Reply #25: This little bit is from the ACLU site (they got behind her on this) -

[cyberpj]

History has shown that the government has relied on the state secrets privilege to cover up its own negligence. In the 1953 Supreme Court case that was the basis for today's state secrets privilege doctrine, United States v. Reynolds , the government claimed that disclosing a military flight accident report would jeopardize secret military equipment and harm national security. Nearly 50 years later, in 2004, the truth came out - the accident report contained no state secrets, but instead confirmed that the cause of the crash was faulty maintenance of the B-29 fleet.

The government is engaged in a similar cover-up in the Edmonds case. In 2002, at the request of Senate Judiciary Committee members Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the FBI provided several unclassified briefings to Members of Congress in which it confirmed many of Edmonds' allegations.

More than two years later, the Justice Department retroactively classified those briefings, which were reported in the Congressional Record, and asked Members who had the information posted on their web sites to remove certain documents. This move was a blatant attempt to bolster the government's efforts to dismiss Edmonds' case on state secrets grounds. After the Project On Government Oversight filed a separate lawsuit challenging the retroactive classification, the Justice Department agreed the information could be distributed.

An unclassified summary of a report by the DOJ's Inspector General, released in January 2005, corroborates Edmonds' allegations . The IG report concludes that the FBI had retaliated against Edmonds for reporting serious security breaches, stating that “many of her allegations were supported, that the FBI did not take them seriously enough, and that her allegations were, in fact, the most significant factor in the FBI's decision to terminate her services.”

Edmonds' case is not an isolated incident. The federal government is routinely retaliating against government employees who uncover weaknesses in our ability to prevent terrorist attacks or protect public safety.

http://www.aclu.org/scotus/2005/19950prs20050926.html?h...