What If We Scrubbed Wachovia Like We Did the Lebanese Canadian Bank?

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I’ll have several things to say about Jo Becker’s story on the big Hezbollah money laundering ring. For the moment, I’m most interested in how Treasury Department authorities uncovered the ring: by first declaring Lebanese Canadian Bank a money launderer, providing reason to break it up. When an affiliate of Société Générale agreed to buy the bank, they also agreed to scrub its money laundering accounts. To do so, it specifically had someone beyond the Big Four accounting firm that had “overlooked” the accounts in the past scrub the books, including bringing in John Ashcroft.

As part of its own agreement with Treasury officials, Lebanon’s Central Bank set up a process to scrub the books. But compliance officers at S.G.B.L.’s French partner, Société Générale, were skeptical of the Central Bank’s choice of investigators. One of them, the local affiliate of the international auditing firm Deloitte, had presumably missed the drug-related accounts the first time around, when it served as the Lebanese Canadian Bank’s outside auditor.

And, according to people knowledgeable about Lebanese banking, the central bank’s on-the-ground representative had been recommended to that post by Hezbollah.

As an extra step, to reassure wary international banks, the chairman of S.G.B.L.,  Antoun Sehnaoui, commissioned a parallel audit, with the help of Société Générale’s chief money-laundering compliance officer. And to make sure that his bank did not run afoul of Treasury officials by inadvertently taking on dirty assets, he also hired a consultant intimately familiar with the Patriot Act provision used to take the bank down: John Ashcroft, the former attorney general whose Justice Department wrote the law.

And then it investigated (presumably using pattern analysis) each and every account at the bank.

Initially, the auditors looked only at records for the past year. As they began combing through thousands of accounts, they looked for customers with known links to Hezbollah. They also looked for telltale patterns: repeated deposits of vast amounts of cash, huge wire transfers broken into smaller transactions and transfers between companies in such wildly incongruous lines of business that they made sense only as fronts to camouflage the true origin of the funds.

Each type of red flag was assigned a point value. An account with 1 or 2 points on a scale to 10 was likely to survive. One with 8 or 9 cried out for further scrutiny. Ultimately, the auditors were left with nearly 200 accounts that appeared to add up to a giant money-laundering operation, with Hezbollah smack in the middle, according to American officials. Complex webs of transactions featured the same companies over and over again, most of them owned by Shiite businessmen, many known Hezbollah supporters. Some have since been identified as Hezbollah fronts.

So effectively, they took a bank known to ignore money laundering controls and took it apart, piece by piece, to see all the money laundering it had sheltered.

Compare how the US dealt with Wachovia, which was involved in laundering a far greater chunk of money for drug cartels: $363 billion.

US authorities partly became aware Wachovia was helping cartels launder money when they captured a plane in 2006. In addition, the DEA first noted their role in launder Casas de Cambio money in 2005, and a British whistleblower had identified signs that same year.

But it’s clear that by 2007 officials from top regulators were aware of the problems.

Late in 2007, Woods attended a function at Scotland Yard where colleagues from the US were being entertained. There, he sought out a representative of the Drug Enforcement Administration and told him about the casas de cambio, the SARs and his employer’s reaction. The Federal Reserve and officials of the office of comptroller of currency in Washington DC then “spent a lot of time examining the SARs” that had been sent by Woods to Charlotte from London.

“They got back in touch with me a while afterwards and we began to put the pieces of the jigsaw together,” says Woods. What they found was – as Costa says – the tip of the iceberg of what was happening to drug money in the banking industry, but at least it was visible and it had a name: Wachovia.

But the prosecution of Wachovia wasn’t initiated until after Wells Fargo took it over in 2008. Which means Treasury could have insisted on the same process–an examination of a bank with known problems with money laundering to find all of its criminal clients.

It’s possible Treasury did–or is still doing that. Read more →

Iran Seeks Interpol Prosecution of Neoconservatives Jack Keane, Reuel Marc Gerecht

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Jack Keane, on left, and Reuel Marc Gerecht, on right.

Multiple news outlets in Iran are reporting that Iran has asked Interpol to prosecute former General Jack Keane (co-author of the Iraq surge) and former CIA operative Reuel Marc Gerecht on the basis of their open calls for the assassination of Iranian figures during a meeting of two House Homeland Security Subcommitttees on October 26.

From Mehr News:

In a letter to Interpol, Iranian National Prosecutor General Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejei has called for the prosecution of the U.S. officials, IRNA reported on Monday.

