Tag: guantanamo bay
Are We Forever Captives of America’s Forever Wars?

Are We Forever Captives of America’s Forever Wars?

Reprinted with permission from TomDispatch

As August ended, American troops completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan, almost 20 years after they first arrived. On the formal date of withdrawal, however, President Biden insisted that “over-the-horizon capabilities” (airpower and Special Operations forces, for example) would remain available for use anytime. “[W]e can strike terrorists and targets without American boots on the ground, very few if needed,” he explained, dispensing immediately with any notion of a true peace.

But beyond expectations of continued violence in Afghanistan, there was an even greater obstacle to officially ending the war there: the fact that it was part of a never-ending, far larger conflict originally called the Global War on Terror (in caps), then the plain-old lower-cased war on terror, and finally — as public opinion here soured on it — America’s “forever wars.”

As we face the future, it’s time to finally focus on ending, formally and in every other way, that disastrous larger war. It’s time to acknowledge in the most concrete ways imaginable that the post-9/11 war on terror, of which the bombing and invasion of Afghanistan was the opening salvo, warrants a final sunset.

True, security experts like to point out that the threat of global Islamist terrorism is still of pressing — and in many areas, increasing — concern. ISIS and al-Qaeda are reportedly again on the rise in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa.

Nonetheless, the place where the war on terror truly needs to end is right here in this country. From the beginning, its scope, as defined in Washington, was arguably limitless and the extralegal institutions it helped create, as well as its numerous departures from the rule of law, would prove disastrous for this country. In other words, it’s time for America to withdraw not just from Afghanistan (or Iraq or Syria or Somalia) but, metaphorically speaking at least, from this country, too. It’s time for the war on terror to truly come to an end.

With that goal in mind, three developments could signal that its time has possibly come, even if no formal declaration of such an end is ever made. In all three areas, there have recently been signs of progress (though, sadly, regress as well).

Repeal Of The 2001 AUMF

First and foremost, Congress needs to repeal its disastrous 2001 Authorization for the Use of Force (AUMF) passed — with Representative Barbara Lee’s single “no” vote — after the attacks of 9/11. Over the last 20 years, it would prove foundational in allowing the U.S. military to be used globally in essentially any way a president wanted.

That AUMF was written without mention of a specific enemy or geographical specificity of any kind when it came to possible theaters of operation and without the slightest reference to what the end of such hostilities might look like. As a result, it bestowed on the president the power to use force when, where, and however he wanted in fighting the war on terror without the need to further consult Congress. Employed initially to root out al-Qaeda and defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan, it has been used over the last two decades to fight in at least 19 countries in the Greater Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Its repeal is almost unimaginably overdue.

In fact, in the early months of the Biden presidency, Congress began to make some efforts to do just that. The goal, in the words of White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, was to “to ensure that the authorizations for the use of military force currently on the books are replaced with a narrow and specific framework that will ensure we can protect Americans from terrorist threats while ending the forever wars.”

The momentum for repealing and replacing that AUMF was soon stalled, however, by the messy, chaotic and dangerous exit from Afghanistan. Those in Congress and elsewhere in Washington opposed to its repeal began to argue vociferously that the very way America’s Afghan campaign had collapsed and the Biden policy of over-the-horizon strikes mandated its continuance.

At the moment, some efforts towards repeal again seem to be gaining momentum, with the focus now on the more modest goal of simply reducing the blanket authority the authorization still allows a president to make war as he pleases, while ensuring that Congress has a say in any future decisions on using force abroad. As Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), an advocate for rethinking presidential war powers generally, has put the matter, “If you’re taking strikes in Somalia, come to Congress and get an authorization for it. If you want to be involved in hostilities in Somalia for the next five years, come and explain why that’s necessary and come and get an explicit authorization.”

One thing is guaranteed, even two decades after the disastrous war on terror began, it will be an uphill battle in Congress to alter or repeal that initial forever AUMF that has endlessly validated our forever wars. But if the end of the war on terror as we’ve known it is ever to occur, it’s an imperative act.

Closing Gitmo

A second essential act to signal the end of the war on terror would, of course, be the closing of that offshore essence of injustice, the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba (aka Gitmo) that the Bush administration set up so long ago. That war on terror detention facility on the island of Cuba was opened in January 2002. As it approaches its 20th anniversary, the approximately 780 detainees it once held, under the grimmest of circumstances, have been whittled down to 39.

Closing Guantánamo would remove a central symbol of America’s war-on-terror policies when it came to detention, interrogation, and torture. Today, that facility holds two main groups of detainees — 12 whose cases belong to the military commissions (2 have been convicted and sentenced, 10 await trial) and 27 who, after all these years, are still being held without charge — the truest “forever prisoners” of the war on terror, so labelled by Miami Herald (now New York Times) reporter Carol Rosenberg nearly a decade ago.

