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# Charlie Savage

Author of Power Wars & Takeover

## Sitemaps

- [XML Sitemap](https://charliesavage.com/sitemap.xml): Contains all public & indexable URLs for this website.

## Posts

- [Lindsey Graham Dies](https://charliesavage.com/2026/07/lindsey-graham-dies/)
- [Did Native Americans Really Name the Fort Wayne Portage  "Glorious Gate?"](https://charliesavage.com/2025/02/did-native-americans-really-call-fort-waynes-maumee-confluence-portage-the-golden-gate/) - [cross-posted from the Facebook group True Fort Wayne History, from January 2024] On the portage and "Glorious Gate"-- I'd like to pull something out of a friendly conversation I had with Steve Oberlin deep in the comments under his post about the watershed, because maybe it will be interesting to a wider audience. It is
- [On Journalism and American Democracy](https://charliesavage.com/2026/04/on-journalism-and-american-democracy/) - Here are some brief remarks I delivered about journalism and American democracy at the 2025 George Polk Awards ceremony.
- [New FOIA Lawsuit Filed: Durham Appendix and Related Material](https://charliesavage.com/2026/04/new-foia-lawsuit-filed-durham-appendix-and-related-material/) - With help from NYT newsroom lawyers Al-Amyn Sumar and David McCraw, I have today filed a new Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking a less-redacted version of the (once) classifed appendix to the 2023 report by former Special Counsel John Durham, as well as disclosure of related material. Declassified and released last summer, the appendix
- [Grokipedia's Politicized Hallucinations (About Me)](https://charliesavage.com/2026/01/grokipedias-politicized-hallucinations/) - An article about me on Grokipedia is full of disinformation in which the LLM strained to fulfill its programming mandate to present a conservative viewpoint. [See this Feb. 1, 2026 post for an update.] “Grokipedia,” Elon Musk’s AI-written alternative to Wikipedia that is touted as de-wokified information, recently came to my attention, so I (naturally)
- [Newly Unsealed Hearing Transcripts From Trump Investigations](https://charliesavage.com/2026/03/hearing-transcripts-unsealed-from-subpoena-fights-in-trump-cases/) - I have been continuing my efforts to get court records unsealed from the behind-the-scenes subpoena battles in the Trump Jan. 6 and classified documents investigations. (See this post from last September for the previous round.) It's not clear if there will always be daily news article fodder in such materials since we already know the
- [Newly Revealed Material About Attorney-Client Privilege and Grand Jury Subpoenas in Trump's Election and Documents Cases](https://charliesavage.com/2025/09/newly-revealed-material-from-the-trump-grand-jury-privilege-fights-in-the-election-and-documents-cases/) - Yesterday, Judge James E. Boasberg, the chief judge of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, made public some previously secret material about attorney-client privilege fights in the grand jury investigations that led to President Trump's indictment for trying to overturn the 2020 election and for retaining classified documents. I wrote about it
- [Republicans and the Myth that Every President Since Nixon has Declared the War Powers Resolution's 60-Day Clock to be Unconstitutional](https://charliesavage.com/2015/12/republicans-and-the-myth-that-every-president-since-nixon-has-declared-the-war-powers-resolutions-60-day-clock-to-be-unconstitutional/) - Last week, over at Balkinization, Stephen Griffin took issue with a brief passage in my book Power Wars. In chapter 12, I tell the story of the Obama administration’s internal fight and agonies over the War Powers Resolution’s 60-day limit for unauthorized hostilities during NATO's 2011 air war in Libya. Congress appeared to be unable or unwilling to
- [Fixing Grokipedia's Fake News](https://charliesavage.com/2026/02/fixing-grokipedias-fake-news/) - With help from a pseudonymous reader who proposed an experiment, Grok cleaned up most of its politicized hallucinations about me. A few days ago, I wrote a blog post about fabricated claims Grok had invented in an entry about me for Grokipedia, Elon Musk's AI-written "de-woke" version of Wikipedia. The entry's biographical materials were accurate,
- [Seeking Pam Bondi's TikTok Letters to Apple and Google](https://charliesavage.com/2025/05/seeking-pam-bondis-tiktok-letters-to-apple-and-google/) - With The New York Times, I have filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in the Southern District of New York against the Justice Department seeking disclosure of the letters Attorney General Pam Bondi sent to Apple and Google assuring them that they would not be prosecuted for violating the law against providing support to
- [New FOIA Lawsuit: Boat Strike Videos](https://charliesavage.com/2025/11/new-foia-lawsuit-boat-strike-videos/) - With The New York Times, I have filed a new Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the government. I am seeking the full aerial surveillance videos from three of President Trump's boat strikes - the first one, and the two for which there were announced survivors (at least initially). My thanks to David McCraw, the
- [On Dick Cheney](https://charliesavage.com/2025/11/on-dick-cheney/) - Former Vice President Dick Cheney died last week. The morning his passing was announced, I wrote a piece for The New York Times about how Cheney's efforts to expand presidential power paved the way for Donald Trump's imperial presidency, even though the two men became political adversaries. My first book, Takeover, was about the Bush-Cheney
- [More on my discussion with Stephen Griffin on Republicans and the Myth that Every President Since Nixon has Declared the War Powers Resolution's 60-Day Clock to be Unconstitutional](https://charliesavage.com/2015/12/more-on-my-discussion-with-steven-griffin-on-republicans-and-the-myth-that-every-president-since-nixon-has-declared-the-war-powers-resolutions-60-day-clock-to-be-unconstitutional/) - Stephen Griffin and I have been discussing the myth that all presidents since Nixon have deemed the War Powers Resolution’s 60-day clock to be unconstitutional. (Griffin #1, me #1, Griffin #2, and now this from me.) In sum, we agree it’s a myth because Democratic presidents have taken the opposite position, but we disagree about
- [Judge orders Trump admin to speed up a search for legal documents, if any, about legal basis, if any, for April airstrike against Syria](https://charliesavage.com/2017/07/judge-orders-trump-admin-to-speed-up-a-search-for-legal-documents-if-any-about-legal-basis-if-any-for-april-airstrike-against-syria/) - Yesterday, Federal District Court Judge Christopher Cooper issued an unusual 14-page ruling in a Freedom of Information Act case brought by Protect Democracy and a preliminary injunction ordering the government to expedite its processing of the matter. The lawsuit is seeking documents laying out the Trump administration's legal rationale for the United States' April 6
- [Trump signing statement challenges 42 statutory provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2018](https://charliesavage.com/2017/12/trump-signing-statement-challenges-42-statutory-provisions-of-the-national-defense-authorization-act-for-2018/) - When President Trump signed the fiscal year 2018 iteration of the annual National Defense Authorization Act this week, he appended a signing statement challenging several dozen of its provisions. Obviously he didn't write the signing statement himself, but his legal team - spanning the Office of Legal Counsel, the Office of the White House Counsel,
- [Senators Press Pompeo over Monitoring Ex-Gitmo Detainees, Fate of Two Libyans Deported by Senegal](https://charliesavage.com/2018/07/senators-press-pompeo-over-monitoring-ex-gitmo-detainees-fate-of-two-libyans-deported-by-senegal/) - As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo heads to the Senate later today to testify before the Foreign Relations Committee, a bipartisan group of lawmakers have sent him a sharp-toned letter about the Trump-era State Department's seeming neglect of its responsibility to monitor former Guantanamo detainees -- and expressing "profound concern" about two who disappeared after they
- [Upstream Internet Surveillance Confusion](https://charliesavage.com/2015/10/upstream-internet-surveillance-confusion/) - 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,
- [The Buried History of Fort Wayne and Culture War](https://charliesavage.com/2020/09/the-buried-history-of-fort-wayne-and-culture-war/) - Over the course of about 15 months in 2019-20, I developed a special side project: a deep look at a political and culture-war fight that broke out in my hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana, last year, over creating a new honor for the town's namesake, who conquered the Native American tribes in the Midwest and
- [Was Fort Wayne's Swinney Park Really a Native American Site for Ritualistic Torture and Cannibalism?](https://charliesavage.com/2025/02/was-fort-waynes-swinney-park-really-a-native-american-site-for-ritualistic-torture-and-cannibalism/) - [Cross posted from the "True Fort Wayne History" Facebook group] On Swinney Park and whether it was the ritual site for Miami tribe "cannibalistic orgies" or was the "old torture ground" -- [ADDED for TLDRers: My tentative conclusion is that this local lore appears to be a myth which traces back to a speech delivered
- [Seeking Unsealing of Grand Jury Fights Over Attorney-Client Privilege in the Trump Cases](https://charliesavage.com/2025/02/seeking-unsealing-of-grand-jury-fights-over-attorney-client-privilege-in-the-trump-cases/) - I have formally asked Judge James Boasberg, the chief judge of the Federal District Court in Washington, to unseal dockets, filings and judicial opinions related to fights over attorney-client privilege and attorney work product privilege during the investigations that led to Trump's indictments in the election case and the classified documents case. My request has
- [New FOIA Lawsuit: Seeking Jack Smith's Report on the Trump Classified Documents Case](https://charliesavage.com/2025/01/new-foia-lawsuit-seeking-jack-smiths-report-on-the-trump-classified-documents-case/) - Just after midnight this morning, the New York Times and I filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act seeking disclosure of the volume of former Special Counsel Jack Smith's report about the Trump classified documents case. Here is the complaint.