/snip/

According to the online magazine Firstpost, at a session of the committee, Jack Keane, a retired four-star general who helped plan the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq, called for the assassination of the leaders of Iran’s Qods Force in retaliation for their alleged role in a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington, a claim vehemently denied by Iranian officials.

“Why don’t we kill them? We kill other people who are running terrorist organizations against the United States,” he said.

The other witness, Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA officer who is now a senior fellow at the neoconservative think tank the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the committee, “I don’t think that you are going to really intimidate these people, get their attention, unless you shoot somebody.”

The article then goes on to report that Congressmen Peter King, Michael McCaul and Patrick Meehan signed a November 22 letter stating “that the U.S. should undermine Iranian officials and damage the country’s infrastructure through increasing covert operations”.

Fars News Agency claims that Interpol stands ready to help in the effort:

Iran’s Deputy Police Chief Brigadier General Ahmad Reza Radan announced that the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) has promised to help Tehran prosecute the two former US officials who had called on the Obama administration to assassinate Iran’s top military commanders.

“The Interpol will take the steps for the prosecution of two Americans who sponsor terrorism,” Radan told FNA on Tuesday. Read more →

Defense Authorization Conference Makes Few Changes to Detainee Provisions

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According to a press release from Senator Levin’s office, the conference on the Defense Authorization has made few changes to the detainee provisions institutionalizing military detention of alleged terrorists.

With regards to Section 1031, which authorized the indefinite detention of alleged terrorists, the conference bill,

Reaffirm[s] the military’s existing authority to detain individuals captured in the course of hostilities conducted pursuant to the Authorization for the Use of Military Force. No change has been made to the Senate version of this provision, which confirms that nothing in the provision may be “construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.”

Section 1032, which mandates presumptive military detention, adds language purporting not to change FBI’s national security authorities (though I don’t understand how that could practically be the case).

Require military detention – subject to a Presidential waiver – for foreign al Qaeda terrorists who attack the United States. This provision specifically exempts United States citizens and lawful resident aliens, authorizes transfer of detainees to civilian custody for trial in civilian court, and leaves it up to the President to establish procedures for determining how and when persons determined to be subject to military custody would be transferred, and to ensure that such determinations do not interfere with ongoing intelligence, surveillance, or interrogation operations. Language added in conference confirms that nothing in the provision may be “construed to affect the existing criminal enforcement and national security authorities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or any other domestic law enforcement agency with regard to a covered person, regardless whether such covered person is held in military custody.” [my emphasis]

And the conference does change the breathtaking limits on Attorney General authority in the Senate bill I laid out here, apparently adopting the House formulation of requiring the AG to ask permission of the Defense Secretary before the AG does his or her job.

Require the Attorney General to consult with the Secretary of Defense before prosecuting a foreign al Qaeda terrorist who is determined to be covered under the previous section, or any other person who is held in military custody outside the United States, on whether the more appropriate forum for trial is a federal court or a military commission and whether the individual should be held in civilian or military custody pending trial.

It seems to me the language does enough to avoid a veto from the cowardly Obama, but still does terrible damage to both the clarity of national security roles and overall investigative expertise.

The Wild, Wild West: Drones Hunting Down Cattle Rustlers

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This story, billed as an account of the first Predator-drone assisted arrest in the US, has all the elements we’ve been expecting from this development.

The drone in question belongs to the Border Patrol; presumably, it operates under the legal black hole built up around borders.

The drones belong to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which operates eight Predators on the country’s northern and southwestern borders to search for illegal immigrants and smugglers.

[snip]

Congress first authorized Customs and Border Protection to buy unarmed Predators in 2005. Officials in charge of the fleet cite broad authority to work with police from budget requests to Congress that cite “interior law enforcement support” as part of their mission.

The local sheriff used the drone to conduct sophisticated surveillance of his target, the Brossart family.

For four hours, the Predator circled 10,000 feet above the farm. Parked on a nearby road, Janke and the other officers watched live drone video and thermal images of Alex, Thomas and Jacob Brossart — and their mother, Susan — on a hand-held device with a 4-inch screen.
The glowing green images showed people carrying what appeared to be long rifles moving behind farm equipment and other barriers.

What surprised me, though, was the justification for using the drone: $6,000 worth of cows that had wandered into the family’s property.

