Reply #18: Up until this administration, "State Secrets Privilege" was only being used to block evidence [View All]

[cascadiance]

... that was ruled threatening to national security from being presented in civil trials. But the courts during Bush's term have taken it a step further and have routinely dismissed entire cases when this "privilege" is exercised.

Though the laws for criminal cases are more defined than they are for civil cases in this arena, I think the same effort is going on to try and dismiss entire cases instead of just the evidence pieces in the case of evidence that is protected for "national security" reasons. As many have said here, this administration has been using "State Secrets Privilege" and other "gray mail" defenses to really cover up their wrong doing and not protect national security. Their regard for national security is probably not high on their list of priorities, as exemplified by their exposing Brewster Jennings when they outed Valerie Plame. It's been harder for them to do with criminal cases. As I noted earlier, they TRIED to do this with Scooter Libby, but probably folks like Reggie Walton, who coincidentally was the same judge that dismissed two of Sibel Edmonds' cases for "State Secrets Privilege" reasons, felt that the case was too high profile for them to be able to get away with just "dismissing" it. So they did what they did, and let Bush take care of things by commuting his sentence.

Perhaps they are hoping that Brent Wilkes' case is lower profile than Scooter's was and therefore they could get away with a "gray mail" dismissal to the public. We need to make sure that it ISN'T low profile and that they can't get away with this.