Charlie Savage

From the chapter of my 2007 book TAKEOVER about the growing stacking the Supreme Court with former executive branch lawyers who came of age marinating in separation-of-powers disputes from a presidentialist perspective:

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When we came out of Syria in 2022 and landed at a military base, Graham got call and his demeanor changed and he moved away from the group to urgently talk. He had been subpoenaed to testify about calling Georgia’s Secretary of State when Trump was trying to overturn his loss of the 2020 election.

RIP Senator Lindsey Graham. I spoke with him many times over the years, primarily re war-on-terror detainee policy issues like Guantanamo & military commissions. He twice invited me to join congressional fact-finding trips to the war zone in Syria to scrutinize Kurdish-run prisons for ISIS detainees

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In my assessment, Graham started off as a pragmatic thinker (in a war you don’t torture captured enemies but you also don’t give them Miranda warnings/ lawyers before interrogating for intel) but hardened over the years into ideological dogma despite the lived experience that tribunals didn’t work.

Cubs this year are fire and ice with no lukewarm water in between: two ten-game winning streaks, a ten-game losing streak, etc. These last two games are the ridiculous season in a nutshell:

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We talked less over time as detainee policy issues faded, but he invited me again in 2022 to go to Syria, this time to look at where ISIS wives and children were being detained. He thought it was a shameful disaster than countries were not taking them back. www.nytimes.com/2022/07/19/u...

ISIS Fighters’ Children Are Growing Up in a Desert Camp. What Will They Become? (Published 2022)

Leaving captured men, women and children in prisons and camps run by Kurds risks seeding a new global terrorism disaster, rights groups and the U.S. military warn.

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Graham and I related to each other mainly through the dynamic of nerding about detainee policy, which we established before Trump. My impression was he thought he could work Trump thru flattery. In Manbij, he told me the town should name a square after Trump so he would not pull US troops out.

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In the Bush/Obama years, Graham aligned himself with Senator John McCain. He was a staunch opponent of torture but a strong supporter of handling terrorism cases using military detention and commissions rather than the civilian criminal justice system. charliesavage.com/2015/10/powe...

Power Wars Document: Lindsey Graham’s grand bargain proposal over Guantanamo - Charlie Savage

This previously undisclosed document is a proposal Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, developed in 2009. It was a starting point for what became lengthy but unsuccessful negotiation...

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Part of that 2018 trip was not about detainees. We visited an Arab town the Kurds had liberated from ISIS but the Turks wanted to push the Kurds out of. Graham spoke with local leaders trying to rebuild society at a cafe. Later a suicide bomber blew up that cafe. www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/r...

A Reporter’s Visit Last Summer to Restaurant in Syria Where Carnage Reigned (Published 2019)

“This is what stability looks like,” said a top general, wearing no body armor, before an upbeat lunch with local leaders.

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Here is main article that came from the 2018 trip with Graham, Senator Jeanne Shaheen & several staff. The military flew us in & out of Syria from Baghdad - long hot dusty day, visiting several locations. We processed it together that night in a green-zone canteen. www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/w...

As ISIS Fighters Fill Prisons in Syria, Their Home Nations Look Away (Published 2018)

On a rare tour of prisons for Islamic State suspects from nearly 50 countries, a Times reporter watched their jailers try to secure them humanely — but for how long?

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I assume you are tagging me because of my thread about my journalistic interactions with Lindsey Graham. Which of those tweets involved a matter where there were no stakes, in your view?

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My plan is to rewrite “They Ride Us” this time by me