That’s the gist of this report, filed earlier today by Politico’s Josh Gerstein:
A federal judge declined Monday to take action on behalf of a hunger-striking prisoner at Guantanamo Bay whose attorneys say his life is in danger
Josh Gerstein of Politico is reporting:
A group has posted audio online of Bradley Manning’s speech to a military court in Fort Meade explaining his decision to release classified military information to Wikileaks, the first time the public has
Over at Politico, Ginger Gibson is reporting that:
Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) criticized the Obama administration on Thursday over reports that an al-Qaeda leader had been brought to New York.
According to The New
The recent controversy about the Justice Department White Paper and the closely related Senate confirmation hearings for CIA director-nominee John Brennan have raised the profile of congressional intelligence oversight. A brief summary of some of these issues is this Politico … Read more »
So reports Politico’s Jennifer Epstein and Josh Gerstein:
President Obama has reversed course and agreed to provide the congressional intelligence committees with classified Justice Department legal advice authorizing the use of drones to kill U.S. citizens abroad, two administration
My excitement over Shane Harris’s new blog, Dead Drop, provides a catalyst for an action I have been meaning to take for some time: creating an automated page on Lawfare for outside news feeds of particular value for Lawfare … Read more »
Politico reports that Senate and House negotiators have reached an agreement on the NDAA, with votes in both houses expected later this week…and then, on to the White House. The full text is available here. As for the highlights, … Read more »
Here’s Reuters on the story. Here’s Josh Gerstein in Politico.
This just in – sort of. On Wednesday, Judge Leonie Brinkema denied John Kiriakou’s motion to dismiss certain counts against him on vagueness and overbreadth grounds. Not at all surprising stuff, considering the skepticism Brinkema had expressed during oral argument… Read more »
Apparently prompted by David Remes’ motion regarding GTMO counsel access issues in Esmail [h/t Josh Gerstein at Politico], the government now has filed its own motion.
I’ve only glanced at the new filing, but it seems the government … Read more »
Earlier today, numerous Israeli English-language media outlets (Times of Israel, Haaretz) picked up Bulgarian news stories that identified the Bulgarian suicide bomber as Mehdi Ghezali, a 33-year old Swede who was held at Guantanamo Bay from 2002 … Read more »
The government has filed its opposition brief in United States v. Kiriakou – the unauthorized disclosures and false statements case against a former CIA officer, who helped to apprehend Abu Zubaydah and later publicly bashed the government for torturing terrorism … 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 »
The White House has issued a SAP (Statement of Administration Policy) threatening to veto HR 4310 (the NDAA FY ’13) on various grounds, including objections to the detainee provisions found in sections 1035-43 of the bill (summarized by me previously … Read more »
For months everyone watching as cyber legislation moved on Capitol Hill has been sure of only one thing — that the main action was in the Senate where the basic outlines of any legislative deal would be forged. The House, … Read more »
Check out this post from Josh Gerstein of the Politico describing FBI Director Robert Mueller’s fears about how the NDAA conference report–even with the latest changes–will still “muddle the roles of the FBI and the military.”
I missed this before Thanksgiving, I’m afraid, but fortunately, the invaluable Josh Gerstein did not:
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is joining the chorus of Obama administration voices warning against detainee-related language in a pending Senate defense authorization bill.
On Tuesday, the Senate Armed Services Committee passed a new version of the controversial detainee provisions to be included in the National Defense Authorization Act for FY ’12. The text is here, thanks to Josh Gerstein at Politico, and … Read more »
The latest public development in the long-running fight over the detention provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act occurred last Friday when a group of 13 Senate Democrats (all the Democrats on SSCI and some but not all from Judiciary) … Read more »
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 »
Josh Gerstein at the Politico beat me to the punch with a point I have been meaning to make since looking at the Seventh Circuit’s Vance decision yesterday: The viability of civil cases against former officials for allegations of detention … Read more »
Josh Gerstein of Politico is reporting:
The Justice Department is warning a federal appeals court not to disclose classified information about the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance programs during upcoming arguments on a lawsuit challenging the NSA’s effort.
Three
Josh Gerstein at the Politico is reporting:
The Obama administration is invoking the state secrets privilege to seek dismissal of part of a lawsuit brought by Muslims who claim that the FBI conducted sweeping unconstitutional surveillance of Southern California
Politico’s Josh Gerstein is reporting:
A move by House Republicans to reauthorize the war on terror is unwise because it could foster perceptions that the U.S. is in an endless war with Al Qaeda, the Taliban and similar groups, the
Josh Gerstein of the Politico is reporting a fascinating development in the rules of the Detainee Review Boards at Bagram:
The Obama Administration has taken a step to have official representatives for U.S.-held prisoners in Afghanistan act more like lawyers,
Eric Holder, the Politico is reporting, has now said that it would have been lawful to shoot Bin Laden even if he had tried to surrender:
Holder initially said the U.S. team “obviously” should have accepted if bin Laden
The other night, with CNN reporting very tentatively that the Bin Laden operation had likely been a drone strike, Bobby and I got a little ahead of ourselves. Bobby said that it will “be interesting indeed to see how [drone] … Read more »
Yesterday I drew attention to a piece by Daphne Eviatar (Human Rights First) concerning the DRB process for screening detainees in Afghanistan, emphasizing the following passage:
Under international law, a detainee in the Afghan armed conflict has the right to
As Josh Gerstein reports over at Politico, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates today granted the Al Maqaleh petitioners’ motion for leave to file amended habeas petitions. Al Maqaleh concerns the habeas petitions of detainees held at the Bagram … Read more »
“And because the American people deserve to know that special interests aren’t larding up legislation with pet projects, both parties in Congress should know this,” President Obama said last night in his State of the Union Address, “if a bill … Read more »
For the past several months, the Obama administration has been in a weird limbo about Guantanamo. On the one hand, it has barely lifted a finger to effectuate its declared policy of closing the facility–afraid of the politics of the … Read more »
Charlie Savage reports in the New York Times that DOJ is considering charging Julian Assange as a conspirator to Bradley Manning’s undoubtedly illegal leak of classified information:
Justice Department officials are trying to find out whether Mr. Assange encouraged or
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 »
[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 »
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 »
Josh Gerstein of the Politico has an excellent story on the dumb debate going on over how to read the life sentence Faisal Shahzad received yesterday.
Here’s the White House:
“We are pleased that this terrorist has been sentenced to
One person we have not heard from in our extensive discussion on this blog of Sen. Lindsey Graham’s habeas legislation, S. 3707, is Sen. Lindsey Graham. Graham has been uncharacteristically reticent on the subject of his legislation, since introducing … Read more »
Josh Gerstein at the Politico reports that, quite unsurprisingly, President Obama has extended for another year the state of national emergency that has existed since President Bush proclaimed it in September 2001. The official notice reads as follows:
NOTICE-
The much-discussed legislation by Sen. Lindsey Graham to guide habeas corpus cases brought by detainees at Guantánamo Bay, S.3707, was quietly introduced a few weeks ago. The bill represents an important maturation in the debate over detention, and it deserves … Read more »
Friday, May 17, 2013
The Department of Justice’s Inspector General released an interim report on the Department’s handling of “known or suspected” terrorists who have entered the government’s witness protection program. The report found, among other things, that information on some program participants had not been turned over to no-fly list authorities; and, that two such people could not be located—though one… Read more »