- [Hosting My Old Twitter Archive](https://charliesavage.com/2024/12/hosting-my-old-twitter-archive/) - Like many people, I have found zombie Twitter -- Elon Musk's X -- to be increasingly unusable for the purposes that originally attracted me to it. Among many other degradations of the former Twitter experience, its algorithmic suppression of posts with news links significantly impedes my ability as a journalist to get a broader audience
- [Nora Dannehy confirms that she quit Durham inquiry in protest](https://charliesavage.com/2023/09/nora-dannehy-confirms-that-she-quit-durham-inquiry-in-protest/) - Nora Dannehy, now a Connecticut Supreme Court justice, publicly confirmed at her confirmation testimony that she resigned as the No. 2 in John Durham's counter-investigation of the Russia investigation in protest of what she saw as unethical politicization of the effort by then-Attorney General Bill Barr. With my NYT colleagues Katie Benner and Adam Goldman,
- [Power Wars Documents: Violating the Notice Law for the Bergdahl Prisoner Exchange Deal](https://charliesavage.com/2015/10/power-wars-documents-violating-the-notice-law-for-the-bergdahl-prisoner-exchange-deal/) - This is a set of documents related to the Obama administration’s disputed decision to transfer five higher-level Taliban detainees to Qatar as part of the prisoner exchange deal for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had been captured by the Taliban in 2009 after wandering off his outpost and was being held under horrific conditions. I discuss
- ["Vice" - A Cheney Biopic [updated 4/7/19]](https://charliesavage.com/2018/10/vice-a-cheney-biopic/) - Check out Christian Bale as Dick Cheney in this trailer for "Vice" that dropped today. This movie looks fantastic. Chapters two and three of my first book, Takeover, were essentially an intellectual history of Cheney - why he had the views on executive power that he did, based on his previous life experiences - leading
- [PCLOB Releases Its (Very Redacted) XKEYSCORE Study](https://charliesavage.com/2024/02/pclob-releases-its-very-redacted-xkeyscore-study/) - Back in December 2020, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board completed a report on the National Security Agency's XKEYSCORE system, whose existence had come to light as part of the Snowden leaks. XKEYSCORE is a software program that N.S.A. analysts use to query the vast repository of stuff that the agency has sucked up,
- [A Short Tribute to Norma Thiele (1930-2023), My High School Journalism Teacher -- And Her Special Retirement Issue of "The Northerner"](https://charliesavage.com/2023/02/a-short-tribute-to-miss-norma-thiele-who-got-me-started-in-journalism/) - Norma Thiele, my journalism teacher at North Side High School in Fort Wayne, Indiana, died on Monday at age 92. For more than four decades, "Miss Thiele" was a great writing teacher and adviser to the then-weekly student newspaper, The Northerner. After each issue of the paper, she would mark up everything that was wrong
- [How "The Dark Side of the Rainbow" Haunts My Career](https://charliesavage.com/2023/06/how-the-dark-side-of-the-rainbow-haunts-my-career/) - I wrote in the New York Times Magazine (gift link) about my weird connection to the experience of listening to Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon" while watching "The Wizard of Oz," which is sometimes called "The Dark Side of the Rainbow." I didn't invent this idea, but an article about it I
- [Takeover document: The Iran-Contra minority report](https://charliesavage.com/2016/02/takeover-document-the-iran-contra-minority-report/) - The first quarter or so of Takeover is a history of executive power before the Bush-Cheney administration, primarily from Watergate to the end of Bill Clinton's presidency, interwoven with an intellectual history of Dick Cheney - how he came to develop his beliefs about strong executive powers. A key moment, recounted in Chapter 3, Section 6,
- [Four things Antonin Scalia did on executive power, secrecy & surveillance in the Ford administration](https://charliesavage.com/2016/02/four-things-antonin-scalia-did-on-executive-power-secrecy-surveillance-in-the-ford-administration/) - There have been a lot of retrospectives about Justice Antonin Scalia's record on the Supreme Court since his death on Saturday, but here are four things about his earlier career as head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in the Ford administration that you might not know about. They are drawn from my
- [Edward Snowden's Hong Kong barrister authenticates hotel records debunking mystery gap claim](https://charliesavage.com/2017/03/edward-snowdens-hong-kong-barrister-authenticates-hotel-records-that-debunk-mystery-gap-theory/) - In the New York Review of Books, I have been engaged in a debate with Edward Jay Epstein about his book, "How America Lost Its Secrets: Edward Snowden, the Man and the Theft," which lays out the case that Snowden was an espionage source for the Russians or Chinese masquerading as a whistleblower. I wrote
- [Eight things the Obama administration did not do because of legal concerns (at least in part)](https://charliesavage.com/2016/01/eight-things-the-obama-administration-did-not-do-because-of-legal-concerns-at-least-in-part/) - One of my themes in “Power Wars” is how extraordinarily lawyerly the Obama administration has been in terms of personnel, mindset, and deliberative approach, in contrast to the extraordinarily un-lawyerly Bush-Cheney administration - for better and for worse. When I do book talks – like one last week at the CATO Institute – a recurring
- [Is my Obama book, Power Wars, less "prosecutorial" than my Bush book, Takeover? Yes, some – and here's why.](https://charliesavage.com/2016/02/is-power-wars-less-prosecutorial-than-takeover-yes-and-heres-why/) - Last week, The Weekly Standard published a lengthy review of Power Wars: Inside Obama's Post-9/11 Presidency by Gabriel Schoenfeld. I was grateful for the engagement with the book, though of course as with any review, I agreed with and liked some parts of it more than others. He and I had a private exchange about one
- [Judge Rejects Request to Unseal Executive Privilege Arguments Related to the Jan. 6 Grand Jury](https://charliesavage.com/2023/02/judge-rejects-request-to-unseal-executive-privilege-arguments-related-to-the-jan-6-grand-jury/) - Judge Beryl Howell, the chief judge of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, has decided not to unseal filings and rulings ancillary to the material presented to the grand jury investigating Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The New York Times and I
- [A Note of Appreciation for Alberto Ibargüen as He Retires From the Knight Foundation](https://charliesavage.com/2023/03/a-note-of-appreciation-for-alberto-ibarguen-as-he-retires-from-the-knight-foundation/) - As Alberto Ibargüen -- the head of the Knight Foundation and former publisher of The Miami Herald -- retires, I would like to add a public note of personal appreciation to the encomiums. https://www.philanthropy.com/article/knight-foundation-leader-to-retire-leaving-a-powerful-legacy In 1999, when I went to work for The Miami Herald as a cub reporter just out of college and he
- [Rodney Joffe's De-Censored Complaint v Neustar about Bulk DNS Sales, Alfa Bank and Trump](https://charliesavage.com/2023/01/rodney-joffes-interesting-complaint-v-neustar-re-dns-sales-and-alfa-bank-litigation/) - Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, a judge in Delaware, has ordered a previously heavily redacted court document to largely be made public, partly at my request. It is a complaint that Rodney Joffe filed against his former company, Neustar, in a lawsuit over whether Neustar has to pay his legal bills for matters arising from
- [As Gitmo's Camp 5 closes, the backstory of my 2003 story disclosing its existence](https://charliesavage.com/2016/09/the-story-of-my-story-about-gitmos-camp-5/) - Today, my friend Carol Rosenberg of The Miami Herald, who does God's work by traveling to Guantanamo to cover every day of every pre-trial hearing in the dysfunctional military commissions system, reports that the military has closed Camp 5 and consolidated the remaining 46 regular detainees in Camp 6. (The 15 former CIA black-site high-value prisoners
- [What Google Earth Shows About Guantanamo's Super-Secret Camp 7](https://charliesavage.com/2016/06/what-google-earth-shows-about-guantanamos-super-secret-camp-7/) - UPDATED Jan. 28, 2018 with Strava fitness map data visualization insight UPDATED Sept. 18, 2017 with updated Google Earth satellite images UPDATED Apr. 6, 2021 with archival Google Earth satellite images *** Today I read on TechCrunch that Google had figured out a way to make its satellite maps clearer, and checked Camp 7 of
- [A Trip to Syria: ISIS Fighters’ Children Are Growing Up in a Desert Camp. What Will They Become?](https://charliesavage.com/2022/07/a-trip-to-syria-isis-fighters-children-are-growing-up-in-a-desert-camp-what-will-they-become/) - I accompanied a military-escorted congressional fact-finding trip organized by @LindseyGrahamSC to look at detention of ISIS men & wives & children operated by a Kurdish-led militia that is the main US partner in northeastern Syria. Story has just posted: This is what Al Hol -- the vast camp for refugees and others displaced by war
- [The FBI's 2021 Review of 9/11-Related Investigations With Saudi Links](https://charliesavage.com/2022/06/the-fbis-2021-review-of-9-11-related-investigations-with-saudi-links/) - This interesting 130-page report from July 2021 was included in a tranche of otherwise much older documents related to the government's investigations into links between the 9/11 hijackers and various Saudi officials and agencies, which have been declassified as a result of Biden's Executive Order 14040. Ahead of the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks
- [Live-Tweeting the Sussmann-Durham Trial: Closing Arguments](https://charliesavage.com/2022/05/live-tweeting-the-sussmann-durham-trial-closing-arguments/) - Good morning again from the E. Barrett Prettyman courthouse in downtown Washington, DC. The Sussmann-Durham trial will at least start to wrap up today with closing arguments. /1 Jury deliberations should start this afternoon. But because the judge is leaving at 2:30 p.m. for his planned Memorial Day weekend vacation, deliberations would have to go
- [Live-tweeting the Sussmann-Durham trial May 26](https://charliesavage.com/2022/05/live-tweeting-the-sussmann-durham-trial-may-26/) - Good morning from the E. Barrett Prettyman courthouse in Washington DC, where the Sussmann-Durham trial is set to resume. Yesterday the prosecution wrapped and defense witnesses began. As of last evening, defense had not decided whether Sussmann himself will take the stand./1 The defense will NOT be calling Sussmann to testify./2 Judge makes sure Sussmann
