EXECUTIVE WATCH

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.

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U.S. forces pulled out of major Iraqi cities in what CQ Politics calls a “quiet” withdrawal. Foreign Policy’s Mark Lynch says the Obama Administration should be praised for honoring the Status of Force Agreement between the two countries. Foreign Policy’s Peter Feaver fears America is compromising a decent outcome in Iraq. Fellow Foreign Policy blogger, Tom Ricks, says that there’s no decent outcome to be had, but concedes that a pulling out now might not be optimal for undoing the Bush-era damage.

Foreign Policy’s Mark Lynch examines how Arabs will judge Obama’s Guantanamo policy, concluding that his policy must be clear and bold to have a positive impact. The New York Times’ Charlie Savage illustrates why clarity and boldness have not marked Obama’s counterterrorism policies thus far, instead bearing close resemblance to the policies of President Bush. In other Gitmo commentary, the Atlantic Monthly’s Chris Good details efforts by a Guantanamo detainee to suppress evidence produced by torture and place the Obama administration in the difficult position of demonstrating why the evidence is still legitimate. In another case, the New York Times reports that lawyers want to visit black sites run by the CIA before they are decommissioned to see if they were tainted by harsh conditions and torture.

The New York Times’ Roger Cohen says if President Obama engages with Iran, he “betrays millions of Iranians who have defrauded and have risked their lives to have their votes count.” The National Review’s Andy McCarthy agrees, with his characteristic rhetorical flourish.

The Washington Independent’s Spencer Ackerman slams Secretary of Defense Bob Gates’s recent statement on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell as incoherent, while The Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb says it’s reasonable. Relatedly, Lt. Dan Choi lost his first administrative challenge after being dismissed under DADT.

ProPublica’s Dafna Linzer notes that President Obama appeared to back away from issuing an executive order establishing indefinite detention. Left-leaning commentators were angered by rumors of an impending executive order, including Obsidian Wings’ Hilzoy, who said that it would undermine America’s basic respect for the rule of law. Liza Goitein writes for Balkinization about why the issue is so divisive. Benjamin Wittes and Jack Goldsmith pen a guest column for the Washington Post explaining why the President should collaborate more with Congress on national security matters. Volokh Conspiracy’s Jonathan Adler agrees with their analysis.

The Obama administration comes up with a way to avoid a fight with Congress over the Uighurs detained at Guantanamo – send them to Palau.  Or to Bermuda.  The Telegraph reports that the UK was not consulted.  Thomas Joscelyn sees a resultant fracture developing in the US-UK relationship.  Scott Horton sees friction between the allies resulting from the UK Law Lords’ declaration that detainees are entitled to view all the evidence against them.  And Slate reports on what happens to detainees that are shipped to other countries.

The Obama administration also transferred three detainees to Saudi Arabia.  The Weekly Standard’s Thomas Joscelyn critically notes that one of them is a convicted murderer (in Bosnia).

Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Lieberman calls Guantanamo a “humane” facility and urges the President to keep it open.  A Guantanamo detainee allegedly commits suicide. but the AP is skeptical of the government’s story.  Christopher Hitchens calls Guantanamo a “state-sponsored madrasah,” where the guards are humane but the worst detainees force the others to live the lifestyle of a radical Muslim.

Reports claim that the White House has  abandoned plans to transfer detainees into the United States.  Contrarily, Rep. John Boehner claims that the “first step in the Democrats’ plan to import terrorists into America” has been put in motion.  His evidence: “[A] Tanzanian national held at Guantanamo since September 2006, arrived at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, which has housed several suspected terrorists during their prosecutions in the federal court for the Southern District of New York.”  In Iraq, a detainee suspected of killing 5 Americans is released as part of a peace deal.  And White House press spokesman Robert Gibbs refuses to speculate on whether detainees found not guilty by federal courts would be released.

A Senate Judiciary subcommittee holds a hearing on the implications of long-term detention.  Dan Froomkin and Glenn Greenwald are both optimistic that the Obama administration will be forced to more clearly state whether it supports the Bush administration’s policies or not.

Senators Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman proposed an amendment to the latest war spending bill to exclude photos of detainee abuse from being accessible under the Freedom of Information act.  Greg Sargent reports that Nancy Pelosi and other House liberals and libertarians will not allow the amendment into the final bill.  Michael Goldfarb reports that, in the interim, President Obama may use an executive order to prevent the release of the photographs in the event of an unfavorable court ruling.  Slate helpfully explains what happens when the CIA tells a judge that documents cannot be released.

