60 Words
Radiolab
This episode of Radiolab explores the profound impact of a single 60-word sentence—the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF)—passed in the
Key takeaways
- The 60-word AUMF, drafted hastily after 9/11, granted sweeping authority to the president to use force against anyone deemed responsible for the attacks or harboring terrorists.
Main topics
- Legal foundations of the War on Terror
- The Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF)
Notable quotes
"60 words. Today, a collaboration with BuzzFeed and with reporter Gregory Johnson, we're going to try to decode those words and ask, where did those words come from?"
Conclusion
The episode concludes by highlighting that despite years of debate and multiple legislative attempts, the
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:01) Hey, this is Radiolab. I'm Matt Kilty. So we are coming up on the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Actually, a week from today, it'll be the 25th anniversary. And a while back, I co-produced a story that was about the legacy of 9-11, only it wasn't about any aspect of 9-11 that I had ever heard before. It's about one single sentence, 60 words long, written in the panicked, grief-stricken days right after 9-11 that ended up... defining America for decades. And the story, it's a sort of like strange side door into this legal world behind the longest war in our country's history. We have a couple of updates for you at the end, so stick around for that. But for now, we're just going to jump in. So here we go. Wait, you're listening? Speaker 2 (0:54) You're Speaker 1 (0:56) listening to Radiolab. Speaker 5 (0:57) Radiolab. From WNYC. Speaker 1 (1:03) Rewind. Speaker 4 (1:07) Okay, ready? Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad. I'm Robert Krolwich. And this is Radiolab. Today we've got a story about the crazy power of words. In Speaker 7 (1:15) particular, Speaker 4 (1:16) 60 words. Single sentence. Speaker 7 (1:17) That is, well, that has, you could say, defined America for the last 12 years. And the place to start is a difficult one. Speaker 6 (1:27) This just in, you are looking at obviously a very disturbing live shot there. Speaker 7 (1:31) September 11th, 2001, 846 a.m. A Speaker 6 (1:34) plane. has crashed into the World Trade Center. We don't know anything more than that. This Speaker 7 (1:39) is a day that anyone who is old enough to remember does remember. We can remember where we were, who we were with. So Speaker 1 (1:47) you have Speaker 7 (1:47) no idea right now? Oh, Speaker 6 (1:48) there's another one. Another plane just hit. Oh, my God. Another plane has just hit. Speaker 7 (1:54) And, of course, Speaker 3 (1:55) we Speaker 7 (1:57) can remember how we felt. Speaker 6 (1:59) Tell me what you just Speaker 8 (2:00) saw. Oh, shoot! Speaker 8 (2:06) It is Speaker 7 (2:08) the worst attack ever on American soil. But if you really want to understand the world we live in now, you've got to jump ahead one day to September 12th to a corner office in the White House where there's a lawyer sitting at a computer trying to figure out how are we going to declare war? Speaker 1 (2:30) And one of the things that everybody realizes after sort of an initial discussion is, yes, we'd like to declare war, but we have no idea upon whom we should declare war. That is Gregory Johnson. The Michael Hastings National Security Reporting Fellow at BuzzFeed. Now, the Speaker 7 (2:47) reason this lawyer, a man by the name of Timothy Flanagan, the reason Flanagan is sitting at a computer in an office is because then President George Bush had to do something. He had to act, and he didn't want to act alone. He wanted congressional approval. Right. I mean, technically in an emergency. The president can defend the country. He is Speaker 8 (3:05) the commander in chief after all. He doesn't have to go to Congress and say, hey, do I have authorization to use force? Speaker 7 (3:10) Not in an emergency. Speaker 8 (3:11) That's Ben Wittes, Speaker 7 (3:12) by the way. Senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. But President Bush needed Congress on his side, he felt. You know, it was important that we project unity. that we were all standing together as one. And second, if this was an act of war... The power to declare war in the Constitution is given to Speaker 8 (3:29) Congress, not Speaker 7 (3:30) to Speaker 8 (3:30) the executive. Speaker 7 (3:31) And when Congress declares war, suddenly the president has a very clear and powerful mandate. Now, the declaration Speaker 8 (3:39) of war is kind of a dead instrument of international law. I mean, nobody's declared war since World War II. But the modern incarnation of the declaration of war is the authorization to use force. Speaker 7 (3:55) The authorization to use force. What's Speaker 1 (3:58) called the authorization for the use of military force. Speaker 7 (4:00) Or as it's commonly referred to, the AUMF. Speaker 1 (4:06) Right. So Speaker 7 (4:06) our lawyer in the White House, Flanagan. He's given a task. Go write an AUMF that Congress can send to the president. Speaker 1 (4:13) He really has no idea. So he goes back to the last time that the U.S. did this. Speaker 7 (4:18) Last time Congress passed one of these things. He does a quick sort of search on his computer. Speaker 1 (4:22) Boom, finds it. 1991, Iraq, the Gulf War. Flanagan grabs the text. And