Sen. Ron Wyden has led a lonely battle against state secrecy. He wanted his findings from the Intelligence Committee on what he perceived as a misuse of the Patriot Act to be made public. And now, he wants a public record on the death of Anwar al-Awlaki. Five months after Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was [...]

For months now, Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall have spoken out about the Justice Department’s interpretation – wrongful interpretation, in their view – of the Patriot Act, which has led to some unnamed manner of mischief in terms of civil liberties deprivation through mass data collection. Wyden and Udall have implored DoJ to explain [...]

Charlie Savage digs out the process for authorizing the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki, killed in Yemen late last month. He wasn’t able to obtain the secret memo from the Office of Legal Counsel authorizing the placing of Awlaki on a kill list, but he had some of the memo described to him: The secret document [...]