BROWN, Circuit Judge: The United States appeals the district court's grant of the writ of habeas corpus to detainee Adnan Farhan Abd Al Latif Three errors in the district court's analysis require us to vacate that decision. First, the court failed to accord an' official government record a presumption of regularity. Second, the district court failed to determine Latif s credibility even though the court relied on his declaration to discredit the Government's key evidence. See AI-Adahi v. Obama, 613 F.3d 1102, 1110 (D.C. Cir. 2010). Third, the court's unduly atomized approach to the ~vidence is one we have rejected. See id. We remand so the district court can evaluate Latifs credibility as needed in light of the totality of the evidence, inchiding newly available evidence as appropriate.

I

Latif is a Yemeni national who was apprehended near Pakistan's Afghan border in late 2001 and transferred to Guantanamo Bay in January 2002. The parties agree that Latif commenced his travels at the suggestion of a man named Ibrahim and that Latif set off from Yemen to Quetta, Pakistan, and from there to Kabul, Afghanistan. The parties also agree that afte~ returning to Pakistan, Latif was seized by the Pakistani military without a passport. What the parties disagree about is the nature of Latifs trip. The Government says Latif was recruited and trained by the Taliban. and then was stationed in Kabul on the front line against the Northern

UNCLASSIFIEOIIFOR PUBLIC RELEASE ---.UNc1:ASS~FIEDllfO·R·PUBtIC ·RELEASE··· - ..... 3 2J19@MT Alliance. Latif says he left Yemen in search of medical care and has never had anything to do with the Taliban. Acc;ordlmg to the story attributed to Latif in the Report, Ibrahim AI-Alawi began recruiting Latif for jihad in 2000. At Ibrahim's urging, Latif left home in early August 2001 and travelled to Afghanistan via Sana' a, Yemen; Karachi, Pakistan; and Quetta, Pakistan. Latif met Ibrahim at the Grand Mosque in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and stayed with him and his family for three days. From Kandahar, Ibrahim took Latif to the Talibail. The Taliban gave him weapons training and stationed him on the front line against the Northern Alliance, north of Kabul, under the command of Afghan leader Abu Fazl. While there, Latif reportedly "saw a lot of people killed during the bombings, but never fired a shot." While with the Taliban, Latif met Abu Hudayfa of Kuwait, Abu Hafs of Saudi Arabia, and Abu Bakr of the United Arab Emirates or Bahrain. Latif retreated to Pakistan via lalalabad with fleeing Arabs, guided by an Afghan named Taqi Allah. Among other un-redacted identifying details, the Report indicates that Latif's mother's name is Muna, that he lived in the village of 'Udayn in Ibb, Yemen, and that his only prior trip o.ut of that country was to Jordan with a ~ 1"r,,"~lt........c>nt of an injury to his h a n d . " _ In the district court, the Government did not produce the notes· on which this Report was based. The Government now claims to have located the' notes, which it UNCLASSIFIEOIIFOR PUBLIC RELEASE ·.... UNC-lASSIF-I-EDIIFO-R· PUBLIC REtEASE-· says confirm the Report. Since this case was briefed, those notes have been disclosed to Latifs counsel in some form.

Latif does not deny being interviewed Nor does he allege his statements were coerced or otherwIse involuntary. But Lati~ tements were misunderstood or, alternatively,_ were misattributed to him. In a declaration filed with the district coUrt in 2009, Latif denies ever being part of the Taliban and offers an innocent explanation for his journey. Latif says he left Yemen in 2001 on a quest for medical treatment for head injuries he suffered in a 1994 car accident. He went to Pakistan to get help from Ibrahim, a Yemeni he had met at a charitable organization in Yemen. When Latif arrived in Quetta, Ibrahim had already left Pakistan, so Latif followed him to an Islamic studies institute in Kabul, Afghanistan. But once Latif caught up to Ibrahim at the institute, Ibrahim had to leave again and told Latif to wait for him there until they could travel together to Pakistan. After waiting in vain for several weeks, Latif says, he then returned to Pakistan without Ibrahim, fleeing U.^[8].- . supported forces he had been told were advancing from northern Afghanistan.

The district court granted Latifs habeas petitIOn following briefing and a hearing in which Latif dec1ined to testify. Abdah v. Obama (Latif), 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 83596 (D.D.C. July 21,2010). Although it did not "disregard" the Report entirely, slip op. at 26, the district court concluded it could not "creqit that information because there is serious question.as to whether the [Report] accurately reflects Latifs words, the incriminating facts in the [Report] are not corroborated, and Latif has presented a plausible alternative story to explain his travel." Id.

UNCLASSIFIEOIIFOR PUBLIC RELEASE __ .. UNCLASS~FIEDIIFORo PUBl1C-RELEASEo 0-- - 8BQRIIT 5 JI!CM!lT II In a Guantanamo detainee case, we review the district court's "specific factual determinations" for clear error, and its ultimate grant or denial of habeas de novo. Almerfedi v. Obama, - F.3d - , 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 11696, at[*11] (D.C. Cir. June 10, 2011). As in our prior cases, we assume, without deciding, that the district court was correct to hold the Government to the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard. See id. at II n.4; Al-Bihani v. Obama, 590 F.3d 866, 878 & nA (D.C. Cir. 2010); see also Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723, 787 (2008) ("The extent of the showing required of the Government in these cases is a matter to be determined. "); Al- Adahi, 613 F.3d at 1105 ("Although we doubt ... that the Suspension Clause requires the use of the preponderance standard, we will not decide the question in this case."). To meet its burden, "the government must put forth credible facts demonstrating that the petitioner meets the detention standard, which is then compared to a detainee's facts and explanation." Almerfedi, - F.3d - , 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 11696, at[*12] -13. At the heart of the Government's case' is the Report in which Latif reportedly admitted being recruited for jihad, receiving weapons training from the Taliban, and serving on the front line with other Taliban troops. Latirs whole defense is that this official government record is unreliable-in other words, that the Government botched it. Latif his interro so summary no to what he actually said. LatiCs case turns on this claim, because if the Report is an accurate summary of what Latif told his interrogators, then his detention is lawful. On this we all agree.Latif, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 83596, slip op. at 26; accord Dissenting Op. at 2-3. The district court says UNCLASSIFIEOIIFOR PUBLIC RELEASE UNC lASSIFI EDtlFO"R-PU BLiC RELEASE 9fJ8MT 6 3M2""] it did not altogether disregard the Government's evidence, slip op. at 26, and for good reason: the Report has more than sufficient indicia of reliability to meet the Government's "minimum threshold of persuasiveness." Almer/edi, - F.3d - , 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 11696~ at[*13] . Ordinarily, at this point in our analysis, we would simply review the district court's comparison of the Government's evidence with the "detainee's facts and explanation," bearing in mind that the ultimate burden is on the Government to establish Latirs detention is legal. ld. We pause here, however, because the district court expressly refused to accord a presumption of regularity to the Government's evidence, and on appeal the Government continues to assert its Report is entitled to such a presumption. A "The presumption of regularity supports the official acts of public officers and, in the absence of clear evidence to the contrary, courts presume that they have properly discharged their official duties." Sussman v. u.s. Marshals Serv., 494 F.3d 1105, 1117 (D.C. CiL 2007). The presumption applies to government-produced documents no less than to other official acts. See Riggs Nat 'I Corp. v. Comm'r, 295 F.3d 16, 21 (D.C. Cir. 2002) (holding that "an official tax receipt" of a foreign . government "is entitled to a presumption of regularity"). But Latif (and our dissenting colleague) argue no such presumption can be applied in Guantanamo cases-at least not to interrogation reports prepared in stressful and chaotic conditions, ~ filtered through interpreters, subject to transcription errors, and heavily redacted for national security purposes. UNCLASSIFIEOIIFOR PUBLIC RELEASE UNCLASSIFIEOIIFOR PUBLIC RELEASE Since the problems Latif cites are typical of Guantanamo detainees' interrogation reports, the rule he proposes would subject all such documents to the he-saidlshe-said balancing of ordinary evidence. It is impossible to cure the conditions under which these documents were created, so Latif's proposed rule would render the traditional presumption of regularity wholly illusory in this context. We conclude first that intelligence documents of the sort at issu~ here are entitled to a presumption of regularity, and second that neither internal flaws nor external record evidence rebuts that presumption in this case.

Courts sensibly have anticipated that 'some sort of presumption is proper in the Guantanamo, but until now we have not directly addressed the question. The dissent interprets our silence heretofore as disapproval and suggests that a presumption in favor of the Government's evidence in this case "inappropriately shift[s] the burden" of proof from the Government to the detainee. Dissenting Op. at 30. A Supreme Court plurality said just the opposite, however-and in a case involving the military detention of an American citizen, no less: [T]he Constitution would not be offended by a presumption in favor of the Government's evidence, so long as that presumption remained a rebuttable one and fair opportunity for rebuttal were provided. Thus, once the Government puts forth credible evidence that the habeas petitioner meets the enemy- combatant criteria, the onUs could shift to the petitioner to rebut that evidence with more persuasi ve evidence that he falls outside the criteria. Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507, 534 (2004).

