The New York Times editorial page has still not corrected its error of the other day, when it promoted John Brennan to National Security Adviser. But that hasn’t stopped our friends over there from making some new doozies in … Read more »
[UPDATED 4:53]
Scott Shane, Mark Mazzetti, and Charlie Savage of The New York Times have this lengthy article on the hunt for Anwar Al-Aulaqi. Their piece describes, among other things, the legal analyses that approved of Al-Aulaqi’s killing.
Interestingly, the … Read more »
Readers by now know this much: Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz harbor great anxieties about possible drone strikes against U.S. citizens on U.S. soil—chiefly against citizens who pose no imminent threat to our national security. And their concerns apparently … Read more »
The thing kind of speaks for itself:
Rep. Louie Gohmert: Thank you Mr. Chairman, and this is an exceedingly important topic. We do appreciate your being here today. Obviously the Justice Department folks are busy doing something more important
In writing my testimony for today’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on drones and targeted killing of U.S. citizens overseas, I found myself writing a more complete explication of the essential legal rationale underlying the administration’s position on the subject than … Read more »
Amid the flurry of writing about the White Paper’s approach to “imminence” – an important conversation, to be sure – little attention has been paid to a paragraph in the White Paper that seems to establish new parameters for the … Read more »
Okay, everyone, take a deep breath. Chill out. The DOJ’s “White Paper” on targeted killing is no big deal. Really.
You wouldn’t know this from reading the somewhat breathless press coverage of the document, much of which offers a reasonable … Read more »
Over at the Emptywheel blog, the estimable Ms. Wheel (aka Marcy Wheeler) has posted a transcribed excerpt of a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing dealing with Senator John Cornyn’s proposal to compel the administration to release its legal memos on … Read more »
I am normally pretty good about keeping up with my Lawfare-related email, but sometimes, an important emails slips through the cracks. Andrew Kent of Fordham Law School sent me this comment on my post on the new Al Aulaqi… Read more »
Over at the New Yorker blog, Steve Coll has this post on the al-Aulaqi operation, and on related reporting in Dan Klaidman’s Kill or Capture.
Coll focuses on capture’s infeasibility, one of the conditions that reportedly must be satisfied … Read more »
By now you’ve pored over last week’s complaint in Al-Aulaqi et al v. Panetta et al. I’ve only got one cent to add to the already quite robust discussion of the lawsuit, and it has to do with the last … Read more »
Over at the AEIdeas blog, Marc Thiessen asks derisively: “Why is the ACLU suiting Panetta, Petraus over Awlaki Killing—But Not President Obama?”
He writes:
if it’s accountability they want, then why isn’t President Obama a defendant in the
In Power and Constraint, I argued (in a chapter summarized here) that the Center for Constitutional Rights litigation strategy for GTMO garnered crucial judicial support for GTMO detentions that in the end significantly strengthened the legitimacy of such … Read more »
I have now read through the ACLU-CCR lawsuit on behalf of the Al-Aulaqi and Khan families. Here are my initial thoughts:
First, this lawsuit does not suffer from the prohibitive standing problem that plagued these groups’ earlier efforts to block … Read more »
The ACLU has filed suit over the deaths in drone strikes of three U.S. citizens: Anwar Al-Aulaqi, his 16-year-old son, and AQAP propagandist Samir Khan. The complaint is available here. The ACLU’s press release is available here. I … Read more »
Tom Junod wrote in with the following in response to Ben’s earlier post:
Point taken on the “lecture from the principal” criticism: you either like that or you don’t, and you didn’t. But I don’t think you got the
I have now had time to read Tom Junod’s lengthy essay in Esquire to which Ritika linked the other day. Entitled “The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama,” it combines the form of a reported essay with a different form–one I … 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 »
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 »
The New York Times this morning has a lengthy, rich, and detailed feature story on President Obama’s counterterrorism record. Reporters Jo Becker and Scott Shane have done a really terrific job of bringing together lots of strands of Obama’s development … Read more »
It is surprising to me that neither the Washington Post nor the New York Times nor the Wall Street Journal has yet to run an editorial reacting to John Brennan’s extensive and thoughtful speech on drones last week.