Through diplomacy — by promising safety to the detainees and security to the United States should signs of recidivist behavior appear — the Biden administration could arrange the release of the prisoners in that second group to other countries and radically reduce the forever-prison population. They could be transferred abroad, including even Abu Zubaydah, the first prisoner tortured under the CIA’s auspices, a detainee whom the Agency insisted, “should remain incommunicado for the remainder of his life.”

The military commissions responsible for the other group of detainees, including the five charged with the 9/11 attacks, pose a different kind of problem. In the 15 years since the start of those congressionally created commissions, there have been a total of eight convictions, six through guilty pleas, four of them later overturned. Trying such cases, even offshore of the American justice system, has proven remarkably problematic. The prosecutions have been plagued by the fact those defendants were tortured at CIA black sites and that confessions or witness testimony produced under torture is forbidden in the military commissions process.

The inadmissibility of such material, along with numerous examples of the government’s mishandling of evidence, its violations of correct court procedure, and even its spying on the meetings of defense attorneys with their clients, has turned those commissions into a virtual Mobius strip of litigation and so a judicial nightmare. As Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) put it in a recent impassioned plea for Gitmo’s closure, “Military commissions are not the answer… We need to trust our system of justice,” he said. “America’s failures in Guantanamo must not be passed on to another administration or to another Congress.”

As Durbin’s comments and the scheduling of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on closure set for December 7th indicate, some headway has perhaps been made toward that end. Early in his presidency, Joe Biden (mindful certainly of Barack Obama’s unrealized executive order on Day One of his presidency calling for the closure of Gitmo within a year) expressed his intention to shut down that prison by the end of his first term in office. He then commissioned the National Security Council to study just how to do it.

In addition, the Biden administration has more than doubled the number of detainees cleared to be released and transferred to other countries, while the military tribunals for all four pending cases have restarted after a hiatus imposed by Covid-19 restrictions. So, too, the long-delayed sentencing hearing of Pakistani detainee Majid Kahn, who pleaded guilty more than nine years ago, finally took place in October.

So, once again, some progress is being made, but as long as Gitmo remains open, our own homemade version of the war on terror will live on.

Redefining the Threat

Another admittedly grim sign that the post-9/11 war on terror could finally fade away is the pivot of attention in this country to other, far more pressing threats on a planet in danger and in the midst of a desperate and devastating pandemic. Notably, on the 20th anniversary of those attacks, even former President George W. Bush, whose administration launched the war on terror and its ills, acknowledged a shift in the country’s threat matrix: “[W]e have seen growing evidence that the dangers to our country can come not only across borders, but from violence that gathers within.”

He then made it clear that he wasn’t referring to homegrown jihadists, but to those who, on January 6 so notoriously busted into the Capitol building, threatening the vice president and other politicians of both parties -- as well as other American extremists. “There is,” he asserted, “little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home.”

As the former president’s remarks suggested, even as the war on terror straggles on, in this country the application of the word “terrorism” has decidedly turned elsewhere — namely, to violent domestic extremists who espouse a white nationalist ideology. By the end of January 6, the news media were already beginning to refer to the assault on lawmakers in the Capitol as “terrorism” and the attackers as “terrorists.” In the months since, law enforcement has ramped up its efforts against such white-supremacist terrorists.

As FBI Director Chris Wray testified to Congress in September, “There is no doubt about it, today’s threat is different from what it was 20 years ago… That’s why, over the last year and a half, the FBI has pushed even more resources to our domestic terrorism investigations.” He then added, “Now, 9/11 was 20 years ago. But for us at the FBI, as I know it does for my colleagues here with me, it represents a danger we focus on every day. And make no mistake, the danger is real.” Nonetheless, his remarks suggested that a page was indeed being turned, with global terrorism no longer being the ultimate threat to American national security.

The Director of National Intelligence’s 2021 Annual Threat Analysis noted no less bluntly that other dangers warrant more attention than global terrorism. Her report emphasized the far larger threats posed by climate change, the pandemic, and potential great-power rivalries.

Each of these potential pivots suggest the possible end of a war on terror whose casualties include essential aspects of democracy and on which this country squandered almost inconceivable sums of money while constantly widening the theater for the use of force. It’s time to withdraw the ever-expansive war powers Congress gave the president, end indefinite detention at Gitmo, and acknowledge that a shift in priorities is already occurring right under our noses on an ever more imperiled planet. Perhaps then Americans could turn to short-term and long-term priorities that might truly improve the health and sustainability of this nation.

Copyright 2021 Karen J. Greenberg

Karen J. Greenberg, aTomDispatch regular, is the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law and author of the newly published Subtle Tools: The Dismantling of Democracy from the War on Terror to Donald Trump(Princeton University Press). Julia Tedesco helped with research for this piece.

Close Guantánamo Now

When Will America Step Back From The Global War On Terror?