UNCLASSIFIEOIIFOR PUBLIC RELEASE "UNCLASSIFIEOIIFOR PUBLIC RELEASE When the Supreme Court extended the habeas right to non-citizen detainees in 2008, it tasked the lower courts with developing a workable habeas remedy that would give detainees a "meaningful opportunity to demonstrate" the unlawfulness of their detention, Boumediene, 553 U.S. at 779, yet it left unaddressed the content of the governing law, id. at 798. Boumediene noted that "common-law habeas corpus was, above all, an adaptable remedy" whose "precise application and scope changed depending upon the circumstances." Id. at 779. Our dissenting colleague seems to think Boumediene mandates a skeptical-if not cynical- supervisory role for the courts over the Executive branch's interactions with its detainees at Guantanamo. Dissenting Op. at 7. In our view, the Boumediene Court envisioned a much more modest judicial role. Aside from a few minimal procedural s~feguards, designed to preclude the Government acting as its own judge, 1 the Court left the scope of the habeas right to the common-law-like process in which we have been engaged" ever since: "[T]he Suspension Clause does not resist innovation in the field of habeas corpus. Certain accommodations can be made to reduce the burden habeas corpus proceedings will place on the military without impermissibly diluting the protections of the writ." Boumediene, 553 U.S. at 795.

United States, [644 F. Supp. 2d 78 (D.D.C. July 29, 2009)]." Id. Those ~ases misunderstood the nature of the presumption. In Ahmed and Al Mutairi, the district court assumed the requested presumption would go to the truth of "the facts contained in the Governmenfs exhibits." Ahmed, 613 F. Supp. 2d at 55. Since "the accuracy of much of the factual material contained in the [Government's] exhibits [was] hotly contested," id., quoted in Al Mutairi, 644 F. Supp. 2d at 84, and the evidentiary dispute in Ahmed involved allegations that the relevant statements were "obtained by torture," Ahmed, 613 F. Supp. 2d at 55, the court was rightly disinclined to grant them a presumption of truth. But the presumption of regularity does not require a court to accept the truth of a non- government source's statement.

The confusion stems from the fact that intelligence reports involve two distinct actors-the non-government source and the government official who summarizes (or transcribes) the source's statement. The presumption of regularity pertains only to the second: it presumes the government official accurately identified the source and accurately summarized his statement, but it implies nothing about the truth of the underlying non-government s'ource's statement. There are many conceivable reasons why a government document might accurately record a statement that is itself incredible. A source may be shown to have lied, for example, or he may prove his statement was coerced. The presumption of regularity-to the extent it is not rebutted- requires a court to treat the Government's record as accurate; it does not compel a determination that the record establishes what it is offered to prove.

Another reason the district court has denied the Government's motions for a presumption of accuracy may be that such a presumption is often unnecessary or irrelevant.

UNCLASSIFIEDIIFOR PUBLIC RELEASE UNCLASSIFIEDIIFOR PUBLIC RELEASE----- ---- The Government has frequently been able to prove its detention authority without relying on any presumption that its records are accurate. And in many cases, detainees do not challenge the Government's recordkeeping. Instead, they attack the sufficiency of the evidence, or they claim that the Government's infonnatiol1 is unreliable because it resulted from harsh interrogation techniques, multiple levels of hearsay, or unknown sources.

This case presents a different question because Latifs sole challenge is to the accuracy of the Government's summary of his. own words. When the detainee's challenge is to the evidence-gathering process itself, should a presumption of regularity apply to the official government document that results? We think the answer is yes.

To forbid a presumption of regularity in spite of Boumediene's implicit invitation to innovate, 553 U.S. at 795, would be particularly counterintuitive, since the field of habeas corpus is already well accustomed to such burden- .shifting presumptions. In a state prisoner's federal habeas proceeding, for example, "a determination of a factual issue made by a State court shall be presumed to be correct," and "the applicant shall have the burden of rebutting the presumption of correctness by clear and convincing evidence." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(l); see Al-Bihani, 590 FJd at 878. And after a state court conviction becomes fmal~ it is subject to a "presumption of regularity," such that "[iJf that conviction is later used to enhance a [federal] criminal sentence, the defendant generally may not challenge the enhanced sentence through a petition under § 2254 on the ground that the prior conviction was unconstitutionally obtained." Lackawanna Cty. Dist. Att'y v. Coss, 532 U.S. 394,

UNCLASSIFIEDIIFOR PUBLIC RELEASE UNCLASSIFIEOIIFOR PUBLIC RELEASE---·· .. , 403-04 (2001); see also Parke v. Raley, 506 U.S. 20, 30 (1992) (same for enhancement of a state court sentence).2

Just as prinCiples of vertical comity and federalism justify presumptions in favor of state court judgments in ordinary criminal habeas proceedings, see Sumner v. Mara, 449 U.S. 539, 547 (1981), the horizontal separation of powers justifies a presumption in favor of official Executive branch records in Guantanamo habeas proceedings. The district court is uniquely qualified to determine the credibility of hearsay, and the presumption of regularity does not detract from that role. But courts have no special expertise in evaluating the nature and reliability of the Executive branch's wartime records. For that, it is appropriate to defer to Executive branch expertise. See Boumediene, 553 U.S. at 796-97 ("In considering both the proc~dural and substantive standards used to impose detention to prevent acts of terrorism, proper deference must be accorded to the political branches."). Both the Constitution and common sense support judicial modesty when assessing the Executive's authority to detain prisoners during wartime, for it is an area in which the judiciary has the least competence and the smallest constitutional footprint.

Our dissenting colleague concludes the presumption of regularity should not extend to official intelligence reports because he imagines the presumption of regularity is just a , shortcut for crediting the work product of official processes we know to be "transparent, accessible, and often familiar'" Dissenting Op. at 3, and because he thinks we know relatively little about how intelligence reports are created, id. at 4-5. Both premises are false. Courts regularly apply the presumption to government actions and documents that result from processes that are anything but "transparent," "accessible," and "familiar." The presumption of regularity is founded on inter-branch and inter-governmental comity, not our own judicial expertise with the relevant government conduct. In Riggs National, we presumed a foreign government entity's receipt to be reliable without pretending it was produced by a "familiar" or "transparent" process. Id. at 3; see 295 FJd at 20-22. Likewise, federal courts need no expertise concerning the procedures of state courts, probation offices, and drug treatment centers to afford their official records a presumption of regularity. See cases cit~ note 2. Thanks to the explanatory declarations _ _ which we discuss below, see infra at 21-22, we know far more about the personnel, process, and standards involved in producing intelligence records like the Report than we do about the foreign and state governmental organs whose records we also presume to be reliable, and we have no court had judged the "admissions presented by the government to be 'credible and consistent. '" Id. Indeed, the district court relied on "certain statements by the petitioner that the Court finds credible and certain classified documents" without entertaining the possibility that the detainee's statements had been mis-reported. Al Bihani v. Obama, 594 F. Supp. 2d 35, 38~39 (D.D.C. 2009). We did not distinguish the presumption of regularity from the admission of hearsay evidence generally, but we noted that "had the district court imposed stringent standards of evidence in the first instance, the government may well have been obligated to go beyond AI-Bihani's interrogation records and into the battlefield to present a case that met its burden," Al Bihani, 590 F.3d at 877-78, and we "disposed of' "[t]he rest of AI-Bihani's procedural claims . .. without extended discussion," id. at 881. Although Al-Bihani does not clearly hold the district court may accord government evidence a presumption of regularity, . that case is certainly consistent with today's holding.

Although it was decided under the pre-Boumediene Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (DTA), our opinion in Parhat v. Gates, 532 F.3d 834 (D.C. Cir. 2008), also lends support to the continuing viability of such a presumption. In Parhat, we noted that the DTA incorporated by reference a "rebuttable presumption that the Government Evidence is genuine and accurate." Id. at 847 (quotation marks omitted) (quoting Implementation of Combatant Status Review Tribunal Procedures at E·l § G(ll) (July 29, 2004»). We reversed the Tribupal' s decision because the Government's evidence, despite the presumption in its favor, could not "sustain the determination that Parhat is an enemy combatant." 532 F .3d at 847. The intelligence consisted of anonymous hearsay in the form of unsupported "bottom-line assertions," so it was impossible for us to "assess the reliability of the assertions in the documents." Id. We explained that "[iJf a Tribunal cannot assess the reliability of the government's evidence, then the 'rebuttable' presumption becomes effectively irrebuttable." Jd. Although we found the presumption rebutted in Parhat, we cast no doubt on the propriety of such a presumption in the Guantanamo context. Parhat still "sets the guideposts for our inquiry into the reliability of the [Government's] evidence in a detainee's habeas case." Bensayah v. Obama, 610 FJd 718, 725 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (quoting Barhoumi v. Obama, 609 F.3d 416, 428 (D.C. Cir. 2010)). And neither the Supreme Court nor our court has ever rejected the presumption we analyzed in that case.

