9/11 Defense Counsel to President Obama: Please Declassify RDI Program
Today defense counsel to Mustafa al Hawsawi in United States v. Mohammed et al, the 9/11 case, delivered this letter to President Obama.
Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Today defense counsel to Mustafa al Hawsawi in United States v. Mohammed et al, the 9/11 case, delivered this letter to President Obama. It requests that details of the rendition, detention and interrogation program be declassified in accordance with EO 13526, as the press release attached to the letter explains:
Guantanamo Naval Station, Cuba --- The Defense in the 9/11 trial by military commission has asked President Obama to enforce an Executive Order by declassifying information relative to the rendition, detention and interrogation (RDI) program as it was applied to the accused, and that took the accused to black sites in host nations. Regarding the letter, CDR Walter Ruiz said: “Today uniformed officers and our civilian colleagues join in asking our president to uphold our obligations under the convention against torture, and remove improper classification restrictions which are preventing the pursuit of truth and meaningful justice.” Evidence of war crimes must not be classified. For decades now, the United States, by Executive Order, has banned the use of classification rules to conceal violations of law. President Reagan signed the Convention Against Torture in 1988, and the United States Senate ratified the Convention in 1994. As such, according the U.S. Constitution, it is part of United States law.
Raffaela Wakeman is a Senior Director at In-Q-Tel. She started her career at the Brookings Institution, where she spent five years conducting research on national security, election reform, and Congress. During this time she was also the Associate Editor of Lawfare. From there, Raffaela practiced law at the U.S. Department of Defense for four years, advising her clients on privacy and surveillance law, cybersecurity, and foreign liaison relationships. She departed DoD in 2019 to join the Majority Staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where she oversaw the Intelligence Community’s science and technology portfolios, cybersecurity, and surveillance activities. She left HPSCI in May 2021 to join IQT.
Raffaela received her BS and MS in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009 and her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 2015, where she was recognized for her commitment to public service with the Joyce Chiang Memorial Award. While at the Department of Defense, she was the inaugural recipient of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s General Counsel Award for exhibiting the highest standards of leadership, professional conduct, and integrity.
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