ACLU: 'Secret courts' conceal fraud by military contractors

[unhappycamper]

ACLU: 'Secret courts' conceal fraud by military contractors
Muriel Kane
Published: Thursday January 15, 2009

A law originally intended to encourage whistleblowers may have been used by the Bush Justice Department to cover up allegations of fraud by contractors such as Halliburton spin-off KBR.

In 2007, David Rose's "The People vs. the Profiteers" described a "scandal of epic proportions" involving the alleged suppression of dozens of lawsuits against KBR for alleged massive fraud in Iraq.

Those and similar charges are the basis for a complaint (pdf) filed on Thursday by the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Virginia, which alleges that secrecy provisions added to the False Claims Act (FCA) in 1986 have been used to keep complaints under seal indefinitely and gag whistleblowers who might otherwise speak out.

"Secret courts and secret proceedings have no place in this country," stated ACLU attorney Chris Hansen. "There are plenty of procedures Congress or the courts could adopt to preserve the interest of privacy when it is warranted without enlisting the courts in a blanket scheme that automatically gags people who have information about possible abuse of taxpayer dollars."

The complaint seeks a ruling that the secrecy provisions violate both the public's First Amendment rights and the inherent power of the courts to determine proceedings on a case-by-case basis.


Rest of article at: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/ACLU_Law_to_encourage_whistleblowers_may_0115.html

[merh]

1. Kick

Important article

We thought we had scandal fatigue before, just wait until "They" are gone and all the truth comes out. x(

:scared:

[L. Coyote]

2. Mr. OBAMA, tear down this wall!

[lonestarnot]

3. Burn the whole shit pile!