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Agreement Reached on the NDAA

Robert Chesney
Tuesday, December 18, 2012, 11:35 PM
Politico reports that Senate and House negotiators have reached an agreement on the NDAA, with votes in both houses expected later this week...and then, on to the White House.  The full text is available here.  As for the highlights, perhaps the most notable thing from the perspective of the issues we've been tracking is that the Feinstein Amendment (

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Politico reports that Senate and House negotiators have reached an agreement on the NDAA, with votes in both houses expected later this week...and then, on to the White House.  The full text is available here.  As for the highlights, perhaps the most notable thing from the perspective of the issues we've been tracking is that the Feinstein Amendment (i.e., the provision stating that AUMFs should not be construed to provide detention authority vis-a-vis US persons captured in the US absent express language authorizing detention in that scenario) did...not...make it. Some other items of interest, for me at least: Section 925 - constraints on expansion of the Defense Clandestine Service (see here for background) Section 939 - requires quarterly briefing from DOD to SASC and HASC on offensive cyber operations and "significant" defensive cyber operations And of course there are sections 1021 through 1029, containing by-now-familiar constraints on transfers out of GTMO and so forth.

Robert (Bobby) Chesney is the Dean of the University of Texas School of Law, where he also holds the James A. Baker III Chair in the Rule of Law and World Affairs at UT. He is known internationally for his scholarship relating both to cybersecurity and national security. He is a co-founder of Lawfare, the nation’s leading online source for analysis of national security legal issues, and he co-hosts the popular show The National Security Law Podcast.

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