In the first two months of Joe Biden's presidency, you could feel the country holding its breath. Sheltered in place, hidden behind masks, unsure about whether to trust in a safe-from-pandemic future, we are nonetheless beginning to open our eyes collectively. As part of this reemergence, a wider array of issues — those beyond Covid-19 — are once again starting to enter public consciousness. Domestically, attempts to repress (or preserve) voting rights have been consuming activists and dominating headlines, along with this country's missing infrastructure and a need to raise the minimum wage. The foreign affairs agenda isn't far behind. From rising great-power rivalries, notably with China and Russia, to cyberattacks like the Solarwinds hack that affected agencies across the government, to the question of whether American troops will leaveAfghanistan, a growing number of issues loom for the administration, Congress, and the public in the months to come.

On the domestic front, the response to the new administration (and especially its $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief bill) has been a collective sigh of relief — as well as much praise, as well as fierce partisan Republican attacks — when it comes to the reform agenda being put in place domestically. In the realm of foreign affairs, however, criticism has been swift and harsh, owing to several early administration actions.

On February 25, at the president's order, the U.S. launched an airstrike against an Iranian-backed militia in Syria, killing 22. On February 26, the administration released an intelligence report pointing the finger at Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, only to follow up with an announcement that, while there would be sanctions against individuals close to the prince, no retaliation against him would follow. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof called the absence of strong retribution against MBS akin to letting "the murderer walk," setting an example for other "thuggish dictators" in the years to come.

Meanwhile, there is still, at best, indecision about whether the U.S. will pull its last troops out of Afghanistan by the May 1st deadline set during the Trump administration as part of a deal with the Taliban. President Biden recently termed meeting that date "tough." Others have called hesitancy about the May 1st deadline a step towards an escalation in violence and "even more deaths" in a nearly 20-year-old "unwinnable war." November has now been floated by the Biden administration as a more "reasonable" deadline.

While each of these acts (or the lack of them) should be scrutinized in light of the lessons of the past, a rush to condemn could prove too quick to be helpful. Yes, it would have been more satisfying if the administration had said, "We will respond in our own time and in our own way," when it came to the murder of Khashoggi. Yes, it would have been good to see a full-scale new drone policy in place prior to any future strikes. It will, however, take some time for the new administration to sort out the issues involved, to unearth what promises, deals, and threats were imposed by predecessors and to assess the meaningfulness of plans for a new agenda. My own suggestion: Why not set an agenda of expectations and goals — a list of imperatives if you will — and then check back in a relatively short time, perhaps six months from the January 20th inauguration of President Biden, to assess what's truly developed?

Given our chaotic and troubled world, the list of must-dos is already long indeed, but here's my own personal list of three, all tied to an issue I've followed closely for nearly the last two decades: the war on terror and how to end it.

Three Ways To Begin To End The War On Terror

The Biden administration has offered up its own list of priorities and challenges. Setting out its national security agenda, the president has committed his administration "to engage with the world once again, not to meet yesterday's challenges, but today's and tomorrow's." In a new strategy paper, "Renewing America's Advantages: Interim National Security Strategic Guidance," his administration has made its priorities reasonably clear: the development of a multidimensional strategy, led by diplomacy and multilateralism (though not averse to the "disciplined" use of force if necessary) with an overriding commitment to strengthening democracy at home and abroad.

Among the priorities set out in that strategy is one that should — if carried out successfully — be a relief to us all: moving beyond the global war on terror. "The United States should not, and will not, engage in 'forever wars' that have cost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars," the paper states, pointing to ending "America's longest war in Afghanistan," as well as the war in Yemen, and helping to end Africa's "deadliest conflicts and prevent the onset of new ones."

These war-on-terror-related goals are not only upbeat but distinctly achievable, if kept at the forefront of the American foreign-policy agenda. To achieve them, however, the institutional remnants of the war on terror would have to be eradicated. And at the top of any list when it comes to that are the lingering war powers granted the president; the authority to commit "targeted killings" via drones in more and more places around the globe; and the existence of that symbol of injustice, the prison established by the Bush administration in 2002 at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Eliminating such foundational war-on-terror policies is essential, if we are to move into an era in which national security exists in tandem with the rule of law and adherence to constitutional norms.

So here, on those three issues, are the basics for my six-month check-backs in late June 2021.

The AUMFs

As far as I'm concerned, the first six-month marker for the Biden administration should be the repeal of the 2001 and 2002 congressional Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMFs) that granted the president the right to continue to pursue conflicts in the name of the war against terror without further recourse to Congress. Three presidents over the last nearly 20 years relied in ever-expanding ways on just that supposed authority to expand the war on terror any way they saw fit.

