Power Wars – Chapter Outline

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

  1. Aboard Flight 253 11
  2. Change and Continuity 13
  3. The Underwear Bomb 17
  4. Obama’s Ambiguous First Year 19
  5. First Responders 22
  6. Withholding the Miranda Warning 25
  7. Unconnected Dots 28
  8. Read Him Miranda 30
  9. The Accusation 34

Chapter Two: Acting Like Bush 36

  1. Post-9/11 Presidential Power 36
  2. Cheney’s Push to Expand Executive Power 39
  3. The Bush-Cheney Legal Team 44
  4. Two Critiques of Bush: Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law 47
  5. “No More Ignoring the Law When It Is Inconvenient” 50
  6. The Executive-Power Survey 55
  7. Foreshadowing 57
  8. Obama and the “War” on Terrorism 60
  9. The Role of Law 62
  10. The Obama Legal Team on Christmas 67

Chapter Three: Things Fall Apart 75

  1. First Political Fallout from the Christmas Attack 75
  2. First Policy Fallout from the Christmas Attack 77
  3. The Law Enforcement Approach in Action 81
  4. The Shock Wave of Brown’s Victory 82
  5. Mirandizing Terrorists Becomes a Political Issue 84
  6. The KSM Trial Plan Collapses 87
  7. Abdulmutallab Fingers an American Citizen 88
  8. “We Need a Commander in Chief, Not a Professor of Law” 91
  9. Obama’s Approach to Counterterrorism Hardens 95

Part II

War in the Twenty-First Century

Chapter Four: Look Forward, Not Back (Captives 2009) 101

  1. The Executive Orders 101
  2. Dilemma of the Yemenis 104
  3. Fighting Habeas Rights at Bagram 107
  4. The Last American-Soil Enemy Combatant 110
  5. The Path to Keeping Military Commissions 113
  6. Seeds of the Senate Torture Report 114
  7. Keeping Indefinite Detention 117
  8. Quashing an After-Action Review 121
  9. Keeping Military Commissions 123
  10. Turbulence in the Effort to Close Guantánamo 126
  11. A Hidden Tribunals Debate 130
  12. A Temptation to Entrench Gitmo-Style Policies 133
  13. Just Keep Plugging Away at It 137
  14. The Interrogation and Rendition Task Force 140
  15. Investigating Torture 144
  16. Papering Over the Yemeni Problem 147
  17. The Outer Bounds of Detention Power 148
  18. Was Bush’s Treatment of Padilla Clearly Illegal? 152
  19. The KSM Trial Decision 157
  20. The Calm Before 160

Chapter Five: Stellarwind (Surveillance 1928–2009) 162

  1. The Briefing 162
  2. The Snowden Revelations 168
  3. The Road to FISA 170
  4. Transit Authority 173
  5. The Pre-Millennium Threat 177
  6. Stellarwind 180
  7. The FISA Court Starts to Evolve 187
  8. The Hospital-Room Crisis 190
  9. Legalizing Bulk Data Collection 194
  10. The Path to Legalizing Warrantless Surveillance 199
  11. A Hidden Fight 203
  12. Upstream Internet Surveillance 207
  13. The Protect America and FISA Amendments Acts 211
  14. Prism 214
  15. Erosion 217
  16. The Obama Team and the Stellarwind Legacy 218
  17. Keeping the Patriot Act Interpretation Secret 221

Chapter Six: Targeted Killing 224

  1. Two Air Strikes in Yemen 224
  2. The Radical Muslim Cleric 227
  3. The Christmas Eve Strike 229
  4. Sovereignty and Lies 232
  5. The First al-Awlaki Memo 233
  6. The Targeting Law of 9/11 239
  7. Is the World a Battlefield? 245
  8. The Second al-Awlaki Memo 249
  9. Why Wasn’t al-Awlaki Indicted? 252
  10. Signature Strikes 254
  11. The Secret (bin Laden I) 257
  12. Operation Neptune Spear (bin Laden II) 260
  13. Kill or Capture (bin Laden III) 266
  14. What Would a Lawyer Have to Add at This Point? (bin Laden IV) 269
  15. Drone Fallacies 271
  16. Is the United States at War with al-Shabaab? 274
  17. Killing Americans 279
  18. A New Targeted-Killing Playbook 282
  19. But Targeted Killings Continue 285
  20. “Must Be Trusted” 289

Part III:

The Security State

Chapter Seven: Ratchet (Captives 2010–2011) 293

  1. The Straw Man Plan for Future Captures 293
  2. Democrats Get to Be President, Too 296
  3. Power, Sought and Unsought (Gitmo Habeas Collapse I) 299
  4. You and Me Both 303
  5. Curbing Miranda Rights 305
  6. Giving Up on Closing Guantánamo 308
  7. An Exception to the Moratorium (Gitmo Habeas Collapse II) 311
  8. One Last Push for a KSM Civilian Trial 314
  9. How to Avert a Trial 317
  10. Tortured Evidence (Gitmo Habeas Collapse III) 320
  11. The Ghailani Verdict 325
  12. The Guantánamo Transfer Restrictions 327
  13. Giving Up on a Civilian Trial for KSM 329
  14. A New Tribunals Prosecutor 332
  15. Torture and bin Laden 334
  16. A New High-Value Detainee 339
  17. The Hybrid Model 344
  18. Policy Success 347