A search of the property turned up four rifles, two shotguns, assorted bows and arrows and a samurai sword, according to court records. Police also found the six missing cows, valued at $6,000.

Now, to be fair, the cow thieves in question weren’t just your garden variety cow thieves. In a move that ought to remind Conservatives why they used to embrace libertarianism, these cow thieves allegedly belong to the Sovereign Citizen Movement.

The six adult Brossarts allegedly belonged to the Sovereign Citizen Movement, an antigovernment group that the FBI considers extremist and violent. The family had repeated run-ins with local police, including the arrest of two family members earlier that day arising from their clash with a deputy over the cattle.

It’d be nice if the story considered this angle in more detail. Was the sheriff quicker to use this drone because he was targeting the closest thing his district has to terrorists? Is this part of the (also entirely predictable) focus on domestic terrorism for local law enforcement that doesn’t have any Muslim extremists to hunt?

DOJ Doesn’t Think Bloggers Are Media Either–and It May Use NSLs to Get Media Call Records

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A number of bloggers are pointing, with concern, to an Oregon case in which a blogger got hit with a $2.5 million defamation judgement.

Oregon law provides special legal protections against defamation lawsuits to journalists associated with traditional media outlets. Such publications are immune from defamation suits unless the defamed individual first requests a retraction. Journalists at recognized media outlets are also protected from revealing confidential sources. Cox argued that she was eligible for protection under both provisions and asked the judge to set aside the verdict.

But Judge Marco Hernandez disagreed. “Although defendant is a self-proclaimed ‘investigative blogger’ and defines herself as ‘media,’ the record fails to show that she is affiliated with any newspaper, magazine, periodical, book, pamphlet, news service, wire service, news or feature syndicate, broadcast station or network, or cable television system,” the judge wrote. “Thus, she is not entitled to the protections of the [Oregon journalist shield] law.”

That result was apparently dictated by the text of the Oregon shield statute, which singles out those specific media technologies for legal protection.

But as Kashmir Hill notes, even aside from the outdated terms of Oregon’s law, the woman in question had set up a series of websites pretty much designed to hurt the reputation (and especially the Google searches) of the firm in question, and then sent an email asking for $2,500 a month for “reputation management” services to undo her work.

The Oregon case, in other words, is more complicated than it has been portrayed.

DOJ Doesn’t Consider Many Bloggers News Media

But while we’re talking about whether bloggers are protected under media guidelines, we probably ought to be looking at DOJ’s recently changed Domestic Investigation and Operations Guide, which also don’t consider bloggers to be protected as media (I wrote about these changes here, but the guidelines themselves have been released, in heavily redacted form). Unlike Oregon, DIOG does include online news in its definition of media (PDF 157).

“News media” includes persons and organizations that gather, report or publish news, whether through traditional means (e.g., newspapers, radio, magazines, news service) or the on-line or wireless equivalent. A “member of the media” is a person who gathers, reports, or publishes new through the news media.

But then it goes on to exclude bloggers from those included in the term “news media.”

The definition does not, however, include a person or entity who posts information or opinion on the Internet in blogs, chat rooms or social networking sites, such as YouTube, Facebook, or MySpace, unless that person or entity falls within the definition of a member of the media or a news organization under the other provisions within this section (e.g., a national news reporter who posts on his/her personal blog).

Then it goes onto lay out what I will call the “WikiLeaks exception.”

As the term is used in the DIOG, “news media” is not intended to include persons and entities that simply make information available. Instead, it is intended to apply to a person or entity that gathers information of potential interest to a segment of the general public, uses editorial skills to turn raw materials into a distinct work, and distributes that work to an audience, as a journalism professional.

The definition does warn that if there is any doubt, the person should be treated as media. Nevertheless, the definition seems to exclude a whole bunch of people (including, probably, me), who are engaged in journalism.

DOJ Has Made It Easier To Investigate Journalists’ Contacts

Though to some degree, it doesn’t matter, because the new DIOG treats the media so poorly in any case. It considers investigations sensitive (and therefore requiring special approvals) only if the member of the news media (or religious or political organization, or academic institution) is the subject of the investigation, not if they are a witness, as media almost always will be in leak investigations.

Just as troubling, the new DIOG seems to make it a lot easier to get news media contact records in national security investigations. Read more →

Jon Kyl Justifies Military Detention by Claiming CIA-Military Credit for FBI Interrogations

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In the entire two week debate over the detainee provisions of the Defense Authorization, the champions of military detention offered almost no rationale for it (a pity, then, that the opponents barely explained why it’s such a bad idea), aside from Lindsey Graham repeating endlessly that detainees shouldn’t get lawyers (he never explained how this claim jived with his promise that every detainee would have access to habeas corpus).