The first of those AUMFs, passed in Congress with a staggering unanimity (lacking only the brave "no" vote of California Representative Barbara Lee just days after September 11, 2001), authorized the president to "use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons." The second authorized the president to use force "as he determines to be necessary and appropriate" to counter the (supposed) threat posed by Iraq to the "national security of the United States" and "to enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq," a reference to weapons of mass destruction monitoring and compliance. Both AUMFs provided a basis for future unilateral war-making decisions that excluded Congress and, as such, superseded its constitutional authorization to declare war.

Those two AUMFs, the first aimed at al-Qaeda, the second at Saddam Hussein's Iraq, have ever since been stretched to provide the president with the power to wage wars and engage in other military interventions across much of the Greater Middle East and increasing parts of Africa — and to focus on targets far removed from the perpetrators of 9/11. The 2001 AUMF has been used to justify military engagements and drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen among other places. And Donald Trump referred in part to the 2002 AUMF to justify the drone assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani at Baghdad International Airport in January 2020.

"Woefully outdated," those AUMFs have provided what one critic recently called "a blank check to wage war on virtually anyone at the president's discretion." In 2013, President Obama acknowledged that ever-expansive first AUMF and expressed his desire to engage

"Congress and the American people in efforts to refine, and ultimately repeal, the AUMF's mandate. And I will not sign laws designed to expand this mandate further. Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue. But this war, like all wars, must end. That's what history advises. That's what our democracy demands."

Conversely, in May, 2020, Trump vetoed a bill forbidding him to take action against Iran without first obtaining Congressional approval. In sum, neither president stopped using those congressional authorizations.

Repeatedly, since 2001, Representative Barbara Lee and others in Congress have called for the repeal of the 2001 AUMF to no avail. In March 2019, Senators Tim Kaine and Todd Young introduced a bipartisan plan to repeal the 2002 AUMF on the grounds that Iraq was no longer an enemy. Lee led a parallel move in the House which voted to repeal the act. Nothing further happened, however.

"It makes no sense that two AUMFs remain in place against a country that is now a close ally. They serve no operational purpose, run the risk of future abuse by the president, and help keep our nation at permanent war," Kaine said. Given the increasing U.S. attacks in Iraq on Iranian-backed militias, this might prove an uphill battle, but it's nonetheless an important one. Kaine and Young have recently reintroduced legislation to repeal the 2002 authorization. Although for Biden's strike in Syria against Iranian-backed militias, the supposed powers of the commander-in-chief were cited rather than the 2002 AUMF, the worry is that, if tensions continue to escalate between Washington and Tehran, it will be cited in future attacks, however unrelated to its original intent.

On March 5th (two days after Kaine and Young introduced their plan), the White House announced through Press Secretary Jen Psaki that it would itself seek to "replace" the two authorizations "with a narrow and specific framework." In a further gesture towards a more constrained use of force, Biden reportedly cancelled a second strike in Syria after finding out that civilian casualties might result.

First Six-Month Check-Back: The repeal of those endlessly expansive authorizations is a must and should be a top priority for the Biden administration. Any new AUMFs should include consultations with Congress before any attacks are launched on potential foreign enemies, should limit exactly who those enemies might be, and specify both a time frame and the geographical reach of any authorization.

Targeted Killings

Under President Obama, drone warfare — the use of remotely piloted aircraft (RPAs) to target individuals and groups — became a signature tool in Washington's war on terror arsenal. Such "precision" strikes (chosen in "Terror Tuesday" meetings at the White House in the Obama years) were justified because they would reputedly reduce American deaths and, over time, battlefield deaths generally, including the "collateral damage" of civilian casualties. Obama used such drone strikes expansively, even targeting U.S. citizens abroad.

In his second term, Obama did try to put some limits and restrictions on lethal strikes by RPAs, establishing procedures and criteria for them and limiting the grounds for their use. President Trump promptly watered down those stricter guidelines, while expanding the number of drone strikes launched from Afghanistan to Somalia, soon dwarfing Obama's numbers. According to the British-based Bureau for Investigative Journalism, Obama carried out a total of 1,878 drone strikes in his eight years in office. In his first two years as president, Trump launched 2,243 drone strikes. When it came to civilian casualties, at first the Trump administration merely ignored a mandated policy from the Obama era whereby a yearly report on civilian drone strike casualties had to be produced and made public. Then, in March 2019, Trump simply cancelled the requirement, consigning the drone killing program to an even deeper kind of secrecy.

On the subject of drones, in the first weeks of the Biden administration, there have been some potentially encouraging signs. His appointees have signaled an intention to revamp and limit drone policy. On Inauguration Day 2021, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan issued an order announcing the administration's intention to review the use of RPAs for targeted-killing missions outside of war zones. While the review takes place, some of the Trump-era freedom of the CIA and the military to decide on drone targets on their own was suspended. According to reporting by Charlie Savage and Eric Schmitt of the New York Times, "The military and the CIA must now obtain White House permission to attack terrorism suspects in poorly governed places where there are scant American ground troops, like Somalia and Yemen."

