The Week That Was: All of Lawfare in One Post

The main topic on Lawfare this week was the President's address at the National Defense University on counterterrorism policy.  We previewed the Thursday address in our early week coverage: Jack was the first to note the speech on the blog, Bobby and Matt suggested possible points for the president to cover, Rick shared an abstract of a chapter he authored in a forthcoming book about drone strikes, and John reminded us of the Bush administration's efforts to close GTMO.  Also in advance of the speech, Attorney General Eric Holder sent a letter to Congress acknowledging that four American citizens have been killed in drone strikes.  Matt and John reacted to the letter. Then came the speech itself.  We've got all of your primary source materials here at Lawfare: video, prepared remarks, and fact sheet.  To those things you can add plenty of Lawfarer commentary: by Rick, Wells, Ben (on whether we're at war, Guantanamo,  targeting criteria, and a drone court), John, Jack, and Ken. I pulled together reactions of Republican senators as well. Jack noted some additional post-speech commentary by Ryan Goodman and Sarah Knuckey.  The pair ask a series of questions about  targeting rules announced during the President's address. Just in time for the speech, the Hoover Institution released the second chapter of Ken's and Ben's book on the Obama administration's addresses on national security law. Meanwhile, Ken's essay in Commentary Magazine was published; it has the self-explanatory title of "The Case for Drones." Bobby asked whether the armed conflict model really matters in practice any more, and overviewed some reasons why today's armed conflict and the post-conflict era might closely resemble one another. Steve wrote about the Center for Constitutional Rights' efforts, in civilian court, to gain access to the Bradley Manning court martial proceedings. David Kris's guest posts on reforming U.S. surveillance laws went up: read his introduction, and his three pieces on the challenges and approaches to, and concluding thoughts about, a blue sky overhaul. Likely you've heard of the Al-Bahlul case, pending before the D.C. Circuit en banc.  Wells posted on the filing, Friday, of the petitioner's brief. Wells also noted this week's filings by GTMO detainees, wherein they argued that detention center policies chill them from meeting with counsel. He also shared the D.C. Circuit's order affirming the district court's denial of habeas corpus to GTMO detainee Al Warafi; Susan analyzed the order more closely. It seems a Yemeni detainee's plea to the D.C. Circuit,to force the District Court to decide a long-pending motion of his, prompted action at last.  On Thursday the District Court denied Hani Abdullah's motion for a preliminary injunction, as Wells discussed. We shared video from a recent event at the Heritage Foundation on detention policy, which featured four former Deputy Assistant Secretaries of Defense for Detainee Policy---including Matt. More information came to light about the Rosen/Kim investigation, which Jack discussed.  Paul wondered whether Fox News understands the insecurity of Gmail, given that Rosen, a Fox reporter, used the email platform to communicate with Kim, the accused government leaker. A government official wrote in about the leak investigation, and Alan put together another "explainer," this time on third party leak prosecutions and the Espionage Act. Jack reacted to Bill Keller's New York Times column, in which Keller argued for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the IRS fiasco. Ben and Bobby testified before the House Judiciary Committee on the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens in the war on terror; here's their testimony. We welcomed a great addition to the blogosphere: Brookings Iran expert Suzanne Maloney launched Iran@Saban blog. And that was the week that was. As always, we continue to solicit readers’ views about this experimental feature.  Please drop me a line and let me know yours. Or, you can do us a solid and fill out our readership survey.