Federal Appeals Court Rejects CIA 'Fiction of Deniability' on Drone Documents

[bigtree]

from NPR:


A federal appeals court has rejected an effort by the CIA to deny it has any documents about a U.S. drone program that has killed terrorists overseas, ruling that the agency is stretching the law too far and asking judges "to give their imprimatur to a fiction of deniability that no reasonable person would regard as plausible."

The ruling by a three judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit cites several public speeches by prominent American officials about the U.S. use of weaponized drones, including a 2009 talk by then-CIA director Leon Panetta, a Google+ web chat by President Obama last year and a 2012 speech by the president's new CIA chief, John Brennan.

. . . ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer called Friday's decision "an important victory."

Jaffer added that: "It requires the government to retire the absurd claim that the CIA's involvement in the targeted killing program is a secret, and it will make it more difficult for the government to deflect questions about the program's scope and legal basis. It also means that the CIA will have to explain what records it is withholding, and on what grounds it is withholding them."

The court says the CIA may have to prepare a list of all the drone materials and fight it out in a lower court over whether they should be turned over. The agency still has other legal defenses under the Freedom of Information Act.


read: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/03/15/174409897/court-says-cia-can-t-have-it-both-ways-on-drones?ft=1&f=1001&sc=tw&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

[Wilms]

1. That's a blow to the Obushama Administration.