What is the Domestic Legal Basis for Planned Cyberattacks in Syria?
David Sanger reports that the Pentagon and the NSA planned a sophisticated cyberattack aimed at “the Syrian military and President Bashar al-Assad’s command structure” that “would essentially turn the...
View ArticleLederman on Secrecy, Nonacknowledgement, and Yemen
Marty Lederman has a long post picking apart the errors in last week’s AP story on last December’s drone strike in Yemen. Along the way he carefully parses the covert action statute, and has...
View ArticleNYU School of Law Event: “‘The Snowden Operation’: A Victory for Privacy...
NYU School of Law hosted a debate yesterday between Edward Lucas, Senior Editor of The Economist and author of The Snowden Operation: Inside the West’s Greatest Intelligence Disaster—which Ben...
View ArticleIs JSOC About to Become More Transparent on Drone Strikes?
One frequently sees the claim that CIA drone operations should be handed over to the military because the military is more transparent. I have frequently disparaged that argument, not because the CIA...
View ArticleA Clue About the Origins of “Imminence” in the OLC Memo?
There’s a lot to discuss about the OLC memo on the al-Aulaqi strike—including, as Ben mentioned yesterday, the origins and significance of “imminence.” (There’s also excellent analysis over at Just...
View ArticleReadings: Civilian Intelligence Agencies and the Use of Armed Drones by Ian...
Footnote 44 of the recently released and much-discussed OLC Awlaki memorandum is heavily redacted, but what’s left reads, in part: Nor would the fact that CIA personnel would be involved in the...
View ArticleCIA Drone Strikes and the Public-Authority Justification
In a pair of posts (here and here), Kevin Heller at Opinio Juris explores a very interesting question: What exactly is the domestic legal foundation for the CIA’s use of lethal force given that the...
View ArticleMore on CIA Drone Strikes, Covert Action, TMA, and the Fifth Function
Yesterday Kevin Heller and I exchanged views on the possible sources of domestic authorization for the CIA to conduct drone strikes. His two initial posts are here and here; my response is here; and...
View ArticleThe Legal Basis for the Mughniyah Killing
The Washington Post and Newsweek report that the CIA in 2008 worked with Israel’s Mossad to kill Imad Mughniyah, Hezbollah’s operations chief, in Damascus, Syria. The Post says that Mughniyah “had...
View ArticleWaiving the “Imminent Threat” Test for CIA Drone Strikes in Pakistan?
[Update: Ryan Goodman has an excellent post here noting that a January 2013 WaPo article anticipated that CIA would get a waiver for Pakistan ops, albeit not necessarily a waiver specific only to the...
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