The lie behind the secrets
GOVERNMENT secrecy in the name of national security has reached record-setting proportions. In case after case, the government has used it as an excuse to thwart lawsuits by whistle-blowers and people with grievances against the United States.
There was, for instance, the FBI linguist who alleged corruption and malfeasance inside her translation unit. There was the African American CIA officer who reported racial discrimination inside the agency, and the Syrian Canadian who was "renditioned" to Syria for a little torture. In two of the cases, the government succeeded in having the case thrown out of court on grounds of secrecy.
The latest example came just last week in the case of Khaled Masri, a German citizen born in Kuwait who was detained while on vacation in 2003, flown to a prison in Afghanistan, held for five months and allegedly beaten, shackled and injected with drugs -- only to be released in May 2004 as a case of mistaken identity.
Not surprisingly, Masri is suing the government. But the Justice Department, at the request of the CIA, last week urged the federal judge in the case to dismiss the lawsuit under what is known as the "state secrets privilege," saying that the government would not be able to confirm or deny Masri's claims without the disclosure of information that could be harmful to national security and relations with other countries. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III agreed and threw out the case.
Justice Department lawyers have taken the same position in a lawsuit brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation on behalf of an AT&T technician who accused his employer of "hoovering" its customers' phone calls into government databases.
When the government claims the "state secrets privilege," the courts tend to look no further, and the cases are dismissed. It was invoked only four times in the first 23 years after the U.S. Supreme Court created the privilege in 1953, but now the government is claiming the privilege to dismiss lawsuits at a rate of more than three a year. The Justice Department describes this tactic as an "absolute privilege" -- in effect, a neutron bomb that leaves no plaintiff standing.
