New Policy May Affect Wiretap, Torture Suits
By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
The Obama administration will announce a new policy Wednesday making it much more difficult for the government to claim that it is protecting state secrets when it hides details of sensitive national security strategies such as rendition and warrantless eavesdropping, according to two senior Justice Department officials.
The new policy requires agencies, including the intelligence community and the military, to convince the attorney general and a team of Justice Department lawyers that the release of sensitive information would present significant harm to "national defense or foreign relations." In the past, the claim that state secrets were at risk could be invoked with the approval of one official and by meeting a lower standard of proof that disclosure would be harmful.
That claim was asserted dozens of times during the Bush administration, legal scholars said.
And the money quotes:
"What we're trying to do is . . . improve public confidence that this privilege is invoked very rarely and only when it's well supported," said a senior department official involved in the review, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the policy had not yet been unveiled. "By holding ourselves to this higher standard, we're in some way sending a message to the courts. We're not following a 'just trust us' approach."
Read that again, everyone -- "We're not following a 'just trust us' approach."
If this is what we all hear, sometime tomorrow, from AG Holder then we have truly entered a new era.
Combined with what President Obama made clear today regarding energy and climate policy and Palestine-Israel and he's got some momentum for change, apart from what he catalyzed last week for health care reform.
Peace.