State Secrets Privilege - an American FRAUD

[leftist_not_liberal]

I just saw this in LBN:

This just in from the Associated Press: The Supreme Court has sided with the Bush administration in blocking a lawsuit by a man who claims he was tortured by the CIA.

Update at 10:06 a.m. ET: Khaled el-Masri, a 44-year-old German, claims that he was kidnapped and tortured by American officials who mistook him for a suspected terrorist.

The U.S. government hasn't commented on his claims, but did convince lower courts to dismiss the case on the grounds the lawsuit would reveal "state secrets" if it went to trial. The justices refused today to hear el-Masri's appeal of that decision, meaning that his case is no longer viable.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3021509

It seems to me a bit more of that too-little known history is in order for the DU-GD:

U.S. v. Reynolds

In 1953, the US Supreme Court set the basic precedent for executive control of classified documents in legal proceedings. In United States v Reynolds, an appeal of a default judgment alleging Air Force negligence in the death of 3 civilian contractors, the Supremes decided that a great deal of deference was due the government when it claimed National Security justification for withholding documents, and that in some cases (including Reynolds) they could deny the District Court judge access, preventing judicial review of the claim.

Natch, the government was lying. There were no secrets -- other than that the government just wanted to avoid the fullness of its liability for several civilian deaths.

While the US did ultimately pay damages in a settlement, it never accepted blame for the accident and maintains to this day that there were valid "national security" reasons for withholding the accident report. Maybe there were...

In 2003, the dead mens' widows filed an motion based on the declassified documents with the Supreme Court asking them to reconsider their "error" asserting that the declassified documents had no national security information.

Of course, every national security case since then has used Reynolds as precedent, right up to the Patriot Act cases of late.

The Supreme Court rejected the petition on June 23, 2003 though there was but one secret that was evident from the accident report: The B-29 SuperFortress didn't work very well and could not be relied upon in a major war.

So protecting the MIC versus the lives of innocents is the genesis for this wonderful government privilege...




Part 1
A daughter's search for answers

Part 2
Sweet grasses and spilled blood

Part 3
Coming
full
circle

View an interactive, animated presentation about the crash

View a full page diagram of what went wrong (PDF)


Families continue quest for justice in 1948 deaths
Historic case gets new hearing
http://www.courierpostonline.com/specialreports/statesecrets



Judith Loether (left), the former Judith Palya, was haunted for years by unanswered questions about her father's death. Albert Palya (right) of Haddon Heights at work in Camden in the 1940s. He had been working for RCA for only three years when he died in the B-29 crash.

The secrets in this accident report provide more than details about a plane crash that killed nine men in 1948. They expose the roots of American secrecy law, the very essence of "state secrets."

...

On Oct. 6, 1948, it is now known, Albert Palya flew in a B-29 bomber to test secret electronic equipment. The plane crash killed Palya, three other civilians and five Air Force personnel.

The crash ended Palya's life, but it began a lifetime of questions for his daughter, Judith.

Why did the B-29, the same model plane trusted to deliver the two atomic bombs, disintegrate over the skies of Georgia?

How is it that only four of 13 men aboard were able to parachute to safety?

What information was the Air Force trying to hide when it refused to produce the accident report, even for a federal judge?

The answers would provide a cautionary lesson, particularly relevant today, about governmental accountability at times when America feels most threatened.