A senior … Read more »
John Brennan’s speech yesterday was important for at least three reasons: (1) it marked the first official White House acknowledgment that “the United States Government conducts targeted strikes against specific al-Qa’ida terrorists, sometimes using remotely piloted aircraft, often referred to … 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 »
The more I think about Attorney General Holder’s defense of targeted killings in his speech @ Northwestern last Monday–and the various reactions thereto–the more confused I become. To be sure, this confusion may merely be a testament to my … Read more »
Well, it’s the Sunday after the attorney general’s address on targeted killing, so naturally, we awaken to a New York Times editorial blasting the speech:
President Obama, who came to office promising transparency and adherence to the rule of law,
One brief (but significant) point that thus far has gone largely unnoticed in the wide coverage of yesterday’s speech by Attorney General Eric Holder is his invocation of the Supreme Court’s Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test for assessing how much … Read more »
In late January, Daniel Klaidman reported that the administration was inclined to have Attorney General Holder give a major speech specifying additional details regarding the legal framework governing the use of lethal force against Anwar al-Awlaki. That time has now … Read more »
Very interesting Washington Post article on this sentencing memorandum filed by the Justice Department in the Abdulmutallab case. As Peter Finn of the Post describes it,
The memo, released Friday ahead of the sentencing next week of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab,
With Anwar al-Awlaki dead, one hears relatively little these days regarding the progress of events in Yemen in relation to AQAP and U.S. involvement there. Which is remarkable, because some very interesting and important things have been happening against the … Read more »
Lawfare readers who followed our coverage and analysis of the al-Aulaqi drone strike last fall (archived here) may be interested to see the UK House of Commons Library’s recently released research briefing on the matter (with citations including … Read more »
With the next semester quickly approaching, I’m going through the annual struggle to decide just how much I want to cover current (national security) events in my first-year Constitutional Law course. This is always difficult for me for several reasons, … Read more »
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 »
David Cole has this very thoughtful essay on the Anwar Al Aulaqi killing in the New York Review of Books–a very thoughtful essay with a rather loaded opening. Cole’s first sentence asks, “When can the president order the execution … Read more »
My colleague Noah Feldman has an interesting essay on Bloomberg that draws connections between the controversial Bush-era legal opinions on interrogation and President Obama’s targeted killing policy. The essay is difficult to summarize, but these passages will provide a flavor:… Read more »
Drone strikes in Southern Yemen killed nine members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) on Friday, including Ibrahim al-Bana, the terrorist organization’s media chief, and, according to tribal elders in the area, Abdul-Rahman al-Aulaqi, the son of Anwar … Read more »
The first thing to say about today’s long-belated New York Times editorial on the Al-Aulaqi killing–and the memo justifying it–is that it is not a ridiculous document, and I’m not going to ridicule it. It does not flamboyantly contradict … Read more »
Better late that never, the New York Times has finally run an editorial on the Al Aulaqi strike.
This makes it impossible to accept new entries in the Write the New York Times Al-Aulaqi Editorial Competition–making a winner … Read more »
Jacob Sternberger, a political science and security studies major at Dickinson College, has the distinction of sending in the first entry in Lawfare‘s Write the New York Times Al-Aulaqi Editorial Competition–complete with annotations as to the Times editorial … Read more »
A second Sunday paper has come and gone since the Anwar Al-Aulaqi strike, and still no New York Times editorial about it. I guess the killing of two U.S. nationals by their own government isn’t adequately important to warrant comment–certainly … Read more »
The oral argument for the Al-Zahrani case, about which Ben just posted, took up much of my morning, so expect Headlines and Commentary tomorrow. But in the meantime, I wanted to share this very interesting article, which discusses … Read more »
In response to some push back, and at the risk of some repetition, I would like to clarify a bit more why I think there is no serious bar to the government revealing more about the legal basis for its … Read more »
By last Friday afternoon, I was–I admit–in a state of nearly fevered excitement. Al-Aulaqi had just been killed, and there would be a nice, fat, New York Times editorial about it to savage. It would contain errors, internal contradictions, and … Read more »
Over at Slate, Will Saletan has an interesting post up querying whether the Fifth Amendment analysis potentially underlying the decision to kill al-Aulaqi–broken down into requirements that the person be otherwise targetable in connection with al Qaeda, that the person … Read more »
Raha Wala of Human Rights First writes in with the following objections to my analysis of the Anwar Al-Aulaqi killing:
I don’t know if killing Aulaqi was legal because I don’t know what factual basis there was for it. But
The Washington Post reports that the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel wrote a classified legal opinion in support of the al-Aulaqi killing. Carrie Budoff Brown* at Politico reports that former U.S. Representative and intelligence committee member Jane Harman says … Read more »
“God bless Ben,” Spencer Ackerman writes, ”he’s really trying hard to think through what the rules ought to be for killing an American citizen accused of terrorist membership.” My effort in that regard, he says, is “commendable . … Read more »
In an editorial on Friday about the al-Awlaki killing, I stated:
An attack on an enemy soldier during war is not an assassination. During World War II, the United States targeted and killed Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of the
Greg Miller has a story for the Washington Post discussing the al-Aulaqi strike from the perspective of CIA-military “convergence.” It’s a topic near and dear to my heart. ’m close to finishing off a lengthy article titled “Military-Intelligence Convergence and … Read more »
Once again, she is accusing Barack Obama of serious crimes. And once again, she refuses to say what she’s really saying. In this article on CNN.com. she calls the Al Aulaqi killing “illegal, immoral, and dangerous.” She says that … Read more »
Yesterday, the New York Times reported that Samir Khan, a 25-year old U.S. citizen from North Carolina, was killed in the same drone strike that targeted Anwar al-Aulaqi. According to Foreign Policy, Khan “helped create the media architecture of … 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 »