Second Six-Month Check-Back: The Biden administration minimally needs to revise its use of drones for targeted killings of any sort, anywhere, so that they become a rarity, not the commonplace they've been. The president must further insist on transparency in reporting on the uses of drone warfare and its casualties. He and his key officials must create a policy in accordance with both domestic and international law.

Guantánamo

Last (but very much not least) on my list, it's time to close the Guantánamo Bay detention facility. This past January was the 19th anniversary of its opening, the moment when the first prisoners from the war on terror were flown to Cuba, offshore from American justice and away from the eyes of the world. In 2008, while George W. Bush was still president, Gitmo received its last inmates. Twelve years ago, Barack Obama pledged to close it within a year.

When Obama left office in January 2017, he had at least made some headway towards its closure, though failing ultimately to shut it down. Gitmo's population had been reduced from 197 prisoners to 41, thanks to the efforts of the Office of the Special Envoy for the closure of Guantánamo, which Obama had set up in 2013, and to its head, Lee Wolosky. He aggressively pursued the mission of transferring detainees out of that facility during the final 18 months of Obama's presidency. One-third of the remaining prisoners were facing charges from, or had already been convicted by, the military commissions that Obama revived in 2009 and that made remarkably little headway towards trials, no less resolutions, during his two terms.

On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump infamously pontificated that he would "load [Gitmo] up with some bad dudes." In actuality, no new detainees would be transferred to the facility during his time in office. Meanwhile, military commission prosecutors proved unable even to mount what should have been the centerpiece case of the Guantánamo years — the trial of the five men, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused of being co-conspirators in the 9/11 attacks.

As with the AUMFs and the drone-strike policy, there are, in the early moments of the Biden years, some encouraging signs that closure could once again become a priority. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, for instance, expressed his thoughts on the subject in questions submitted to the Senate Armed Services Committee during his confirmation hearings. "It is time," he wrote, "that the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay close its doors." Similarly, Dr. Colin Kahl, Biden's nominee for undersecretary for policy at the Pentagon, told Congress, "I believe that it is time to close the DoD detention facility at Guantánamo Bay responsibly." President Biden has also signaled his support for closure, claiming that he wants it shut by the end of his presidency. And there has already been an announcement that the National Security Council is looking into plans to do so.

Meanwhile, after years of delays, reversals, governmental misdeeds, and the dark shadow cast over cases in which torture has been an integral part of the evidentiary record, some movement does seem to be underway. The day after Biden's inauguration, for instance, the administration set the date for a trial that has been stalled for years — that of three Southeast Asian men accused of bombings in Indonesia in 2002 and 2003. All three have been in U.S. custody since 2003, first at CIA "black sites" and, from 2006 on, at Guantánamo. However, as of February 2nd, the date for that trial had already been postponed, due to Covid-19.

Third Six-Month Check-Back: It's imperative that the Biden administration shut down Guantánamo — and the sooner the better. The catastrophic cost of that detention facility is hard to overestimate. It continues to stain the American reputation for fairness and justice worldwide and is the ultimate reminder of the trade-off made between security and liberty in the war on terror. Until Guantánamo closes, the door to detention without due process and so to an alternative judicial system outside the law, as well as to unlawful secret interrogations and brutal treatment remains open. And after all these years, six months should be more than long enough to at least put in motion, if not complete, plans for that closure.

It's one thing to have good intentions, and quite another to realize those intentions in policy. While I understand the concerns of the early critics of Biden's developing war-on-terror-related decisions, my own preference is for a modicum of patience — though nothing like an open-ended time frame. After all, it's way beyond time to consign those war on terror deviations from law and from anything like reasonable norms of action to the history books.

Karen J. Greenberg, a TomDispatch regular, is the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law and the author of Rogue Justice: The Making of the National Security State, and the forthcoming Subtle Tools: The Dismantling of Democracy from the War on Terror to Donald Trump (Princeton, 2021). Julia Tedesco provided research for this article along with Jonathan Alegria and Matthew Ruane.

Intelligence Officer: Trump’s Conflict With Spy Agencies Creates ‘Dangerous Moment’

Intelligence Officer: Trump’s Conflict With Spy Agencies Creates ‘Dangerous Moment’

Reprinted with permission from ProPublica.

The conflict between President-elect Donald Trump and the U.S. intelligence community could have profound repercussions.

We spoke recently about the issue to Matthew Olsen, who spent two decades working in senior posts in intelligence and national security for Democrat and Republican administrations. Olsen, 54, served most recently (from 2011 to 2014) as director of the intelligence community’s National Counterterrorism Center. Before that, he was the general counsel of the National Security Agency. In 2009, he was executive director of the Guantanamo Review Task Force for the Justice Department.