Our dissenting colleague points to four more recent cases to defend his view that intelligence documents like the Report in this case are undeserving of a presumption of regularity. Dissenting Op. at 10-12 (citing Barhoumi, 609 F.3d 416, Bensayah, 610 FJd 718, Al Alwi v. Obama, - F.3d - , No. 09-5125, 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 14991 (D.C. Cir. July 22, 2011), and Khan v. Obama, - F.3d - , No. 10-5306,2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 18471 (D.C. Cir. Sept. ^[6], 2011)). But we had no occasion to apply such ·a presumption in any of these cases, and none of them limits our discretion to do so under Boumediene.

In Barhoumi, we considered a Government intelligence report containing a translation of a diary. Although we affinned the district court's favorable treatment of the Government's evidence, 609 F.3d at 428--31, we did not apply a presumption of regularity. The reason for that omission is simple. The district court had credited the Government's evidence without applying a presumption of regularity, and we were reviewing for clear error. See Brief of Respondents-Appellees at 52, Barhoumi, 609 F.3d 416 (No.

We begin our rebuttal analysis with the Report itself, because Latif alleges that intrinsic flaws in the document undermine its reliability. The Report bears indication of bein what the Government it .

orne s IntervIew IS redacted, including infonnation about. _ t h e name of a friend who. 'ed him to ~edical tre2ltmlent. Despite its redactions, the Report permits the assessment of reliability we demanded in Parhat. 532 F.3d at 847. The UNCLASSIFIEOIIFOR PUBLIC RELEASE """" U"NCLASSIFTEDIIFO"R"PUBLrC RELEASE" OI3@IlII' 22 ~f!CI\ET These- general descriptions seem to be consistent with the specific document at issue in this case. Critically, the Report purports to summarize an actual interview with Latif himself-not the anonymous hearsay we rejected in Parhat. Cf id. at 846-47. 6 Rather than "bottom-line assertions," id. at 847, the Report tells a story that a court can evaluate for internal consistency, and for consistency with other evidence. And the Report includes enough biographical information to support an inference that Latif was indeed . of the interview. Although the Report bears "[T]he reliability of evidence can be determined not only by looking at the evidence alone but, alternatively, by considering sufficient additional information permitting the faCtfinder to assess its reliability." Bensayah v. Obama, 610 F.3d 718, 725-26 (D.C. Cir. 2010). The only piece of extrinsic evidence the district court relied on does nothing to weaken the presumption of regularity. The district court found Latif was captured with medical records in his possession, based on a government document's statement to that effect.· The record contains a medical benefits referral from Yemen's Ministry of Defense, a "medical report" from a Jordanian Hospital confirming that Latif was admitted in 1994 for a "head injury," and a report from Yemen's Ministry of Public Health recommending in 1999 that Latif pursue further treatment at his own expense. This evidence corroborates Latirs assertions about his medical condition- and incidentally corroborates the Report's description of his medical trip to Jordan-but it does nothing to undermine the reliability of the Report. The Government is tasked with proving Latif was part of the Taliban or otherwise detainable-not disproving Latif s asserted medical condition. There' is no inconsistency between Latirs claim that Ibrahim promised him medical treatment and the Report's statement that Ibrahim recruited him for jihad. Both may be true. For example, Ibrahim could have promised Latif

UNCLASSIFIEOIIFOR PUBLIC RELEASE UNCLASSIFIESIIFOR PUBLIC RELEASE the medical treatment he needed to induce him join the Taliban.

Such a recruiting tactic (or cover story) would fit the modus operandi of the man who recruited many of the detainees whose. interrogation reports appear in the record. One man reported that he was recruited by Ibrahim [Balawi] to travel to [Afghanistan] to search for a wife and job. Ibrahim told him if he traveled to [Afghanistan] he would be able to find a bride and the Taliban would provide him with a house and income. Ibrahim also mentioned the jihad in [Afghanistan] ... IIR 6 034 0365 02; detainee "advised reasons gomg to were to train to go to fight in Chechnya and, secondly, to immigrate to Afghanistan." IIR 6 034 0861 02. Yet another "said he was a young man with no future who was tricked by Abu Khalud ['true name Ibrahim AI-Balawi'], who told him be could make money and find a wife in [Afghanistan]." Petitioner's Ex. ^[2]. Ibrahim appears to have frequently offered his recruits tangible benefits in exchange· for fighting jihad, or at least equipped them with such cover stories. Latirs medical records and his. professed desire for medical treatment are therefore consistent with the Report, not inconsistent. Crediting those records does nothing to rebut the Report's presumption of regularity.

of extrinsic evidence to decision of the UNCLASSIFIEOIIFOR PUBLIC RELEASE ----ONC1:ASSIFIEDIIFOR" PO BlIC" RELEAS"E" " 9!fg@MT 29 All of Latifs subsequent statements, including his latest declaration denying much of the incriminating information from his first interview, corroborate elements of the Report. In interviews that took place during Latifs confmement at Guantanamo, he confirmed several additional details of the Report, though he ascribed an exclusively medical purpose to his journey and disclaimed any involvement with the Taliban. In 2002, for example, Latif confirmed that he was from 'Udayn, that his mother's name is Muna, and that he travelled to Afghanistan via Sana'a, Karachi, and Quetta, as stated in the Report. ISN 156 SIR (Mar. ^[6], 2002). Latif repeatedly confirmed that his only prior trip out of Yemen was to Jordan for medical treatment-a unique detail from his initial interview that the Report gets generally right. See id.; ISN 156 FD-302 (Apr. 26, 2002). The Government's documentation of the chain of custody for Latif s personal possessions confirms he was captured with four thousand Pakistani rupees in his pocket, as noted in the Report. ^[8] Many characters from the Report's dramatis person~ reappear in Latifs subsequent interrogations, sometimes playing different parts in his narrative with changes to the elements of the Government's evidence corroborate the reliability of the Report and, together with the Report's intrinsic indicia of reliability, support rather than rebut the presumption of regularity. As we shall see, the district court's ambivalent findings about Latifs current story do no better.

III

The district court issued its decision in this case a week after we published our opinion in Al-Adahi v. Obama, 613 F.3d 1102 (D.C. Cir. 2010). We observed that "[o]ne of the oddest things" about that case was that "despite an extensive record and numerous factual disputes, the district court never made any findings about whether AI-Adahi was generally a credible witness or whether his particular explanations for his actions were worthy of belief." Id. at 1110. The district court's analysis in this case suffers from the same omission. Because the court relied in part on Latifs declaration in discrediting the Report, see Latif, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 83596, slip op. at 26 ("[T]he Court cannot credit [the Report] because ... Latif has presented a plausible alternative story."), the district court was obligated to consider his credibility. Only a credible story could overcome the presumption of regularity to which the Report was entitled. The court's failure to make a credibility finding is especially puzzling where the inculpatory and exculpatory versions of the detainee's story overlap· so that the factfmder is forced to untangle the detainee's current story from the shared framework of a prior narrative. Even doting Uncle Henry managed to evaluate Dorothy's credibility when' she professed that the family and friends gathered around her bed had been with her in Oz. See THE WIZARD OF Oz (MGM 1939) ("Of course we believe you, Dorothy."). The district court, by contrast, mustered only a guarded fmding of more than once that the inconsistencies in his statements "may be the result of a misstatement or a mistranslation," without ever making a finding to that effect. Id., slip op. at 27 (emphasis added); id. ("The smaller inconsistencies ... may be no more than misstatements or mistranslations." (emphasis added)). Likewise, the court found that "Latif did have an injury ... for which he might therefore have sought treatment." Id., slip op. at 28 (emphasis added); see also id., slip op. at 6 n.4 (citing Latifs "alternative explanation for not having his passport at the time he was seized," without deciding whether that explanation is more likely than the Government's incriminating explanation). The district court provided no indication that it actually believed Latifs story and instead noted the story's "inconsistencies and unanswered questions." Id., slip op. at 27.