One exception is a statement that Jon Kyl submitted to the record but did not read (the statement starts on PDF 5). After reasserting the legality of the detainee provisions under Hamdi, Kyl’s (was it Kyl’s?) statement offered an “explanation” for military detention; I’ve reproduced that part of the statement in full below the line.

Now, the statement doesn’t make any sense. It invokes what it claims were CIA interrogations and treats them as military interrogation; though in fact a number of the interrogations the statement invokes were FBI interrogations.

The statement claims detainees wouldn’t have a lawyer, though the architects of the bill have made it clear (as has SCOTUS) detainees would have access to habeas corpus and therefore (presumably) lawyers.

Perhaps not surprising, the statement also invokes two discredited pieces of propaganda: Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby’s January 9, 2003 Declaration in opposition to granting Jose Padilla habeas corpus and George Bush’s September 6, 2006 speech announcing he was moving 14 high value detainees to Gitmo.

It relies on Jacoby’s statement to argue for the value of a “relationship of dependency,” which seems to no more than a rebranding of Bruce Jessen’s “learned helplessness.” And note, Jacoby’s statement, written six months after DOD took custody of Padilla, spoke of intelligence he might offer prospectively; it doesn’t claim to have gotten any intelligence using this “relationship of dependency.”

And it relies on Bush’s statement to claim that military or CIA interrogations exposed that KSM was Mukhtar and Jose Padilla’s plans, both of which came from Ali Soufan’s FBI interrogation of Zubaydah. It also claims the CIA interrogations yielded Ramzi bin al-Shibh’s location, whereas Soufan, at least, claims that came from an FBI interrogation in Bagram. And it claims CIA’s interrogation of KSM revealed the Liberty Towers plot that had been broken up a year earlier. In other words, Kyl’s argument for why we need military detention consists of repeating discredited propaganda claiming CIA credit for interrogations largely conducted by the FBI. The same FBI officers who will lose their ability to interrogate detainees if and when this bill goes into place.

In short, one of the most comprehensive arguments for why we need military detention instead makes the case for retaining FBI primacy. At the same time, it appears to endorse the “learned helplessness” that ended up making delaying any value to KSM and other detainee interrogations.

Even the champions of military detention offer proof that we’re safer with civilian detention.

What follows is the statement Kyl submitted to the record.

Wahy Military Detention Is Necessary: To Allow Intelligence Gathering That Will Prevent Future Terrorist Attacks Against the American People

Some may ask, why does it matter whether a person who has joined Al Qaeda is held in military custody or is placed in the civilian court system? One critical reason is intelligence gathering. A terrorist operative held in military custody can be effectively interrogated. In the civilian system, however, that same terrorist would be given a lawyer, and the first thing that lawyer will tell his client is, “don’t say anything. We can fight this.”

In military custody, by contrast, not only are there no lawyers for terrorists. The indefinite nature of the detention–it can last as long as the war continues–itself creates conditions that allow effective interrogation. It creates the relationship of dependency and trust that experienced interrogators have made clear is critical to persuading terrorist detainees to talk.

Navy Vice-Admiral Lowell Jacoby, who at the time was the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, explained how military custody is critical to effective interrogation in a declaration that he submitted in the Padilla litigation. He emphasized that successful noncoercive interrogation takes time–and it requires keeping the detainee away from lawyers.

Vice-Admiral Jacoby stated:

DIA’s approach to interrogation is largely dependent upon creating an atmosphere of dependency and trust between the subject and the interrogator. Developing the kind of relationship of trust and dependency necessary for effective interrogations is a process that can take a significant amount of time. There are numerous examples of situations where interrogators have been unable to obtain valuable intelligence from a subject until months, or, even years, after the interrogation process began.

Anything that threatens the perceived dependency and trust between the subject and interrogator directly threatens the value of interrogation as an intelligence gathering tool. Even seemingly minor interruptions can have profound psychological impacts on the delicate subject/interrogator relationship. Any insertion of counsel into the subject-interrogator relationship, for example–even if only for a limited duration or for a specific purpose–can undo months of work and may permanently shut down the interrogation process.

