Center for National Security Studies

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Website not finalized : changes coming : so I took this SnapShot

Resettling some detainees in the US essential to closing Guantanamo

On July 10^th, two dozen national security and terrorism experts sent a letter to Congress arguing that

“blocking the government from bringing any Guantanamo detainees to the U.S. is unnecessary and harmful to our national security.”

The entire letter, which goes on to emphasize the strength of America’s criminal justice system, is available here.

DOJ releases secret torture memos

Keeping true to a commitment to greater government openness and transparency, on April 16^th the DOJ released four secret Office of Legal Counsel opinions that were used to justify torture and abusive interrogation methods employed by the CIA during the Bush Administration.

President Obama, who ended unlawful interrogations in an Executive Order issued in his first days in office, has stated that CIA agents who relied on the memos in good faith will not be prosecuted.

For more on the memos, their authors and how torture has harmed our national security, please watch Kate Martin’s appearance on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal.

Supreme Court ends al-Marri detention case

On March 6^th the Supreme Court ended the detention case of al-Marri, a legal U.S. resident who has been held in solitary confinement in the United States as an “enemy combatant”, without charge or trial, for several years. At the request of the Obama Administration, the Court erased a 2008 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit that gave the previous Administration the authority to indefinitely detain legal U.S. residents as terrorism suspects. As Kate Martin, the Center’s Director, noted,

“[t]his is a very important victory for the rule of law and civil liberties. With President Obama's decision to transfer al-Marri from the military prison to civilian authorities, there is no longer anyone seized in the U.S. being held by the military without trial, for the first time since 2002. And now the appeals court decision approving that practice has been undone. There is every reason to hope that at the end of the administration's detention policy review, it will formally renounce any claim to such extraordinary and unconstitutional authority.”

For more on how ending the military imprisonment of “enemy combatants” respects the rule of law and civil liberties, and makes the United States safer, please read the January 2009 amicus brief filed by Suzanne Spaulding and other former national security officials and counterterrorism experts.

"Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger,

real or pretended, from abroad."
James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, May 13, 1798

The Center for National Security Studies, a non-governmental advocacy and research organization, was founded in 1974 to work for control of the FBI and CIA and to prevent violations of civil liberties in the United States.

A central challenge for democratic societies is to maintain national security while enhancing individual freedoms. Defense of civil liberties and constitutional procedures in the face of claims of national security is a never-ending task that requires constant vigilance and public awareness. The Center for National Security Studies plays that role as the only institution devoted solely to this constitutional watchdog function. The Center works to develop a consensus on policies that facilitate the exercise of government responsibilities in ways that do not interfere with civil liberties and constitutional government.

The Center works to strengthen the public right of access to government information, combat excessive government secrecy, assure effective oversight of intelligence agencies, protect the right of political dissent, prevent illegal government surveillance, ensure congressional authority in war powers, and protect the free exchange of ideas and information across international borders.

Since 1993, the Center has also worked internationally to assist human rights organizations and government officials in establishing oversight and accountability of intelligence agencies in emerging democracies throughout the world.

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the
government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
Justice Louis Brandeis, 1928

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1120 19th Street, NW, 8th Floor, Washington, DC 20036 • cnss@cnss.org • Fax: (202) 530-0128

Main Phone: (202) 721-5650 • Media/Press Inquiries: (202) 721-5660

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