Chapter Eight: The Leak Crackdown 350

  1. The Leak Task Force 350
  2. Unprecedented 358
  3. Leak Prosecutions Before Obama 364
  4. The First Case: Leibowitz 368
  5. The Second Case: Drake 370
  6. The Third Case: Manning 371
  7. Bulk Leaks 373
  8. The Fourth Case: Kim 375
  9. Electronic Trails 377
  10. The Fifth Case: Sterling 380
  11. “We Had Lost” 381
  12. The Sixth Case: Kiriakou 384
  13. A War on Whistleblowers? 387
  14. “Aiding the Enemy” 390
  15. Pendulum Swing 394
  16. The Seventh Case: Snowden 399
  17. “No First Amendment Testimonial Privilege” 402
  18. The Eighth Case: Sachtleben 405
  19. Cases That Weren’t 406
  20. The Ninth Case: Petraeus 410
  21. “A Price to Be Paid” 413

Chapter Nine: Secrecy and Secret Law 415

  1. The al-Awlaki Lawsuit (State Secrets I) 415
  2. The Most Transparent in History (State Secrets II) 418
  3. The US Attorney Firings Subpoena (Executive Privilege I) 424
  4. The Dover Photos and the Torture Memos 426
  5. Retrenchment 430
  6. Hair on Fire (Executive Privilege II) 432
  7. Secret Law: The Patriot Act Interpretation 435
  8. The al-Awlaki Memo and Glomar 437
  9. Talking About Killing Citizens 440
  10. Acknowledging Secret Wars 443
  11. Chilling the Candor 445
  12. Fast and Furious (Executive Privilege III) 448
  13. “Alice in Wonderland” 452
  14. #standwithrand 454
  15. Voluntary Transparency 458
  16. Lifting the Veil 462
  17. Safety in Silence 464
  18. “A Welcome Development” 465
  19. “A Significant and Disturbing Shift” 467
  20. Disclosing the al-Awlaki Memo 469
  21. Victory or Defeat? 470

Part IV

American-Style Democracy

Chapter Ten: Wounds That Won’t Heal (Captives 2011–2015) 475

  1. The Romney Interrogation Memo 475
  2. Mandatory Military Detention 478
  3. The Last Iraq War Detainee 482
  4. Holding Americans as Enemy Combatants 485
  5. The 9/11 Military Commission Begins 488
  6. Two Torture Investigations End 490
  7. Code Yellow 492
  8. War Crimes, Real and Imagined 495
  9. Red Light at the Military Commissions 501
  10. The Guantánamo Hunger Strike 502
  11. Handling the Boston Marathon Bomber 505
  12. Reviving the Guantánamo Closure Effort 508
  13. The CIA versus the Intelligence Committee 512
  14. Risk Aversion 515
  15. Violating the Transfer Restrictions to Save Bergdahl 519
  16. A Visit to Guantánamo 523
  17. Pressuring Hagel to Make Decisions 526
  18. Unwinding the Parwan Prison at Bagram 530
  19. A Legal Obligation to Refrain from Cruelty 534
  20. The Senate Torture Report and Bush-Cheney Lawyering 538
  21. Tribunals Quagmire 544
  22. Obama’s Guantánamo Endgame Begins 549

Chapter Eleven: Institutionalized (Surveillance 2009–2015) 555

  1. Defending and Entrenching Warrantless Surveillance 560
  2. Hidden Headaches with Bulk Collection 560
  3. Going Dark 566
  4. Violating the Fourth Amendment 571
  5. Databases about Americans 573
  6. The “Least Untruthful” Answer 578
  7. Uproar 583
  8. Evidence Derived from Warrantless Surveillance 586
  9. Roberts’s Court 593
  10. Outside the Oval Office (Freedom Act I) 597
  11. Ending the DEA’s Bulk Phone Records Program 600
  12. Obama Under Pressure (Freedom Act II) 603
  13. Asking to be Forced 609
  14. A Bill That Can Pass (Freedom Act III) 612
  15. “NSA Reform That Only ISIS Could Love” (Freedom Act IV) 614
  16. Reform (Freedom Act V) 616
  17. Untargeted Collection (12333) 620
  18. Backdoor Searches and Battles to Come 625

Chapter Twelve: The Tug of War 627

WAR POWERS 1-6;
DOMESTIC POLICY 7-9;
FOREIGN AFFAIRS 10-13;
FOREVER WAR 14-17

  1. “A Red Line” in Syria 627
  2. Separation of Powers and the Initiation of War in the Twenty-First Century 631
  3. Initiating the Libya Air War 635
  4. The War Powers Resolution 638
  5. “We Are Acting Lawfully” 645
  6. Going to Congress for Syria in 2013 650
  7. Polarization and the Path to Unilateralism 655
  8. “We Can’t Wait” 657
  9. Executive Actions and Self-Restraint 659
  10. Signing Statements 666
  11. The Coup Cutoff Law 672
  12. Executive-Branch Lawyering 677
  13. Treaties and the Iran “Agreement” 681
  14. Ending the 9/11 War 683
  15. Extending the 9/11 War 685
  16. The Lawyerly Administration 690
  17. A New Normal? 695