Specifically with regard to Jose Padilla, Vice Admiral Jacoby also noted in his Declaration that: “Providing [Padilla] access to counsel now would create expectations by Padilla that his ultimate release may be obtained through an adversarial civil litigation process. This would break–probably irreparably–the sense of dependency and trust that the interrogators are attempting to create.”

In other words, military custody is critical to successful interrogation. Once a terrorist detainee is transferred to the civilian court system, the conditions for successful interrogation are destroyed.

Preventing the detention of U.S. citizens who collaborate with Al Qaeda would be a historic abandonment of the law of war. And, by preventing effective interrogation of these collaborators, it would likely have severe consequences for our ability to prevent future terrorist attacks against the American people.

We know from cold, hard experience that successful interrogation is critical to uncovering information that will prevent future attacks against civilians.

On September 6 of 2006, when President Bush announced the transfer of 14 high-value terrorism detainees to Guantanamo, he also described information that the United States had obtained by interrogating these detainees. Abu Zubaydah was captured by U.S. forces several months after the September 11 attacks. Under interrogation, he revealed that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the principal organizer of the September 11 attacks. This is information that the United States did not already know–and that we only obtained through the successful military interrogation of Zubaydah.

Zubaydah also described a terrorist attack that Al Qaida operatives were planning to launch inside this country–an attack of which the United States had no previous knowledge. Zubaydah described the operatives involved in this attack and where they were located. This information allowed the United States to capture these operatives–one while he was traveling to the United States.

Again, just imagine what might have happened if the Feinstein amendment had already been law, and if the Congress had stripped away the executive branch’s ability to hold Al Qaeda collaborators in military custody and interrogate them. We simply would not learn what that detainee knows–including any knowledge that he may have of planned future terrorist attacks.

Under military interrogation, Abu Zubaydah also revealed the identity of another September 11 plotter, Ramzi bin al Shibh, and provided information that led to his capture. U.S. forces then interrogated bin al Shibh. Information that both he and Zubaydah provided helped lead to the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Under interrogation, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed provided information that helped stop another planned terrorist attack on the United States. K.S.M. also provided information that led to the capture of a terrorist named Zubair. And K.S.M.’s interrogation also led to the identification and capture of an entire 17-member Jemaah Islamiya terrorist cell in Southeast Asia.

Information obtained from interrogation of terrorists detained by the United States also helped to stop a planned truck-bomb attack on U.S. troops in Djibouti. Interrogation helped stop a planned car-bomb attack on the U.S. embassy in Pakistan. And it helped stop a plot to hijack passengers planes and crash them into Heathrow airport in London.

As President Bush stated in his September 6, 2006 remarks, “[i]nformation from terrorists in CIA custody has played a role in the capture or questioning of nearly every senior al Qaida member or associate detained by the U.S. and its allies.” The President concluded by noting that Al Qaida members subjected to interrogation by U.S. forces: “have painted a picture of al Qaeda’s structure and financing, and communications and logistics. They identified al Qaeda’s travel routes and safe havens, and explained how al Qaeda’s senior leadership communicates with its operatives in places like Iraq. They provided information that ….. has allowed us to make sense of documents and computer records that we have seized in terrorist raids. They’ve identified voices in recordings of intercepted calls, and helped us understand the meaning of potentially critical terrorist communications.

[Were it not for information obtained through interrogation], our intelligence community believes that al Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland. By giving us information about terrorist plans we could not get anywhere else, this [interrogation] program has saved innocent lives.”

If the Feinstein amendment were adopted, this is all information that we would be unable to obtain if the Al Qaeda collaborator that our forces had captured was a U.S. citizen. It would simply be impossible to effectively interrogate that Al Qaeda collaborator–the relationship of trust and dependency that military custody creates would be broken, and the detainee would instead have a lawyer telling him to be quiet. And we know that information obtained by interrogating Al Qaeda detainees has been by far the most valuable source of information for preventing future terrorist attacks.

Again, in every past war, our forces have had the ability to capture, detain, and interrogate U.S. citizens who collaborate with the enemy or join forces with the enemy. I would submit that in this war, intelligence gathering is more critical than ever. Al Qaeda doesn’t hold territory that we can capture. It operates completely outside the rules of war, and directly targets innocent civilians. Our only effective weapon against Al Qaeda is intelligence gathering. And the Feinstein amendment threatens to take away that weapon–to take away our best defense for preventing future terrorist attacks against the American people. [my emphasis]

Eric Holder, Indefinitely Detained by DOD?

