Bush team blocks suits with state secrets

[dogday]

claim Critics complain that action stifles judicial review, public debate

Washington -- 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-Sept. 11 era.

The privilege has been asserted by the Justice Department more frequently under President Bush than under any of his predecessors -- in 19 cases, the same number as during the entire eight-year presidency of Ronald Reagan, the previous record holder, according to a count by William Weaver, a political scientist at the University of Texas at El Paso.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/06/04/MNG75J863I1.DTL&type=politics

[texastoast]

1. This is an old trick

It happened to the families of some soldiers killed on the USS STARK during the first Gulf war.

In our case, the manufacturer of the Phalanx gun on the ship placed the gun on the ship knowing it wouldn't work. Captain Brindel depended on it to deflect an incoming Exocet missile, and the radar didn't work. Thirty-seven boys died.

The product liability lawsuit against the manufacturer was dismissed because of "state secrets," even though the lawsuit could have been tried to the bench. It was so dramatic. The government (a U.S. Justice Department lawyer and a rear admiral with a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist) showed up at the federal judge's chambers and told him to dismiss the suit so we couldn't refile it. He did.

We also were placed under a gag order for months, told our phones could be tapped, yada, yada.

And that was the late 80s. I've never been the same since.

http://eightiesclub.tripod.com/id344.htm

http://www.romingerlegal.com/fifthcircuit/opinions/91-2432.0.wpd.html

[texastoast]

2. Kick

:kick: