Armed Conflict Congress Executive Branch Foreign Relations & International Law

Clarification on Admiral McRaven's Testimony: Probably Not Intended to Speak to Non-AUMF Scenarios

Robert Chesney
Tuesday, July 5, 2011, 3:38 PM
Last week I posted about testmony from Admiral McRaven and General Allen concerning the lack of U.S.-controlled detention option in a world in which the executive branch does not want to see anyone brought to GTMO, Congress does not want anyone brought into the United States, and Afghanistan may not agree to allow us to turn to the DFIP instead in cases involving extra-Afghanistan captures.  Here's a key passage,:
Admiral McRaven: ...As

Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Brookings

Last week I posted about testmony from Admiral McRaven and General Allen concerning the lack of U.S.-controlled detention option in a world in which the executive branch does not want to see anyone brought to GTMO, Congress does not want anyone brought into the United States, and Afghanistan may not agree to allow us to turn to the DFIP instead in cases involving extra-Afghanistan captures.  Here's a key passage,:
Admiral McRaven: ...As you know, there are certain individuals that are under the AUMF, the use of military force, and those are easier to deal with than folks that may not have been under the authority for AUMF. In many cases, we will put them on a naval vessel and we will hold them until we can either get a case to prosecute them in U.S. court or…
As to that list of disposition options, I read McRaven as talking about what we'd do in the event we had our hands on a non-AUMF person.  But a knowledgeable reader told me I probably had it wrong, and that nothing in the testimony was meant to shed light on how we would approach a non-AUMF scenario.  Fortunately, my earlier post did go on (in response to a separate part of the testimony) to focus on the same set of questions as to AUMF-covered detainees; that component of the post remains as before.

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.

Subscribe to Lawfare