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The most shocking phrase in the Senate’s Defense Authorization detainee provisions to me was not the language affirming indefinite detention. That language simply affirms and possibly narrows the status quo. Rather, it was this language purporting to strike a “balance” between military and civilian detention for alleged terrorists by offering the Secretary of Defense the option of waiving military custody for terrorist detainees.

The Secretary of Defense may, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence, waive the requirement of paragraph (1) [mandating military custody of terrorism detainees] if the Secretary submits to Congress a certification in writing that such a waiver is in the national security interests of the United States.

The presumption of military detention is bad enough. But to codify that the Defense Secretary would not even consult with DOJ on this front was shocking. After all, there is no reason any of these people–Defense Secretary, DNI, or Secretary of State–would know about a terrorist suspect captured in the US. They certainly wouldn’t know the investigation and prosecution strategies. Yet, the language passed last Thursday would not only allow the Defense Secretary to bypass DOJ as a default, but wouldn’t even require the Defense Secretary to ask whether it’s a good idea to move a suspect into DOD custody.

It effectively makes civilian prosecutors supplicants to the military bureaucracy to be allowed to do their work. And it’s particularly troubling given all the Bush-era instances in which FBI’s experts on al Qaeda were prevented from using that expertise to question detainees so Cheney’s torturers could torture them instead.

And the language in the Senate bill is actually more restrictive than the equivalent language in the House equivalent, which simply gives the Secretary of Defense input on civilian prosecution decisions.

SEC. 1042. REQUIREMENT FOR DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE CONSULTATION REGARDING PROSECUTION OF TERRORISTS.

(a) IN GENERAL.—Before any officer or employee of the Department of Justice institutes any prosecution of an alien in a United States district court for a terrorist offense, the Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, or Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, shall consult with the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense about—

(1) whether the prosecution should take place in a United States district court or before a military commission under chapter 47A of title 10, United States Code; and

(2) whether the individual should be transferred into military custody for purposes of intelligence interviews.

Whereas in May, crazy House Republicans wanted to give the Secretary of Defense veto power over civilian prosecutions, on Thursday the Senate voted to take the Attorney General out of discussions over whether civilian prosecutions are better than military detention altogether.

And yet, of all the Administration complaints about these provisions–John Brennan, David Petraeus, James Clapper, Leon Panetta–Robert Mueller is the only one who spoke from DOJ [Update: National Security Division head Lisa Monaco spoke at the ABA National Security conference]. Unless I missed it, Eric Holder didn’t issue a statement. And it was only after the bill passed the Senate that some anonymous DOJ official released a comprehensive explanation of why this is such a bad idea Read more →

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt Advocates Extending PATRIOT Act to Domestic Terrorists

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I watched last night’s Huckabee Presidential forum between thrilling plays in the Big 10.2 Championship game. Since each candidate appeared by him or herself, it lacked the entertaining in-fighting of other episodes of this reality show. But it was fascinating because some rising stars in the Republican Party–three far right Attorneys General, OK’s Scott Pruitt, VA’s Ken Cuccinelli, and FL’s Pam Bondi–served as co-moderators. As such, I think the forum provided some indication of where the leading edge of Republican crazy is.

Which is troubling, because in a question directed to Congressman Ron Paul, Pruitt endorsed applying the PATRIOT Act to purely domestic terrorists. [Update: bob johnson, who is from OK, says this wasn’t an endorsement. A pity, then, that Pruitt not only extended the discussion of PATRIOT to domestic grounds but also set up Bondi for more fearmongering.] After raising the specter of Tim McVeigh’s attack on the Murrah Federal Building, Pruitt asked,

Pruitt: What thoughtful alternative do you have to the PATRIOT Act to prevent acts of domestic terrorism in the future?

Paul provided the same kind of answer he has provided when he has gotten asked similar questions in the context of foreign terrorism in other debates, noting that the PATRIOT Act should have been called the repeal of the Fourth Amendment. To which Priutt doubled down:

So Congressman, you don’t believe that there needs to be a comprehensive law at the federal level equipping law enforcement to prevent domestic terrorism in this country?

Now, as I said, Paul gets asked a similar question at just about every debate. The authoritarian streak of today’s GOP party likes to call out Paul’s libertarianism so as to mock it as outside acceptable bounds of GOP ideology (usually just before everyone applauds torture).

