Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF)

The Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) is the post-September 11 congressional authorization that the book identifies as the legal framework under which Guantánamo operates. Its stated reach is directed at nations, organizations, and persons determined to have planned, authorized, committed, or aided the attacks, or harbored those responsible; the account sets that grant of force beside the much more expansive secret detention and interrogation system that followed, making the difference between an authorization and its implementation central to the reader’s understanding of Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s case.

Text and Scope

The book’s explanatory note defines the AUMF as a law dated September 14, 2001, authorizing the President to use all necessary and appropriate force against those connected to the September 11 attacks, for the purpose of preventing future international terrorism against the United States. The narrative separately says that on September 18, 2001, a joint resolution of the U.S. Congress authorized George W. Bush to use force against the nations, organizations, or persons responsible for or implicated in the attacks. These dates appear in distinct parts of the book: the narrative places the authorization in its account of the response to the attacks, while the note identifies the AUMF by name and date.

The formulation centers on a determination by the President about who falls within its categories. The book links that authority to the operation of Guantánamo, but does not present the statute’s wording as a detailed account of every later detention or interrogation practice. Its significance therefore lies both in the power it grants and in the subsequent institutional choices made under the post-attack security framework.

From Authorization to Secret Operations

In Slahi’s account, the U.S. government’s response moved beyond the announced use of force against the Taliban government in Afghanistan. He describes the subsequent creation of a secret operation to seize, detain, interrogate, or kill terrorism suspects, and argues that this operation had no legal basis. That is his assessment of the program, not a quotation from the AUMF itself; the distinction matters because the book presents the law’s stated authorization and the covert practices carried out in its name as related but not interchangeable.

Slahi describes himself as caught within that system despite denying involvement in the crimes at its center. After the September 11 attacks, he says, he responded immediately to a request to turn himself in, expecting that questioning would clear him. Instead, American agents questioned him in Mauritania, and he says the United States reached an arrangement with the Mauritanian government to send him to Jordan for further interrogation. He recounts eight months in Jordan, two weeks at Bagram Air Base, and then transfer to Guantánamo. His account makes the law’s practical setting a chain of custody across countries, agencies, and detention sites rather than a single battlefield action.

Slahi’s Case and the Changing Grounds for Detention

The book’s chronology shows that the focus of questioning changed over time. Early interrogations in Mauritania centered on the Millennium Plot, and Slahi told the Administrative Review Board that Jordanian interrogators were also concerned with that plot. A link to the September 11 hijackers surfaced later, after the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh in September 2002. Slahi recounted that bin al-Shibh identified him as someone who had hosted him and advised him to travel to Afghanistan for training; the allegation marked a sharp change in how Slahi’s connections were interpreted.

The public account of Slahi’s status also shifted. A 2010 newspaper editorial portrayed him as a leading September 11 recruiter and attacked Judge James Robertson’s order granting his habeas corpus petition. The later-released, redacted order included the government’s acknowledgment that it had abandoned the argument that Slahi was detainable under the AUMF theory that he aided the September 11 attacks, conceding that he probably did not know of the attacks. The book contrasts that concession with the earlier public certainty, while emphasizing that the government continued to argue that Slahi was part of al-Qaeda on other grounds.

Legal and Narrative Significance

The AUMF thus enters the narrative not merely as a statute but as a contested boundary: its text specifies categories of responsibility, while Slahi’s history raises the question of how those categories were applied to a person detained far from the attacks and held without criminal conviction. Judge Robertson’s 2010 order, described in the book as granting Slahi’s habeas petition, provides a judicial counterpoint to broad public claims about his guilt. The government’s abandonment of the specific aided-in-the-attacks theory further complicates the image of the AUMF as a simple, settled explanation for his detention.

The book also stresses the evidentiary uncertainty surrounding the system. Its account draws on public records, declassified materials, investigations, and Slahi’s own narrative, while acknowledging that redactions limit what can be established. Against that background, the AUMF is both a legal instrument and a political reference point: it helps explain the asserted authority for post-attack action, but does not by itself resolve whether each secret transfer, interrogation, or continuing detention described in the book was justified.