Counterterrorism
516 Articles
Treasury’s Turf War Over Domestic Spying
BuzzFeed News recently reported serious allegations that the Treasury Department’s Office of Intelligence Affairs (OIA) is illegally accessing and analyzing the financial records…
Congressional Oversight and the Niger Attack
President Donald Trump’s handling of military condolences has dominated the coverage of the Oct. 4 deaths of four U.S. Special Operations forces soldiers in Niger. However, there…
Pluses and Minuses of the Imminence Standard in Counterterrorism Strikes
Last month, I wrote on the revisions that the Trump Administration reportedly plans to make to President Obama’s drone policy. The piece set off a robust conversation with…
Surveillance “Reform”: The Fourth Amendment’s Long, Slow, Goodbye
Over 16 years after the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent repeated passage or renewal of draconian “temporary” but “emergency” domestic surveillance laws in response, it’s…
My Priorities As UN Special Rapporteur on Counter Terrorism: The Problem of Permanent Emergencies
French soldiers patrolling a street of Saint Denis, France, during an anti-terrorist raid on November 18, 2015. France has been under a government-declared state of emergency…
Gun Violence Deserves As Robust a Response as Terrorism
When videos from the mass shooting in Las Vegas began circulating on social media last Sunday night, I immediately recognized the rapid sound of automatic gunfire. I knew the sound…
Addendum to My “Memo to the Human Rights Community” (on drone strikes outside of “hot battlefields”)
On Wednesday, I published an essay at Just Security titled, “Why the Laws of War Apply to Drone Strikes Outside “Areas of Active Hostilities” (A Memo to the Human Rights…
A Response to Goodman’s “Memo to the Human Rights Community”
Ryan Goodman’s “Memo to the Human Rights Community” is a perplexing critique that takes a surprising tone, coming from a former U.S. government official who worked on these…
Why the Laws of War Apply to Drone Strikes Outside “Areas of Active Hostilities” (A Memo to the Human Rights Community)
Reports that the White House is poised to revise a four-year old set of policy restrictions on drone strikes and other lethal operations has generated a heated debate that turns…
Three Half-Truths on U.S. Lethal Operations and Policy Constraints
Late last week, Charlie Savage and Eric Schmitt of the New York Times reported that President Donald Trump might soon adopt a new policy on U.S. lethal operations outside hot warzones.…
Trump’s New Drone Strike Policy: What’s Any Different? Why It Matters
[Editor’s note: this article was originally published on September 21, 2017 at 9:50 PM] After months of continued tough talk and recent assurances that the United States…
What Can Stop the Next Black Hawk Down: Risks to Special Operation Forces in the Trump Era
(Editors’ note: This article first appeared as a three-part series. We are reproducing it here in full.) Twenty-four years ago this month, President Bill Clinton, a first-term…