B

The district court's decision gives us no reason to believe it would have reached the same result had it not relied on Latifs "plausible" version of the relevant events. The ·court said it could not "credit" the Report's inculpatory statements, partly "because ... Latif has presented a plausible alternative story to explain his travel." Id., slip op. at 26. Instead of advancing from plausibility to a judgment about Latifs veracity, the court repeated its plausibility finding: "Latif asserts that he did not make the statements, and his suggestion that mistranslation or misattribution likely explain the indication that he did is plausible." Id. The district court clearly relied on Latif s alternate account of his trip as one basis for rejecting the Report.

True, the court cited problems ~ U\.dl~UU·'~ its substantial r e d a c t i o n s , _ its reference to Latifs "hand" "plausible," not credible, the court merely established the possibility, not the probability, that Latifs story was true. And without a "comparative judgment about the evidence," there is no finding of fact for this court to review. AI-Adahi, 613 F.3d at 1110.

By forgoing a determination of credibility for one of plausibility, the district court replaced the necessary factual finding with a legal conclusion that some other reasonable factfinder might believe Latifs story. In other words, the district court took on the role of a reviewing court, assuming in effect that Latif aJready had been found credible and then applying a deferential standard of review to that imaginary finding. Cf A wad, 608 F.3d at 7 ("[I]f the district court's account of the evidence is plausible in light of the record viewed in its entirety, the court of appeals may not reverse it."). We cannot allow the district court to bypass its factfinding role in favor of an appellate standard of review. Cf Anderson v. United States, 632 F.3d 1264, 1269-70 (D.C. Cir. 2011) (noting that the district court may not apply the appellate court's standard of review in crafting its own sentence). And since "de novo factfmding is inconsistent with [an appellate court's] proper role," United States v. Brockenborrugh, 575 F.3d 726, 746 (D.C. Cir. 2009), we are at an impasse.

Perhaps because it had already denied the Government's key evidence a presumption of regularity, the district court committed both errors, explaining away some of the individual contradictions and coincidences in Latifs story one by one, as if each stood alone, and ignoring other probative details altogether. In A/-AdaM, we reversed the district court's grant of habeas because the court had failed to consider all the evidence in context. Viewing the evidence as a whole, we concluded the Government had proven the detainee "was more likely than not part of al-Qaida. HId. at 1111. Although we do not reach an ultimate conclusion on the merits in this case, the district court's similar treatment of the evidence in this case provides an alternative basis for remand.

The district court's unduly atomized approach is illustrated by its isolated treatment (or failure to consider) several potentially incriminating inferences that arise from evidence Latif himself offers in support of his petition- namely, (a) striking similarities between Latifs exculpatory .story and the Report, (b) the route Latif admits traveling, and (c) contradictions in Latifs exculpatory statements. fu .......... u v .... , the district court . declined to "'v.J,.... ""'...,~

,.u".'.... "' .. court of weighing this evidence in A

What makes Latifs current story so hard to swallow is not its intrinsic implausibility but its correspondence in so many respects with the Report be now repudiates. Like Dorothy Gale upon awakening at home in Kansas after her fantastic journey to the Land of Oz, Latif s current account of Report are the result of misattribution. Latif, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 83596, slip op. at 26. But Latifs own insistence (or self-serving volte-face) is his only evidence that the Those incriminating admissions are _details in the Report that persist in Latifs current account of his travels. The district court makes no effort to untangle that knot.

B

Nor did the district court consider that Latif s admitted route to Afghanistan from his home in Yemen corroborates the evidence that Latif trained with the Taliban. We have held that "traveling to Afghanistan along a distinctive path used by al Qaeda members can be probative evidence that -the traveler was part of al Qaeda." Uthman, 637 F.3d at 405 (citing Al Odah, 611 F.3d at 16). At Guantanamo, more than a year after his capture, Latif told his interrogators he flew from Sana'a, Yemen to Karachi, Pakistan in early 2001 with a plane ticket Ibrahim gave him. From there he took a bus to Quetta, Pakistan and a taxi to Kandahar, Afghanistan as Ibrahim had instructed. Then Ibrahim took him by taxi to Kabul, where Latif said he spent five months in the religious study center. 14 This route has been well traveled by al-Qaida and Taliban recruits and by our precedent. See Uthman, 637 F.3d at 405 (noting that Utlunan's route from Sana'a to Karachi by plane, from Karachi to Quetta by bus,

1;4 Although Latif s more recent declaration in the district court leaves out some of these details, he does not deny taking this route. Indeed, Latif cites the consistency of his Guantanamo interrogations as evidence that his current story is true. Appellee's Br. 18':'22. Latif s recent declaration confirms he took a bus to Quetta and a taxi from Quetta to Afghanistan, and then stayed in Kabul before returning to Pakistan.

from Quetta to a Taliban office by taxi, and from there to Kandahar "is similar to the paths of admitted al Qaeda members"); Al Odah, 611 F.3d at 10, 12 (noting that a similar "route used by al Odah was' a common travel route for those going to Afghanistan to join the Taliban"). The record in this case is replete with interrogation summaries of other Yemeni detainees who followed the same route to Afghanistan. Instead of focusing on Latir s route, the district court observed that "[n]o other detainee told interrogators that he fled from Afghanistan to Pakistan, from Tora Bora or any other location, with Latif." Latif, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 83596, slip op. at 26. That is true. But the court overlooked the implications of Latirs own subsequent admissions about the route he traveled. 15 This is relevant evidence, and it should have factored into the district court's decision. The court's failure even to consider it is a legal error that compels remand.

c Latif s current version of his story conflicts in significant ways with other things he is reported to have told interrogators at Guantanamo. The district court rejected the Report "having taken into consideration the explanation of events Latif has offered" and even noted some of the "inconsistencies and unanswered questions" in Latifs story. Id., slip op. at 27. This is a welcome step toward the holistic approach to' the evidence we called for in AI-Adahi. But as with the other evidence, the district court examined some contradictions in isolation from the rest of the evidence and overlooked others altogether.

The court gestured obliquely to what it characterized as "smaller inconsistencies" that it concluded "may be no more than misstatements or mistranslations." ld. Apparently, the court found it unnecessary to get to the bottom of these contradictions because "even if some details of Latif's story have changed over time, for whatever reason, its fundamentals have remained the same." ld. (The district court did .not apply similar reasoning to the Government's evidence. The Report contains two minor discrepancies but its fundamentals have been corroborated time and again.) Applied to Latif s contradictory statements, the district court's reasoning neglects "the well-settled principle that false exculpatory statements are evidence-often strong evidence-of guilt." Al-Adahi, 613 F.3d at 1107. Thus, even if a given inconsistency in a detainee's story does not go to the central question of his involvement with the Taliban or al- Qaida, it may be relevant nonetheless to the court's evaluation of his credibility, which in turn bears on the reliability of the Government's evidence. Cf United States v. Philatelic Leasing, Ltd., 601 F. Supp. 1554, 1565 (S.D.N.Y. 1985) (citing the principle, "which Wigmore has described as 'one of the simplest in human experience, '" that "when a litigating party resorts to 'falsehoods or other fraud' in trying to establish a position, the court may conclude the position to be without merit and that the relevant facts are contrary to those asserted by the party") (quoting 2 John Henry Wigmore, Evidence § 278, at 133 (1979)).

Many of these "smaller inconsistencies" shore up details in the Report in ways the district court overlooked. The court observed, for example, that in Latifs 2009 declaration (in which he claimed to be too disabled to fight) Latif said he Islam. Even if some of the inconsistencies in Latirs story "may be," as the district court suggested about others, "no more than misstatements or mistranslations," Latif, 20 I 0 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 83596, slip op. at 27, viewed together with the rest of the evidence they undermine the credibility of Latif s declaration. "We do not say that any of these particular pieces of evidence are conclusive, but we do say that they add to the weight of the government's case against [the detainee] and that the district court clearly erred in tossing them aside." AI- Adahi, 613 FJd at 1110.

D I~ We do not ''findrT' that this evidence "do[es] in fact implicate" Latif, as the dissent accuses us of doing. Dissenting Op. at 2. Rather, we hold the district court's findings suspect in that the court "failed to take into account" related evidence when it made those findings. Al-Adahi, 613 F.3d at 1108.

E

In a recent case, we held "the location and date of [the detainee's] capture, together with the company he was keeping, strongly suggest that he was part of al Qaeda." Uthman, 637 FJd at 405. The Yemeni detainee in that case was captured in December 2001 with at least five other Yemeni men, two of whom were confessed al-Qaida members, at the Afghan-Pakistani border near Tora Bora, a cave complex in Eastern Afghanistan that was, at that time, the site of a battle between al-Qaida and the United States. [d. Analogous details in the circumstances of Latif s capture should have been weighed in combination with the rest of the Government's incriminating evidence.

