The Lawfare Podcast Episode #23: Brig. Gen. Mark Martins on His Decision to Drop Standalone Conspiracy Charges Against 9/11 Defendants


Charlie Savage of the New York Times has reported that both Martins' decision and the new Justice Department brief followed a significant interagency dispute over how to respond to Hamdan II and that the Justice Department's decision followed Attorney General Eric Holder's overruling of Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr.
General Martins joined me by phone this morning to discuss his decision and the implications of Hamdan II for the future of military commissions more generally. There were, of course, some issues he couldn't address in our discussion---or could address only glancingly. But the discussion sheds a lot of new light on the prosecutor's thinking after Hamdan II.
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.