Jack Goldsmith: Today’s secret warfare needs its own legal
framework  President Barack Obama is presiding over the rise of
a secret, nimbler war defined by covert action — a new form of
warfare that needs a firmer political and legal foundation.  The
administration’s approach finds support in opinion polls and is
almost certainly lawful. Bevies of lawyers and inspectors
general monitor secret executive action, as does, in some
contexts, a secret intelligence court. And the executive branch
regularly reports these activities to select congressional
committees that are generally supportive.  Yet the legal and
political foundation for secret war, including the drones that
have been so much in the news of late, is weak. That foundation
rests mostly on laws designed for another task that government
lawyers have since interpreted, without public scrutiny, to meet
new challenges. Outside the surveillance context, Congress as a
body has not debated or approved the means or ends of secret
warfare, except, perhaps, thr