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What is the status of a long-pending report on the CIA's counterterrorism interrogation methods? According to the The Atlantic, the Obama Administration has been sitting on the 6,000-page tome, in which...
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It is precarious to comment on a leaked version of broad conclusions from a government report. But I think the NYT and WSJ accounts of the recommendations by the President’s Review Group on Intelligence...
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The Onion ranks this year's "Top 2 Tsarnaevs of 2013."
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From the department of Not a Joke, Appearances Notwithstanding comes this article from Forbes. My only explanation for this is that the folks over at the National Reconnaissance Office must be having a l...
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On Wednesday, the Solicitor General filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to grant, vacate, and remand (“GVR”) the Samantar case to the Fourth Circuit after that Circuit’s surprising decision la...
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Earlier this week the Solicitor General filed its brief in Samantar v.
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In what the New York Times is calling a “major step towards transparency,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel publicly acknowledged the presence of U.S. forces at the Combined Air and Space Operations Center ...
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Last night, I posted a link to Stewart Baker's announcement of his Privy Award for “the stupidest, the most hypocritical, and the most power-serving uses of privacy law of the year.” Stewart has now post...
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Linda Greenhouse has a thoughtful column over at the New York Times entitled "The Mirror of Guantanamo" about the Abdul Razak Ali case---about which I wrote some thoughts last week. Ten years ago, Greenh...
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This is amusing. Over at the Skating on Stilts site, former NSA general counsel and DHS policy guru Stewart Baker has launched an award he's calling "The Coveted Golden Privy Award"---for "the stupidest,...
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At 2pm today, the Senate Judiciary Committee is will hold an oversight hearing on U.S. government surveillance authorities.
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Ambassador James F. Dobbins testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday that the Obama administration still believes it possible to sign a security pact with Afghanistan that would ...
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I have only had a chance to look briefly at the Guantanamo-related provisions of the House-Senate compromise NDAA, but the text looks to me like a big win for the Obama administration---and for common se...
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In case you're having trouble sleeping tonight, here is the 1,105-page full text of the compromise NDAA and the mere 532-page Joint Explanatory Statement on the bill. I'll have comments as soon as I go t...
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Quite intrusive, it seems---at least according to this letter filing, which was submitted yesterday in Hatim v. Obama, the "Counsel Access Case." Oral argument also was held yesterday, as y'all likely kn...
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The Brennan Center for Justice released today a new report titled “National Security and Local Police.” They conducted surveys of more than a dozen major police departments and their affiliated state or...
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Cheng Li’s and Ryan McElveen’s good post over the weekend (via Daniel Byman) sparked the following reflections on U.S. economic espionage, post-Snowden. Li and McElveen nicely summarize U.S.-Chinese rel...
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The world mourns Nelson Mandela's passing today. A memorial service was held in Soweto, South Africa.
Members of the House and Senate armed services committees have reached a deal regarding the 2014 Nat...
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As 2013 draws to a close, I was reflecting on some of the things that happened, and some of the things that did not. One that struck me is that we celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the "National Str...
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Monday evening, Senate and House armed services committee leaders announced that a compromise has been largely reached with regard to the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act. Among those matters incl...