Curiously, the Supreme Court's opinion re the A-12 closely matched the release of Anne Jacobson's book, Area 51.
It's interesting to use Jacobson's book to read between the lines in the Supreme Court opinion.
Court:
"[T]the fact that the Government had to continue asserting the privilege after granting petitioners access to B–2 and F–117A program information suggests it had other, possibly covert stealth programs in the 1980’s and early 1990’s."
The court reasoned that (a similar) contract dispute could not be litigated because to proceed further would reveal sensitive information necessary for national defense and intelligence operations:
Court [citations omitted]: "Such suits threaten to undermine ongoing intelligence-gathering and covert operations—two vital aspects of national security—through inadvertent exposure of espionage relationships. . . Rather than tempt fate, we leave the parties to an espionage agreement where we found them the day they filed suit."
However,
Area 51 provides pictures of (what appears to be) the things the Supreme Court says are too secret to discuss, namely some of the testing done on the SR-71
stealth replacement.
Oops.
If you're interested in knowing more about the 1951 Roswell crash (the origin of "Area 51"), one theory is the Russians used Nazi technology, and attempted to cause a disturbance in the United States by flying a balloon over the US.
The balloon was supposedly remotely controlled by the Russians, and the "pilots" were really children who had been genetically modified using lessons from Russian-captured Nazis. Stalin supposedly used children with deformities, and hoped to cause a panic in the United States.
One reason the story remains classified is that the US engaged in similar questionable testing on American children after WWII related to aircraft design and nuclear hardening.
Conclusion
Until the Supreme Court disclosed the existence of the "other" stealth programs, we never had much public information about the SR-71 replacement: Aurora.
Fortunately, the photographs from Area 51 show the types of testing done. The photographs show how stealth equipment was carefully hidden in plain view.
The Area 51 book relays extensive CIA interest in drones going back to the 1960s. These early CIA-drones were earlier versions of the still-not-disclosed stealth drones, of joint interest to the CIA and the Defense Department.
It remains unclear whether the US government declares such a program a matter of "state secrets" and makes excuses not to conduct more effective oversight of how the NSA, using stealth drones, intercepts and uses information related to American citizens.
It will be interesting to see which court first issued a warrant permitting American law enforcement to use a stealth drone against an American citizens in the United States.
Recommendations
Congress should get some assurances that stealth drones are not being piloted over the United States. If they are, there needs to be better understanding of how the NSA intercepts information used to identify ground targets in the United States.
There needs to be some understanding of how electronic data intercepted by stealth drones flying over the United States is forwarded through satellites to NSA ground stations, and how this interception method falls within the DOJ OLC memos re FISA warrant exceptions.
We also kneed to know how this data is sent through foreign-owned, or contracted fiber optic lines to circumvent the FISA warrant requirements on government.