Author: Charlie Savage

The Nation commissioned me to write a review-essay about the Afghanistan War and the book The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War by Clint Whitlock of The Washington Post. The magazine has now published it in its April 4/11 issue under the headline “Mission Creep: What are the lessons of the United States’ […]

Reality check for some Trump critics: The Jan. 6 Committee filing’s vague hand gesture in the direction of possible crimes or fraud by Trump in a dispute over a subpoena is a far cry from a road map for criminal prosecution based on the same evidence. In this 🧵, I will explain why the Jan […]

I am saddened to hear that @walterdellinger has died. We nerded out over legal issues many times over the years. A running joke was that I was the only one who was more impressed about the fact that he had led the Office of Legal Counsel than served as acting solicitor general. I looked up […]

With The New York Times — and in one case, with my colleague Mark Mazzetti — I filed two new Freedom of Information Act cases this week. I thank the Times’ newsroom lawyer, David McCraw, and our annual First Amendment fellow, Jess Hui, for their representation in this litigation. The case with Mark is asking […]

I live-blogged on Twitter the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on closing Guantanamo today. The biggest takeaway was what didn’t happen: the Biden administration didn’t send any government witness, in keeping with its low-key (and not particularly active) approach to its nominal policy goal of closing the prison. Although the revitalized Periodic Review Board has been […]

With the New York Times, I have filed a new lawsuit against the United States Central Command seeking public disclosure of surveillance footage related to the tragically botched Aug. 29 drone strike in Kabul. Specifically, the lawsuit — filed under the Freedom of Information Act — seeks aerial footage starting five minutes before the drone […]

I posted the below thread in response to this tweet from Marcy Wheeler (@emptywheel) promoting a blog post that mainly critiqued an article that has gotten supporters of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange excited. Her post included an aside about “propaganda” from “Pulitzer Prize winning NYT reporters” that turned out to link to this June 16 […]

Here is a short guide to the complex issue of what kinds of communications-related metadata that prosecutors could have seized from Apple with grand jury subpoenas, including about Schiff, Swalwell and McGahn: /1 These are some types of metadata that can be subpoenaed: when one used apps like Facetime & iMessage, & one’s IP addresses […]

Fifty years ago next month, the NYT began publishing the Pentagon Papers, a seminal moment in the history of the Vietnam War and in leaks of Top Secret information. Its source, Daniel Ellsberg, has made another unauthorized disclosure. /1 Ellsberg also copied a large amount of material about planning for nuclear war, intending to release […]

After neglecting this website for awhile, a recent technical mishap required me to pay attention to it again to fix it (with help once again from my friend John Musser of Digerati Designs). That’s a good opportunity to take note of two book-review essays I wrote as a freelancer for publications other than The New […]