No matter how you look at this attempt to suppress and ignore the WikiLeaks material, it is bizarre and somewhat comical. The WikiLeaks Gitmo Detainee files genie is out of the bottle; it would behoove the US government to join the battle and arguments on the merits and facts instead of trying to cram the genie back in and play hide the bottle.

When I posted on the new guidelines the government has given Gitmo lawyers on how they can use the Gitmo Detainee Assessment Briefs released by WikiLeaks, I had not yet seen the guidelines. Here they are. What’s most interesting to me about the guidelines is the way the government appears to be trying to undercut [...]

When our children askin the future how the Great Writ of Habeas Corpus, the foundation of law, died, this is the time and this is the answer.

Charlie Savage reports on the new “relaxed” standards that will allow Gitmo defense lawyers to glance at the Gitmo Detainee Assessment Briefs released by WikiLeaks. (h/t fatster) In guidance to the lawyers — who have security clearances, and so are required to follow government rules for the handling of classified information — the department’s court [...]

A number of people have commented on the Obama Administration’s statement of opposition to a ban on Department of Homeland Security funding for Gitmo detainee transfers. Here’s Benjamin Wittes: The administration just issued a Statement of Administration Policy on a DHS appropriations bill (H.R. 2017), which contains a spending restriction similar to one of the [...]

DOD has announced that prosecutors have recommended charges against KSM and the other alleged 9/11 plotters. The Department of Defense announced today the office of military commissions prosecutors have sworn charges against five individuals detained at Guantanamo Bay:  Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmed [...]

Become a Member of Firedoglake GOAL: 1,000 New Members by June 1st Support our one-stop shop for in-depth news coverage and hard-hitting activism.   Just over two years ago, right around the time I reported that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in a month, many of you chipped into the “Marcy Wheeler fund” [...]

According to reports, we first started tracking the couriers who would ultimately lead us to Osama bin Laden over four years ago. The stream of information that led to Sunday’s raid began over four years ago, when U.S. intelligence personnel were alerted about two couriers who were working with al Qaeda and had deep connections [...]

I’m going to be in transit for another half day yet, but I wanted to comment on this motion David Remes, Gitmo detainee Saifullah Paracha’s attorney, filed to request emergency access to the Detainee Assessment Brief on his client released by WikiLeaks on Monday. (h/t Benjamin Wittes)  Remes describes the implications of the protection order [...]

Check out this sentence, which appears at the end of the Executive Summary of a document purporting to debunk the “cover stories” of detainees who claimed to have traveled to Afghanistan to teach the Koran. Mujahideen that traveled to Afghanistan following the attacks of 11 September 2001 did so with the knowledge that Usama Bin [...]