Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
265 Articles

5 Best and 5 Worst Moments from the Week’s Confirmation Hearings on US National Security Issues
The week of confirmation hearings is over, and it’s time to take stock of what we have learned from the people the President-elect has nominated to lead his administration in…

Questions for Tillerson and Pompeo Confirmation Hearings — Updated
Confirmation hearings for President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks continue Wednesday. The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding its second day of hearings to examine…

Trump Calls for Congressional Investigation of his Administration-in-Waiting
On Friday, President-elect Donald Trump tweeted: “I am asking the chairs of the House and Senate committees to investigate top secret intelligence shared with NBC prior to…

The Drone Memos—The Book
My new book, The Drone Memos, will be published on November 15. It’s a collection of the most important legal and policy documents relating to the U.S. drone campaign, preceded…
Today’s Important Deadline in the ACLU’s Targeted-Killing Transparency Case
Today, more than three years after President Obama announced that he had issued a classified “Presidential Policy Guidance,” commonly known as the PPG, meant to govern the…
Secret Law, Targeting, and the Problem of Standards: A Response to Dakota Rudesill
In his recent posts and an article, Dakota Rudesill tackles the phenomenon of secret law. Dakota persuasively describes a growing body secret law, which he defines as “legal…
John Brennan on “enhanced interrogation techniques”
At this event today at Brookings, CIA Director John Brennan reiterated what he has said before: — “you cannot establish cause and effect between the [CIA’s]…
The Good and Bad in the US Government’s Civilian Casualties Announcement
The US government on Friday, July 1 released long-sought information on its views as to how many people it has killed in drone and other strikes “outside areas of active hostilities,”…
Medical Complicity in CIA Torture, Then and Now
The US government released a series of documents about the CIA torture program on June 14 and 15, in response to Freedom of Information Act lawsuits by the ACLU and Vice News.…
The Early Edition: June 17 2016
Before the start of business, Just Security provides a curated summary of up-to-the-minute developments at home and abroad. Here’s today’s news. IRAQ, SYRIA, and THE ISLAMIC…
Forced Nudity: What International Law and Practice Tell Us
A number of weeks ago it was revealed that CIA operatives systematically photographed detainees who were being held as part of the “war on terror” while naked. It…
Why Federal Agencies Must Still Preserve (and Should Finally Read) the SSCI Torture Report
This week’s news that the CIA’s Office of Inspector General destroyed two copies of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report (SSCI Report) on the CIA’s Detention…