Obama's Justice Department Backs Bush Secrecy on Renditions Suit- ACLU 'shocked and disappointed'

[Orwellian_Ghost]

Obama's Justice Department backs Bush secrecy on renditions suit
Stephen C. Webster
Published: Monday February 9, 2009

Update (at bottom): ACLU 'shocked and deeply disappointed'

An attorney for President Obama's Department of Justice has told the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that it supports the Bush administration's controversial state secrets defense in a lawsuit over the prior president's "extraordinary rendition" program.

"The case involves five men who claim to have been victims of extraordinary rendition -- including current Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed, another plaintiff in jail in Egypt, one in jail in Morocco, and two now free," reports ABC News. "They sued a San Jose Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen Dataplan, accusing the flight-planning company of aiding the CIA in flying them to other countries and secret CIA camps where they were tortured."

<snip>

Update: ACLU 'shocked and deeply disappointed'

"We are shocked and deeply disappointed that the Justice Department has chosen to continue the Bush administration’s practice of dodging judicial scrutiny of extraordinary rendition and torture," Wizner said in a Monday advisory released after the government stated its position. "This was an opportunity for the new administration to act on its condemnation of torture and rendition, but instead it has chosen to stay the course. Now we must hope that the court will assert its independence by rejecting the government’s false claims of state secrets and allowing the victims of torture and rendition their day in court."

"Eric Holder’s Justice Department stood up in court today and said that it would continue the Bush policy of invoking state secrets to hide the reprehensible history of torture, rendition and the most grievous human rights violations committed by the American government," Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU, said in the same release. "This is not change. This is definitely more of the same. Candidate Obama ran on a platform that would reform the abuse of state secrets, but President Obama’s Justice Department has disappointingly reneged on that important civil liberties issue. If this is a harbinger of things to come, it will be a long and arduous road to give us back an America we can be proud of again."

<snip>

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Obamas_Justice_Department_backs_Bush_state_0209.html

[Geoff R. Casavant]

1. I can't help feeling there is something I'm missing

I find it impossible to believe that this administration would simply adopt wholesale any policy of the last administration, especially one so odious.

[mmonk]

2. Yep, we have to keep fighting.

This is the consequence of not defending constitutional checks and balances.

[HamdenRice]

3. So you think Holder has turned around every DOJ lawsuit in 7 days?

This is getting silly. The headline should be "Bush appointed US attorney/functionary continues business as usual litigation strategy in one case while newly appointed Attorney General, in office for 7 days, reviews all DOJ policies, including state secrets policy."

A lawsuit is like an ocean liner -- it takes a while to review and turn around.

I doubt that with everything else on his plate, Obama reviewed and approved this particular motion in this particular case by this particular attorney.

[Flying Dream Blues]

4. This was my (hopeful) take as well. I refuse to believe that this

policy will not be reversed, but I think it will take time. Aren't the same people in the lower ranks still in place?

[mmonk]

6. The state secrets privilege is invoked in this case to shut the door

on further action. This case is up to the judiciary now.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

9. What do you think

about the ACLU's response?

[HamdenRice]

11. I think they asked for clarification from Hillary as SoS

which is appropriate as a way to bring attention to the issue. I'm not against criticizing the use. But it will definitely take time. The DoJ has to review the actual evidence to determine whether there actually might be state secrets, or some lower level of security concern, and if there is a lower level security concern, how to proceed in court.

The DoJ has lots and lots of tools in its tool kit to present sensitive information, but it takes quite a lot of time to evaluate that evidence and how to proceed.

I just don't think anyone should characterize this as "policy" of the Obama administration.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

18. Updates

UPDATE II: There wasn't a more enthusiastic Obama supporter during the campaign than Andrew Sullivan. Here is what he wrote just now:

The Obama administration will continue the cover-up of the alleged torture of the British resident. The argument is that revealing the extent of the man's torture and abuse would reveal state secrets. No shit. This is a depressing sign that the Obama administration will protect the Bush-Cheney torture regime from the light of day. And with each decision to cover for their predecessors, the Obamaites become retroactively complicit in them.

So what are they hiding from us? Wouldn't you like to know?

There is no viable excuse, or even mitigation, for what they did here.