then he copies that into a Word document, and that becomes his template. He makes some cuts, he makes some changes, he deletes some words. And then he hits send. Speaker 7 (4:39) Our war on terror, a just war. And he sets in motion this bewildering series of events. A U.S. drone strike linked to Al-Qaeda. In the war ring, the Speaker 2 (4:49) troops home now. This Speaker 7 (4:52) madness that is basically the world we live in. Speaker 2 (4:54) 15 Speaker 7 (4:55) members of a wedding procession were killed by a U.S. And if you're like me. Speaker 6 (4:59) Bizarre, even sadistic treatment. If Speaker 7 (5:01) you're like me and you find yourself flipping through the channels, seeing the news, basically ignoring it, but then every so often thinking, wait a second. Speaker 6 (5:07) Terrorism targets in Africa. From Speaker 7 (5:09) Libya now, the U.S. Air Force. drone strike in southern Somalia. Wait, wait, how are we doing this in all these different places? Speaker 6 (5:16) 100 prisoners are on a hunger strike. And Speaker 7 (5:18) like that. Speaker 6 (5:19) In protest of their indefinite detention. Speaker 7 (5:21) How are we detaining people for so long? You mean, is it okay to do that? Well, just who signed off on this, you know? And it turns out we all did because it was in that document. Speaker 1 (5:33) This is the legal foundation for everything that the U.S. has done, everything from Guantanamo Bay to drone strikes to secret renditions to seal raids. It's all been hung off these 60 words. Speaker 7 (5:44) And that's the crazy part. The body of this document, the part that really matters, and the reason that when I was reading Gregory's reporting on this, I was like, what? Is that it all goes back to one Speaker 1 (5:54) single sentence. 60 words, one sentence. Speaker 7 (5:58) Can you read it? Speaker 1 (6:00) Absolutely. That the president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations, or persons. Speaker 7 (6:33) 60 words. Today, a collaboration with BuzzFeed and with reporter Gregory Speaker 4 (6:42) Johnson, we're going to try to decode those words and ask, where did those words come from? And how did they come to mean what they mean? Which is not what you think they mean. No. Speaker 7 (6:52) And how did they end up leading us into what is arguably the longest war in American history? And Speaker 4 (7:01) nobody saw it coming. Absolutely nobody. That's the weirdest part. Speaker 7 (7:04) Well, nobody minus one. Let's start there. Maybe you should introduce us to Barbara Lee. Speaker 1 (7:13) Right. Barbara Lee is a congresswoman from right around Berkeley, California. Hello. Hello, hello. Hi, it's Barbara. And she is someone who has been in many ways a lifelong activist. Going Speaker 7 (7:28) all the way back to when she was 15 in high school in San Fernando Valley. Because I wanted Speaker 3 (7:32) to be a cheerleader. Speaker 7 (7:34) But, you know, since this was the early 60s. You Speaker 3 (7:36) had to have certain criteria like... At least whether it was stated or not, blonde and blue eyes. Speaker 4 (7:42) That would have been hard for you, I would figure. Speaker 3 (7:45) That was really hard. So I went to the NAACP. She Speaker 1 (7:48) got them to pressure the school to change the rules. And I won. And she became the first black cheerleader at her high school. Yeah, yeah. Speaker 7 (7:56) That's just by way of introduction. Fast forward many years, she becomes a congresswoman. She gets elected to a second term. And on that day. Speaker 3 (8:02) There is smoke pouring out of the Pentagon. She was at the Capitol. No one knew where to go, so the police officers just said, run, run, run, go, go, go. This was an apparent terrorist attack on our country. So I ran out of the Capitol down Pennsylvania Avenue. I remember looking back and saw a lot of smoke. Which was, you know, the Pentagon. You know, clearly the country's under attack. Clearly people have died. Clearly we've got to deal with whoever did this, whatever it takes. Speaker 7 (8:31) Fast forward two days, September 13th, Barbara Lee is back at the Capitol to meet with her Democratic colleagues to review that document that Flanagan had sent over. The Speaker 1 (8:40) mood in the room was very somber and very angry. The thing we have to keep in mind when we're talking about this is all of this was done within 72 hours after the worst terrorist attack in United States history. And very confused. What would be the appropriate Speaker 3 (8:57) response? Speaker 3 (9:00) So Speaker 7 (9:00) as she and her colleagues read Speaker 3 (9:02) those Speaker 7 (9:02) 60 words, there Speaker 1 (9:03) was a lot of debate going on back and forth. Oh Speaker 7 (9:06) yes, Speaker 1 (9:06) oh yes, from everyone. Speaker 7 (9:07) Because this actually wasn't the first draft. Flanagan had sent one over the night before. September 12, 2001. And that one? Was something Speaker 1 (9:15) that almost no one agreed to. According Speaker 7 (9:17) to Gregory, that early draft Speaker 1 (9:18) had a few extra lines in it. One gave the president the power to preempt any future acts of aggression against the United States. And Barbara Lee and her colleagues knew that, look, so many things can be packed into this word aggression, that if we sign on to this, that if we give the president this power, the president may never have to come back to Congress ever again and request authorization for