State Secrets?

[struggle4progress]

<snip> The State Secrets Privilege is a series of American legal precedents allowing the federal government the ability to dismiss legal cases that it claims would threaten foreign policy, military intelligence or national security. <snip>

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the Edmonds case, says there is an "acute" need for clarification of the state secrets doctrine "because the government is increasingly using the privilege to cover up its own wrongdoing and to keep legitimate cases out of court." <snip>

The government invoked the privilege again in the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who sought to sue then Attorney General John Ashcroft for his role in rendering Arar to Syria to face torture and extract false confessions. <snip>

Steven Aftergood, who heads the Project on Government Secrecy for the American Federation of Scientists, said in an interview, "Once rarely invoked, the state secrets privilege is now increasingly used by the government as a "get out of jail free" card to block unwanted litigation. The idea that courts cannot handle national security cases involving classified information is simply false. Classified information often figures in criminal espionage cases, and even occasionally in Freedom of Information Act cases. There are procedures for in camera review, protective orders, non-disclosure agreements, and so on." <snip>

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0508/S00167.htm

[wli]

1. fascism on the goose-step

Everything Bushler's goose-stepping government does is fascism.