{"id":3614,"date":"2013-02-03T23:58:23","date_gmt":"2013-02-04T04:58:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=3614"},"modified":"2014-07-09T21:05:08","modified_gmt":"2014-07-10T01:05:08","slug":"the-secret-warriors-secret-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=3614","title":{"rendered":"The Secret Warriors&#8217; Secret Law Unveiled (Sort Of)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?page_id=54\">The Big Picture Home Page<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0<a title=\"Spring Cleaning\" href=\"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=3551\">Previous Big Picture Column<\/a>\u00a0| <a title=\"Drones: An Informed Debate Begins\" href=\"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=3654\">Next Big Picture Column<\/a><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">The Secret Warriors&#8217; Secret Law Unveiled (Sort Of)<\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Published in the Maryland Daily Record\u00a0February 11, 2013<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <em>And why am I under arrest?<\/em> Herr K asks in Kafka\u2019s <em>The Trial<\/em>.<em> That\u2019s something we\u2019re not allowed to tell you<\/em>, the plainclothes arresting officer responds. This surprises K: <em>K was living in a free country, after all, everywhere was at peace, all laws were decent and were upheld.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ordinarily, as Kafka intimated, when laws are decent and are upheld, governments are forthcoming about why they do what they do.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">FOIA Foiled<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=3219\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;\">Last July<\/span><\/a><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> I wrote in these pages about the silence surrounding the nation\u2019s continuing drone assassination program. At the time, I pointed out that we are killing people, some of them American citizens, some of them noncombatants, and our government will not publicize its reasoning. I decried the failure of the Obama administration to release the Office of Legal Counsel memos which must exist to explain the alleged legality of the program. But there were no fuller explanations until this last month, when there were two major developments.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Well before my earlier comments, reporters for the New York Times, followed by the ACLU, had filed Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain this information. <\/span><\/span><\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lawfareblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/THE-NEW-YORK-TIMES-COMPANY1.pdf\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; color: #0000ff; font-size: medium;\">On January 3 of this year, U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon of the Southern District of New York ruled, in essence, that FOIA will not be the tool to pry that information out of the government\u2019s hands<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">The General Drift, Maybe<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As Judge McMahon wrote, we thought we knew the general drift of what would have been revealed, if the requests had been honored. From various public comments of various administration officials, it would appear that the legal justification for this bloodshed runs roughly like this:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">The September 18, 2011 <\/span><\/span><\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gpo.gov\/fdsys\/pkg\/PLAW-107publ40\/html\/PLAW-107publ40.htm\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; color: #0000ff; font-size: medium;\">Authorization of the Use of Military Force<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; color: #000000; font-size: medium;\"> was tantamount to a declaration of war upon Al Quaeda and the Taliban, despite the fact that, legally speaking, war had previously been thought to exist only between states or at least would-be states, like the American South in the Civil War, and Al Quaeda, at least, was not even arguably a state.<\/span><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">[1]<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">In war, a nation is allowed to kill enemy combatants if it cannot capture them.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">The people we are targeting are combatants, even if they are tracked down and blasted with missiles far away from a \u201chot\u201d battle-zone.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">We have determined that we cannot capture these combatants, and hence have the right under the laws of war to kill them.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">The laws of war permit the killing of innocents as \u201ccollateral damage\u201d to the killing of combatants if an appropriate determination of \u201cproportionality\u201d has been made.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">If an American becomes a combatant against the U.S., he\/she is not entitled to judicial due process, but only to the benefit of the \u201crules\u201d listed above.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We only <em>thought<\/em> we knew the rationale, however: a point Judge McMahon repeatedly made. For instance, in discussing <\/span><\/span><\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cfr.org\/terrorism-and-the-law\/holders-speech-targeted-killing-march-2012\/p27562\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; color: #0000ff; font-size: medium;\">Attorney General Holder\u2019s speech at Northwestern University on March 5, 2012<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">, the Judge summarized: \u201cNor can it be said that Mr. Holder revealed <em>the exact<\/em> legal reasoning behind the Government\u2019s conclusion that its actions comply with domestic and international law. In fact, when you really dissect the speech, all it does is recite general principles of law and the Government\u2019s legal conclusions.\u201d She characterized her own analysis of the government\u2019s position as nothing better than \u201creverse engineering,\u201d an \u201cinformed guess\u201d by an \u201coutsider.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">The Questions We Were Prevented From Addressing<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Judge McMahon also noted that this bland and sketchy position raises many important legal questions. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One had to do with separation of powers; though the War on Terror is colloquially called a war, it has many of the hallmarks of a police action, and police actions end up in front of a judicial, not an executive officer. Is it really right to have the executive serve as the equivalent of judge, jury, and executioner? <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Looking at what the targeted Americans did as possible treason, it is notable that the procedural threshold for proving treason is constitutionally set very high. Is it acceptable to kill those we (supposedly) cannot arrest when they would have enjoyed such protections if we could have arrested them?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As to the killing of innocents, Holder acknowledged that proportionality is only established if \u201cthe anticipated collateral damage [is] not excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage.