Sunday · November 15, 2026
Edited daily
American history, reported as it happened
Made for the 250th
20011776 Club

Bush signs an order allowing military tribunals for foreign terror suspects

It was the first order of its kind since World War II, and the tribunals it creates can impose the death penalty.

Two months after the September 11 attacks, the United States was at war in Afghanistan and still deciding how to try the men it hoped to capture. On November 13, 2001, President George W. Bush signed an executive order allowing military tribunals for foreigners suspected of ties to terrorist acts or planned acts against the country. No president had issued an order of that kind since World War II. Suspects could be prosecuted outside the civilian courts, and the tribunals could impose the death penalty…

1776 Club

This story is held for members.

Members read every story of the day — and tomorrow's, and the next.

Join the 1776 Club
$17.76 your first year · then $39.99/yr · cancel anytime
More from November 13
1942

Searchlights snap on at 3,000 yards, and a night battle breaks out off Guadalcanal

Callaghan's cruisers and destroyers meet Abe's battleships between Savo Island and Guadalcanal, and within minutes the formations dissolve into the dark.
1956

Supreme Court affirms Browder v. Gayle; Alabama's bus segregation laws fall

Four women arrested on Montgomery buses carried the suit, and the boycott that surrounded it has now run eleven months.
1775

Montreal falls to Montgomery without a fight; Carleton slips away by river

Carleton judged the city indefensible, and contrary winds nearly kept his fleet in port while American troops crossed downstream.
19271776 Club
Coolidge opened Saturday's ceremony by telegraph key from his yacht; two of the tunnel's chief engineers did not live to see the first car.
Read this as a member →
Read the full November 13 edition →Everything that happened on November 13 →
More from Modern America
1998

Thirteen Tomahawks hit a Khartoum medicine factory; Washington says it made nerve gas

The strike came thirteen days after the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, and the target was a plant that made most of Sudan's antibiotics.
2020

Biden accepts the nomination alone in a Delaware ballroom, no crowd, no roar

A pandemic convention ends with the nominee speaking to a camera instead of a stadium.
1994

Thirty-three years after his death, the Air Force finally makes Eugene Bullard an officer

France called him a hero and gave him a pilot's license in 1917; his own country waited until 1994 to make it official.
2012

Voyager 1 leaves the Sun's bubble; no craft has gone farther

Thirty-five years after launch, its instruments detect the plasma signature of true interstellar space.
The Daily Record · free by email

Tomorrow's edition in your inbox — one featured story, one quote, and today's flag status. Free, every morning.

The full experience

Read every story, narrated, in the app.

Take this story with you.

The complete daily edition, the deep-cut narration, and a library that's yours — the 1776 Club lives in the app.

Your membership comes with you — every event, narrated, with flag alerts, CarPlay, and your saved library.

Download on the App Store