NYT: Invoking Secrets Privilege Becomes Popular Legal Tactic of Bush Adm.

[DeepModem Mom]

Invoking Secrets Privilege Becomes a More Popular Legal Tactic by U.S.
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: June 4, 2006

WASHINGTON, June 3 — Facing a wave of litigation challenging its eavesdropping at home and its handling of terror suspects abroad, the Bush administration is increasingly turning to a legal tactic that swiftly torpedoes most lawsuits: the state secrets privilege.

In recent weeks alone, officials have used the privilege to win the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by a German man who was abducted and held in Afghanistan for five months and to ask the courts to throw out three legal challenges to the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program.

But civil liberties groups and some scholars say the privilege claim, in which the government says any discussion of a lawsuit's accusations would endanger national security, has short-circuited judicial scrutiny and public debate of some central controversies of the post-9/11 era....

***

While the privilege, defined by a 1953 Supreme Court ruling, was once used to shield sensitive documents or witnesses from disclosure, it is now often used to try to snuff out lawsuits at their inception, (William G. Weaver, a political scientist at the University of Texas at El Paso)and other legal specialists say....

***

Under Mr. Bush, the secrets privilege has been used to block a lawsuit by a translator at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Sibel Edmonds, who was fired after accusing colleagues of security breaches; to stop a discrimination lawsuit filed by Jeffrey Sterling, a Farsi-speaking, African-American officer at the Central Intelligence Agency; and to derail a patent claim involving a coupler for fiber-optic cable, evidently to guard technical details of government eavesdropping....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/04/washington/04secrets.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[Kagemusha]

1. "short-circuited judicial scrutiny and public debate"

That's the point of doing it, duh.

[thecrow]

2. Fasten your seatbelt, folks!

It may get worse!

[lyonn]

3. Was Clinton allowed all these State Secret Privileges

when he was being sued by anyone who wanted to bring a lawsuit against him, Paula Jones for instance.

It's a wonder Fitzgerald has received any documents from the executive branch for his case.

[unblock]

9. state secrets wouldn't wash for clinton because

the jones suit was based on his activities while he was governor of arkansas.

[lyonn]

4. The Untouchable "W"

This is criminal and no one can or will stop this madness. Our country has become the "abused society" kinda like the abused wife syndrome. They blame themselves. Trouble is we have nowhere to go to get away from the abuse.

[aquart]

5. Criminals generally prefer to work in secret.

Exposure so often leads to long imprisonment.

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. And Ronald Reagan's tactic was to evoke executive privilege.

I remember he said he couldn't answer all those questions because it would set a bad precedent.

These white guy elitest have a King complex.

[Mr_Spock]

7. This trend is by far the most dangerous threat to our democracy yet

It should be obvious to anyone reading that article that this is a very dangerous situation for this country.

Heck, even the case in which the law precident was set was apparently based on a lie:

"But critics of the use of the privilege point out that officials sometimes exaggerate the sensitivities at risk. In fact, documents from the 1953 case that defined the modern privilege, United States v. Reynolds, have been declassified in recent years and suggest that Air Force officials misled the court.

An accident report on a B-29 bomber crash in 1948 was withheld because the Air Force said it included technical details about sensitive intelligence equipment and missions, but it turned out to contain no such information, said Wilson M. Brown III, a lawyer in Philadelphia who represented survivors of those who died in the crash in recent litigation.

"The facts the Supreme Court was relying on in Reynolds were false," Mr. Brown said in an interview. "It shows that if the government is not truthful, plaintiffs will lose and there's very little chance to straighten it out.""

This situation infuriates me.

[intheflow]

8. But don't you know?

If you say it out loud, it's true. Just ask Blackwell about invoking an FBI terror alert as reason for counting the Ohio votes in a lockdown/lockout situation.
:sarcasm:

[hootinholler]

10. Hmmm...

Should the invocation of States Secrets yield an automatic win for the other side? Kind of like, ok, you can keep the secret and lose the suit, or reveal the secret in an apropos cleared court and defend the suit.

In the Edmunds case, the I.G. reported she is in the right. Her suit was finally quashed when the Supremes refused to accept it into their docket.

-Hoot

[struggle4progress]

11. kick

:kick:

[Supersedeas]

12. Ya don't say!?!