\u201d But how can we know whether that calculus is being correctly done if we do not know what yardstick is being applied or what it is being applied to?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Then, too, the U.S. is subject to international law, which forbids the nation to engage in \u201cassassinations.\u201d Apart from some utterances containing syllogistic logic which the Judge correctly treated with skepticism, we had no clear idea how the administration determined we did not run afoul of that prohibition.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In short, a more detailed disclosure of administration thinking would have made for a much better informed public debate about the killings the drones commit constantly in our nation\u2019s unstated name. It is even possible that public opinion would have rebelled against our occasioning this carnage, even to protect ourselves; at a bare minimum, we would have chosen it deliberately.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Judge McMahon may well have been right that because of the FOIA exemptions (exemptions practitioners know often render the Act useless), it proved the wrong tool for eliciting the information that unlocks the debate. The problem seemed to be that there was no <em>right<\/em> tool. Without one, a detailed answer to the question <em>what justification?<\/em> was as impregnably protected from meaningful disclosure as the name of the crime Herr K was charged with and executed for.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">The Leakocracy Intervenes<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 However, at this juncture <\/span><\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=1164\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;\">what I once described in these pages as \u201cthe messy but necessary leakocracy\u201d<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; color: #000000; font-size: medium;\"> came to the rescue. On February 5, NBC News revealed that someone had provided it with a \u201cwhite paper\u201d culled from the Office of Legal Counsel memos the Times, the ACLU and the public had all sought. This was not the memos themselves, but instead a congressional briefing. The style is unmistakable, however. This is the stuff of OLC memos. <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/articles\/2013\/02\/06\/the-drone-memo-s-origins.html\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;\">Indeed Daniel Klaidman of the Daily Beast reports that it is an abridgement of them.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It turns out, as Klaidman reports, that there was, all the time, a struggle within the Obama administration, as there has been within the commentariat, about whether the killing rationale should be publicized. Predictably, the CIA was in one corner and State and Justice were in the other. Initially, the CIA won, and all we got were general remarks like Holder\u2019s. But someone interested in providing some fodder for the interrogation of John Brennan, nominee for CIA head, <\/span><\/span><\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/02\/06\/world\/middleeast\/with-brennan-pick-a-light-on-drone-strikes-hazards.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;\">whom the New York Times calls the \u201cchief architect\u201d of the drone killing program<\/span><\/a><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">, resolved the matter by making the white paper public.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That apparently decided President Obama. <\/span><\/span><\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/blogs\/ticket\/obama-orders-secret-drone-memos-shared-congress-010736702--politics.htm\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;\">On February 6, the White House announced it would make the full texts of the secret memos available to Congress.<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; color: #000000; font-size: medium;\"> We\u2019ll all surely see them eventually.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">Not OK<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For the moment, we already have something semi-substantive. We should have had it long ago. This is not Kafka\u2019s <em>Mitteleuropa<\/em>. It\u2019s our government and our information. We should not have had to wait for leakers to get our hands on it.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Next time, I\u2019ll discuss what we have learned about the legal rationale as we know it by then.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<div><br clear=\"all\" \/><\/p>\n<hr align=\"left\" size=\"1\" width=\"33%\" \/>\n<div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">[1]<\/span><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; color: #000000; font-size: medium;\">.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And I leave aside the fact that the document is not captioned a declaration of war. See my discussion of Congressional declarations of hostilities that stop short of war <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=194\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;\">here<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Copyright (c) Jack L. B. Gohn<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?page_id=54\">The Big Picture Home Page<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0<a title=\"Spring Cleaning\" href=\"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=3551\">Previous Big Picture Column<\/a>\u00a0| <a title=\"Drones: An Informed Debate Begins\" href=\"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=3654\">Next Big Picture Column<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the moment, we already have something semi-substantive. We should have had it long ago. This is not Kafka\u2019s Mitteleuropa. It\u2019s our government and our information. We should not have had to wait for leakers to get our hands on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[845,4264,733,4250,4252,330,866,1070,1625,4259,3493,4258,1361,1666,732,670,4263,4246,669,4245,2833,4254,4255,4261,4262,293,4249,4265,4251,4257,189,4248,4260,4253,4244,4243,68,4256,593,4247],"class_list":["post-3614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bigpicture","tag-al-quaeda","tag-assassinations","tag-attorney-general-eric-holder","tag-authorization-of-the-use-of-military-force","tag-battle-zone","tag-civil-war","tag-combatants","tag-confederate-states-of-america","tag-definition-of-war","tag-drone-killings","tag-drone-warfare","tag-drones","tag-due-process","tag-enemy-combatants","tag-eric-holder","tag-foia","tag-foia-exemptions","tag-frank-kafka","tag-freedom-of-information-act","tag-herr-k","tag-hostilities","tag-judge-colleen-mcmahon","tag-judge-mcmahon","tag-killing-of-americans","tag-killing-of-innocents","tag-law-of-war","tag-legal-memos","tag-nation-of-laws-not-of-men","tag-non-combatants","tag-northwestern-university","tag-office-of-legal-counsel","tag-old","tag-police-actions","tag-proportionality","tag-secret-law","tag-secret-war","tag-separation-of-powers","tag-southern-district-of-new-york","tag-taliban","tag-the-trial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3614"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4785,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3614\/revisions\/4785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}