Chicago Bomb-Sting Defense Lawyer Can See FISA Papers

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-30/chicago-bomb-sting-defense-lawyer-can-see-fisa-papers.html

A defense lawyer won permission to see secret foreign intelligence papers that may have led to evidence against his client, the first such ruling in an American terrorism case.

Over the objection of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, a Chicago federal judge yesterday granted lawyer Thomas A. Durkin’s request to see applications for intelligence gathering submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The judge said she was the first to allow a defendant’s attorney to see such FISA court records.

Durkin represents Adel Daoud, 20, a Hillside, Illinois, man arrested in September 2012 after he allegedly tried to detonate a phony bomb outside a downtown Chicago bar in a Federal Bureau of Investigation sting operation. Daoud has pleaded not guilty.

Holder said in an affidavit that the disclosure would harm national security. The ruling comes as the federal government is coming under increasing scrutiny for surveillance at home and abroad using the National Security Agency’s collection of telephone and Internet metadata.

[questionseverything]

1. washington post ran this story with little more info

that just floored me......

Muhtorov’s challenge has its roots in the case rejected by the Supreme Court last year. In deciding to dismiss, the Supreme Court relied upon the assurance by the U.S. solicitor general that the government would notify criminal defendants when it had used evidence from the surveillance.

But the solicitor general at the time did not know that the Justice Department had a policy to conceal such evidence from defendants. He learned of it only after some criminal defendants sought clarification of remarks that Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) made in late 2012 that the government had used evidence from warrantless monitoring in certain cases. The department reversed its policy last year.
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so the solicitor general presented false info to the supreme court????? because he did not know that justice department was (illegally) concealing evidence???

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/terrorism-suspect-challenges-warrantless-surveillance/2014/01/29/fb9cc2ae-88f1-11e3-a5bd-844629433ba3_story.html