A Federal District Court judge today threw out the ACLU-led challenge to the NSA’s warrantless upstream surveillance of one-end-foreign Internet communications under the FISA Amendments Act, ruling that the plaintiffs, including Wikimedia Foundation, had not established standing. The case touched on an article that I wrote in August 2013, early in the post-Snowden leak era, […]
Author: Charlie Savage
Power Wars teaser GIF: “Never Been Reported”
Obama vetoes National Defense Authorization Act in part over Gitmo closure
Here is the relevant part of his veto message to Congress.
A secret (for now) appeals court ruling in our targeted killing FOIA lawsuit
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has issued what appears to be a significant ruling in the ongoing NYT/ACLU Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for legal memos related to targeted killings — but we can’t see it yet. The court has made certain redactions in its opinion, and the government now has 30 days […]
Power Wars Shoutouts
It’s a team effort to bring national security issues to light. Here are some non-NYT colleagues I thank in Power Wars:
The Word file became ink and paper, and dwelt in warehouses (for now)
On “Quotes” and Reconstructed Dialogue in Journalism
It bothers me to read, in your standard Bob Woodward style insider book or personal memoirs by retired officials, dialogue from private conversations that has quotation marks around it. To me, quotation marks are for verbatim comments. In reporting out behind-the-scenes stuff, we journalists can reconstruct approximate dialogue drawn from people’s memories (ideally, cross-referencing multiple […]
Preview: “Power Wars” Table of Contents
“Power Wars” publishes three weeks from today. Unlike with my first book, “Takeover,” Hachette/Little Brown is keeping it under wraps and has printed up no galleys to distribute in advance. So that means those who pre-order “Power Wars” will be among its earliest readers. Here is a preview of what you’ll find in it:
Tracking my FOIA lawsuits
My bureau chief asked me to compile an overview of the many Freedom of Information Act lawsuits I am waging with the New York Times, which was a useful exercise for me, too, to keep track of it all. It’s a lot! I decided to put it up here too, and will update it as […]
We’re asking a court to force the government to disclose more of its surveillance-related inspector general reports for public scrutiny
“Under FOIA, courts are not rendered mere bystanders whenever the executive branch declares something classified.” — NYT motion Today, the New York Times filed a memorandum of law in support of its motion for summary judgment in another one of my Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. This case involves a series of inspector general reports about government […]