2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force

The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) supplies Guantánamo Diary with a crucial legal and political frame: it authorized presidential force in response to the September 11 attacks, and an editorial note identifies it as the law under which Guantánamo operates. The narrative sets that broad authorization beside Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s account of secret detention, arguing that the existence of the resolution did not make the covert operation against him lawful.

Text and scope

The book describes Congress as authorizing President George W. Bush to use force against nations, organizations, or persons he determined had planned, authorized, committed, or aided the September 11 attacks, or had harbored those responsible. The stated purpose was to prevent future international terrorism against the United States. An editorial note calls the AUMF the September 14, 2001, law under which Guantánamo operates; the narrative separately dates Congress’s joint resolution to September 18. These dates appear in different parts of the book and are best understood as the text’s distinct references to the measure and its passage.

The resolution’s described scope concerns the use of force against those connected to the attacks and the prevention of future terrorism. The book does not present its wording as an express authorization for every subsequent detention or interrogation practice. Instead, it places the law in the larger political setting in which the United States began a campaign against the Taliban government in Afghanistan and, in the narrator’s account, a secret operation to seize, detain, torture, or kill terrorism suspects.

The law in Slahi’s account

Slahi says he was not involved in the crimes attributed to him. He recalls that on September 29, 2001, he was asked by telephone to turn himself in and did so, expecting to be cleared. Instead, American agents questioned him in Mauritania; the United States then reached an agreement with the Mauritanian government to send him to Jordan for further interrogation. He describes being held in Jordan for eight months, transferred to Bagram Air Base for two weeks, and then taken to the Guantánamo detention system, where he remained as he wrote.

That sequence gives the AUMF a significance beyond the wording of a statute. It appears in the book beside a chain of decisions and transfers that placed Slahi under state control across several countries. Slahi argues that the secret operation in which he became caught had no legal basis, even as the United States invoked a post-September 11 security framework. The account thus distinguishes the resolution’s stated response to the attacks from the specific covert actions carried out in its political aftermath; it does not treat the law’s existence, by itself, as proof that those actions were authorized by its text.

Documentary context and limits

The AUMF appears in an editorial note among material intended to help readers understand the legal and historical context of the manuscript. The editor explains that notes addressing censored passages draw on their surrounding context, information elsewhere in the manuscript, and publicly available sources, including declassified government documents, litigation records, journalism, and government investigations. The purpose is not to reconstruct the original redacted wording or uncover classified information, but to offer the most plausible publicly supported context where it matters to readability and impact.

That method also marks a boundary around what the annotations claim. The editor identifies such explanations as speculation where appropriate and says that neither Slahi’s attorneys with security clearances nor anyone else with access to the unredacted manuscript reviewed or confirmed the introductory material and footnotes. The AUMF therefore functions both as a legal reference point in the book and as part of its documentary argument: readers are shown the public authorization and the account of what followed, while the censorship and limits on access remain visible.