Today's Headlines and Commentary
At least one member of Congress believes that killing Al-Aulaqi is an impeachable offense: Congressman Ron Paul. Dan Hirschhorn of the Politico reports on his remarks in a New Hampshire town hall meeting.
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At least one member of Congress believes that killing Al-Aulaqi is an impeachable offense: Congressman Ron Paul. Dan Hirschhorn of the Politico reports on his remarks in a New Hampshire town hall meeting. Meanwhile, Roger Simon tries to answer the question, "Should the president have the right to kill you?"
Phil Stewart at Reuters interviewed a senior U.S. official on the the intelligence network built leading to the strike against Al-Aulaqi.
Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, serving a life sentence for his involvement in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania, has succeeded in convincing Judge Marcia S. Krieger of the District Court in Colorado to allow him to pursue a lawsuit arguing that his First Amendment rights were being violated when he was held under special administrative measures (SAMs). SAMs bar high-security inmates from much communication with outsiders. John Schwartz and Benjamin Weiser at the New York Times cover the story, and you can read the opinion here.
Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled on Friday that prosecutors may use the "silent witness procedure," in which a document is shown to the jurors, defendant and judge, but not to the public. The order was made with regards to the upcoming trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling. Josh Gerstein has the story at the Politico, along with Judge Brinkema's order.
Carol Rosenberg at the Miami Herald has this coverage of the announcement that the trial of KSM and his four alleged co-conspirators will not start until at the earliest next year, allowing time for lawyers from both sides to make recommendations on whether the death penalty should still be pursued, as well as whether all five men should be tried together. The last paragraph in the article, meanwhile, notes an important development in access to the trials in Guantanamo:
Meantime, the Pentagon is preparing a viewing site at Fort Meade, Md., near Washington, D.C., for reporters to watch the proceedings by a 40-second-delayed closed circuit feed as an alternative to making the trip to Camp Justice at Guantánamo. The military is also preparing a viewing site in Norfolk, Va., for the families of the 17 American sailors who were killed in the Cole attack off Yemen in October 2000.Al Shabab in Somalia has claimed responsibility for the truck bomb that was detonated outside the Ministry of Education in Mogadishu. Read the AP story (via NPR) and the Times article by Jeffrey Gettleman. The AP (via the Post) reports that the Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal of John Reece Roth, a University of Tennessee professor who was convicted of violating the Arms Export Control Act for providing foreign students with access to his work on drones through an Air Force contract. 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.
