Today's Headlines and Commentary
Let's start with some big military commissions news. Mark Martins, the new Chief Prosecutor for Military Commissions has proposed that Guantanamo cases be broadcast on a 40-second delay to sites in the United States to allow more people, including the media and victims, to watch the court proceedings. Up until now only those actually at Guantanamo Bay could watch the proceedings, as Carol Rosenberg at the Miami Herald points out.
Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Let's start with some big military commissions news. Mark Martins, the new Chief Prosecutor for Military Commissions has proposed that Guantanamo cases be broadcast on a 40-second delay to sites in the United States to allow more people, including the media and victims, to watch the court proceedings. Up until now only those actually at Guantanamo Bay could watch the proceedings, as Carol Rosenberg at the Miami Herald points out. The announcement came in a Weekly Standard profile of Martins, whom it terms "the legal stud." The Standard describes Martins as suggesting that:
Military commissions will feature new measures to ensure transparency, including a venue enabling victims and media to observe proceedings near-real-time in the continental United States (40-second delay to ensure safeguarding of national security information).Readers may recall that Ben floated a very similar idea this past summer:
critically, the live video feed of proceedings (which is shot anyway for the benefit of reporters in overflow rooms at Guantanamo) should be available stateside as well. At a minimum, a closed-circuit video feed should be accessible to anyone who wants to see it at sites around the country. This would, I suspect, have a dramatic impact on the number of people who view the process first-hand–and that diversity will affect what ends up being said about the process.Speaking of military commissions, the Obama administration is considering a military commission trial in the United States for Ali Mussa Daqduq, reports the AP (via the Washington Post). Bobby also posted on this over the weekend. In other news, Politico's Mackenzie Weinger writes here about the 9th Circuit's decision about OFAC on Friday, about which Bobby posted on Friday. The LA Times' editorial over the weekend discusses the legal and moral questions surrounding the use of drones in war, as does Post editoral. Craig Whitlock at the Post writes on the Navy's lack of interest in using drones. The U.S. launched drone attacks on al-Shabab in Somalia, reports BBC News. The AP's Selcan Hacaoglu reports that the U.S. will deploy drones on Turkish soil to assist in the U.S. and Turkish fight against Kurdish rebels with bases in Iraq. NYPD's Commissioner Ray Kelly was interviewed this weekend on 60 Minutes, and in answering questions regarding the Department's preparedness, he affirmed that the NYPD has the equipment and the training to take down an aircraft if necessary. Mark Memmott at NPR has the story. Follow us on Twitter for interesting law and security-related articles, and email me noteworthy articles that I may have missed at wakeman.lawfare@gmail.com.
Raffaela Wakeman is a Senior Director at In-Q-Tel. She started her career at the Brookings Institution, where she spent five years conducting research on national security, election reform, and Congress. During this time she was also the Associate Editor of Lawfare. From there, Raffaela practiced law at the U.S. Department of Defense for four years, advising her clients on privacy and surveillance law, cybersecurity, and foreign liaison relationships. She departed DoD in 2019 to join the Majority Staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where she oversaw the Intelligence Community’s science and technology portfolios, cybersecurity, and surveillance activities. She left HPSCI in May 2021 to join IQT.
Raffaela received her BS and MS in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009 and her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 2015, where she was recognized for her commitment to public service with the Joyce Chiang Memorial Award. While at the Department of Defense, she was the inaugural recipient of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s General Counsel Award for exhibiting the highest standards of leadership, professional conduct, and integrity.