A longtime federal prosecutor, Olsen has been an associate deputy attorney general overseeing national security and criminal cases; acting assistant attorney general for national security; chief of the national security division at the U.S. Attorney’s office in the District of Columbia; and a special counsel to the director of the FBI. Last year, Olsen was a part-time volunteer adviser on national security issues to the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. Today, he’s an executive at IronNet Cybersecurity, a firm he co-founded, and a lecturer at Harvard Law School.

ProPublica: You’ve told me the worst thing someone can say about intelligence professionals is that they are partisan. So what is your impression of the mood in the intelligence community as a result of the criticism by the President-elect?

Olsen: I think it’s a dangerous moment. Because of how important it is for the political leadership of the country, up to and including the president, to have confidence in the information and analysis that we are getting from the intelligence community. And right now the intelligence community is being told that what they say doesn’t matter, or that it’s biased, or that it’s partisan, and those criticisms cut to the core of the whole reason for the existence of the intelligence community. That is, to be outside of the political process, to be expert, so your opinions do matter, and then to be able to inform political leaders in a way that gives leadership a decision advantage. That’s the mission of the intelligence community. And if the President-elect is saying that those things aren’t true, then there’s no reason for the intelligence community to exist. That’s why the most significant criticism that can be levelled at an intelligence professional is this idea that they’re biased.

In the short term, if the president just ignores the intelligence community that’s obviously extremely dangerous, because the decisions won’t be made based on the facts. But in the long run, you can actually have an impact on the intelligence community itself. So that a young person coming out of a graduate program decides instead of going to the CIA, I’m going to instead go to Goldman Sachs, and make a lot more money anyway.

For now, what I experienced at the National Counterterrorism Center, out of the thousand or so people there, across the board there were just incredibly talented, mostly young people, who could’ve gone to Wall Street or to Silicon Valley, but wanted to go fight al-Qaida. And it was enormously gratifying to walk into a briefing room and have these people who were just incredibly talented and dedicated. And I’m concerned that one of the impacts of the latest controversy over the Russian hacking starts to undermine the fact that the intelligence community can continue to recruit and retain the most talented thinkers in the country.

In the past couple of weeks have you heard anything specific about the way people in the agencies are reacting?

I’ve talked to a few people who are in leadership positions in the intelligence community. And they have confirmed what seems obvious from my position on the outside: that these are difficult times. And people are wondering: What’s it going to be like in six months or a year? Is my job going to matter? Is the work I do going to matter? And I think the leadership is trying to encourage people that this is just campaign talk, and not how the government will operate in six months.

Yet in my own view, I am looking for some sign that’s true. … One could just chalk up some of these disparaging statements about the intelligence community to campaign rhetoric. But the problem is that that rhetoric and that discourse haven’t changed much since the election. And I think if you search you won’t find hard evidence on which to base a view that it’s going to change in the next six months or a year. … I think President-elect Trump had an opportunity after he received the briefing [January 6] from the leadership of the intelligence community to make an unequivocal endorsement of the views they expressed, which reflected the clear consensus of the community about Russia’s role in hacking during the election. And he did not take that opportunity. And now only belatedly has he seemed to accept this analysis. That sends a negative message to the professionals in the intelligence community.

What about the annex with unsubstantiated allegations about President-elect Trump that was given to him with that report about Russian operations? He has criticized the intelligence community, and even accused them of leaking the dossier. Is it unusual for the agencies to provide that kind of dossier along with a far more documented and measured intelligence assessment?

It would appear to me that the intelligence community leaders had little option here but to advise the President-elect about the existence of this information. It’s necessary for leaders to have an awareness of information like this, even if it’s unconfirmed.  And it is the responsibility of the IC to inform policy makers of any information that may be relevant to national security. The context is obviously important, and the reports are that the briefing for the President-elect placed this in the proper context.

What do you make of the reports that the Trump administration is considering overhauling the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI)?

I think that would be a mistake. The DNI, after ten years, is serving an invaluable role overseeing the intelligence community. Particularly under Director [James] Clapper’s leadership, it has come into its own as a leader of the disparate elements of the intelligence community. That said, it’s perfectly appropriate for the administration to take a hard look at the DNI to ensure that it is fulfilling the role that Congress envisioned when the DNI was established over 10 years ago. … What happens in the context today during the Trump transition, it’s seen through the lens of: What is Trump trying to do to gut the intel community? … So I think it took on a more significant dimension because of [Trump’s] disparaging of the intel community. The fact that Trump nominated [former] Senator [Daniel] Coats is a good sign. He’s a serious guy and has been a significantly constructive voice on the Senate intelligence committee. … I don’t think you would put Coats in to carry out the dismantling of the DNI.

What’s your view of the national security team the President-elect has put together?

I think the national security team that Trump has put together has some very strong elements. Particularly General [James] Mattis, [for secretary of defense], and General [John] Kelly, [for secretary of homeland security]. And then in terms of experience, Senator Coats at DNI and Representative [Mike] Pompeo, [R-Kan., for director of the CIA] they both have strong intelligence experience and national security experience.

