The Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs (DASD-DA) is a political appointment created by United States President George W. Bush. The appointee has responsibility for captives apprehended during the "war on terror". The New York Times described one appointee as: "a primary adviser to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on detainee matters and his point man for dealing with foreign governments and international organizations on the issue."
Matthew Waxman was the first to hold this position. He was followed by Charles "Cully" Stimson, who resigned in February 2007 following controversial comments about lawyers representing detainees. Career State Department lawyer Sandra Hodgkinson held the position from 2007-2009.
The Washington Post reported in February 2009 that Phillip E. Carter was slated to be the new Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, following speculation on Pentagon blogs about his appointment.
The Department of Defense has published 179 Guantanamo documents dossiers prepared from the unclassified documents prepared for captives 2004 Combatant Status Review Tribunals. Documents from the Deputy Assistant Secreary of Defense for Detainee Affairs routinely lead the documents that the Tribunals considered as evidence justifying the Guantanamo captives continued extrajudicial detention.
On February 16, 2010 William K. Lietzau was appointed as "Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Policy". By October 2011 he had taken on responsibility for the department's Rule of Law and Humanitarian Policy portfolio, and held the title "Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for rule of law and detainee policy".
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“Not all the water in the rough rude sea
Can wash the balm off from an anointed king;
The breath of worldly men cannot depose
The deputy elected by the Lord.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“... the wife of an executive would be a better wife had she been a secretary first. As a secretary, you learn to adjust to the boss’s moods. Many marriages would be happier if the wife would do that.”
—Anne Bogan, U.S. executive secretary. As quoted in Working, book 1, by Studs Terkel (1973)
“Unlike Boswell, whose Journals record a long and unrewarded search for a self, Johnson possessed a formidable one. His life in London—he arrived twenty-five years earlier than Boswell—turned out to be a long defense of the values of Augustan humanism against the pressures of other possibilities. In contrast to Boswell, Johnson possesses an identity not because he has gone in search of one, but because of his allegiance to a set of assumptions that he regards as objectively true.”
—Jeffrey Hart (b. 1930)
“These things do not happen by chance. There is much less luck in public affairs than some suppose.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)