senate Armed Services Committee, along with the Pentagon’s top lawyers, and declared that the armed conflict with Al Qaeda and its associated forces under the AUMF would go on … Read more »
In his speech today, President Obama explicitly raised this perennial, maddeningly difficult issue. But he stopped well short of proposing a solution. Instead he said that “once we commit to a process of closing GTMO, I am confident that … Read more »
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
May 23, 2013
Fact Sheet: U.S. Policy Standards and Procedures for the Use of Force in Counterterrorism Operations Outside the United States and Areas of Active Hostilities
Since his first day in … Read more »
There are many important strands to President Obama’s national-security speech, but I want to focus on just one particularly noteworthy element. In clear terms, President Obama announced today that the same substantive standards apply to targeted killings operations against non-American … Read more »
The President’s remarks follow below.
The Future of our Fight against Terrorism
Remarks of President Barack Obama – As Prepared for Delivery
National Defense University
May 23, 2013
As Prepared for Delivery –
It’s an honor to return to
Watch President Obama’s speech at National Defense University below:
In his speech this afternoon, the President is expected to announce a renewed effort to close Guantanamo. This will require hard work, both with Congress and with other countries. When the President originally announced his intent to shutter Guantanamo, I … Read more »
In advance of the President’s speech tomorrow, the Attorney General has just sent this letter to Senator Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, describing the Administration’s legal basis for killing Anwar al-Aulaqi and targeting other U.S. citizens outside the … Read more »
With President Obama’s big speech tomorrow on counterterrorism policy at National Defense University in mind, Commentary Magazine has been nice enough to post today my June cover essay, “The Case for Drones.” (It’s free; no subscriber wall.) Lawfare readers will … Read more »
Bill Keller of the NYT urges President Obama to order the Justice Department “to appoint an independent investigator with bulldog instincts and bipartisan credibility” to fully examine the IRS imbroglio and determine “whether the treatment of conservative groups seeking special … Read more »
Ben and Bobby will be testifying in front of the House Judiciary Committee on “Protecting U.S. Citizens’ Constitutional Rights During the War on Terror” at 10 am tomorrow at 2141 Rayburn House Office Building. The two other witnesses will be … Read more »
[Editor's Note: below you'll find a fourth and final post in our series by David Kris, on possible reforms to surveillance statutes. The first post, an introduction, can be found here; two posts, on current challenges and a … Read more »
A few years ago I wrote an op-ed that gave these reasons (among others) why the USG should not prosecute Julian Assange for the WikiLeaks disclosures of State Department cables:
A conviction [of Assange] would also cause collateral damage to
[Editor's Note: below you'll find the third in a series of posts by David Kris on surveillance reform. In the first two installments, David introduced his subject, and then overviewed the challenges facing an attempt to overhaul the legal … Read more »
[Editor's Note: this is the second in a series of four posts by David Kris, on large-scale surveillance reform. The first, an introduction, can be found here. Below, David discusses the challenges facing any "blue-sky" overhaul.]
A blue-sky overhaul, while … Read more »
The President will give a speech on counterterrorism at the National Defense University on Thursday, reports the WP:
A White House official, speaking Saturday on the condition of anonymity to describe the speech in advance, said Obama will “discuss our
[Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of four posts, in which David S. Kris discusses the possibility of wide-ranging reform to U.S. surveillance law.]
A paper I wrote for Ben Wittes a few years ago discussed … Read more »
Melissa Hathaway has a new essay that argues for putting cybersecurity and related issues on the G20 agenda:
To counteract these [cybersecurity] risks, some governments and businesses are turning to international venues, seeking mechanisms to drive a path toward international
Carrie Cordero, Georgetown’s Director of National Security Studies and a former Justice Department official, writes in with these thoughts on the AP subpoenas controversy and background law:
In light of the hysteria over reports that the Department of Justice
A common assumption in the debate about the appropriate legal regime for extra-AUMF threats is that the AUMF is cabined and cannot be extended to newly threatening Islamist terrorist threats. Yesterday’s SASC hearing exploded this assumption. The hearing made clear … Read more »
The New York Times has a story about the problems of expanding CALEA to on peer-to-peer communications. The story discusses a Center for Democracy and Technology report on the topic by several experts. One signatory is Susan Landau, who writes … Read more »
It’s been a rough week for the Obama Administration. In addition to outrage over IRS targeting of conservative groups and continued conspiratorial rumblings about the Administration’s response to the Benghazi attack, the Department of Justice (DOJ) faces blowback over subpoenas… Read more »
Lawyers for Hani Saleh Rashid Abdullah, a Yemeni detained at Guantanamo, yesterday petitioned the D.C. Circuit for a writ of mandamus. The gist: Abdullah wants the circuit court to force the district court decide a long-pending motion of his.… Read more »
The D.C. Circuit wants to know whether Ali Hamza Ahmad Suliman Al-Bahlul desires to continue challenging his conviction by a military commission. And the appeals court wants an answer from the accused himself, as it made clear in an order … Read more »
Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, it appears that the Supreme Court disagrees with me–and doesn’t think the constitutionality of courts-martial for civilian contractors is worth its time. [H/T: SCOTUSblog.]
Laura Dean is a journalist and writer living in Cairo, from where she has been doing election monitoring projects in countries around the region. She is also a good friend, from earlier days when she lived in Washington and worked … Read more »
The New America Foundation has released a fact sheet listing the identities of Guantanamo Bay detainees who are “confirmed to be or suspected of engaging in militant activities against either U.S. or non-U.S. targets” after their release or relocation from … Read more »
From Harold Koh’s speech to the Oxford Union the other day:
Suppose we are back at Sept 18, 2001, and Congress has just passed the AUMF against Al Qaeda. Suppose the President –let’s assume it for the sake of
From Harold Koh’s speech to the Oxford Union the other day: the first “obvious” difference between the Bush and Obama administrations is that “the Obama Administration has not treated the post-9/11 conflict as a Global War on Terror to … Read more »
From Harold Koh’s speech to the Oxford Union yesterday:
A third critical difference between this Administration and its predecessor is the Obama Administration’s determination not to address Al Qaeda and the Taliban solely through the tools of war. .
Hmmmm.
From Harold Koh’s speech to the Oxford Union: Congressional transfer restrictions with respect to Guantanamo detainees “must be construed in light of the President’s authority as commander-in chief to regulate the movement of law-of-war detainees, as diplomat-in-chief to … Read more »
Charlie Savage reported in the NYT today that the Obama administration “is on the verge of backing a Federal Bureau of Investigation plan for a sweeping overhaul of surveillance laws that would make it easier to wiretap people who communicate … Read more »
Curtis Bradley and I have a casebook on foreign relations law that includes a heavy dose of national security law (including chapters on covert action and targeted killing) that might be of interest to Lawfare readers. Here is a TOC … Read more »
John Rizzo, Company Man: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA. Publication date: January 2014.
Two interesting and related developments in the Al-Bahlul appeal now pending before the D.C. Circuit: first, it seems that in mid-April, the accused had passed a note to a JTF-GTMO guard, in which Al-Bahlul (among other things) said he wished … 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 »