Judge Jeffrey White refuses to dismiss Jose Padilla’s suit against John Yoo.  Separately, UK cops allegedly waterboard drug suspects.  The New York Times reports that all Bush DOJ officials involved in a 2005 debate about waterboarding agreed that it was legal.  Debate erupts about the role of James Comey, with Scott Horton and Glenn Greenwald accusing the Times of reporting only selected e-mails.

President Obama appoints a special master, or “compensation czar,” to oversee compensation for executives at companies receiving federal assistance.  Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner rushes to clarify the guidelines for the new office .  Meanwhile, the “transparency czar” struggles to provide transparency to the federal assistance programs and urges that “stress tests” be rerun.  And Rep. Darrell Issa goes originalist on the Treasury Secretary, arguing that the modern office of the Treasury Secretary goes far beyond Alexander Hamilton’s worst nightmares. (more…)

President Barack Obama delivered an address from Cairo directed at the “Muslim World” entitled “A New Beginning.” Opinio Juris’s Roger Alford favorably compares the address to Woodrow Wilson’s famous speeches and distills the message to seven key issues. The New Republic’s William Galston concurs, pointing out that Obama has a knack for seizing the moment.  Mouin Rabbani is more skeptical, labeling the speech a “Ctrl+Alt+Del” operation in which American Middle East policy is merely “being rebooted into the same decrepit operating system … it’s the same wars, same autocratic friends and discredited allies, same objective of hegemony and domination.” The New Republic’s Michael Crowley similarly catalogues parallels with President Bush’s language, but maintains that Obama’s speech will have a far greater impact. Harper’s Scott Horton, however, is surprised by the strong criticism that Obama had for all major players in the region, though Afghan Haseeb Humayoon sensed a lack of boldness in Obama’s tone and substance on promoting democracy and human rights. The president’s line that Iran should articulate “not what it is against, but what future it wants to build” resonates with Iranian Taj Bahkhsh. Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab notes that the speech was eloquent and set lofty expectations, but says that failure to follow through with actions “will be much worse than had they not been made in the first place.”

The reaction among commentators on Israel has been mixed. David Newman applauds the speech and says it is time for Israel to stop merely speaking of peace and start implementing it by dismantling settlements. James Kirchick finds it “deeply unsettling” that Obama saved his harshest words for Israel. Daniel Gordis thinks Obama split the difference between ideological extremes and assumed positions “virtually identical to those of Israel’s political center.”

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In a week that saw surprising announcements from President Barack Obama that photos of detainees abuse would remain concealed and that military commissions would be revived, freshman Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA) strikes a chord with many on the Left, saying: “The difference between the last administration and this one is the difference between night and dawn. But we’re looking for day.” A New York Times news analysis by David Sanger sees the developments as part of a trend of Obama leading by second thought while an editorial from the paper says that Obama is running the risk “of missing the chance to make sure the misdeeds and horrors of the Bush years are never repeated.” The Weekly Standard responds by arguing that the New York Times “misunderstands the entire nature of the war al Qaeda and its allies are waging on Western Civilization.”

President Barack Obama’s decision to revive and retool military commissions for approximately 20 detainees being held in Guantanamo Bay enraged rights advocacy organizations such as the ACLU as well as liberal commentators like Glenn Greenwald.  Writing for Salon, the ACLU’s Denny LeBoeuf captures the Left’s frustration, noting that the commissions are irredeemably flawed since they permit so many evidentiary “shortcuts” like confessions extracted by torture and cannot measure up to a legitimate system of justice refined over 200 years. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal heaps praise on Obama for recognizing that “civilian courts are largely unsuited for the realities of the war on terror” and the National Review’s Rich Lowry says the move vindicates the worldview of former Vice President Dick Cheney. Executive Watch guest contributor Scott L. Silliman and the Atlantic Monthly’s Andrew Sullivan take a middle course, contending that Obama is striking the right balance by removing the worst procedural flaws of the Bush-era commissions while still recognizing that Al-Qaeda detainees are better thought of as combatants than criminals. Opinio Juris’s Julian Ku reminds readers that Obama’s assistant Solicitor General Neal Katyal successfully challenged President Bush’s military commissions in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld as illegal under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions; Ku is anxious to see Katyal’s justification for reviving the commissions. The Atlantic Monthly’s Marc Ambinder says that America’s allies are skeptical of the commissions’ validity. Although many liberals were quick to say Obama was breaking a campaign pledge and many conservatives such as the National Review’s Andrew McCarthy were eager to call Obama disingenuous, CQ Politics’ David Nather makes the important observation that Obama carefully chose his words on the campaign trail and never condemned the idea of commissions outright.

