"The privilege (state secrets) was first officially recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 1953 decision, United States v. Reynolds (345 U.S. 1). A military airplane, a B-29 Superfortress bomber, crashed. The widows of three civilian crew members sought accident reports on the crash but were told that to release such details would threaten national security by revealing the bomber's top-secret mission. The court held that only the government can claim or waive the privilege, and it “is not to be lightly invoked”, and last there “must be a formal claim of privilege, lodged by the head of the department which has control over the matter, after actual personal consideration by that officer.” The court stressed that the decision to withhold evidence is to be made by the presiding judge and not the executive.
As a footnote to the founding case establishing the privilege, in 2000, the accident reports were declassified and released,
and it was found that the argument was fraudulent, and there was no secret information. The reports did, however, contain information about the poor state of condition of the aircraft itself, which would have been very compromising to the Air Force's case. Many commentators have alleged government misuse of secrecy in the landmark case."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Secrets_Privilege#Supreme_Court_recognition_in_U.S._v._ReynoldsCongress can make a law to counteract what the Court has done, it did it recently in response to the ruling about differences in payment according to gender.
How much of the state secrets privilege is based off of this lie? Why do still we tolerate an executive power that is rooted in deception?
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