- [Live-tweeting the Sussmann-Durham trial, May 25](https://charliesavage.com/2022/05/live-tweeting-the-sussmann-durham-trial-may-25/) - Good morning from the E Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in DC, where I'm taking back the torch from @adamgoldmanNYT in watching the Sussmann-Durham trial today. It's possible the prosecution will wrap up its case and defense will open today, but we'll see how it unfolds. /1 There was going to be args this a.m. on limits
- [Live-tweeting Sussmann-Durham trial, day one](https://charliesavage.com/2022/05/live-tweeting-sussmann-durham-trial-day-one/) - Good morning from the E. Barrett Prettyman courthouse in Washington DC, where opening arguments are set to begin in the Sussmann-Durham case. Packed media room so will likely be plenty of people live tweeting. One of the cybersecurity researchers who developed the Alfa Bank data and analysis and had been on the prosecutors witness list,
- [Two Sussmann-Durham Case Pre-Trial Threads](https://charliesavage.com/2022/05/two-sussmann-durham-case-pre-trial-threads/) - Another development for in-the-weeds enthusiasts of the Durham-Sussmann case: the defense has a new filing with a bunch of handwritten notes of a March 6, 2017, FBI meeting attended by Baker at which there was knowledge that Sussmann had a client. /1 https://pacer-documents.s3.amazonaws.com/36/235637/04519212888.pdf The defense appears to be planning to use this to suggest that
- [Today's Pre-Trial Hearing in the Durham-Sussmann Case](https://charliesavage.com/2022/04/todays-pre-trial-hearing-in-the-durham-sussmann-case/) - I attended a pre-trial hearing in the Durham-Sussmann case this afternoon at which a litany of evidentiary issues were discussed, many without resolution. It was far too weedy/incremental for a general-reader news article, but here’s my impression of takeaways for enthusiasts. /1 Team Durham (lead prosecutor Andrew DeFilippis) will call Perkins Coie’s managing partner to
- [New Book Review-Essay: The Afghanistan Papers](https://charliesavage.com/2022/04/new-book-review-essay-the-afghanistan-papers/) - 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’
- [Why the Jan. 6 Committee's Filing Accusing Trump of Crimes is Not Necessarily a Roadmap to Prosecuting Him](https://charliesavage.com/2022/03/why-the-jan-6-committees-filing-accusing-trump-of-crimes-is-not-necessarily-a-roadmap-to-prosecuting-him/) - 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
- [RIP Walter Dellinger](https://charliesavage.com/2022/02/rip-walter-dellinger/) - 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
- [I am suing CentCom for aerial footage from the botched Aug. 29 drone strike in Kabul.](https://charliesavage.com/2021/10/i-am-suing-centcom-for-aerial-footage-from-the-botched-aug-29-drone-strike-in-kabul/) - 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
- [Two new FOIA lawsuits: Any DIA purchases of DNS or netflow logs from data brokers, and FBI shooting incident reports](https://charliesavage.com/2021/12/two-new-foia-lawsuits-seeking-docs-about-any-dia-purchases-of-dns-or-netflow-logs-from-data-brokers-and-fbi-shooting-incident-reports/) - 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
- [Durbin Chastises Biden Administration for Snubbing His Guantanamo Closure Hearing](https://charliesavage.com/2021/12/durbin-chastises-biden-administration-for-snubbing-his-guantanamo-closure-hearing/) - 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
- [On Kavanaugh-Pickering and a bad-faith critique by David French (& the Trump White House Press Office)](https://charliesavage.com/2018/09/on-kavanaugh-pickering-and-a-bad-faith-critique-by-david-french-the-trump-white-house-press-office/)
- [Hardcore Surveillance Law Nerding: On Yahoo scanning, "facilities," and Stellarwind](https://charliesavage.com/2016/10/hardcore-surveillance-law-nerding-on-yahoo-scanning-facilities-and-stellarwind/) - Over at Emptywheel, Marcy Wheeler's latest post about legal issues raised by the Yahoo scan controversy/mystery is worth reading. I agree with much but not all of it. This post will explain. First, some context. The Yahoo scan issue, first revealed in an important but in places murky October 4 scoop by Reuters, has gradually
- [Marcy Wheeler is Confused about the Charges Against Assange for Journalistic-Style Activities](https://charliesavage.com/2021/06/marcy-wheeler-is-confused-about-the-charges-against-julian-for-journalistic-style-activities/) - 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
- [Prosecutors Could Not Have Gotten the Type of Metadata People are Most Worried About With Subpoenas to Apple](https://charliesavage.com/2021/06/prosecutors-could-not-have-gotten-the-type-of-metadata-people-are-most-worried-about-with-subpoenas-to-apple/) - 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
- [New Leak by Daniel Ellsberg: the Risk of Nuclear War over Taiwan](https://charliesavage.com/2021/05/new-leak-by-daniel-ellsberg-the-risk-of-nuclear-war-over-taiwan/) - 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
- [Glenn Greenwald's Dishonest Conspiracy Theory on the CIA's Russian Bounty Assessment](https://charliesavage.com/2021/05/glenn-greenwalds-incoherent-conspiracy-theory-on-the-cias-russian-bounty-assessment/) - In service of his schtick, @ggreenwald is again putting forward a series of bad-faith misrepresentations re the CIA Russian bounty assessment and the NYT reporting on it. I’m going to dissect various ways he is demonstrably gaslighting, after which I'll ignore him. /1 At a hearing last year, various lawmakers brought up the recently disclosed
- [Two book review essays](https://charliesavage.com/2021/05/two-book-review-essays/) - 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
- [Read the 1986 Justice Department Report for Ed Meese "Separation of Powers: Legislative-Executive Relations"](https://charliesavage.com/2019/11/read-the-1986-meese-justice-department-report-separation-of-powers-legislative-executive-relations/) - A few days ago, I wrote a piece analyzing Attorney General Bill Barr's Federalist Society speech on his maximalist view of executive power, which I, argued, had more to do with Ronald Reagan's 1980s than George Washington's 1780s. I included a cautionary quotation from an internal 1986 Justice Department manifesto on separation of powers issues
- [The Gotcha Takes on Barr's Census Question Comments Are Off, But Something Else  Is Dubious](https://charliesavage.com/2019/07/the-gotcha-takes-on-barrs-census-question-comments-are-off-but-something-else-is-dubious/) - I think some gotcha takes are missing the mark re Barr’s comments about the “hysterical” media insinuating that the Trump admin was thinking about adding the citizenship question to the Census by executive fiat. There is something here worth scrutinizing, but it’s different. /1 People are citing Barr saying Monday, after being asked about an
- [Remembering Robert Pear](https://charliesavage.com/2019/05/remembering-robert-pear/) - My colleague Robert Pear died last night following a stroke. I would like to share a few memories and anecdotes about what it was like to work near and with him for the past 11 years. /1 Robert Pear, Authoritative Times Reporter on Health Care, Dies at 69 Robert had a very unusual personality. Despite
- [Congress is Litigating at a Historically Unprecedented Rate, as the Aberrational Trump Era Accelerates a Polarization-Driven Trend](https://charliesavage.com/2019/08/congress-is-litigating-at-a-historically-unprecedented-rate-as-the-aberrational-trump-era-accelerates-a-polarization-driven-trend/) - It was once rare for Congress to go to court. But the number of cases House Democrats are now litigating is historically unprecedented -- a Trump-era aberration that is accelerating a larger shift in governance whose seeds predate Trump. w/ @npfandos The House v. Trump: Stymied Lawmakers Increasingly Battle in the Courts It's routine, of
- [Antonin Scalia's 2007 remarks about national-security issues in the Ford administration](https://charliesavage.com/2021/02/antonin-scalias-2007-remarks-about-national-security-issues-in-the-ford-administration/) - In my 2007 book, "Takeover," I included a quote from a speech by Justice Antonin Scalia about his time as a senior Justice Department official in the Ford administration and during the Church Committee investigation. (Scalia was then the assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel.) I recently had a chance to listen
- [A Victory Against Secret Law: Appeals Court De-Censors Its Ruling in Doe v. Mattis (the U.S. citizen enemy combatant case)](https://charliesavage.com/2019/06/a-victory-against-secret-law-appeals-court-de-censors-its-ruling-in-doe-v-mattis-the-u-s-citizen-enemy-combatant-case/) - Today, in a victory against secret law, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has unsealed and re-issued a significant ruling it issued in May 2018 in the case of Doe v. Mattis, regarding an American citizen who was held without trial in American military custody for over a year as a suspected
- [The NYT Is Surveying 2020 Presidential Primary Candidates About Their Views on Executive Power](https://charliesavage.com/2019/06/the-nyt-is-surveying-2020-presidential-primary-candidates-about-their-views-on-executive-power/) - On Friday, I emailed numerous presidential primary campaigns an invitation to participate in a New York Times survey project on executive power. Our intent is to publish the full answers of each participating candidate, alongside notations indicating which others were unwilling or unable to answer the questions. We gave the campaigns a one-month deadline of
- [Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board releases PPD-28 surveillance report in response to my FOIA](https://charliesavage.com/2018/10/privacy-and-civil-liberties-oversight-board-releases-ppd-28-surveillance-report/) - In response to a Freedom of Information Act request I submitted in the spring of 2017, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) has declassified and made public a partly redacted version of its December 2016 (ish) Top Secret report on the implementation of President Obama's PPD-28, the presidential policy directive he issued in
- [Issue to watch: What are the limits on "collective self-defense" of partner forces?](https://charliesavage.com/2018/10/issue-to-watch-what-are-the-limits-on-collective-self-defense-of-partner-forces/) - Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, has sent a letter to the Pentagon continuing a dialogue about the executive branch's expansive view of "collective self defense." The letter contains an excerpt from a letter the military had sent him earlier this year, which is not public, in which it says that the US military has
- [Response to Robert Merry](https://charliesavage.com/2018/02/response-to-robert-merry/) - A few weeks ago, the website of The American Conservative magazine published a lengthy article by its brief-tenured and outgoing editor, Robert W. Merry, carrying the sober and understated headline “The Nunes Memo and the Death of American Journalism.” Why was journalism dead? Because of me! More specifically, because when the famous memo prepared at
- [Lawmakers Warn Against Any Attempt to Jam 702 Surveillance Reauthorization Without a Real Debate](https://charliesavage.com/2017/12/lawmakers-warn-against-any-attempt-to-jam-702-reauthorization-through-without-debate/) - A bipartisan group of 10 senators today sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell today urging him not to try to attach an extension of the expiring warrantless surveillance program law, Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, to some other must-pass bill and trying to jam it through without debate. If there
- [The US Has Deployed Troops To Lebanon Now, and Other Deltas in the New War Powers Resolution Letter](https://charliesavage.com/2017/12/the-us-has-deployed-troops-to-lebanon-now-and-other-deltas-in-the-new-war-powers-resolution-letter/) - The White House last night sent its semi-annual War Powers Resolution letter to Congress disclosing deployments of U.S. troops "equipped for combat" (a sometimes ambiguous category - guards at Guantanamo count, but not troops along the DMZ in the Korean Peninsula). I compared it to the June 2017 letter and identified the following deltas: The
- [702 nuggets: no court-ordered encryption backdoors (yet), CIA working on tracking its USP metadata queries, and more](https://charliesavage.com/2017/12/702-nuggets-no-court-ordered-encryption-backdoors-yet-cia-working-on-tracking-its-usp-metadata-queries-and-more/) - The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has provided some written answers to questions submitted by senators like Dianne Feinstein, Ron Wyden, and Angus King during Senate Intel hearings over the summer about the FISA Amendments Act Section 702 warrantless surveillance program. Some of this is well covered territory, like Wyden's fighting with the
- [With clock ticking, House Intelligence Committee releases its version of a 702 surveillance bill](https://charliesavage.com/2017/11/house-intelligence-committee-releases-its-version-of-a-702-surveillance-bill/) - The law that supports the NSA/FBI warrantless surveillance program, the FISA Amendments Act Section 702, is set to expire on December 31, 2017, if Congress does not act to extend it. There are a proliferating array of rival bills to do so, some with modest reforms, some with sweeping reforms, and some with scant or
- [Revised version of USA Liberty Act (HJC version of 702 bill)](https://charliesavage.com/2017/11/revised-version-of-usa-liberty-act-hjc-version-of-702-bill/) - This is the draft manager's amendment to H.R. 3989, the "USA Liberty Act," which would extend the expiring FISA Amendments Act Section 702 warrantless surveillance law but impose some changes to it, and which is being pushed by bipartisan leadership in the House Judiciary Committee. It's been circulating for several days. Among other things, it
- [702 surveillance legislation: Adding Wyden-Paul "USA Rights Act" to the mix. Bonus: a chart comparing differences with SSCI/Burr & Goodlatte/Conyers HJC bills](https://charliesavage.com/2017/10/702-surveillance-bills-adding-the-wyden-paul-usa-rights-act-to-the-mix/) - Today the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is marking up, in secret, Chairman Burr's bill to extend the FISA Amendments Act Section 702 warrantless surveillance program, the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act. While the bill is not yet public, I published a copy here yesterday, alongside a revised draft of the Goodlatte-Conyers House Judiciary Committee bill,
- [Latest FISA Amendments Act 702 surveillance legislation: SSCI, HJC](https://charliesavage.com/2017/10/latest-fisa-amendments-act-702-surveillance-legislation-ssci-hjc/) - Lots of legislative action on FISA Amendments Act Section 702 warrantless surveillance is happening with drafts that are not public even though they are not classifed. Here are some. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on October 24, 2017, will mark up - behind closed doors - a bill being pushed by its chairman, Senator
- [NSA Declassifies Pile of Documents from 2011 Upstream Surveillance Litigation](https://charliesavage.com/2017/10/nsa-declassifies-pile-of-documents-from-2011-upstream-surveillance-litigation/) - The National Security Agency has declassified a third (and final) tranche of previously unreleased documents from the docket of a then-secret 2011 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court case over upstream Internet surveillance conducted under the FISA Amendments Act/702 program. Here are the first and second tranches. This third tranche is long a dense - nearly 350 pages - but
- [Don't cite the Prism v. Upstream collection numbers from Judge Bates' 2011 FISC opinion anymore](https://charliesavage.com/2017/09/dont-cite-the-prism-v-upstream-collection-numbers-from-judge-bates-2011-fisc-opinion-anymore/) - Among surveillance legal policy specialists, it is common to cite a set of statistics from an October 2011 opinion by Judge John Bates, then of the FISA Court, about the volume of internet communications the National Security Agency was collecting under the FISA Amendments Act ("Section 702") warrantless surveillance program. In his opinion, declassified in
- [Temporary solution to Power Wars index page problems](https://charliesavage.com/2017/08/temporary-solution-to-power-wars-index-page-problems/) - **UPDATE: Problem fixed, many thanks to John Musser of Digerati Designs.** Several readers have brought to my attention that the web page containing the index to the hardcover edition of Power Wars will not load; it appears to have become corrupted. Unfortunately it is so far proving to be beyond my WordPress skills to fix this
- [What Has Changed in the New, "Definitive" Power Wars](https://charliesavage.com/2017/06/what-has-changed-in-the-new-definitive-power-wars/) - [Cross-posted to Lawfare] Today, Hachette is publishing the paperback edition of my history of Obama-era national-security legal policymaking, Power Wars, which is also replacing the text future e-book buyers will receive. I have systematically updated and revised the book since its hardcover publication in November 2015. A few months ago, over coffee in Cambridge, Jack
- [FOIA: Some newly declass'd FISA Court stuff from the 2011 Bates MCT/702 case](https://charliesavage.com/2017/06/foia-some-newly-declassd-fisa-court-stuff-from-the-2011-bates-mct702-case/) - Here are some newly declassified documents from a FISA lawsuit that add to the historical record of the MCT issue that arose in 2011. They provide a little bit more information about the sequencing of the case before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the questions that Judge John Bates was asking. I don't immediately
- [ODNI transparency report nerding: 151 million "call detail records"](https://charliesavage.com/2017/05/odni-transparency-report-nerding-151-million-call-detail-records/) - Several people have blogged things trying to make sense of the disclosure this week that the USA Freedom Act system (which replaced the Patriot Act Section 215 bulk calling records program) collected 151 million call detail records in 2016, even though the intelligence court had approved two-hop collection surrounding only 42 suspects. To be sure,
- [Here's a previously top secret 2005 Bush Justice Department memo on Stellarwind surveillance and prosecutors' discovery obligations](https://charliesavage.com/2017/03/foia-case-yields-2005-bush-administration-memo-on-stellarwind-surveillance-and-the-governments-discovery-obligations/) - In response to one of the Freedom of Information Act lawsuits I am fighting with The New York Times' lawyer David McCraw and our annual First Amendment Fellow, Ian MacDougal, the government has turned over a May 2005 memorandum by Patrick Rowan, who was then a top national-security prosecutor in the Justice Department's Criminal Division.
- [More Gitmo military commissions action at the Supreme Court: Bahlul cert petition filed](https://charliesavage.com/2017/03/bahlul-supreme-court-cert-petition-filed/) - Defense lawyers for Ali Hamza al-Bahlul have filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to take his appeal of his conviction before a military commission of the non-war crime of "conspiracy." It should be docketed tomorrow. Bahlul's case has created one of the most complex appellate matters arising from the tribunals system. It went up and down
- [Trump administration releases Obama-era Gitmo Detainee Review Task Force guidelines, Vaughn index of withheld dossiers in FOIA case](https://charliesavage.com/2017/03/trump-administration-releases-obama-era-gitmo-detainee-review-task-force-guidelines-vaughn-index-of-withheld-dossiers-in-foia-case/) - One of the Freedom of Information Act lawsuits I am fighting against the government with The New York Times is seeking the factual sections about 240 dossiers about the Guantanamo detainees who remained at the wartime prison when President Obama took office in 2009. Obama created a six-agency task force that went back over the
- [Two FOIA lawsuits: Trump-OLC communications & post-Snowden NSA security shortcomings](https://charliesavage.com/2017/03/two-foia-lawsuits-trump-olc-communications-post-snowden-nsa-security-shortcomings/) - Yesterday, the NYT and I filed a new Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking communications in January 2017 between the Trump team (transition team, then post-inaugural White House) and the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel about the legality of proposed executive orders and executive actions, including its blessing of the first travel ban order and
- [Yet another round with Edward Jay Epstein about his shoddy Snowden book](https://charliesavage.com/2017/03/yet-another-round-with-edward-jay-epstein-about-his-shoddy-snowden-book/) - Edward Jay Epstein wrote a second letter to the New York Review of Books and I wrote another response. Here they are. (Here's my original review and here's his first letter and my first response.)
- [In Potential Recusal Reversal, Neil Gorsuch Leaves Door Open to Hearing Supreme Court Cases Involving Billionaire Backer Philip Anschutz](https://charliesavage.com/2017/03/in-a-reversal-on-recusals-neil-gorsuch-appears-to-be-freeing-himself-to-participate-in-supreme-court-cases-involving-billionaire-philip-anschutzs-interests/) - My Denver-based colleague Julie Turkewitz and I have been taking a look at the relationship between Neil Gorsuch, the Supreme Court nominee, and Colorado billionaire Philip Anschutz. The New York Times published it tonight and it will be in tomorrow's newspaper. One thing the article deals with briefly is the question of whether Gorsuch will recuse himself
- [Bipartisan support for C.I.A. general counsel nominee Courtney Simmons Elwood from some national security legal policy veterans](https://charliesavage.com/2017/03/bipartisan-support-for-cia-general-counsel-nominee-from-nat-sec-legal-policy-veterans/) - Last night, President Trump announced nominees for two key posts on the national security interagency lawyers group: John J. Sullivan of Mayer Brown to be general counsel of the Department of Defense and Courtney Simmons Elwood of Kellogg Hansen to be general counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency. This post is about the latter. Elwood was a
- [Partial victory in FOIA case for Durham torture investigation memos](https://charliesavage.com/2017/02/partial-victory-in-foia-case-for-durham-torture-investigation-memos/) - Late yesterday, Judge J. Paul Oetken of the Southern District of New York handed down an important ruling in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit the Times and I have been pursuing over memos about the criminal investigation into the C.I.A. torture program. The memos were written by Assistant U.S. Attorney John Durham, who oversaw the
- [Trump administration gives copy of full, still-secret CIA torture report to judicial branch](https://charliesavage.com/2017/02/1478/) - The last iteration of the Obama administration's ambivalent "look forward not back" attitude toward the defunct Bush-era CIA torture program -- banning it, but not investigating what happened -- was the Obama Justice Department's resistance to an effort to get a copy of the full, still-classified Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report about that program
- [A Proposed Grand Bargain for Fixing Breezewood](https://charliesavage.com/2017/02/a-proposed-grand-bargain-for-fixing-breezewood/) - Today the NYT published a deep-dive I wrote about why Breezewood – a notorious gap in the interstate highway system at the intersection of the Pennsylvania Turnpike and Interstate 70 that is familiar to the millions of people who drive between the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest each year – exists and has never been fixed.
- [Photo: Torch passes from Obama to Trump at Guantanamo](https://charliesavage.com/2017/01/photo-torch-passes-from-obama-to-trump-at-guantanamo/) - Eight years ago, this AP pool photo was taken at Guantanamo Bay's base headquarters building, and it became iconic, showing up in a million blog posts: This weekend the base public affairs staff (with encouragement first from my friend Carol Rosenberg, it turns out, and then also from me) took and released this one:
- [U.S. counterterrorism airstrikes away from combat zones killed just one civilian in 2016, government says](https://charliesavage.com/2017/01/u-s-counterterrorism-airstrikes-away-from-combat-zones-killed-just-one-civilian-in-2016-government-says/) - Late last evening, in the waning hours of Obama administration control of the national security state, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a report about counterterrorism drone strikes and other bombings away from "areas of active hostilities" for 2016. It said there were 53 such airstrikes, and they killed between 431 and 441
- [My New York Review of Books review/essay of Snowden book and film](https://charliesavage.com/2017/01/my-new-york-review-of-books-reviewessay-of-snowden-book-and-film/) - The New York Review of Books asked me to review Edward Jay Epstein's book about Edward Snowden, "How America Lost Its Secrets," and the essay I wrote extended to the Oliver Stone biopic. Spoiler: I'm not a big fan of either. The essay is now available online. Last year I also wrote a NYRB essay
- [Obama fights giving copy of torture report to courts for safekeeping](https://charliesavage.com/2017/01/obama-fights-giving-copy-of-torture-report-to-courts-for-safekeeping/) - It looks like the Obama administration is going to leave office without giving a copy of the torture report to the judiciary for safekeeping. In late December, Judge Royce Lamberth of the Federal District Court of the District of Columbia ordered the Obama administration to deposit a copy of the full, still-classified, 6,000-word Senate Select Committee
- [The Obama administration released the 2009 interrogation/rendition task force report I sued them for under the Freedom of Information Act](https://charliesavage.com/2016/12/obama-administration-releases-2009-interrogationrendition-task-force-report-i-was-suing-them-for/) - President Obama is today scheduled to deliver his last major speech about national security, which will summarize and defend his counterterrorism legal policy and strategy over the past eight years. Ahead of that, the administration released a pile of documents yesterday. These included a 61-page report that described the legal framework for its counterterrorism policies,
- [Intelligence bill would mandate declassification of Gitmo detainee dossiers, curb PCLOB](https://charliesavage.com/2016/11/intelligence-bill-would-mandate-declassification-of-gitmo-detainee-dossiers-curb-pclob/) - The House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI) today released the text of the annual intelligence authorization act for 2017 following conference negotiations with the Senate Intelligence Committee (SSCI). Two provisions in it jumped out at me: DISCLOSING DOSSIERS ABOUT FORMER GITMO DETAINEES Section 701 requires the government to declassify, and make available to the public, intelligence reports
- [FBI releases internal dissents on 2013 Chicago hubcap-thief shooting incident](https://charliesavage.com/2016/10/fbi-releases-internal-dissents-on-2013-chicago-hubcap-thief-shooting-incident/) - In response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit I filed with The New York Times (represented by David McCraw, who is getting some attention today for his letter to Donald Trump's lawyer rejecting a demand that the NYT retract an article about two women who say Trump touched them inappropriately), the Federal Bureau of
- [Marco Rubio lied twice in one sentence but it's 2016 so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯](https://charliesavage.com/2016/09/marco-rubio-lied-twice-in-one-sentence-but-its-2016-so-¯_ツ_¯/) - I just noticed that when President Obama nominated someone yesterday to be the first United States ambassador to Cuba in more 50 years, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who opposes Obama's efforts to thaw relations with the Communist dictatorship, said this in making his argument that the Senate should not confirm that nominee: Just like releasing all terrorists
- [Eternal Return, Enemy Combatant Edition: A call to place the Chelsea bombing suspect in military custody](https://charliesavage.com/2016/09/eternal-return-enemy-combatant-edition-a-call-to-interrogate-chelsea-bombing-suspect-in-military-custody/) - Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, today called for holding Ahmad Khan Rahami, the Afghan-American arrested as the sole suspect in the Chelsea bombing, as an enemy combatant: placing him in indefinite military custody and interrogating him without a defense lawyer or a Miranda warning that he has any right to remain silent. Graham argued that the
- [Two new FOIA lawsuits about detainees and surveillance -- explained](https://charliesavage.com/2016/09/two-new-foia-lawsuits-explained/) - In the past few weeks, the New York Times and I have filed two new Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. This post will explain them. (The hard work, as always, is being done by the NYT's lawyer, David McCraw, as well as our outgoing annual NYT First Amendment fellow, Tali Leinwald, who is off to
- [Pour one out for another fruitful FOIA case for surveillance documents](https://charliesavage.com/2016/09/pour-one-out-for-another-fruitful-foia-case-for-surveillance-documents/) - Another excellent Freedom of Information Act case for surveillance documents came to an end late last month while I was on vacation, so I'm only now getting to it. It was for inspector general reports at the National Security Agency about the three programs that grew out of Stellarwind. The germ of the idea for this FOIA came from
- [ISIS war powers lawsuit update and backstory](https://charliesavage.com/2016/08/isis-war-powers-lawsuit-update-and-backstory/) - Today, David Remes and Bruce Ackerman, the lawyers representing an army captain who is suing President Obama over the legality of the armed conflict against the Islamic State, filed a lengthy brief - the plaintiff's opposition to the government's motion to dismiss the case. In it, they seek to advance their arguments both that the
- [A FOIA lawsuit that brought to light large amounts of information about post-9/11 surveillance may be ending](https://charliesavage.com/2016/08/a-massive-foia-case-that-brought-to-light-large-amounts-of-information-about-post-911-surveillance-may-be-ending/) - Today, Judge Analisa Torres of the Southern District of New York issued a ruling in a Freedom of Information Act case brought by The New York Times and me. The case centered on various Justice Department inspector general reports about post-9/11 surveillance. The government had already made public a sizable amount of information due to this
- [Q&A with the Pentagon about Battle Damage Assessments, the Law of War Manual, and Non-Combatants who Support the Enemy](https://charliesavage.com/2016/08/qa-with-the-pentagon-about-battle-damage-assessments-the-law-of-war-manual-and-non-combatants-who-support-the-enemy/) - Below, I publish a written Q&A between myself and the Pentagon about rules for targeting and battle damage assessments, including how civilians who provide support to a military force, and are killed in strikes aimed at that force, are counted. Although I was addressing my questions to military lawyers, the exchange took place through Lt. Col.
