The Obama administration is trying to prevent a lawyer for a former CIA officer, Sabrina DeSousa, from privately sharing classified information about the case with the judge!
If this sounds outrageous, it is. The judge pronounced herself "literally speechless" at the government's assertions. Federal Judges are authorized to see classified information that is necessary to resolve a case.
But these over-the-top unitary Executive assertions are precisely the kind of arguments the government is also trying to make in the case of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake. Instead of tips and Tweets, please sign the petition for accountability in the Drake case.
Sabrina DeSousa was one of 23 people convicted in absentia in Italy for the botched rendition radical Muslim cleric Abu Omar.
DeSousa was not even in Italy when Omar was rendered to Egypt. As is all too typical, the top people involved were provided government attorneys who got them off the hook, while the other 23 were hung out to try.
But this diary is not a debate about rendition. Extraordinary renditions is illegal and wrong.
What this diary is about is the government's continued abuse of the classification system. In the Drake case, the government wants to use "substitutions" under the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) for unclassified information. You can read the government's memorandum here. One month from trial, and one year after Drake's Indictment, to government has asserted, for the first time, an evidentiary privilege under the NSA Act of 1959 that it claims authorizes the court to redact, or insert substitutions for, relevant, unclassified evidence that will be introduced during the criminal trial starting on June 13. As Drake's public defenders noted in their response,
The government may not erode Mr. Drake's Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial because the National Security Agency fears disclosure of relevant, unclassified information during a public trial.
And in the DeSousa case, the government is objecting to DeSousa's lawyer even conveying the classified information in a closed hearing.
These wild government arguments are a back-door way to create an Official Secrets Act without having to go to Congress, and people should not just pay attention, but do something. These are judicial cases in need for some serious congressional oversight--not into the merits of the case, but into the legal arguments being made by the Justice Department.