The Papers Series
First with The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib and then with The Enemy Combatants Papers: American Justice, The Courts, and the War on Terror, The Center on Law and Security has created two essential volumes of all documentation related to the American government’s philosophy and execution of legal strategies in fight against terrorism, including interrogation and imprisonment.
The Enemy Combatant Papers
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The Enemy Combatants Papers presents the five major enemy combatant cases of the post–9/11 era. Presented in narrative form, these original documents tell the story that clarifies the questions at the heart of the American detention of alleged combatants in the war on terror. These documents discuss the right to counsel, the right to a trial, the right for the accused to see the evidence against him, and the intersection between domestic and international law. The book highlights the tension between the needs of national security and the liberties allotted to alleged enemies of the state by highlighting the basic question of what the U.S. Constitution guarantees and to whom. In these documents, the reader can follow the evolving arguments about presidential powers in time of war, habeas corpus, the Geneva Conventions, balance of powers, and matters of detention and prisoner treatment. Complemented with a comprehensive timeline and appendices that include the relevant cases from the Civil War, World War II, and the Korean War and the premises for setting up military commissions and Combatant Status Review Tribunals, this book is meant for those who seek to understand the issues - legal, political, and military – that have dominated the search for balance between justice and security in the war on terror.
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The definitive documentation of one of the most troubling experiments in modern history."
-David Cole, Georgetown Law School
The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib
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The Torture Papers document the so-called 'torture memos' and reports which US government officials wrote to prepare the way for, and to document, coercive interrogation and torture in Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib. These documents present for the first time a compilation of materials that prior to publication have existed only piecemeal in the public domain. The Bush Administration, concerned about the legality of harsh interrogation techniques, understood the need to establish a legally viable argument to justify such procedures. The memos and reports document the systematic attempt of the US Government to prepare the way for torture techniques and coercive interrogation practices, forbidden under international law, with the express intent of evading legal punishment in the aftermath of any discovery of these practices and policies.
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"The minutely detailed chronological narragive embodied in this volume, which has appeared piecemeal in other publications, possesses an awful and cumulative weight...This book is necessary, if grueling, reading for anyone interested in understanding the backstory to those terrible photos from Saddam Hussein's former prison, and abuses at other American detention facilities."
- The New York Times