What’s your impression of the reaction at the CIA to the naming of Rep. Pompeo?

I think there’s optimism within the agencies both at DNI and CIA that two former members of [congressional] intelligence committees, who have an appreciation for the importance of the work they do, will have strong and deep respect for the workforce. From my perspective, having members of oversight committees is good for understanding that there are limits on intelligence agencies from a privacy and civil liberties and human-rights perspective. I would expect that given their background they would bring an important appreciation of those limits and even of the role of the rule of law in constraining those agencies when they have got enormous powers.

How do you square what seem to be reasonably well-chosen, respected, talented individuals the President-elect has nominated with his critics’ view that he has a rather cavalier, careless attitude towards the intelligence agencies and things like facts and accuracy? You have to judge him by his choices at this stage, and you and others see these nominees as good choices.

The reality is, as much as we elect new political leaders to occupy the White House, at the level of national security there is a high degree of consistency from one administration to another. I was in the Justice department in the Bush administration and then the Obama administration. And sure, there were changes that President Obama put in place in our counter-terrorism policy, but there was also a fair amount of consistency.  I think we should expect and welcome consistency now. Because so much of what we do in our security doesn’t have a partisan dimension. It’s not political … how we view our enemies. What the threats are. The tools we use to go after those threats. Those are largely non-partisan questions.

So when you look at the people that President-elect Trump has surrounded himself with, I think they reflect — in Mattis and Kelly and Coats and Pompeo — the fact these issues are not fundamentally partisan questions. I think that’s how I would explain how I see a relatively talented and experienced set of leaders in this area. There are a lot of good experienced people who are out there who are Republicans.

What are you concerned about in terms of the main challenges the intelligence agencies face, and how the tone President-elect Trump has set could affect those challenges?

The challenges for the intelligence community, at least in the terrorism context, are ensuring that the White House and policymakers have a very fine-grained, sophisticated understanding of the nature of the threat. Where does it come from? What groups are involved? How does it affect American interests overseas? What’s the nature of the threat here in the United States? Because a lot of decisions will be made about how we are going to counter that threat based on our understanding of the severity and nature of threat.  To have that appreciation requires that the intelligence community have a voice at the table, first of all …

Then it requires policymakers, including the president, to be engaged on a sustained basis. It’s not really a tenable approach for the president to fail to have consistent engagement with the intelligence analysis that’s being provided. The statements that the President-elect made about only needing to know when something important has happened reveal a fundamental misunderstanding about how to gain a sufficiently sophisticated understanding of world events. They don’t happen just out of the blue. They happen over time. You need to be getting that consistent infusion of intelligence, if not daily, multiple times a week, to understand when something has changed. Or when something important is happening.

At the end of the day, the president is accountable for protecting American security and making decisions that put American lives at risk. … And the only way to make those decisions is to truly understand at a very deep level and on a consistent basis the nature of the intelligence that is being provided. You need to have a foundation of understanding that’s based on what’s happening day-in and day-out, not when the threat has gone to the highest level. Or, worst-case scenario, the day after there’s an attack.

So that leads to my second-biggest concern, which is broader than just the intelligence community: how does the government react if there’s an attack in the United States? Particularly one on the scale of the ones we’ve seen over the last years in Paris and Brussels. And what sort of policies will flow from the Administration in the aftermath of a serious attack? So I’m concerned about the possibility, given the rhetoric from the campaign, that we will make significant mistakes in overreaching both in how we look at Muslim Americans in this country, and steps to add detainees to Guantanamo, and law enforcement action that reflects the campaign rhetoric of the idea of rounding up people or conducting unwarranted surveillance in the Muslim American community.

I was in Europe recently talking to counter-terror officials. Some of them predicted that the campaign rhetoric about Muslims could worsen radicalization in the United States. Is that something you are worried about?

Definitely. One of the things we’ve been very successful at in this country over the past 15 years, since 9/11, is making it clear that our counterterrorism efforts did not reflect a war on Islam or [the idea] that Muslims don’t belong here in this country. That’s been a fundamental tenet of our counterterrorism policy. One, because it’s just the right thing to do as Americans.  That’s who we are as Americans. But two, strategically we need the help and assistance of Muslim Americans as well as majority-Muslim nations around the world to take on this fight. And I am concerned that the rhetoric that has come out of the incoming members of the Administration, including the President-elect, feeds into a view that we are at war with Islam. And that is exactly the position that ISIS and other jihadist groups would like us to take. Because it’s consistent with their propaganda. It helps with recruiting and it alienates the people we rely on the most in some ways.

When you compare radicalization in Europe to here in this country, what do you see in the U.S. Muslim community?

We don’t have anything on the scale of radicalization in this country like what the European countries are facing. And that’s largely because Muslim-Americans are better integrated here, and it’s also because of what we stand for as a country in terms of diversity and pluralism. These are fundamental American values. And if we undercut those values by saying, for example, that “Fear of Muslims is rational” [a statement tweeted by Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s appointee for national security adviser] we take a self-defeating position and one that is truly at odds with what we stand for as a country.

