Rogue Justice ─ The Making of the Security State

The definitive account of how the architects of the War on Terror began a decade-long assault on the rule of law, permanently weakening our courts and our Constitution in the name of national security.
 
The day after September 11, President Bush tasked Attorney General John Ashcroft with preventing another terrorist attack on the United States. Ashcroft took the mandate seriously; from that day forward, the Department of Justice would shift its resources and focus from the courts and prosecutions to the gathering of intelligence in order to protect the nation. Over the course of the next decade, aided by the DOJ, the Bush administration secretly gave its imprimatur to activities that had previously been unthinkable—from the NSA's wide-ranging collection of the telephone and Internet records of US citizens to indefinite detention at Guantanamo and even to torture.
 
When President Obama came into office, many observers expected these changes to be rolled back and the resulting injustices remedied, but the new administration found the rogue policies to be deeply entrenched. Obama ramped up targeted killings, held fast to aggressive surveillance policies, and fell short on bringing reform to detention and interrogation.
 
More recently, the steady efforts of the ACLU to restore the power of the Constitution, the revelations of Edward Snowden, and a subtle strategy by the Obama administration to bring power back to the courts and restore the rule of law, offer reason to hope. But the American justice system may never recover from the compromises made over the past fifteen years.
 
Riveting and deeply reported, Rogue Justice could only have been written by Karen Greenberg, one of this country’s top experts on Guantanamo, torture, and terrorism, with deep knowledge of the national security apparatus of both the Bush and Obama administrations. Now she brings to life the full story of law and order since 9/11, featuring a vast array of players—from ACLU lawyers to FBI investigators to judges in secret courts to accused terrorists. The picture she paints shows that time and again, when liberty and security were at odds, justice was the victim.

Karen J. Greenberg is Director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University School of Law and is the author ofThe Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days. Her work has been featured in theNew York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, and she frequently appears on MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, and NPR. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.