- [Update from Venezuela on the Lost & Found Ex-Gitmo Detainee](https://charliesavage.com/2016/08/update-from-venezuela-on-the-lost-found-ex-gitmo-detainee/) - Latest statement from Jon Eisenberg, lawyer for Jihad Diyab/Dhiab: Andres Conteris, who is a member of the U.S. human rights group Witness Against Torture and is part of an informal group of Uruguayans who have offered support to Mr. Dhiab since his arrival in Uruguay, met this morning with a member of the Venezuelan foreign
- [Who are the two mystery agencies Obama says must help review capture operations, but not targeted killings?](https://charliesavage.com/2016/08/who-are-the-two-mystery-agencies-obama-says-must-help-review-capture-operations-but-not-targeted-killings/) - The May 2013 Presidential Policy Guidance (PPG), also known as the "playbook" for drone strikes outside of conventional war zones, is now mostly public, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union. In Chapter 6 of Power Wars, I outlined the second-term interagency process for signing off on proposed targeted killing
- [Lawyer asks Venezuela to let the ex-Gitmo detainee who went missing from Uruguay talk to him](https://charliesavage.com/2016/08/lawyer-calls-on-venezuelas-security-agency-to-let-diyabdhiab-talk-to-him/) - In June, Jihad Diyab (also spelled Dhiab), an erratic former Guantanamo Bay detainee from Syria who was resettled in Uruguay (and who is also the plaintiff in a continuing lawsuit seeking to make public videotapes of forcefeeding sessions), said he was going to be incommunicado for the month of Ramadan. Then authorities lost track of him. This
- [F.B.I. discloses 250 pages of internal shooting incident review reports](https://charliesavage.com/2016/07/f-b-i-discloses-250-pages-of-internal-shooting-incident-review-reports/) - The Federal Bureau of Investigation has disclosed another batch of internal shooting incident review reports in response to my Freedom of Information Act lawsuit with the New York Times (pursued by the NYT's lawyer David McCraw and the annual NYT First Amendment fellows, currently Tali Leinwand). The names of the people who were shot are redacted unless
- [Recent citations to "Power Wars": Immigration, Forever War, and whether White House lawyers could constrain a President Trump](https://charliesavage.com/2016/06/rounding-up-recent-citations-to-power-wars/) - When you write a book--missing a lot of time with your family and flirting with walking away from a job you love in order to get it done--it is sincerely gratifying to see it find an audience. The first wave of that, of course, is reviews. The flurry for Power Wars are subsiding, although Barron's published a nice review earlier this month by the FIU
- [FBI Discloses 700 Pages of Internal Shooting Incident Review Reports](https://charliesavage.com/2016/06/1162/) - With the help of the New York Times' legal guru, David McCraw, I have been using a series of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits to assemble a massive public library of internal Federal Bureau of Investigation shooting incident reports dating back to 1993. We’ve just updated that library with about 700 pages of such reports
- [“It’s not like the lawyers couldn’t have come up with a theory”: The Obama legal team and the lawfulness of attacking Assad](https://charliesavage.com/2016/06/its-not-like-the-lawyers-couldnt-have-come-up-with-a-theory-the-obama-legal-team-and-the-lawfulness-of-attacking-assad/) - Several prominent law professors who were formerly members of the Obama national security legal team are debating the "dissent memo" signed by 51 mid-level career State Department diplomats about the administration's current policy toward Syria. The diplomats think the United States should carry out airstrikes against the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad, not just
- [Will Florida's sunshine law thwart the federal government's censorship of the Orlando nightclub shooter's 911 call?](https://charliesavage.com/2016/06/fbi-released-partially-censored-version-of-orlando-nightclub-shooters-fbi-calls/) - UPDATE: FBI/DOJ reverses course, releases uncensored version of 1st Orlando shooter 911 call (what about the others?) pic.twitter.com/WudWiLR9V3— Charlie Savage (@charlie_savage) June 20, 2016 The Federal Bureau of Investigation has released a partially censored transcript of Orlando nightclub shooter Omar Mateen's 911 call in which he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and said
- ["The Imperial Presidency?" ACS Panel Discussion on Executive Power](https://charliesavage.com/2016/06/the-imperial-presidency-acs-panel-discussion-on-executive-power/) - C-Span has now made available the video of last weekend's panel discussion on executive power at the American Constitutional Society for Law and Policy annual convention, which I moderated. The all-star panel included Walter Dellinger, Marty Lederman, Sai Prakash, Neomi Rao, and Hina Shamsi. Here is the description from ACS: The Imperial Presidency? President George W. Bush
- [Senate Intelligence Committee Wants to Give DNI Veto Power Over Gitmo Transfers](https://charliesavage.com/2016/06/senate-intelligence-committee-wants-to-give-dni-veto-power-over-gitmo-transfers/) - The text of the Senate Intelligence Committee's version of the 2017 intelligence authorization bill has finally been made public. The panel is chaired by Senator Richard Burr, Republican of North Carolina. The bill has been getting some attention because, as first reported by Jenna McLaughlin of The Intercept, it has a provision that would expand (or, depending
- [Mitt Romney may be #nevertrump, but "Romney for President Inc." wishes Donald Trump a happy birthday](https://charliesavage.com/2016/06/romney-is-nevertrump-but-romney-for-president-inc-wishes-donald-trump-a-happy-birthday/) - This doesn't have anything directly to do with national security (or does it?), but this is such a marker of the incoherence of the 2016 presidential race that I can't resist sharing it. A friend just passed on the below e-mail, which the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent out today to the mailing list of "Romney for President, Inc."
- [Seven Ways Donald Verrilli Shaped Obama-era National Security Legal Policy](https://charliesavage.com/2016/06/donald-verrilli-a-major-figure-in-the-obama-national-security-legal-policy-team-steps-down/) - Don Verrilli is stepping down after five years as the Solicitor General. News accounts of his departure, like this one by my colleague Eric Lichtblau, are understandably focusing on the big domestic law cases he argued before the Supreme Court - particularly the ones on Obamacare and same-sex marriage rights. But Verrilli's impact on governance
- [General Hayden's World](https://charliesavage.com/2016/05/general-haydens-world/) - Several months ago, as The New York Review of Books was preparing to publish its review of Power Wars, I received a letter from its editor, Robert Silvers, asking whether I would like to write a review essay about Playing to the Edge by Michael Hayden, the former head of the NSA and the CIA.
- [Carter and Dunford grovel a bit re female guards at Gitmo and military commissions independence](https://charliesavage.com/2016/05/carter-and-dunford-grovel-a-bit-re-female-guards-at-gitmo-and-military-commissions-independence/) - Here's a 4 p.m. before Memorial Day Weekend news dump item. The background is here. (Don't hold your breath waiting for any similar from Senator Ayotte though!) Statement by Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph F. Dunford Jr. on Gender-Neutral Staffing of Guard Forces at JTF-GTMO Military
- [Ted Cruz and Senate GOP want to expand the Gitmo transfer ban -- including to Afghanistan and Israel, but exempting Saudi Arabia](https://charliesavage.com/2016/05/ted-cruzs-proposal-to-expand-countries-to-which-gitmo-transfers-are-banned-including-to-israel/) - The newly unveiled Senate Armed Services Committee version of the National Defense Authorization Act has a provision that would wildly expand the number of countries to which the U.S. government may not transfer low-level Guantanamo detainees. Specifically, it would ban transfers to any nation for which the State Department has issued a travel warning. Senator Ted Cruz,
- [Senate Armed Services Committee unveils their NDAA, including detention provisions](https://charliesavage.com/2016/05/senate-armed-services-committee-unveils-their-ndaa-including-detention-provisions/) - One of the undemocratic - or at least, untransparent - things about how Congress shapes American national security law is that the armed services and intelligence oversight committees craft their annual authorization bills behind closed doors, sending them to the floor as a fait accompli. (Another is that these bills contain extensive classified annexes, as Dakota
- [Michael Brenner's confused critique](https://charliesavage.com/2016/05/michael-brenners-confused-critique/) - Someone named Michael Brenner has been circulating a lengthy critique of Power Wars, including distributing a version to his listserv [to which he unilaterally adds the e-mail addresses of people] on Thursday, uploading a version to Consortium News on Saturday, and uploading another version as a Huffington Post blog yesterday. It opens with a flattering thought
- [Do the upstream v. Prism collection numbers from Judge Bates' 2011 opinion add up?](https://charliesavage.com/2016/05/do-the-upstream-v-prism-collection-numbers-from-judge-bates-2011-opinion-add-up/) - Edit: Bottom line up front: Several widely cited numbers about the FISA Amendments Act warrantless surveillance program -- that circa 2011 the NSA was collecting >250 million communications annually, of which 9 percent came from upstream and 91 percent came from Prism -- may be inaccurate. _________ On Medium, Beatrice Hanssen, a writer whom I have
- [How the FBI loosened limits on warrantless surveillance “backdoor searches” in 2011](https://charliesavage.com/2016/04/how-the-2011-changes-to-the-fbis-diog-manual-created-greater-leeway-for-backdoor-searches-of-raw-fisa-amendments-act-intercepts/) - At Just Security, Jake Laperruque writes about the recently declassified Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinion re-upping the FISA Amendments Act warrantless surveillance program for another year. That is the ruling in which Judge Hogan, after hearing constitutional concerns about backdoor searches by FBI agents working on ordinary criminal cases, reaffirmed that such searches are constitutional. Jake is digging into other parts
- [Zazi got a super-belated warrantless surveillance notice while no one was looking](https://charliesavage.com/2016/04/zazi-got-a-super-belated-warrantless-surveillance-notice-while-no-one-was-looking/) - After the Snowden leaks, government surveillance defenders' best and most often-cited example about the value of post-9/11 electronic spying programs was the discovery of Najibullah Zazi in 2009, just days before an intended bombing of the New York City subway. Zazi, who had trained with Al Qaeda in Pakistan, had made the mistake of sending an
- [USA Freedom Act coalition vets fire warning shot, demand more information about Americans' e-mails swept in by warrantless surveillance program](https://charliesavage.com/2016/04/usa-freedom-act-coalition-vets-fire-warning-shot-demand-more-information-about-americans-e-mails-swept-in-by-warrantless-surveillance-program/) - I end the second chapter on the once-hidden history of surveillance 1978-2015 in Power Wars with a behind-the-scenes reconstruction of the fight to enact the USA Freedom Act and then a forward-looking focus on the "backdoor search" loophole, whereby government agents search private communications by Americans that the NSA gathered "incidentally" and without a warrant: [T]he Freedom Act
