Latest in 9/11
The notes, which give details on the administration’s response to the 9/11 attacks, were declassified by the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel close to a decade after the appeal was initially submitted.
In an executive order, President Biden instructed the declassification and release of documents related to the FBI’s investigation into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. We’re tracking the releases here and will continue to update this post as new documents become public.
The United States went to war in Iraq on a false pretense that it was somehow avenging those killed on Sept. 11.
Remembering Sept. 11 and moving beyond the 9/11 era.
It’s hard to imagine a successful counterterrorism campaign in the years that followed Sept. 11 without the invasion of Afghanistan, which played a decisive role in dismantling what had become a major and persistent threat to American lives.
As longtime Lawfare readers know, I often take a moment around the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks to reflect on some current issue of national security law and policy significance. I do this, in part, to mark the anniversary itself.
Last week, the military commission in United States v. Khalid Shaikh Mohammad et al. reconvened for pretrial proceedings, meeting in open session on July 23 and 25, and in closed sessions on July 24 and 26. The commission covered a wide range of topics, including motions relating to unlawful influence by CIA director Gina Haspel, FBI influence in CIA interrogations, denial of a public trial, errors regarding classification determinations, and competing theories of "hostilities" under the law of war.
Even before the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration’s travel ban, trust in law enforcement was eroding—and reaching a nadir—among American Muslims. Many view this administration’s policies as a source of Islamophobia and generalized suspicion of American Muslims.
I thought it would be interesting, even amidst all the pressing immediacy of day-to-day emergency, to step back and ask where we now are in the post-9/11 struggles over America’s national security and surveillance state.
As I noted around this time last year, the 9/11 Commission Report is on the syllabus for my seminar at Georgetown Law, Intelligence Reform and the Modern Intelligence Community. One of the main themes of the report is that, pre-9/11, the Intelligence Community was structured for the Cold War. But, the report cautioned, the 21st Century is and will continue to be one dominated by asymmetric and non-traditional threats; the U.S.