UPDATE III: For those interested, I wrote many times in the past about the origins of the State Secrets Privilege and how the Bush administration's abuse of it (endorsed by the Obama DOJ today) has been so severe and destructive -- see, for instance, here and here. And see this excellent comment from DCLaw1, explaining yet another reason why the Obama administration's decision today is such a substantial setback for the cause of restoring our Constitutional framework.

<snip>

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/02/09/state_secrets/index.html

[Luminous Animal]

13. According to U.S. govt. lawyer, this case was thoroughly reviewed...

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/02/09/state_secrets/index.html

UPDATE IV: The New York Times' article by John Schwartz on today's hearing contains the quotes from the exchange which I described in the Update above:

lawyer for the government, Douglas N. Letter, made the same state-secrets argument on Monday, startling several judges on the panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

“Is there anything material that has happened” that might have caused the Justice Department to shift its views, asked Judge Mary M. Schroeder, an appointee of President Jimmy Carter, coyly referring to the recent election.

“No, your honor,” Mr. Letter replied.

“The change in administration has no bearing?” she asked.

“No, your honor,” he said once more. The position he was taking in court on behalf of the government had been “thoroughly vetted with the appropriate officials within the new administration,” and “these are the authorized positions,” he said.

"Thoroughly vetted with the appropriate officials within the new administration": that's about as explicit as it gets. It will be extremely difficult for even the most loyal Obama followers to deny that this was an active and conscious decision on the part of the Obama DOJ to embrace one of the most extreme abuses of the Bush presidency.

[HamdenRice]

14. How thoroughly vetted with which officials? It's still silly

Imagine you are Eric Holder. You have been in office 7 days. You are conducting a complete top to bottom review of all DoJ policies, including some really difficult contentious issues like whether you are going to prosecute former administration officials, whether to subpoena Karl Rove, how to take custody of Guantanamo prisoners, etc., etc., etc.

Some US attorney who has been litigating a case of one prisoner sends a request up the chain about continuing to assert state secrets privilege in a particular case.

First, do you think that request went to Holder? Obama? or some regional DoJ supervising attorney? Which "administration" official vetted this?

Even if it went to Holder (and it's impossible to imagine it did), what do you think you would do -- tell that person to stop asserting the privilege without having reviewed the evidence yourself, or say go ahead, do what you've been doing until we review the 30,000 or so pages of documents related to that particular case, and until we come up with a comprehensive set of guidelines on what we can disclose that the previous administration was concealing.

Sorry, but this whole kerfufel is incredibly silly given that Holder has been on the job 7 days, and they obviously have not had time to review either the broad policy and guidelines on what remains a national security secret in general, what within this case meets those guidelines or doesn't, and how to deal with the flood of information that will be disclosed (eg how to seal court records while disclosing to defendants, etc.).

[Luminous Animal]

15. I guess "thoroughly vetted" has lost its meaning

now that Obama is in office. Either that, or U.S. lawyer Netter was telling a little fib.

If the judiciary goes along with the Obama/Bush administrations' state secrets stance in this case, the five defendants involved, will be categorically denied litigation. If Holder, et.al., need more time to review the evidence, then that is what they should have asked for.

[lazer47]

5. I hope there is more to this than has been reported,,

[shraby]

7. There is...Holder is reviewing those "state secrets"

claims now..he has a bunch of lawyers going over them.

[mmonk]

8. The DOJ and thus Holder have spoken in this case.

[Luminous Animal]

16. Yep. There is no going backwards

in this case if the judiciary agrees with Obama's state secrets defense.

[chill_wind]

17. Link?

eom

[LakeSamish706]

10. I think someone needs to ask both President Obama and AG Holder directly ...

about this! Ask if this is their policy on this type of case.

[mmonk]

12. It is in this particular case.

Guess we'll have to see on a case by case basis. Hopefully, the judicial branch will push back and let this one go forward.

[eallen]

19. We must oppose this. It was wrong when Bush did it & it is wrong now.

A chief part of my support for Obama was precisely to reverse the Bush administration's assault on civil liberties and the Constitution. I hope that this is some bureaucratic inertia running ahead of policy changes, which is quickly reversed. But that can't change my reaction to it in the meantime. As with most public officials, my sole knowledge of Obama is from his public actions. So long as his administration pushes this policy, I have to conclude that his action in office is contrary to his most important campaign rhetoric.

:mad:
:patriot: