The Obama administration announced that its task forces on detention and interrogation had requested deadline extensions to issue their reports. The White House maintains that the promise to close Guantanamo in January is still operative. Deborah Pearlstein believes that the extensions are not big news and concludes that this means the administration is looking for ways to avoid releasing detainees that they consider to still be dangerous. The task force on detention did offer a preliminary report (hotlink to ABC). Liza Goiten reviews it and finds it lacking in analysis but plentiful in advocacy. And Glenn Greenwald links to a report by Human Rights First that shows over 90% of terrorism suspects brought to the court system are convicted. Meanwhile, Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson appeared to take back earlier comments that Guantanamo detainees might be detained beyond January.
Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki suggested that U.S. troops could be staying in Iraq beyond 2011, which is when the Status of Forces agreement expires. Juan Cole does not see big news in the announcement, believing that al-Maliki only meant to cover a few advisors. Eli Lake speaks with a couple of experts, however, who agree that the statement does signal a shift in policy.
The New York Times reports that, in 2002, Bush administration officials, led by Dick Cheney, argued that the military should be used to arrest and detain terrorism suspects found in Lackawanna, NY. Ultimately, Bush ordered the FBI to make the arrests instead. Jack Balkin sees in the episode evidence of a desire to evade Fourth Amendment guarantees against government detention.
The latest intelligence funding bill might mandate disclosure of documentation of the intelligence gained through enhanced interrogation techniques. The proposed bill passed out of the Senate intelligence committee, where it appears to have split Democrats.
U.S. intelligence officials announced that they are “80 to 85 percent certain” that they killed one of Osama bin Laden’s sons during an airstrike in Pakistan earlier this year. The delay in the news occurred because the CIA sat on the story as a way of “messing with al-Qaeda.”
Neil Barofsky, the Inspector General for the TARP program, spoke with Jake Tapper about his projection that U.S. taxpayers could be on the hook for a $23.7 trillion bailout and about his fight with the Obama administration about how independent his office should be.
The Obama administration refused to release visitor logs that would show who had come to the White House to discuss health-care policy. Then they did an almost complete reverse and released the information. The Economist’s Democracy in America blog notes that the new administration used the same legal position as Cheney did in refusing to release the names involved in his energy policy meetings.
The Senate is threatening to hold back funding for federal cybersecurity initiatives unless the administration coughs up the legal justifications for the programs, including any OLC memos (click here for a summary without a clickthrough page). Meanwhile, defense contractor Raytheon has begun spinning up a large cybersecurity program of its own.
Ezra Klein cheers the imposition of cost controls in the health-care program in Massachusetts. Conor Friedersdorf worries that what Klein is championing is a system in which the legislature creates politically palatable but unworkable programs and lets the executive agencies push the actual reforms through later when the voters can more or less be ignored.
The Senate passed the Lieberman-Sessions Amendment, which mandates that funds be spent to build missile-defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic.
The U.S. military will now stop reporting enemy body counts in Afghanistan. You may recall that body counts were re-introduced as a victory metric less than two months ago. Bill Roggio sees the change as evidence of the military deliberately deciding to suppress information.
This spring, U.S. diplomats met with Iraqi insurgents to try and reconcile them with the Iraqi political process. The Iraqi government denies that any talks occurred, but the Washington Post is sticking by its story. The outcome of the talks appears unclear.
Jonathan Horowitz talks about detention at Bagram Air Base in an interview with Glenn Greenwald. He claims that current detention policy is hurting the counterinsurgency efforts in that country; he is especially concerned because many people are held for six months based on flimsy accusations. Abu Muqawama responds that the International Security Assistance Force (the NATO troops in Afghanistan) does not have the legal ability to detain Afghans and worries that this will impair combat operations.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sues the CIA, NSA, FBI, DIA, DHS, DoE (Energy), and State Department (DoS?) for documents. The EFF alleges that the aforementioned agencies and departments did not respond to Freedom of Information Act requests for misconduct reports filed with the Intelligence Oversight Board.
The Army seeks out private contractors to provide security at forward operating bases in Afghanistan. According to David Axe, the continued use of contractors is not news to most people who have taken a helicopter ride in Afghanistan or Africa.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued a ruling deciding that Chevron deference should be given to federal agencies when they interpret a statute that, in turn, determines the agency’s own jurisdiction. Jonathan Adler flagged the story and analyzed the decision, noting that multiple circuits have ruled on this issue already and produced a split.
Nathan Hodge reports that the journalists’ “code of conduct” in Afghanistan, issued by the Afghan government, forbids criticism of candidates in the upcoming election if that criticism might lead to violence. He also points to this interview with an Afghan media mogul, who complains that the government has harassed him by dragging his company into the courtroom multiple times.
Interesting tidbit I learned this week – the drug czar (officially, the head of the ONDCP) is legally required to oppose all legislation that would legalize or criminalize marijuana and also required to oppose funding for any research that might support reform. If you want to check the legislation, it is available here; the relevant section is, I believe, Sec. 704 (b)(12). I mention this here because it would raise an interesting issue if we ever have a president in favor of legalization. Why did it come up this week? The current drug czar said that there are no medicinal benefits to marijuana.
Tags: Weekly Web Watch