Latif admits that he was captured in "late 2001" after being led across the Afghan border into Pakistan, Appellee's Bf. 7, and he confinned to his Guantanamo interrogators that an Afghan guide led him across the border. The record contains no direct evidence about Latif s route from Kabul to the Pakistani border. The district court noted that around that time, "after the Taliban was defeated in the battle" north of Kabul, "many fighters went to lalalabad, Afghanistan, moved on to the Tora Bora mountain area, ... and followed guides across the border into Pakistan." Latif, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 83596, slip op. at 12. But the district court concluded "the timing of [Latifs] departure from Kabul is not suffiCient to create an inference that he was involved in fighting." [d., slip op. at 27 (emphasis added). This is exactly the formulation we criticized in AI-Adahi. In that case ,the district court concluded "AI-Adahi's attendance at an al-Qaida training camp 'is not sufficient to carry the Government's burden of showing that he was a part' of al-Qaida." 613 F.3d at 1105 (emphasis added). We cited that statement as an example of the court's 11696, at[*23] . In its current posture, this case does not require us to answer that difficult question. 19

v Although the district court committed the same errors here as in Al-Adahi, the evidence before us presents a closer question than we faced in that case and our subsequent reversals. Cj AlmerJedi, - F.3d - , 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 11696; Uthman, 637 F.3d at 400. And the Government says it has discovered new evidence pertaining to the origins of the Report that neither the district court nor our court has had occasion to consider.

As the dissenters warned and as the amount of ink spilled in this single case· attests, Boumediene's airy suppositions have caused great difficulty for the Executive and the courts. See 553 U.S. at 824-26 (Roberts, C.J., dissenting); id. at 827- 28 (Scalia, l, dissenting). Luckily, this is a shrinking category of cases. The ranks of Guantanamo detainees will not be replenished. Boumediene fundamentally altered the calculus of war, guaranteeing that the benefit of intelligence that might be gained-even from high-value detainees-is outweighed by the systemic cost of defending detention decisions. [d. at 828 (Scalia, J., dissenting). While the court in Boumediene

19 Judge Henderson would reverse the district court's grant of habeas corpus outright. In her view, "remand is unnecessary because 'the record pennits only one resolution of the factual issue.'" Concurring Op. at 12 (quoting Pullman~Standard v. United Steel Workers of Am., AFL-CIO, 456 U.S. 273, 292 (1982)). Because of the legal errors we have both identified, I find it unnecessary to decide that question. Remand is warranted not only when "further fact·finding by the district court is necessary," but also, when it "would be helpful." Al Alwi, 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 14991, at *9. This is such a case.

"[w]here . . . testimony is in conflict with contemporaneous documents"). The dissent is simply wrong to equate Judge Brown's careful and complete review of the record evidence-which finds Latif s version both minimally probative, Majority Op. at 45-46, and decisively outweighed by the government's evidence, id. at 20-3 I-with a "wholesale revision of the district court's careful fact findings," Dissenting Op. at 2. there is no largely immaterial errors in the Report and to Latirs "plausible" alternative explanation for his travels, Latif, 2010 WL 3270761, at *9, slip op. at 26. The second error is especially glaring not only in light of the district court's failure to make any finding regarding Latifs credibility, see Al·Adahi v. Obama, 613 F.3d 1102, 1110 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (by "sp[eaking] only of a possible alternative explanation" for detainee's actions and failing to "make any finding about whether this alternative was more likely than the government's explanation," district court failed to make any "comparative judgment about the evidence [that] is at the heart of the preponderance standard of proof" (internal quotations omitted)), cert. denied, 131 S. Ct. 1001 (2011), but also in light of the inconsistencies between Latifs alternative explanation-as set forth in his declaration submitted to the district court-and his earlier statements made to the Guantanamo interrogators, see Majority Op. at 42-45. 2 After "consider[ing] all of the evidence taken as a whole," Awad, 608 F.3d at 7, I, like Judge Brown, cannot help but conclude that the district court's finding regarding the unreliability of the Report coupled with its fmding regarding the mere plausibility of

2Judge Brown cites a variety of examples-for instance, Latif's declaration states that he is married and has one son but he told interrogators that he "would like to get married and have some children"; Latif's declaration states that he planned to meet Ibrahim in Pakistan but he told interrogators that he planned to meet Ibrahim in Afghanistan. Latif has also made inconsistent statements about whether he stayed with a doctor in Kabul or at a religious institute in Kabul, whether Ibrahim was with Latif at the time he decided to flee Afghanistan or had already left several weeks earlier, whether Latif was arrested at the Pakistani border fleeing Afghanistan or arrested at ahospitaJ in Pakistan, whether Latif paid for his medical treatment or not and whether Ibrahim'S charitable organization was called Jamiat an·Nur, Gameiat al Hekma or lam-eiah Islam.

Latifs story is neither "permissible" nor "pJausible in light of the record viewed in its entirety," Anderson, 470 U.S. at 574. II. The dissent also asserts that application of the presumption of regularity to the Report "disturbs" the "careful and conscious balance of the important interests at stake" we have struck in past detainee decisions for admitting and assessing the reliability of hearsay evidence. Dissenting Op. at 12. Judge Brown thoroughly disposes of the assertion-laying out in detail that, while we have not heretofore enunciated the presumption of regularity, we have all but done so. See Majority Op. at 14-20. And we most assuredly are not "discard[ing] the unanimous, hard-earned wisdom" of district courts that have assessed hearsay evidence in detainee cases. Dissenting Op. at 13. To the contrary, sound evidentiary considerations warrant incorporating the presumption of regularity-in the careful marmer we _ expressly do today-into the district court's overall reliability assessment of these records as we routinely do with others, including the point that the facts supporting the presumption of regularity have significant probative force in their own right, as discussed below. Moreover, our holding does nothing to disturb the existing framework for hearsay evidence. All hearsay evidence "must be accorded weight only in proportion to its reliability." Barhoumi v. Obama, 609 F.3d416, 427 (D.C. Cir. 2010). The district court assesses reliability in the first instance, see Parhat v. Gates, 532 FJd 834, 847-48 (D.C. Cir. 2008), and in so doing must consider whatever "indicia of reliability" the hearsay evidence manifests as well as any" 'additional infonnation' " bearing on the question of reliability. Bensayah v. Obama, 610 F.3d 718, facing a finding that such evidence is unreliable, moves the goal posts. According to the court, because the Report is a government-produced document, the district court was required to presume it accurate unless Latif could rebut that presumption. Maj. Op. at 11. In imposing this new presumption and then proceeding to find that it has not been rebutted, the court denies Latif the "meaningful opportuniti' to contest the lawfulness of his detention guaranteed by BoumedienE!; v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723, 779 (2008).

Compounding this error, the court undertakes a wholesale revision of the district court's careful fact findings. Flaws in the Report the district court found serious, this court now finds minor. Latifs account, which the district court found plausible and corroborated by documentary evidence~ court now "hard to swallow" Maj. Op. at 3 9 . _ district court found not Implicate thiS court now finds do in fact implicate him. And on and on, all without ever concluding that the district court's particular take on the evidence was clearly erroneous. But see Fed. R. Civ. P. 52(a)(6) ("Finding of facts, whether based on oral or other evidence, must not be set aside unless clearly erroneous .... ").

In Part I, I explain why the district court committed no error in declining to apply a presumption of regularity to the Report. In Part II, I apply the deferential clear error standard this circuit has used throughout these Guantanamo habeas cases. Finding no clear error, I would affinn the district court's grant of the writ of habeas corpus.

I ..

All agree that this case turns on whether the district court "the waiver of trial by jury fonn" contain inaccurate infonnation when that defendant has no support other than a self-serving allegation. See Thompson v. Estelle, 642 F.2d 996, 998 (5th Cir. 1981) (noting that the "district court could properly rely upon the regularity of the state court's documents in preference to [the qppellant's] self-serving testimony"). Courts presume accuracy because they can trust the reliability of documents produced by such processes. Courts and agencies are hardly infallible, but for the most part we have sufficient familiarity and experience with such institutions to allow us to comfortably rely on documents they produce in the ordinary course of business.

In saying that "[ c]ourts regularly apply the presumption ... [to] processes that are anything but 'transparent,' 'accessible,' and 'familiar,' " Maj. Op. at 13, this court cites a singl~ case where we presumed the accuracy of a tax receipt from the Central Bank of Brazil for purposes of claiming foreign tax credits under the Internal Revenue Code. See id. at 13 (citing Riggs Nat'[ Corp., 295 F.3d at 20- 22). As the Supreme Court has held, the presumption of regularity applies to "the actions of tax officials," and the "records of foreign public officials." See Riggs Nat'i Corp., 295 F.3d at 20 (citing Supreme Court cases). But again, this is because we have no reason to question or be concerned with the reliability of such records.

