Center on National Security Director Karen Greenberg was interviewed for a Law360 feature about her recently published book Subtle Tools: The Dismantling of American Democracy from the War on Terror to Donald Trump.
Mass surveillance, extraordinary rendition, torture of terror suspects, extrajudicial killings via drone, and prosecutions of whistleblowers marked the era of what the U.S. government styled the War on Terror, according to national security scholar Karen Greenberg.
Greenberg, director of Fordham University School of Law’s Center on National Security, said that the erosion in American democracy and rule of law in the two decades following 9/11 was enabled by four “subtle tools” of intentionally vague language, bureaucratic confusion, secrecy and the flouting legal norms. Stretching the meaning of words — using terms like “enhanced interrogation” to circumvent prohibitions on torture — classifying and hiding documentation of the government’s activities, and judicial and congressional deference to the executive in contravention of the separation of powers are examples of the subtle tools.
In her new book, Karen Greenberg, the director of Fordham Law’s Center on National Security, traces how a breakdown in American rule of law after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks was supported by loose legal language and the flouting of legal norms.