Happy April Fools Day

Benjamin Wittes
Sunday, April 1, 2012, 8:51 AM
Anyone know of any good national security April Fools Day pranks? I was trying to think of one this morning, but I came up pretty dry. National security seems like particularly dangerous territory in which to try pranks.

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Anyone know of any good national security April Fools Day pranks? I was trying to think of one this morning, but I came up pretty dry. National security seems like particularly dangerous territory in which to try pranks. Taken too seriously, a prank in this area could--you know--start a war ("Hey, did you hear that the Archduke was knocked off at the behest of the Serbian government?") or cause the wrong person to get locked up or targeted with lethal force ("Hey, I heard that guy on a sat phone the other day talking to Ayman!"). Still, humans being human, and Lawfare readers being Lawfare readers, I'm sure that at least one of this tribe knows of an April Fools prank so good that it would be derelict of us not to share it. Please email me with any great pranks you might know of related to law and security. In the meantime, the only one I can think of--and I am aware of it only because it relates to me--is this from a year ago from the estimable Larry Solum. In a weird example of life imitating parody, I actually am now writing a paper on treason and civil liberties in the early republic--though about the Presidency of James Madison, not Thomas Jefferson, and about the War of 1812, not about the Barbary Wars. I suppose it proves that I'm very predictable--or that the prank was, in fact, very clever.

Benjamin Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books.

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