By contrast, the Report at issue here was produced in the fog of war by a clandestine method that we know almost nothing about. It is not familiar, transparent, generally understood as reliable, or accessible; nor is it mundane, quotidian or tax receipts. Its output, intelligence report, was, in this court s own in stressful and chaotic conditions, filtered through interpreters, subject to transcription errors, and heavily redacted for national security purposes." Maj. Op. at 6. Needless to say, this is quite different from assuming the mail is delivered or that a court employee has accurately jotted down minutes from a meeting.

To support its approach here, this court invokes presumptions of regularity for state court fact-finding and for final judgments in criminal habeas proceedings. See id. at 12- 13. Aside from the abstract and uncontroversial proposition that courts should be sensitive to the separation of powers as well as to federalism, id. at 12, the analogy makes little sense. State court judgments and fact findings arise out of a formal and public adversarial process where parties generally have attorneys to zealously guard their interests, and where neutral state court judges, no less than federal judges, pledge to apply the law faithfully. T~at federal courts give a presumption of regularity to judgments arid fact findings that emerge from such a process, where criminal defendants have ample opportunity to challenge adverse evidence, see Lackawanna Cnty. Dist. Au y v. Coss, 532 U.S. 394, 402-03 (2001), provides no to presume the accuracy inte11igence reports prepared in statutory habeas, where federal state court proceedings, constitutional habeas is the only process afforded Guantanamo detainees. Cf Boumediene, 553 U.S. at 780 ("It appears that the common-law habeas court's role was most extensive in cases of pretrial and noncriminal detention, where there had been little or no previous judicial review of the cause for detention. Notably, the black-letter rule that prisoners could not controvert facts in the jailer's return was not followed (or at least not with consistency) in such cases. ") .

To be sure, the ~1'\"A,.,nTY\AT'lt declaration stating Boumediene, 553 U.S. at 786 (requiring habeas court "to assess," not presume, "the sufficiency of the Government's evidence" (emphasis added)). And indeed, from time immemorial courts have been skeptical of hearsay evidence without implying bad faith or cynicism about the Executive (or whoever is attempting to present that evidence ).

_ Nor am I suggesting that district courts should give no weight to . such the observation, made in a decision cited by the concurrence, Con. Op. at 10, that "the basic fact that public officials usually do their duty ... has ... that quality and quantity of probative value to which it is entitled." Stone v. Stone, 136 F.2d 761, 763 (D.C. Cir. 1943), As that decision goes on to say, however, "the probative. strength of the evidence is for the [factfinder] to consider." Id. Nor do I quarrel with the observation that, as a general matter, government records consisting of interrogation summaries with inculpatory admissions are more likely to be reliable evidence than documents reporting third-party (and sometimes anonymous) hearsay.

But this court goes well beyond these modest conclusions-and well beyond what the government actually argues in its briefs-when it relies on the bare fact that government officials have incentives to maintain careful intelligence reports as a reason to require district courts to presume that such reports are not only authentic, but also accurate, despite circumstances casting their reliability into serious doubt. See Appellants' Br. 30-31. (arguing in passing that the district court in this case erred by failing to give any weight to the general presumption that government officials carry out their duties properly but never urging adoption of a categorical, burden·shifting presumption of regularity); Appellants' Reply Br. 22-24 (same). One need imply neither bad faith nor lack of incentive nor ,'..,,....... t·1h"i"" government officers to COflCHlOe ~d in the field _ n e a r an layers of hearsay, depen , .

reliable, transparent, or accessible to warrant an automatic presumption of regularity.

It is thus not at all surprising that our court has never before applied the presumption of regularity in Guantanamo Bay habeas cases despite numerous opportunities to do so. For instance, in Barhoumi, the government, seeking to establish that the petitioner was "part of' an al Qaida associated militia, relied on an intelligence report that included an English translation of a diary allegedly authored by a member of that militia. Barhoumi v. Obama, 609 F .3d 416, 420 (D.C. Cir. 2010). Among other challenges to this evidence, we considered petitioner's argument that the government's failure to make a copy of the diary available in its original Arabic or to provide infonnation regarding the qualifications or motives of the translator raised doubts about reliability. Although we characterized this objection as "troubling" and "accept[ ed] that the additio~al layer of hearsay added by the diary's translation render[ed] it somewhat less reliable than it otherwise would [have] be[en] (particularly if the government had provided information regarding its translation)," we nonetheless reviewed the diary's internal and external indicia of reliability and concluded that the district court had not clearly erred by relying on it. [d. at 430-32. Had we believed that a presumption of regularity applied to the translation recorded in the intelligence report, none of that extended analysis would have been necessary. Instead, we would have simply presumed the document's accuracy-and expected the district court to do the same. As my colleagues begrudgingly admit, Maj. Op. at 16-17, that is exactly what the government asked us to do in Barhoumi, but to no avail. See Appellees' Br. 52, Barhoumi, 609 F.3d 416 (No. 09-5383) (arguing that "translations are presumed to be accurate in the absence of evidence to the contrary" (emphasis added)).

photographs and items seized from petitioner's home, as we}] as detailed government declarations explaining why the reports were reliable. Khan, 2011 WL 3890843, at *7-10.

Our approach in Barhoumi, Al Alwi, Bensayah, and Khan reflects a careful and conscious balancing of the important interests at stake. While federal courts typically exclude hearsay unless it falls within a specific exception, see Fed. R. Evid. 803, we understand that in the context of enemy combatant proceedings such evidence may be the best available. Barhoumi, 609 F.3d at 427. Thus, rather than acting on our deep, historically rooted skepticism of hearsay by excluding such evidence altogether, we admit it but are careful to assign it no more weight than it is worth as measured by any available indicia of reliability. See id. (holding that h~arsay' evidence is "always admissible" in such proceedings, but th~t it "must be accorded weight only in proportion to its reliability"); see also AI-Bihani v. Obama, 590 F.3d 866, 879 (D.C. Cir. 2010). The presumption of regularity, which this court expressly premises on "defer[ence] to Executive branch expertise," Maj. Op. at 12- 13, disturbs this careful balance, substituting a presumption in place of careful district court "review and assess[ment of] all evidence from both' sides." AI-Bihani, 590 F.3 d at 880. Given the degree to which our evidentiary procedures already accommodate the government's compelling national security interests by admitting all of its evidence, including hearsay; given the heightened risk of error and unlawful detention introduced by requiring petitioners to prove the inaccuracy of heavily redacted government documents; and given the importance of preserving "the independent power" of the habeas court "to assess the actions of the Executive" and carefully weigh its evidence, id., I find this court's departure from our practice deeply misguided.

To be clear, I make no claim that anything in Barhoumi, Bensayah, Al Alwi, Khan, or any of our other Guantanamo .habeas cases affirmatively rules out the possibility of applying a rebuttable presumption of accuracy to certain kinds of government evidence in some circumstances. My point is only that our cases, proceeding in the very common-law-like fashion that my colleagues describe, see Maj. Op. at 19, have endorsed and applied a careful and fine-grained approach to the assessment of reliability. We have applied that approach to claims that a document was mistranslated (Barhoumi) and to claims that a document is insufficiently corroborated (AI Alwi, Khan)--two . . . applied that approach to a (Bensayah, Al Alwi), and to government mterrogatlOn summaries (AI Alwi)-the same type and category of documents as the Report. Following that approach, we have both upheld (Barhoumi, Al Alwi, Khan) and overturned (Bensayah) district court findings that a government document is reliable. The only feature of this case not previously encountered is that here the government lost: the dIstrict court found the dispositive government Report unreliable and granted a writ of habeas corpus.

Moreover, the presumption discards the unanimous, hard- earned wisdom of our district judges, who have applied their fact-finding expertise to a wide array of government hearsay evidence. In doing so, they have developed a uniquely valuable perspective that we ought not so quickly discard. These judges, including the district judge in this case, have unanimously rejected motions to give government evidence a presumption of accuracy. See, e.g., Alsabri, 764 F. Supp. 2d at 66 (noting "ample reason" to decline to presume the accuracy of the government's exhibits and explaining that circuit precedent supported its approach); Al Kandari, 744 F. Supp. 2d at 19 ("Simply assuming the Government's evidence is accurate and authentic does not aid [the reliability] inquiry."); Ahmed, 613 F. Supp. 2d at 55 ("[T]here is absolutely no reason for this Court to presume that the facts contained in the Government's exhibits are accurate."); see also Benjamin Wittes, Robert M. Chesney & Larkin Reynolds, The Emerging Law of Detention 2.0, at 52 (May 12, 2011) (indicating that "none of the publicly available rulings on the issue have favored the government"), available at http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2011l05_guant anamo_wittes.aspx. Rather than ignoring serious doubts about government evidence by presuming its accuracy, our district courts have instead done exactly what we expect of careful factfinders and precisely what our case law demands: scrupulously assess the reliability of each piece of evidence by applying "a long, non exclusive list of factors ... such as: consistency or inconsistency with other evidence, conditions under which the exhibit and statements contained in it were obtained, accuracy of translation and transcription, personal knowledge of [th~] declarant ... , levels of hearsay, recantations, etc." Ahmed, 613 F. Supp. 2d at 55; see also Sulayman v. Obama, 729 F. Supp. 2d 26, 42 (D.D.C. 2010) ("As to many of the intelligence reports [the government] relies upon . . . there is nothing in the record regarding the qualifications of the interpreters used in those interrogations to render a reliable interpretation. There are other intelligence reports . . . in which the government has failed to provide foundational evidence that those statements 'were made under circumstances that render them intrinsically reliable or were made by reliable sources. ~ " (citation omitted)).