military force because he can say that anything is aggression. And we're also giving him the power to preempt. Speaker 7 (9:50) So they kicked it back to the White House. Flanagan took out those words. And now they have this new draft. Speaker 1 (9:55) that the president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force. Speaker 7 (10:00) Which is what you heard. But still, when Barbara read that and saw phrases like all necessary Speaker 3 (10:04) and appropriate force, she thought, what does that even mean? I said this is too broad. Speaker 1 (10:10) It's not. definitive, it's open-ended. And as she was speaking, this is taking place in the basement of the Capitol building, she sees some of her Democratic colleagues start to nod. Yep, people were nodding. People were nodding. Because Speaker 7 (10:22) everybody there knew the danger of ill-defined words. You just had to go back 50 years. To the Gulf of Tonkin. Yep. Gulf of Tonkin. Tonkin. Tonkin. Tonkin with an N. Yes. To explain. Speaker 6 (10:35) My fellow Americans, as president and commander-in-chief. Speaker 7 (10:40) 1964, LBJ announces that two American ships. Two Speaker 6 (10:44) U.S. destroyers. Speaker 7 (10:45) Parked in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of Vietnam were torpedoed by North Vietnamese boats. By a Speaker 6 (10:50) number of hostile vessels. Many Speaker 7 (10:52) people now argue that one of these attacks never even happened. Nonetheless, President Johnson wanted to strike back. So he asked Congress to Speaker 6 (10:59) pass a resolution, Speaker 7 (11:00) which they did, giving him the power to, quote, take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression. Speaker 6 (11:13) Making it clear that our government is united in its determination to take all necessary measures in support of freedom and in defense of peace in Southeast Asia. Speaker 7 (11:26) Now, it is the broad language of that document, most people believe, that opened the door to the worst part of the Vietnam War. Speaker 7 (11:34) The Rangers and Marines took casualties, mostly from hidden snipers. The thousands and thousands of casualties. They just keep Speaker 6 (11:40) dropping Speaker 1 (11:40) in. There's nothing you can do. Speaker 7 (11:42) Horrific atrocities. Charges have been made that troops Speaker 6 (11:45) killed as many as 567 South Vietnamese civilians during a sweep in March 1968. Speaker 7 (11:52) And in a television interview in 1969, when President Johnson was asked to justify it all, he said, you can't just blame him. Congress Speaker 6 (11:59) gave us this authority in August 1964. Speaker 6 (12:06) To do whatever may be necessary. That's pretty far reaching. Speaker 7 (12:12) So the lessons of the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam, that was very much in the air in that meeting on September 13th, 2001. Speaker 5 (12:20) Several key leaders hoped to avoid a repeat of the 1964 Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Speaker 7 (12:24) So it was understandable that when Barbara Lee stood up and said to her Speaker 3 (12:27) colleagues that she was worried about some of this language. People were nodding. People were nodding. So there was a lot of uncertainty about what to do. But in the end, those concerns were ultimately outweighed. by another desire. We've got to be unified with the president. We can't show political Speaker 1 (12:41) divisions. Let's have the nation, let's have Congress speaking with one voice. It Speaker 7 (12:46) was a time for unity and for action. And so walking out of that Democratic caucus meeting on the evening of September 13th, congressional leadership Speaker 1 (12:52) decided that these 60 words, this is the version. There's no going back to the drawing board. And so at 1016 a.m. September 14th, 2001, the Speaker 6 (13:03) Senate will come to order. The Speaker 1 (13:04) Senate is gaveled into session. The clerk will call the roll. Daschle calls a vote. Speaker 6 (13:08) Mr. Akaka. Mr. Allard. Mr. Allen. Speaker 1 (13:13) There are 98 senators on the floor. Mr. Speaker 6 (13:16) Durbin. Mr. Vornovich. Speaker 1 (13:18) All 98 of them vote yay. Speaker 6 (13:20) No senator voted in the negative. Speaker 7 (13:23) So it was a sweep. Speaker 6 (13:23) Yeah. Speaker 7 (13:24) Later in the day, the resolution would go to the House where Barbara Lee was a representative. Daschle had actually rushed the vote through the Speaker 1 (13:30) Senate. Because the White House has called for a national prayer meeting at the National Cathedral. Speaker 7 (13:36) For the victims of 9-11. Speaker 1 (13:37) That's supposed to start right at noon. And so. Right Speaker 7 (13:40) after the Speaker 1 (13:40) vote. All the senators pour out of the Capitol and get onto the buses trying to get through the drizzle. It was actually raining that day. Now, at that moment, Barbara Lee. She hadn't decided how it is that she was going to vote. I struggled with it. For Speaker 7 (13:52) the previous two nights, September 12th and 13th, Speaker 1 (13:55) she stayed up late. Calling back to advisors, to friends in California. We talked every day. Including this guy. This is Ron Dellums. Speaker 7 (14:03) I served for over 27 years in the U.S. House of Representatives. Barbara used to be his chief of staff, and when he resigned, she won his congressional seat. Speaker 3 (14:11) You know, she would say, well, what about this? And