How does the rhetoric that our borders are weak and vulnerable to terrorists compare to your experience in government?

It’s a false impression that our borders are open to terrorists or that terrorists are using the refugee process to infiltrate the United States to carry out attacks here. It’s important that we be vigilant that people who come here do not pose a threat. And of course no system is going to be 100 percent effective, but the reality is that the vetting that takes place for people that are either visiting the United States, or certainly those seeking to come here as refugees, is extremely rigorous and careful. And it actually is in our interests to have a system where we allow those that are fleeing ISIS to come here and be welcomed by the United States because they really present the counter-argument to ISIS. They are leaving the so-called caliphate because of the violence. So there’s a message that we send not just to our allies but to our enemies that we are in fact not at war with Islam, and I think it serves our interests from a national security perspective.

This Administration has said they are going to get tougher on terrorism. What do you see them doing and what are the potential repercussions?

It remains to be seen what the new Administration does in terms of increasing the aggressiveness of our counter-terrorism policy. As the next Administration learns about the activities the government has been undertaking during the last eight years, they may decide that not much more can be done within the bounds of what’s legally appropriate, but also what’s strategically wise. Some of the areas I am concerned about include the potential to begin to add detainees at Guantanamo after all the progress that’s been made toward shutting it down. I am worried about that because it will rekindle Guantanamo as a source of propaganda by jihadists against the United States. And more importantly, perhaps, alienate our allies both in the Middle East and in Europe … and beyond Guantanamo, an area that I am concerned about is the treatment of Muslim Americans. And the rhetoric around barring Muslims from entering the country or creating some kind of registry. I think these are terrible ideas.

The idea of reopening Guantanamo to new detainees, which the President-elect has talked about, is an example of where the new administration has not seemed to learn the lessons of the past 15 years. … The fundamental lesson of detention after 9/11 has been that our American judicial system, federal courts and prosecutors are perfectly capable of bringing those individuals to justice. … To disregard that lesson is a grave mistake.

IMAGE: U.S. President elect Donald Trump speaks at election night rally in Manhattan, New York, U.S., November 9, 2016.  REUTERS/Mike Segar

Obama Signs Defense Spending Bill, Criticizes Guantanamo Policy

Obama Signs Defense Spending Bill, Criticizes Guantanamo Policy

HONOLULU (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday signed into law an annual defense policy bill, but in a lengthy statement he raised objections to parts of it, including policies blocking him from closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Obama pledged in his 2008 presidential campaign to close the military prison, but his efforts have been blocked by mostly Republican opposition in Congress. The Democratic president has instead reduced the population there by transferring prisoners to other countries.

The administration recently told Congress it would move up to 18 more prisoners of the 59 remaining at Guantanamo before Obama leaves office next month.

“During my administration, we have responsibly transferred over 175 detainees from Guantanamo,” Obama said in the statement on Friday. “Our efforts to transfer additional detainees will continue until the last day I am in office.”

President-elect Donald Trump, who will be sworn in on Jan. 20, said during the campaign that he would keep the Guantanamo Bay facility open and vowed to “load it up with some bad dudes.”

The $618.7 billion defense spending bill passed by the Republican-controlled Congress this month was a compromise version that dropped controversial language requiring women to register for the draft.

But it kept some Republican-backed initiatives Obama had opposed. The legislation boosts military spending when there has been no similar increase in non-defense funding, and it bars closures of military bases even though top Pentagon officials say they have too much capacity.

House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican, said on Friday the legislation would give U.S. troops a pay raise and praised the Guantanamo language.

“This ensures that, right up until his last hour in office, President Obama will not be able to transfer Guantanamo Bay detainees to the United States,” Ryan said in a statement.

Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush opened the facility to hold terrorism suspects rounded up overseas following the Sept. 11 attacks. Under Bush, the prison came to symbolize aggressive detention practices that opened the United States to accusations of torture.

Obama has maintained for years that he considers “onerous restrictions” on his ability to transfer prisoners a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s separation of powers between Congress and the executive branch. But he gave no indication he would try to override those restrictions.

Reflecting the growing migration of espionage and warfare into cyberspace, Obama also said on Friday that he favors splitting the U.S. Cyber Command, which conducts offensive operations, from the National Security Agency and making it independent, similar to the military’s European and Pacific Commands.

(Reporting by Emily Stephenson, additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Editing by Leslie Adler and Mary Milliken)

IMAGE: U.S. Marines exit an amphibious assault vehicle during a simulated beach assault at Marine Corps Base Hawaii with the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Unit during the multi-national military exercise RIMPAC in Kaneohe, Hawaii, July 30, 2016.  REUTERS/Hugh Gentry