Brushing aside these district court rulings, my colleagues think that those courts "may" have been denying a presumption of accuracy because they "[c]onfus[ed]" it for a presumption of truth, Maj. Op. at 9, the difference being that the latter presumes the content of a report is true, whereas the former presumes that the government official filling out the report did so accurately-i.e., that in doing the interview, he correctly heard, translated, recorded, and summarized the content embodied in the report. The district courts have suffered from no such confusion, nor do I, for the core question presented in this case is whether the Report accurately reflects Latifs words. Unsurprisingly, my colleagues cite not a single case where a district court refers to a presumption of truth or, for that matter, a single instance in which the government argued for a presumption of truth rather than a presumption of accuracy. They cite Ahmed, but nowhere did the district court there say that "the requested presumption would go to the truth of 'the facts contained in the Government's exhibits.' " Maj. Op. at 10 (citing Ahmed, 613 F. Supp. 2d at 55). Rather, the district court denied a presumption of accuracy, doing so for several reasons, including the need t9 assess the "accuracy of translation and transcription," and not just because of alleged torture, as this court now implies. 613 F. Supp. 2d at 55; see also Al Mutairi v. United States, 644 F. Supp. 2d 78, 84 (D.D.C. 2009) (expressing concern that the government's evidence "is based on reports of interrogations (often conducted through a translator) where translation or transcription mistakes may occur"). In Al Mutairi, the' district court even pointed to evidence in that very case exemplifying such problems: "for over three years" the government had, "based on a typographical error in an interrogation report," erroneously insisted "that Al Mutairi manned an anti -aircraft weapon in Afghanistan." Jd.; see also Al Rabiah v. United States, 658 F. Supp. 2d 11, 18 (D.D.C. 2009) (noting "discrepan[cies]" between two reports summarizing the same interrogation that the government had made no attempt to reconcile); Al Odah v. United States, 648 F. Supp. 2d 1, 6 (D.D.C. 2009) (noting that "interrogators and/or interpreters included incorrect dates in three separate reports that were submitted into evidence based on misunderstandings between the Gregorian and the Hijri calendars"). Indeed, the same district court whose decision we now review explained in another Guantanamo case that it "has learned _ from its experience with these cases that the interrogation summaries and' intelligence reports on which [the Government] rel[ies] are not necessarily accurate and, perhaps more importantly, that any inaccuracies are usually impossible to detect." Odah v. Obama, No. 06-cv-1668, slip op. at 3 (D.D.C. May 6, 2010); see also id. ("[T]here are many steps in the process of creating these documents in which error might be introduced[;] ... the interpreter must understand the question posed and correctly translate it; the interviewee must understand the interpreter's recitation of the question; the interpreter must understand the interviewee's response and correctly interpret it; the interrogator must understand the il1tefQ~eter's translation of the response; the interrogator must tak~ accurate notes of what is said; and the interrogator m~st ac_curately summarize those notes when writing the interrogation summary at a later time. "). Of course, concerns about the accuracy of the reports necessarily raise concerns about fheir truth. But there are no grounds for assuming the district courts are confused about this distinction.

In support of a presumption of regularity, this court relies on the plurality opinion in Hamdi, which, applying Due Process analysis, states that "the Constitution would not be offended by a presumption in favor of the Government's evidence" in enemy combatant proceedings for citizen detainees "so long as that presumption remained a rebuttable one and fair opportut:1ity for rebuttal were provided." Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507, 534 (2004) (plurality opinion). According to this court, because the Hamdi plurality provisionally blessed such a general presumption, its own presumption requiring deference to official government documents must pass constitutional muster. Maj. Op. at 7. But the Hamdi plurality made clear that the presumption it sanctioned would apply only if the government "puts forth credible evidence that the habeas petitioner meets the enemy- combatant criteria." 542 U.S. at 534 (emphasis added); see also Almerfedi, 2011 WL 2277607, at *4 & n.7 (explaining the Hamdi framework requires the government to "put forth credible facts" tending to show that the petitioner meets the detention standard, such as that he received military training at an al Qaida camp, which the petitioner can then rebut with his own facts and explanation). In other words, a presumption is acceptable if the government can first show that its evidence is credible, but the Hamdi plurality never suggested that the government could make that showing by relying on a presumption that government-produced evidence is credible and accurate. It, is the latter presumption that is at issue here and about which. the Hamdi plurality had nothing to say. Given that the district court in this case concluded that the Report was "not sufficiently reliable," Latif, slip op. at 25- i.e., that it was not" credible-the court's reliance on the Hamdi plurality to defend its presumption of regularity is misplaced.

This court believes that our decisions in AI-Bih,ani, 590 F.3d 866, and Parhat v. Gates, 532 FJd 834 (D.C. Cir. 2008) support the "continuing viability" of applying a presumption of regularity to Guantanamo habeas cases. Maj. Op. at 14. In AI-Bihani, however, although the district court "reserved [the] authority" granted by its case management order to presume the government's evidence accurate, it went on to "assess[] the hearsay evidence's reliability as required by the Supreme Court." AI-Bihani, 590 F.3d at 880. Even the government agrees with this view of A I-Bihani. See Appellees' Br. 52, Barhoumi, 609 FJd·416 (No. 09-5383) ("In this case, as in Bihani, the district court did not presume the accuracy or scriveners of unknown quality-is accurate? Whether the presumption can be overcome by a preponderance of the evidence or by clear and specific evidence-this court never says which-I fear that in practice it "comes perilously close to suggesting that whatever the government says must be treated as true," see Parhat, 532 FJd at 849. In that world, it is hard to see what is left of the Supreme Court's command in Boumediene that habeas review be "meaningful." 553 U.S. at 783.

But the court's assault on Boumediene does not end with its presumption of regularity. Not content with moving the goal posts, the court calls the game in the government's favor. Instead of remanding to give Latif an opportunity to rebut the presumption of regularity, this appellate court engages in an essentially de novo review of the factual record, providing its own interpreta~ioris, its own narratives, even its own arguments, see Maj. Op. at 20-52, and finds that "neither internal flaws nor external record evidence rebuts that presumption in ,this case," id. at 7. But see Pullman-Standard v. Swint, 456 U.S. 273, 292 (1982) (where district court fact "findings are infirm b.ecause of an erroneous view of the law, a remand is the proper course"). To be sure, such a finding would be, appropriate if the record supported "only one resolution of the factual issue." 456 U.S. at 292. But that cannot be the case where, as here, the question of reliability turns entirely on witness credibility, inferences drawn from errors and inconsistencies in the Report, and the resolution of conflicts in other record evidence, see infra Part II. Given the court's conclusion that the presumption has not been rebutted, remand may well be a "pointless exercise." Con. Op. at 1.

Th~'s heavy Ions-portIOns of only out of _ pages are unredacted-make evaluating Its reliability more difficult. The unredacted nowhere reveal whether the same repeatedly told interrogators, and has provided evidence to show, that he went to Jordan for treatment of an injury to his own, not a friend's, head, not hand." Id. at 15. In addition, the Report erroneously states that "Latif is unmarried and has no children," even though "a declaration Latif submitted for use in this litigation states that he is married and has a son." Id. Lastly, in what even colleagues concede is an "obvious . .

mistakes when the Report was produced shed light on that question. Likewise, it is undoubtedly probative of the Report's reliability that it contains factual errors, for the presence of a known error increases the likelihood that other information in the Report is inaccurate as well. And of course, it is also relevant that the government has offered no independent corroboration for any of the Report's incriminating facts. After all, skepticism about the trustworthiness of uncorroborated confessions has deep, historical roots, so much so that a criminal defendant "may not be convicted on his own uncorroborated confession." Smith v. United States, 348 U.S. 147, 152-53 (1954) (noting that the rule's "foundation lies in a long history of judicial experience with confessions"). And we recently made clear that in these Guantanamo habeas cases "the [district] court must take [such an] absence of corroboration into account in assessing the reliability of the petitioner's out-of-court statements." Al Alwi, 2011 WL 2937134, at *6 (emphasis added).

