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In an unusual personnel move, the White House announced this afternoon that the President has withdrawn the nomination of Avril Haines to be the Legal Adviser of the State Department and is appointing he...
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We resume with reply argument on AE48C. It comes from Maj Danels, who says the motion is very simple: it asks only for the court to dismiss the charge of conspiracy, period. The prosecution, on the othe...
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We return, refreshed, from a longer-than-expected lunch break.
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The ACLU has filed a lawsuit against the NSA in the Southern District of New York challenging the constitutionality of the program that collects phone metadata. The ACLU statement says:
This dragnet prog...
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It’s witness time. Bryan Broyles, Principal Deputy Chief Defense Counsel for the Military Commissions, is sworn. We’ll hear from him, on matters relating to monitoring---in particular, AE153.
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OMB has issued a Statement of Administration Policy (SAP) pointing out White House objections to various elements in pending NDAA legislation (H.R.
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Our first argued motion is AE142, a defense bid to prevent Al-Nashiri from being from removed from the courtroom during a closed session. Rising in support of it is Maj Allison Danels, who notes the com...
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Wells already flagged yesterday's news re: General Martins' apparent skepticism about the availability of conspiracy and military commission charges in future military commission cases (at least those br...
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At 9:05, the military judge takes the bench. The mic is affixed. “Is this on?” Yes, it is.
All parties are present, including the accused---whose attendance moots the need for any voluntariness discus...
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We are back at Fort Meade, ready to cover today's almost live motions hearing in United States v. Al-Nashiri. The festivities will begin at 0900. Read our coverage of yesterday's hearings here.
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Last week (which seems almost an age ago) when the NSA telephone call meta-data portion of the NSA disclosures first broke, Ben wondered about how an application could be written that would satisfy Secti...
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My Brookings colleague William Galston---political theorist, former White House domestic policy adviser, and all-around wise mind---writes in with the following thoughts on the NSA and data-mining:
Alexa...
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Five years ago today, the Supreme Court handed down its 5-4 decision in Boumediene v. Bush, holding that the Constitution's Suspension Clause "has full effect" at Guantánamo Bay, and that the review sche...
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A slew of news reports have discussed whether Snowden’s choice of Hong Kong as a haven of sorts was a wise one. These reports tend to note the existence of a U.S.-Hong Kong extradition treaty and to des...
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Since we’re already talking about the subject, the defense dives right into AE141, its motion on the Prudential Search Requests (PSR) process employed by prosecutors. Al-Nashiri’s newest defense counsel...
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So the only people who are NOT allowed to read any of the material that Snowden disclosed are Federal employees or contractors who still carry security clearances (like me). I got the following earlier ...
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Before the podium stands Richard Kammen, Al-Nashiri’s lead lawyer. His chosen subject is AE143, a defense motion to compel discovery of exculpatory information the government previously furnished to Al-...
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The White House has now officially announced the President's intent to nominate Stephen Preston as General Counsel of the Pentagon.
The statement says in relevant part:
Stephen W. Preston, Nominee for G...
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That's the essence of Jane Sutton's Reuters story. Not exactly unexpected news, given recent D.C. Circuit decisions, a likely-though-still-uncertain ruling from that same court sitting en banc, and pr...
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In AE109, Al-Nashiri’s lawyers ask Judge Pohl to take judicial notice that the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause applies to military commissions.
As a general matter, says Kammen, the rule is that ...