In other Guantanomo-related news, Obsidian Wings’ Hilzoy responds (parts 1 and 2) to Newt Gingrich’s recent ruminations about the troubling consequences of releasing 17 Chinese Muslim Uighurs on U.S. soil by making clear that they were not trained by al-Qaeda and that there is no evidence that they even harbor ill will against America. Lakhdar Boumediene, a former Guantanamo detainee who successfully challenged a portion of the 2006 Military Commissions Act, has arrived in France where he will face terrorism-related charges.

President Obama’s refusal to release photos of detainee abuse (reversing an earlier determination) in relation to an ACLU lawsuit also sparked a firestorm of controversy. The Washington Post’s David Ignatius says that it is an act of political opportunism and distancing from the Left, Obama’s “Sister Soulja” moment. The ACLU charges Obama with adopting “the stonewalling tactics and opaque policies” of his predecessor and says the country must acknowledge the crimes of the past if it wants to move forward. Obama justified his decision by noting that release of the photos would not enhance our understanding of the acts carried out by a small number of individuals, but would inflame anti-American sentiment and “have a chilling effect on future investigations of detainee abuse.” Reason’s Matt Welch and the Washington Independent’s Spencer Ackerman find Obama’s justifications wanting, if not absurd – the former because the release of the Abu Ghraib photos did add to the gravity of the horrendous acts and the latter because only torturers would be chilled. Anonymous Liberal says it’s contradictory for conservatives to steadfastly defend torture, but then admit releasing photos of such acts would “radicalize the Muslim world or help al Qaeda recruit.” Commentary Magazine’s Jennifer Rubin applauds Obama’s decision and says that it reveals he listens to the soundest reasoning, not the best campaign rhetoric. University of Chicago Law professor Geoffrey Stone writes in the Huffington Post, however, that Obama’s decision deprives the United States of a public debate that should be “at the very core of our self-governing society.” Empty Wheel also argues that it violates Obama’s new Freedom of Information Act guidelines. The New Republic’s Jason Zengerle and True Slant’s Ryan Sager examine the same social scientific evidence about jurors’ responses to gruesome evidence and reach opposite conclusions about the photo’s release – Zengerle suggesting that it might inflame violence against American troops and Sager noting that it would motivate citizens to punish torturers. Finally, Foreign Policy’s Tom Ricks says that Obama has gotten rolled by his generals, while his Foreign Policy colleague, Peter Fever says it’s just as likely that Obama is “getting informed” by his generals and making sound decisions in light of their advice.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, under the leadership of Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT), held hearings on torture. Talking Points Memo’s Zachary Roth has an excellent roundup of the major news emerging from the hearings. The Project on Government Secrecy reports on former State Department Phillip Zelikow’s testimony, where he noted that he had authored a memo advancing a stricter standard for torture’s legality and was thwarted by other Administration officials in 2006. He also accused Administration officials of attempting to destroy all copies of the memo, but revealed that a copy had finally turned up. The Weekly Standard’s Thomas Joscelyn spotlights and refutes other statements by Zelikow such as his claim that many detainees “do not show large signs of future dangerousness.” ThinkProgress writes about the testimony of another key witness, FBI interrogator Ali Zoufan, who reiterated that Abu Zubaydah revealed useful information under standard interrogation techniques and said that President Bush had been told (and repeated) “half-truths” about his interrogation. ThinkProgress also notes that federal judge Jay Bybee specifically declined Patrick Leahy’s invitation to address the commission.  Concerning the broader topic of legal advice on torture, the American Constitution Society’s Harold Bruff lays out the case that Bush Administration lawyers betrayed their oaths to the Constitution and to their profession. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, the former chief counsel for the Senate Intelligence Committee Victoria Toensing refutes this view, arguing that the critics of the torture memos still haven’t read them and that the lawyers were merely providing their best advice on methods the CIA wished to use. The Atlantic Monthly’s Marc Ambinder reports that the Obama Administration is growing wearier of a Truth Commission, fearing that it will paralyze the ability of the nation’s spy services to execute their tasks.

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