- [[Updated with video, verbatim Q&A] Brian Egan's ASIL speech and questions about rules for drone strikes in tribal Pakistan and for assessing collateral damage](https://charliesavage.com/2016/04/brian-egans-asil-speech-and-questions-about-rules-for-drone-strikes-in-tribal-pakistan-and-for-assessing-collateral-damage/) - Yesterday, Brian Egan, the Obama administration's recently confirmed State Department legal adviser (and former National Security Council legal adviser), gave a speech at the annual American Society of International Law conference about "International Law, Legal Diplomacy, and the Counter-ISIL Campaign." Egan's speech was an excellent distillation of the Obama administration's argument for why it thinks
- [Power Wars: Two Important Backstories for Understanding the Shabab and AUMF Controversies](https://charliesavage.com/2016/03/power-wars-two-important-backstories-for-understanding-the-shabab-and-aumf-controversies/) - I wrote a half-reported, half-analysis article in the New York Times today that brings to public light a novel interpretation of the 2001 Congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against the 9/11 perpetrators. The Obama administration believes it authorized the massive American airstrike in Somalia that killed 150 alleged low-level Shabab fighters -- even though the
- [Reality-checking Obama's "values" argument for closing Gitmo](https://charliesavage.com/2016/03/reality-checking-obamas-values-argument-for-closing-gitmo/) - Today the NYT published a news analysis article I co-wrote with my colleague Scott Shane, our first team-up since he went on book leave for Objective Troy and then I went on book leave for Power Wars. It makes the case that much of the political rhetoric about Obama's Guantanamo prison closure plan is garbage. Most of the article is devoted to explaining how numerous claims
- [Trump says he would only use "lawful" powers to fight terrorism - but there is a catch](https://charliesavage.com/2016/03/trump-says-if-elected-president-he-would-be-bound-to-obey-laws-and-treaties/) - Last fall, I attempted to get Donald Trump to answer some questions about his understanding of executive power. Like most candidates this cycle, he declined to answer my questions. That was particularly notable given his vow to bring back torture: DONALD J. TRUMP has declared that as president, he would bring back waterboarding “and more”
- [Power Wars excerpt: A Fight in the Situation Room Over the FBI's "Going Dark" Push](https://charliesavage.com/2016/02/power-wars-excerpt-a-fight-in-the-situation-room-over-the-fbis-going-dark-push/) - The end of this post has an excerpt from Power Wars about a behind-the-scenes conflict in the Obama administration over "Going Dark" -- the FBI's push to legally mandate that technology companies build interception or decryption capabilities into their products so it could execute wiretap or search warrants. The Going Dark debate is getting a
- [Takeover document: Dick Cheney's undelivered 1989 paper on presidential power and "congressional overreaching in foreign policy"](https://charliesavage.com/2016/02/takeover-document-dick-cheneys-undelivered-1989-paper-on-presidential-power-and-congressional-overreach-in-foreign-policy/) - I've posted several primary source documents of interest in Power Wars on this blog, and it occurred to me that I should also make generally available an important primary source document that I dug up when I was writing my first book, Takeover, eight years ago. I had put this up on Document Cloud in 2012, but Google's
- [Reactions to the surprising failure of my quadrennial presidential candidate executive power survey](https://charliesavage.com/2016/01/reactions-to-the-surprising-failure-of-my-quadrennial-presidential-candidate-executive-power-survey/) - Every four years, before Iowa and New Hampshire, I ask presidential primary candidates to answer a short set of hard questions (might be through a physical questionnaire, or verbally) laying out their understanding of the scope and limits of executive power. Generally the questions get at dilemmas in which the rules are murky and contested.
- [All Kinds of New Info About Bergdahl-Taliban Deal, including excerpts from the HASC report](https://charliesavage.com/2015/12/all-kinds-of-new-info-about-bergdahl-taliban-deal-including-excerpts-from-the-hasc-report/) - An important moment in Power Wars is the May 2014 prisoner exchange deal in which the United States sent five high-level Taliban detainees to live under monitoring and travel restrictions in Qatar to secure the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, America's only prisoner of war in Afghanistan, who had been held in horrific conditions by
- [Power Wars in 100 Tweets?! A valiant attempt.](https://charliesavage.com/2015/12/power-wars-in-100-tweets/) - https://storify.com/csavage7/tim-edgar-s-power-wars-in-100-tweets
- [Mark Martins and the backstory to Hamidullin, the Russian Taliban sentenced to life in prison today](https://charliesavage.com/2015/12/mark-martins-and-the-backstory-to-hamidullin-the-russian-taliban-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-today/) - Today, Irek Hamidullin, a Russian army defector who joined the Taliban and was captured after a (spectacularly unsuccessful) assault on American and Afghan forces in Afghanistan in November 2009, was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted at trial before a civilian court last August. I report the very interesting background to Hamidullin case on pages 533-534 of Power
- [Gitmo endgame: may federal judges accept guilty pleas and impose sentences by remote videoconference?](https://charliesavage.com/2015/12/gitmo-endgame-can-federal-judges-accept-guilty-pleas-and-impose-sentences-by-remote-videoconference/) - In today's article about Obama's new Gitmo closure endgame of trying to drive down the number of detainees who would be brought to a replacement wartime prison on domestic soil, I mentioned that some lawyers for detainees (including Abu Zubaydah) want to strike plea deals with the government - but, for several reasons, only in the
- [Takeaways from my latest inside-the-Gitmo-closure-fight article](https://charliesavage.com/2015/12/takeaways-from-my-latest-inside-the-gitmo-closure-fight-story/) - Here is my latest Gitmo story, surfacing the latest behind-the-scenes stuff on Obama's fraught push to close Gitmo before he leaves office. Among the takeaways: Although Obama has twice said he wants the detainee population (currently 107) down to double digits by around the new year, there are currently no SecDef notices at Congress, so we're at
- [Hillary Clinton's parting rebuke to Obama on Gitmo](https://charliesavage.com/2015/11/hillary-clintons-parting-rebuke-to-the-obama-wh-on-gitmo/) - Today, Ryan Reilly of the Huffington Post released most of Hillary Clinton's memo to Obama at the end of her tenure as secretary state about how to revive the stalled effort to close Guantanamo. Daniel Klaidman first reported the existence of this memo in a 2013 story in the old Newsweek-Daily Beast. The cover memo
- [Solving the mystery of Qwest, Joe Nacchio, and the February 2001 NSA "illegal" request](https://charliesavage.com/2015/11/solving-the-mystery-of-qwest-joe-nacchio-and-the-february-2001-nsa-illegal-request/) - As a follow up to my pre-Thanksgiving blog post discussing some of the revelations in Power Wars about the invention and significance of transit authority for understanding surveillance, I thought I'd highlight a nugget that is buried in the endnotes. I found or figured out so much stuff in reporting out Power Wars that some had to be
- [Power Wars document: Transit Authority and the 1990 Lawton surveillance memo](https://charliesavage.com/2015/11/power-wars-document-transit-authority-and-the-1990-lawton-surveillance-memo/) - Although "Power Wars" is mostly about the Obama era, "Chapter 5: Stellarwind (Surveillance 1928-2009)" focuses on events years before he took office. In it, I piece together fragments of recently revealed information - from the Snowden leaks, the resulting wave of government declassifications, and FOIA lawsuits by myself and others - to form the first
- [Read "Power Wars" Chapter One for free, plus index and expanded table of contents](https://charliesavage.com/2015/11/read-power-wars-chapter-one-for-free-plus-index-and-expanded-table-of-contents/) - We have posted the full text of Chapter One: The Captive on the website as a free sample chapter. It reconstructs the day of the Christmas 2009 underwear bombing, and has new information about the famous decision to read the terrorist the Miranda warning. We've also put up an expanded table of contents, showing the
- [Power Wars: Clarifications and Errata](https://charliesavage.com/2015/11/power-wars-clarifications-and-errata/) - My hope for Power Wars is that people will still be using it many years from now as the definitive investigative history of post-9/11 policymaking in the Obama era. So I want it to be as clear and accurate as I can make it. To that end, I have made some adjustments in subsequent printings. First,
- [Power Wars Document: Rice's memo to Hagel on risk and transferring Guantanamo detainees](https://charliesavage.com/2015/10/power-wars-document-rices-memo-to-hagel-on-risk-and-transferring-guantanamo-detainees/) - This document, whose full text has not previously been made public, is a three-page memo that Susan Rice, Obama's national security adviser, sent to Chuck Hagel, then the secretary of defense, in May 2014. (The existence of this memo has been previously reported.) I discuss it in Chapter 10, Section 14: "Risk Aversion." At the time, Hagel was
- [Power Wars Document: Office of Legal Counsel white paper on amendment barring prosecution of the 9/11 case in civilian court](https://charliesavage.com/2015/10/power-wars-document-office-of-legal-counsel-white-paper-on-amendment-barring-prosecution-of-the-911-case-in-civilian-court/) - This previously undisclosed document is a five-page summary of an unsigned, unofficial "white paper" developed by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. It was written in January 2010 by David Barron, then the acting head of the office and now a federal appeals court judge. I discuss it in Chapter 7, Section 2: "Democrats Get to
- [Power Wars Document: Lindsey Graham's grand bargain proposal over Guantanamo](https://charliesavage.com/2015/10/power-wars-document-lindsey-grahams-grand-bargain-proposal-over-guantanamo/) - This previously undisclosed document is a proposal Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, developed in 2009. It was a starting point for what became lengthy but unsuccessful negotiations with the Obama White House over a grand bargain on detainee policies. (The existence of those negotiations has been reported.) I discuss it in Chapter 4, Section
- [The first review of Power Wars, and my response](https://charliesavage.com/2015/10/the-first-review-of-power-wars-and-my-response/) - The New York Times has published the first review of Power Wars. They commissioned James Mann, a non-NYT staffer and the author of Rise of the Vulcans and The Obamians, to write it to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. Mann's review is generally very positive, and he engages thoughtfully with some of
- [Derived from Power Wars: How 4 Federal Lawyers Paved the Way to Kill Bin Laden](https://charliesavage.com/2015/10/derived-from-power-wars-how-4-federal-lawyers-paved-the-way-to-kill-bin-laden/) - Read it here in the New York Times.