Which is why I find it so troubling that Pruitt did so with regards to domestic terrorism.

Read more →

Why the Iraq AUMF Still Matters

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The big headline that came out of yesterday’s American Bar Association National Security panels is that DOD General Counsel Jeh Johnson and CIA General Counsel Stephen Preston warned that US citizens could be targeted as military targets if the Executive Branch deemed them to be enemies.

U.S. citizens are legitimate military targets when they take up arms with al-Qaida, top national security lawyers in the Obama administration said Thursday.

[snip]

Johnson said only the executive branch, not the courts, is equipped to make military battlefield targeting decisions about who qualifies as an enemy.

We knew that. Still, it’s useful to have the Constitutional Lawyer President’s top aides reconfirm that’s how they function.

But I want to point to a few other data points from yesterday’s panels (thanks to Daphne Eviatar for her great live-tweeting).

First, Johnson also said (in the context of discussions on cyberspace, I think),

Jeh Johnson: interrupting the enemy’s ability to communicate is a traditionally military activity.

Sure, it is not news that the government (or its British allies) have hacked terrorist “communications,” as when they replaced the AQAP propaganda website, “Insight,” with a cupcake recipe (never mind whether it’s effective to delay the publication of something like this for just one week).

But note what formula Johnson is using: they’ve justified blocking speech by calling it the communication of the enemy. And then apparently using Jack Goldsmith’s formulation, they have said the AUMF gives them war powers that trump existing domestic law, interrupting enemy communications is a traditional war power, and therefore the government can block the communications of anyone under one of our active AUMFs.

Johnson also scoffed at the distinction between the battlefield and the non-battlefield.

Jeh Johnson: the limits of “battlefield v. Non battlefield is a distinction that is growing stale.” But then, it’s not a global war. ?

Again, this kind of argument gets used in OLC opinions to authorize the government targeting “enemies” in our own country. On the question of “interrupting enemy communication,” for example, it would seem to rationalize shutting down US based servers.

Then, later in the day Marty Lederman (who of course has written OLC opinions broadly interpreting AUMF authorities based on the earlier Jack Goldsmith ones) acknowledged that Americans aren’t even allowed to know everyone the US considers an enemy.

Lederman: b/c of classification, “we’re in armed conflicts with some groups the American public doesn’t know we’re in armed conflict with.”

Now, as I’ve noted, one of the innovations with the Defense Authorization passed yesterday is a requirement that the Executive Branch actually brief Congress on who we’re at war with, which I take to suggest that Congress doesn’t yet necessarily know everyone who we’re in “armed conflict” with.

Which brings us to how Jack Goldsmith defined the “terrorists” whom the government could wiretap without a warrant.

the authority to intercept the content of international communications “for which, based on the factual and practical considerations of everyday life on which reasonable and prudent persons act, there are reasonable grounds to believe … [that] a party to such communication is a group engaged in international terrorism, or activities in preparation therefor, or any agent of such a group,” as long as that group is al Qaeda, an affiliate of al Qaeda or another international terrorist group that the President has determined both (a) is in armed conflict with the United States and (b) poses a threat of hostile actions within the United States;

It’s possible the definition of our enemy has expanded still further since the time Goldsmith wrote this in 2004. Note Mark Udall’s ominous invocation of “Any other statutory or constitutional authority for use of military force” that the Administration might use to authorize detaining someone. But we know that, at a minimum, the Executive Branch used the invocations of terrorists in the Iraq AUMF–which are much more generalized than the already vague definition of terrorist in the 9/11 AUMF–to say the President could use war powers against people he calls terrorists who have nothing to do with 9/11 or al Qaeda.

So consider what this legal house of cards is built on. Largely because the Bush Administration sent Ibn Sheikh al-Libi to our Egyptian allies to torture, it got to include terrorism language in an AUMF against a country that had no tie to terrorism. It then used that language on terrorism to justify ignoring domestic laws like FISA. Given Lederman’s language, we can assume the Administration is still using the Iraq AUMF in the same way Goldsmith did. And yet, in spite of the fact that the war is ending, we refuse to repeal the AUMF used to authorize this big power grab.

Bachmann Was Almost Right: The ACLU Is in Cahoots with the CIA

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As I have puzzled over the civil liberties and human rights communities’ stance on the NDAA Detainee Provisions, I’ve come to the unfortunate conclusion that Michelle Bachmann was not far off when she claimed, “Barack Obama … has essentially handed over our interrogation of terrorists to the ACLU. He has outsourced it to them.”

