This week, Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) filed two amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act for 2014 (H.R. 1960).  The first, co-sponsored by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and James Moran (D-VA), provi...

AE114 is next.  It involves RMC 703(c), and commission procedures for the production of witnesses.  Do these violate the Military Commissions Act, and Al-Nashiri’s constitutional and statutory due proces...

The hearing resumes, with all parties present including the accused.

Your correspondent returns to Fort Meade' Burba Cottage---our usual CCTV venue, Smallwood Hall, being unavailable---to take in another day of piped-in-from-Guantanamo hearings in United States v. Al-Nash...

In an unusual personnel move, the White House announced this afternoon that the President has withdrawn the nomination of Avril Haines to be the Legal Adviser of the State Department and is appointing he...

We resume with reply argument on AE48C.  It comes from Maj Danels, who says the motion is very simple: it asks only for the court to dismiss the charge of conspiracy, period. The prosecution, on the othe...

We return, refreshed, from a longer-than-expected lunch break.

It’s witness time.  Bryan Broyles, Principal Deputy Chief Defense Counsel for the Military Commissions, is sworn.  We’ll hear from him, on matters relating to monitoring---in particular, AE153.

OMB has issued a Statement of Administration Policy (SAP) pointing out White House objections to various elements in pending NDAA legislation (H.R.

Our first argued motion is AE142, a defense bid to prevent Al-Nashiri from being from removed from the courtroom during a closed session.  Rising in support of it is Maj Allison Danels, who notes the com...

Wells already flagged yesterday's news re: General Martins' apparent skepticism about the availability of conspiracy and military commission charges in future military commission cases (at least those br...

At 9:05, the military judge takes the bench.  The mic is affixed.  “Is this on?”  Yes, it is. All parties are present, including the accused---whose attendance moots the need for any voluntariness discus...

We are back at Fort Meade, ready to cover today's almost live motions hearing in United States v. Al-Nashiri. The festivities will begin at 0900. Read our coverage of yesterday's hearings here.

Last week (which seems almost an age ago) when the NSA telephone call meta-data portion of the NSA disclosures first broke, Ben wondered about how an application could be written that would satisfy Secti...

My Brookings colleague William Galston---political theorist, former White House domestic policy adviser, and all-around wise mind---writes in with the following thoughts on the NSA and data-mining: Alexa...

Five years ago today, the Supreme Court handed down its 5-4 decision in Boumediene v. Bush, holding that the Constitution's Suspension Clause "has full effect" at Guantánamo Bay, and that the review sche...

A slew of news reports have discussed whether Snowden’s choice of Hong Kong as a haven of sorts was a wise one.  These reports tend to note the existence of a U.S.-Hong Kong extradition treaty and to des...

Since we’re already talking about the subject, the defense dives right into AE141, its motion on the Prudential Search Requests (PSR) process employed by prosecutors.  Al-Nashiri’s newest defense counsel...