Federal court rejects CIA's denial of drone strikes as 'fiction'
Source: Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-court-cia-drone-20130315,0,1257923.story
Federal court rejects CIA's denial of drone strikes as 'fiction'
By David G. Savage
March 15, 2013, 10:22 a.m.
WASHINGTONA federal appeals court said Friday that it will no longer accept the fiction from the Obama administrations lawyers that the CIA has no interest or documents that describe drone strikes.
It is neither logical nor plausible for the CIA to maintain that it would reveal anything not already in the public domain to say the Agency at least has an intelligence interest in such strikes, said Chief Judge Merrick Garland. The defendant is, after all, the Central Intelligence Agency.
The decision gave a partial victory to the American Civil Liberties Union in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that seeks documents on the governments still-secret policy on drone strikes. The three judges did not say any particular documents must be released, but they rejected the administrations position that it could simply refuse to confirm or deny that it had any such documents.
A federal judge had rejected the ACLUs suit entirely, but the three-judge appeals court revived the suit. The agencys non-response does not pass the straight face test, Garland concluded.
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