Author name: Branden Loizides

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NSJ Analysis: Rep. Miller (R-MI) Proposes Statutory Detention Authority

Representative Candace Miller (R-MI) has introduced H.R. 4415, the Terrorist Detention and Prosecution Act of 2010.  The bill expands the definition of unlawful enemy combatant, codified at 10 U.S.C. § 948 to include persons determined by the President to be closely associated with Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups, to have taken up arms on behalf of Al Qaeda, or to have committed or conspired to commit acts of terrorism in the United States.  Most significantly, it would apply “regardless of the location of the person’s capture.”  The bill would give the President the authority to detain any unlawful enemy […]

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NSJ Analysis: Nation Sources Present Conflicting Stories of U.S. Military and Blackwater Involvement in Pakistan

The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill points to the recent deaths of three United States special forces soldiers in Pakistan as further evidence of the existence of an extensive, but classified American military presence in that country. Scahill highlights a number of reasons to be suspicious of the United States Government’s claims that the soldiers were part of a training mission.  He cites a Pakistani journalist who claims that some of the U.S. soldiers had been dressed in civilian clothes and had been identified by Pakistani handlers as journalists. Moreover, he points to a potential discrepancy in numbers—a United States Central Command

Features

A Response To ‘Connecting the Dots and the Christmas Plot’

By Jeffrey Kahn – When your favorite tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  After the near-catastrophe on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day, it is not surprising that many hammer away with the tools they know best: data-mining and watchlists.  The conventional wisdom is that if we know enough soon enough, we can stop the next attack.  The problem over Christmas, therefore, is identified solely as a function of that tool: we didn’t know enough, or, if we did, not everyone did, or if we all did, we forgot crucial bits in the welter of all

Features

A Response To ‘Connecting the Dots and the Christmas Plot’

By Nathan A. Sales – It didn’t take long after 9/11 for the conventional wisdom to crystallize.  The devastating terrorist attacks were almost immediately, and almost universally, chalked up to the intelligence community’s failure to share information.  Yet if al Qaeda’s attempt to down Northwest flight 253 is any indication, the feds still haven’t learned how to connect the dots. The Christmas plot is shaping up to be an information-sharing epic fail.  As early as last fall our spies began picking up alarming signals that something big was afoot.  The clues should have been circulating widely throughout the intelligence community. 

Features

Connecting the Dots and the Christmas Plot

By Paul Rosenzweig – “We slipped up.”  That’s what Patrick F. Kennedy, the Undersecretary of State for Management, said at a Senate hearing last week about the Christmas day bomb plot and the arrest of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. He has a gift for understatement. But the real question isn’t whether we “slipped up”—everyone knows we did.  It’s rather how and why we did.  The truth is that this was a failure of policy, not of law.  We did it to ourselves.  In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration (DARPA) began work on techniques of data

Main Volumes

Volume 1 Editors’ Preface

Robert Williams and Anne Siders Click here to read the full Editors’ Preface “National security” has become a powerful watchword for politicians, lawyers, policy makers, and academics alike.  Invocation of the “national security” label typically aims to signal that the issue under discussion is of the highest priority for public policy.  And yet, when we, as students of national security law, proposed the creation of a journal dedicated to national security, one of the first questions posed to us was: How do you define national security?  What is it, exactly? In the middle of the twentieth century, the National Security

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