- [Obama's evolution on security vs. individual rights in two quotes](https://charliesavage.com/2015/10/obamas-on-security-vs-individual-rights-in-two-quotes/) - We are six days out from the publication of "Power Wars," an investigative history of the Obama administration's national-security legal policymaking. It goes behind the scenes to explore the space between these two Obama quotes in its epigraph:
- [Power Wars teaser GIF: "Never Been Reported"](https://charliesavage.com/2015/10/power-wars-teaser-gif-never-been-reported/)
- [Obama vetoes National Defense Authorization Act in part over Gitmo closure](https://charliesavage.com/2015/10/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](https://charliesavage.com/2015/10/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](https://charliesavage.com/2015/10/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)](https://charliesavage.com/2015/10/the-word-file-became-ink-and-paper-and-dwelt-in-warehouses-for-now/)
- [On "Quotes" and Reconstructed Dialogue in Journalism](https://charliesavage.com/2015/10/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](https://charliesavage.com/2015/10/sneak-peek-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](https://charliesavage.com/2015/10/foia-lawsuit-tracker/) - 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](https://charliesavage.com/2015/10/were-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
- [A partial victory (for now) in my FOIA lawsuit about the Justice Department's investigation into the CIA black-site program](https://charliesavage.com/2015/09/a-partial-victory-for-now-in-my-foia-lawsuit-about-the-justice-departments-investigation-into-the-cia-black-site-program/) - Today, Federal District Court Judge J. Paul Oetkin issued an important ruling in one of the Freedom of Information Act lawsuits I am fighting with the New York Times. It was a partial victory and a partial defeat. I have posted his memorandum opinion and order below. The lawsuit concerns my FOIA request for documents related

## Pages

- [Freedom of Information Act Litigation](https://charliesavage.com/bio/nytsavage-freedom-of-information-act-litigation/) - One of the benefits of working for The New York Times is that I have had access to legal resources to pursue Freedom of Information Act litigation. FOIA is a powerful but dysfunctional tool for bringing information to public light. One of its shortcomings is that in practice, it rarely works unless you file a
- [Bio](https://charliesavage.com/bio/) - Charlie Savage The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charlie Savage is a Washington correspondent for the New York Times. He specializes in national security and legal policy issues. Originally from Fort Wayne, Indiana, Savage graduated from Harvard College and earned a master’s degree from Yale Law School. He began his reporting career at the Miami Herald in
- [Twitter 08-24](https://charliesavage.com/twitter-archive/)
- [Articles](https://charliesavage.com/articles/) - My work is mostly published in The New York Times, where I have been a staff writer since 2008. This page on its website lists the most recent articles for which I had a byline or a contributor line. Politico Magazine published a special project I undertook about culture war and the history of the
- [Contact](https://charliesavage.com/contact/) - Write to Charlie Savage at:savage ((at)) nytimes ((dot)) com Follow him on Bluesky
- [Power Wars - Chapter 1: The Captive](https://charliesavage.com/books/power-wars-inside-obamas-post-911-presidency/power-wars-chapter-1/) - "Power Wars: Inside Obama's Post-9/11 Presidency" by Charlie Savage CHAPTER ONE 1. Aboard Flight 253 It was about half past eleven on December 25, 2009--a quiet Christmas morning. The administration of President Barack Obama, the constitutional lawyer who had risen to power on a message of change from the tumultuous era of President George W.
- [Books by Charlie Savage](https://charliesavage.com/books/) - "Taken together, Savage’s Power Wars and Takeover will stand among the definitive accounts of the United States’ approach to national security and law over the past decade and a half." -- Dawn Johnsen, Foreign Affairs go to Takeover or Power Wars page
- [Power Wars by Charlie Savage](https://charliesavage.com/books/power-wars-inside-obamas-post-911-presidency/) - The original hardcover (2015) and updated paperback (2017) editions of Power Wars Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charlie Savage's penetrating investigation of the Obama presidency and the national security state Barack Obama campaigned on changing George W. Bush’s “global war on terror” but ended up entrenching extraordinary executive powers, from warrantless surveillance and indefinite detention to military
- [Begin Reading "Takeover" by Charlie Savage](https://charliesavage.com/books/takeover-the-return-of-the-imperial-presidency-and-the-subversion-of-american-democracy/begin-reading-takeover-by-charlie-savage/) - CHAPTER ONE Inside the Bunker 1. As the United States of America reeled, Vice President Dick Cheney took control. At a quarter past ten o’clock on the morning of September 11, 2001, a choking cloud of debris and death, once the south tower of the World Trade Center, engulfed lower Manhattan. Flames and black smoke
- [Takeover by Charlie Savage](https://charliesavage.com/books/takeover-the-return-of-the-imperial-presidency-and-the-subversion-of-american-democracy/) - Hailed by liberals and conservatives alike for its revelation of an emerging threat to the checks and balances devised by our Founding Fathers, Takeover is a searing investigation into how a group of true believers, led by Dick Cheney, has seized vast powers for the presidency – and permanently altered the constitutional balance of American
- [Events/Appearances & Reviews](https://charliesavage.com/publicityevents/) - IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS: PBS American Forum: Interview with Douglas Blackmon (Feb. 3, 2016, scheduled to air Feb. 24, 2016) Fox News' Foxhole: Interview with James Rosen (posted Dec. 22, 2015) Federalist Society International & National Security Law Practice Group Podcast: Interview with Paul Rosenzweig (made public Dec. 21, 2015) Interview with Charlie Rose (aired Dec. 2, 2015) Majority
- [Sample Page](https://charliesavage.com/sample-page/) - This is an example page. It's different from a blog post because it will stay in one place and will show up in your site navigation (in most themes). Most people start with an About page that introduces them to potential site visitors. It might say something like this: Hi there! I'm a bike messenger
- [Takeover - Index](https://charliesavage.com/takeover-index/) - Index [PDF Version] ABC (American Broadcasting Company), 75–76, 100, 175 ABC News, 219, 337 ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaty, 67, 139–41, 183 abortion rights, 250, 253, 254, 256, 271, 274; opposed, 43, 269, 301 Abramoff, Jack, 244n, 365n48 Abu Ghraib torture scandal. See torture Ackerman, Bruce, 140–41, 322 Adams, John, 82 Addington, David, 178–79, 198; as
- [Rare Documents Available on Power Wars/Takeover Website](https://charliesavage.com/books/power-wars-inside-obamas-post-911-presidency/documents-available-on-power-warstakeover-website/) - Occasionally, I post a primary document that is important to Power Wars or Takeover in the blog section of this website. Most of them were not previously public or readily accessible. This page compiles links to them so they are easier to find. I will update it whenever I put up another one. TAKEOVER Report by the Department
- [War on terror in a post-9/11 presidency - MSNBC Live With Thomas Roberts - 11/2/15](https://charliesavage.com/publicityevents/war-on-terror-in-a-post-911-presidency-msnbc-live-with-thomas-roberts-11215/) - Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charlie Savage of The New York Times joins Thomas Roberts to discuss his new book, "Power Wars." Duration: 3:07
- [Book looks at Obama's 'post-9/11' presidency - Morning Joe - 11/2/15](https://charliesavage.com/publicityevents/book-looks-at-obamas-post-911-presidency-morning-joe-11215/) - Author Charlie Savage joins Morning Joe to discuss his new book 'Power Wars: Inside Obama's Post-9/11 Presidency.' Duration: 3:29
- [Power Wars - Hardcover Edition Index](https://charliesavage.com/books/power-wars-inside-obamas-post-911-presidency/power-wars-index/) - Index [PDF Version] Aamer, Shaker, 554 ABC News, 386, 387, 388, 389 Abdo, Alexander, 587 Abdullah (king of Saudi Arabia), 107 Abdulmutallab, Umar Farouk Anwar al‑Awlaki’s contact with, 229–30, 232, 253 background information on, 29–30, 81 in civilian criminal justice system, 76, 77, 78–79, 85, 91, 93, 94, 348 criticism of
- [Power Wars - Chapter Outline](https://charliesavage.com/books/power-wars-inside-obamas-post-911-presidency/chapter-outline-power-wars/) - Power Wars: Inside Obama’s Post-9/11 Presidency By Charlie Savage Expanded Table of Contents (Hardcover Edition) Part I Obama’s 9/11 Chapter One: The Captive 11 Aboard Flight 253 11 Change and Continuity 13 The Underwear Bomb 17 Obama’s Ambiguous First Year 19 First Responders 22 Withholding the Miranda Warning 25 Unconnected Dots 28 Read Him Miranda
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- [Power Wars Blog by Charlie Savage](https://charliesavage.com/blog/)
- [Power Wars](https://charliesavage.com/home/) - Barack Obama campaigned on a promise of change from George W. Bush’s “global war on terror.” Yet from indefinite detention and drone strikes to surveillance and military tribunals, Obama ended up continuing-and in some cases expanding-many policies he inherited. What happened? In Power Wars, Charlie Savage looks inside the Obama administration's national security legal and

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