After all, in the guise of “fixing” some of what I agree are problems with the Detainee Provisions–the laws regarding detention and interrogation of detainees–the ACLU is telling its members to lobby for the Udall Amendment to the NDAA.

But there is a way to stop this dangerous legislation. Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) is offering the Udall Amendment that will delete the harmful provisions and replace them with a requirement for an orderly Congressional review of detention power. The Udall Amendment will make sure that the bill matches up with American values.

In support of this harmful bill, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) explained that the bill will “basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield” and people can be imprisoned without charge or trial “American citizen or not.” Another supporter, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) also declared that the bill is needed because “America is part of the battlefield.”

The solution is the Udall Amendment; a way for the Senate to say no to indefinite detention without charge or trial anywhere in the world where any president decides to use the military. Instead of simply going along with a bill that was drafted in secret and is being jammed through the Senate, the Udall Amendment deletes the provisions and sets up an orderly review of detention power. It tries to take the politics out and put American values back in.

As a threshold matter, the ACLU’s  support of the Udall Amendment appears to put them on the same side of the debate as–among others–former CIA exec John Brennan and the former Director of the CIA, Leon Panetta. (Current CIA Director and outspoken detention authority while still at DOD, General David Petraeus, has been eerily quiet over the last several weeks.)

And I do agree with the ACLU that the Udall Amendment sets up an orderly review of detention power.

But, as I’ve noted, there’s one aspect of the Detainee Provisions that Udall doesn’t leave for orderly review: the scope of the language describing a “covered person.” Instead, Udall’s Amendment says covered people should be those “whose detention … is consistent with the laws of war and based on authority provided by” the 9/11 and Iraq AUMFs, as well as “any other statutory or constitutional authority.”

(b) Covered Persons.–A covered person under this section is any person, other than a member of the Armed Forces of the United States, whose detention or prosecution by the Armed Forces of the United States is consistent with the laws of war and based on authority provided by any of the following:

(1) The Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40).

(2) The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution 2002 (Public Law 107-243).

(3) Any other statutory or constitutional authority for use of military force.

Udall pretty much unilaterally reasserts the application of the AUMFs (plural) and other vaguely defined legal bases to detention (and, because that’s how OLC has built up Executive Power over the last decade, a bunch of other things), in an effort to defeat SASC’s language that limits such detention authority to those tied directly to 9/11 or “who [were] part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces.” Udall’s Amendment may give SSCI and SJC another shot at this law, but it dictates that detention authority apply to a far broader group of people than the SASC language describes.

Hey, Mark. See that calendar? We’re not going to pass and sign this bill before December 1. We’re due to pull our troops out of Iraq by the end of that month. Are you telling me we need to include that language for less than 31 days? Or just to provide a bubble during which the Administration can do whatever it wants with Ali Mussa Daqduq, the alleged Hezbollah agent in US custody presenting so many legal dilemmas for us in Iraq? Or are you instead applying the AUMF for a war that is effectively over to grant the President authority to hold a much broader category of “terrorist” than the 9/11 AUMF authorized? Why, at this late date, are you including the Iraq AUMF?

Given your “based on authority provided” language, I assume it is the latter, meaning this attempt to do an orderly review of detention authority also mandates that that detention authority be applied as if the Iraq war were not ending.

And all that’s before you consider the “any other statutory or constitutional authority for use of military force,” which seems to say that in any circumstance in which Congress has authorized some use of military force, Udall’s Amendment also piggybacks detention authority … and whatever else (like assassination and wiretap authority) gets built off of detention authority in secret by the OLC.

The Udall Amendment, while giving the Senate Intelligence and Senate Judiciary Committees an opportunity to weigh in on what the President must and can do with detainees, goes far beyond the language in the SASC version of 1031, which reaffirmed the war on terrorists, but only on terrorists who have anything directly to do with, or are associated with, 9/11.

I may be badly misreading this. But as I understand it, the ACLU is basically lobbying to codify a vastly-expanded AUMF that will serve to legitimize many of the intelligence community’s most egregious civil liberties abuses, not just on detention, but on a range of other “war powers,” like wiretapping and assassination.

And while that may not be the same as outsourcing interrogation to the ACLU–as Bachmann described it–it does amount to using the ACLU to give sanction to a broad expansion of Executive war and surveillance powers the likes of which the CIA loves to exploit.