covert action

Latest in covert action

Counterterrorism

Targeting al-Baghdadi and Selective Notification to Congress: Assessing the Issues

Robert Chesney Sun, Oct 27, 2019, 9:02 PM

In the aftermath of the successful operation against Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the fact that the Trump administration gave advance notice to the Russian government and possibly also to some Republican lawmakers—but not to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff or other Democratic lawmakers—is attracting criticism. Is the criticism warranted? Not from a legal perspective. But it’s complicated from there.

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Covert Action

Teaching Covert Action to Law Students

Peter deLacy Thu, Aug 8, 2019, 9:26 AM

I recently was a guest lecturer on covert action in a law school seminar. For anyone interested, my instructional approach (fictional scenario, issues for consideration, operational proposals) is available here —feel free to use it (or, better yet, improve on it). In this post I offer a few practitioner-focused thoughts on the “why,” “what” and “how” that informed my planning for this class. I hope this background description and approach are useful to others teaching about covert action.

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Drones

Shift to JSOC on Drone Strikes Does Not Mean CIA Has Been Sidelined

Robert Chesney Thu, Jun 16, 2016, 2:29 PM

Greg Miller has an interesting and seemingly quite well-sourced article in the Washington Post today documenting (and offering explanations for) a significant decline in CIA drone strikes. To be clear, the claim is not that drone strikes on the whole are in decline.

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Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center (CTIIC)

No CTIIC Meddling Please: Excerpts from White House Veto Threat

Robert Chesney Wed, Jun 24, 2015, 6:57 PM

Back on June 15, the White House issued a SAP (statement of administration policy) spelling out objections to H.R. 2596, the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY'16. The SAP concludes that the President will veto the bill if presented as-is.

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Targeted Killings

Eliminating the Afghanistan Exception to the Oversight Regime for Military Kill/Capture Ops

Robert Chesney Fri, Jun 19, 2015, 12:03 PM

A little-noticed provision of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016 might expand Congressional oversight of kill/capture operations conducted by the U.S. military. The change arguably reflects the ongoing process whereby U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is coming to resemble our involvement in Yemen and Somalia (and we now might add Libya), and constitutes the latest development in the long-running process whereby we are evolving a legal architecture for kinetic operations in situations that are not obviously full-fledged combat operations.

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