The USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 is an Act of Congress that was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001. The title of the act is a ten letter bacronym (USA PATRIOT) that stands for Uniting (and) Strengthening America (by) Providing Appropriate Tools Required (to) Intercept (and) Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001. The act, as a response to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, significantly weakened restrictions on law enforcement agencies’ gathering of intelligence within the United States; expanded the Secretary of the Treasury’s authority to regulate financial transactions, particularly those involving foreign individuals and…
Author: John Greenewald
Timothy James “Tim” McVeigh (April 23, 1968 – June 11, 2001) was an American who detonated a truck bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. Commonly referred to as the Oklahoma City bombing, the attack killed 168 people and injured over 600. It was the deadliest act of terrorism within the United States prior to the September 11 attacks, and remains the most serious act of domestic terrorism in United States history. McVeigh, a militia movement sympathizer and Gulf War veteran, sought revenge against the federal government for their handling…
Ghost detainee is a term used in the executive branch of the United States government to designate a person held in a detention center, whose identity has been hidden by keeping them unregistered and therefore anonymous. Such uses arose as the Bush administration initiated the war on terror following the 9/11 attacks of 2001 in the United States. As documented in the 2004 Taguba Report, it was used in the same manner by United States (US) officials and contractors of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center (JIDC) at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003-2004. I filed a FOIA…
Background Bowe Robert Bergdahl (born March 28, 1986) is a United States Army soldier who was held captive by the Taliban-aligned Haqqani network in Afghanistan from June 2009 until his release in May 2014. The circumstances under which Bergdahl went missing and how he was captured by the Taliban have since become a subject of intense media scrutiny. Bergdahl was released on May 31, 2014, as part of a prisoner exchange for five Taliban members who were being held at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. This exchange quickly became a political controversy within the United States. Below, are documents…
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence On April 3, 2014, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence voted to send the Findings and Conclusions and the Executive Summary of its final Study on the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program to the President for declassification and subsequent public release. This report was finally released, and is available here: Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program, released December 9, 2014 [ 525 Pages, 62.71MB ]. Approved December 13, 2012, Updated for Release April 3, 2014, and Declassication Revisions December 3, 2014. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Files CUSTODIAL INTERROGATION FOR PUBLIC…