Moreover, none of the subsidiary fact findings the district court made about the Report itself were clearly erroneous. As this court acknowledges, "the (district] court cited problems with the . . its substantial redactions,. its reference to its u','~"'J."UJ.U

corro . at agrees that "(t]he inconsistencies in the Report may suggest a document produced on the field by imperfect translators or transcribers." ld. at 27.

Nonetheless, this court insists, "[i]t is almost inconceivable," id. at 25, that the inculpatory information in appearing in the Report sound similar to names and statements Latif later made.

of the evidence. To require otherwise would, in effect, inappropriately shift the burden of proof to Latif.

Given that the district court found Latifs story entitled to at least some weight and given that such a finding could properly guide its evaluation of the government's evidence, the only remaining question for us is whether that finding was clearly erroneous. It was not. As this court itself acknowledges, Latifs story, on its own terms, is not "intrinsic(ally] implausib[le]." Maj. Op. at 39. And that observation is reinforced by corroborating evidence showing that Latif needed to leave Yemen for medical care in 1994, that Yemen's Ministry of Public Health recommended he do so again in 1999, and that Latif had medical papers with him when seized crossing into Pakistan. That a trip abroad for medical care had been necessary, not once but twice, makes it more likely that Latif would have needed to travel abroad for medical care in 2001 as well. And the fact that Latifs condition was still serious enough to require such a trip in 1999, five years after he was first injured, increases the odds that the injury continued to be that serious two years later in 2001. Equally important, the most plausible reason for why Latif would have had medical papers in his possession when first seized is that his trip in fact had a medical purpose.

Attempting to cast doubt on the district court's favorable assessment of Latifs account, this court insists that the district court "toss[ed] . . . aside" inconsistencies in Latif s account. [d. at 45; see also id. at 42-45. But the district court did . no such thing. It expressly recognized those inconsistencies, LatiJ, slip op. at 24-25 (summarizing the alleged inconsistencies); id. at 27 ("Latifs story is not without inconsistencies and unanswered questions."), ultimately finding the government's "attack[ on] the credibility of Latifs story" based on those inconsistencies "unconvincing." Latif, slip op. at 27. Particularly significant to the district court was the fact that the "fundamentals [of Latifs story] have remained the same." Jd. As Latif points out, those fundamentals-appearing in more than a dozen interro

May 10, 2009-" any involvement with al Qaida or the Taliban; his serious head injury from a car accident in Yemen; his inability to pay for the necessary medical treatment; and his expectation and hope that Ibrahim Alawi would get him free medical care." Appellee's Br. 57. Indeed, at least some in the government apparently agree. The commanding officer of the Defense Department's Criminal Investigative Task Force noted in a June 16, 2004 memo that Latifs statements to interrogators had "been relatively consistent." Ex. 80, Memorandum from Criminal Investigative Task Force to General Counsel, Department of Defense (June 16, 2004). Moreover, before making too much of smaller inconsistencies it is important to remember that they appear not in verbatim transcripts prepared by a court reporter with the aid of an audio or video recording, but rather in brief summaries of translated interrogations. As mentioned above, it would be unsurprising to discover that minor errors crept in as Latirs account passed from his mouth to a translator (of unknown ability) to an interrogator to the interrogator's notes and .tinally to the interrogator's summary of those notes-the last of which represents the only evidence in the record of what Latif actually said in each of his interrogations. As we remarked in another Guantanamo Bay habeas case, "[t]he task of resolving discrepancies among the various accounts offered into evidence is quintessentially a matter ... for the district judge sitting as the fact-finder." AI-Madhwani, 2011 WL 2083932, at *5 (internal quotation marks omitted).

have liked. Latif left Kabul in November 2001 and then traveled through Jalalabad before eventually arriving at the Pakistani border where Pakistani authorities detained him. According to the government, this path mirrors that of Taliban soldiers retreating from Kabul. Although not contending that this evidence is dispositive, the government argues that because Latif s admitted route is consistent with that of Taliban soldiers and with information in the Report, it is a helpful piece in the puzzle, bolstering its claim that the Report's inculpatory statements are accurate.

Fair enough, but how helpful? If this route is commonly used by innocent civilians, then the evidence is not that helpful at all. To understand why, consider a simple hypothetical. Suppose the government were to argue in a drug case that the defendant drove north from Miami along 1-95, "a known drug route." Familiar with 1-95, we would surely respond that many thousands of non-drug traffickers take that route as well, Given what we know about our own society, the 1-95 inference would be too weak even to mention. Cf Almerfedi, 2011 WL 2277607, at *4 n.7 (noting that some conduct such as possessing an AK-47 is so "commonplace in Afghanistan [that it] does not meaningfully distinguish an al Qaeda associate from an innocent civilian"). On the other hand, if the alleged drug trafficker had driven along an infrequently traveled country road, then a contention that that road was "a known drug route" would carry more weight. The burden of proof is on the government to demonstrate whether travel on a particular route to the Pakistani border, when considered in context, is more like the lonely country road and thus worthy of consideration when it comes to distinguishing between enemy combatants and innocent civilians.

Next consider record evidence that, according to this j court~shows ·'tbat Latif stayed at al-Qai~ at 45. That evidence consists o f _ which the gov'emmeJnt nonetheless accuses the district court of such a scenario is several inferential steps removed from the only relevant fact we know about Latif-that he did not have his passport with him when seized. To be sure, a reasonable factfinder might have interpreted this evidence differently. Yet again, the record contains enough evidence to support "two permissible views of the evidence/' Awad, 608 F.3d at 7 (quotation omitted), meaning that "the factfinder's choice between [those two views] cannot, [therefore,] be clearly erroneous." Id.

D

The court groups many of its criticisms about the district court's fact finding under the catch-all header of Al-Adahi. According to my colleagues, the district court took an "unduly atomized" approach to the evidence. Maj. Op. at 39. The district court did no such thing.

Absent some affirmative indication to the contrary, we "presum [e) that the district court knew and applied the law correctly." United States v. Mouling, 557 F.3d 658, 668 (D.C Cir. 2009). Such affinnative evidence of legal error was quite obviously present in Al-Adahi, as the "fundamental mistake" we identified in that district court's opinion makes clear:

AI-Adahi's ties to bin Laden "cannot prove" he was part of AI-Qaida and this evidence therefore "must not distract the Court." The fact that AI-Adahi stayed at an' al-Qaida guesthouse "is not in itself sufficient to justify detention." AI-Adahi's attendance at an al-Qaida training camp "is not sufficient to carry the Government's burden of showing he was a part of' al-Qaida.

only ignores the presumption of district court lawfulness, but also imposes on that court a virtually impossible burden. As . the First Circuit put it, "[t]he district court could have written a 200~page decision on this case, but the far more compact assessment it made was entirely adequate under Rule 52(a)." Addamax Corp. v. Open Software Foundation, Inc., 152 F.3d 48, 55 (lst Cir. 1998) ("[T]he district court was not required to make findings on every detail, was not required to discuss all of the evidence that supports each of the findings made, and was not required to respond individually to each evidentiary or factual contention made by the losing side."). See also Schilling v. Schwitzer-Cummins Co., 142 F.2d 82, 84 (D.C. Cir. 1944) ("While counsel may be disappointed that findings do not discuss propositions sincerely contended for, that, alone, does not make them inadequate or suggest that such propositions were not understood by the court."); Medtronic, Inc. v. Daig Corp., 789 F.2d 903, 906 (Fed Cir. 1986) ("We presume that a factfinder reviews all the evidence presented unless he explicitly expresses otherwise."); cf Puerto Rico Maritime Shipping Authority v. Federal Maritime Comm 'n, 678 F.2d 327, 351 (D.C. Cir. 1982) ("It is frivolous to contend that the Commission did not consider the evidence because it did not catalogue every jot and tittle of testimony. Nothing is gained by a laundry-list recital of all evidence on the record supporting each view on every issue.").

The district court's opinion is by no means perfect. But clear error review demands a good deal less than perfection. See Microsoft, 253 F.3d at ll8. That said, had the district court otherwise committed legal error or made some other mistake requiring remand, then I would have asked it to clarify whether it had indeed considered this evidence holistically. See, e.g., Salahi, 625 FJd at 753 (noting that "the district court generally" considered all the evidence together but that "its consideration of certain pieces of evidence may - have been unduly atomized u and that "since we [were] remanding" we would encourage the district court to clarify (emphasis added)). But nothing in our case law requires, nor would I now hold, that the mere fact that a district court that obviously and carefully considered the entire record failed to mention a couple items of tertiary importance reflects undu-e atomization of the evidence.

III.

For the foregoing reasons, I would affinn the grant of the writ of habeas corpus.