Episode 11: All of This Has Happened Before, and Will Happen Again

In today's episode, Professors Vladeck and Chesney come to grips yet again with surveillance law and policy issues thanks to the ever-fascinating Trump/Russia story, this time accounting for the President's accusation that then-National Security Advisor Susan Rice committed a crime.  After droning on and on about targeting, minimization, incidental collection, masking, unmasking, and leaking, the professors pivot briefly to Jim Comey's secret Twitter account and also the removal of Steve Bannon from the list of NSC participants (neither of those stories are really national security *law* stories, they are quick to admit, but you get what you pay for...). From there it's back to Guantanamo, where the Court of Military Commission Review has hinted that it might not proceed to adjudicate a former detainee's appeal from a conviction given that the fellow is now in the field with AQAP.  That's followed by a discussion of a new D.C. Circuit opinion on the right of the public to see videotapes of force-feeding of Guantanamo hunger strikers, and a review of the principle of "unlawful command influence" in the context of the Bowe Bergdahlt court martial.  And just in case you weren't sure how geeky these guys are, they wrap with a too-long discussion of Battlestar Galactica (feels like it goes on for a few centars, but it's really just a few centons).