Greg Sargent follows up with the White House on pending legislation regarding state secrets:
The White House is declining to say whether the Obama administration will support legislation introduced by Senate Democrats that would roll back the use of the "state secrets privilege," one of Bush’s most controversial legal tools....
The White House’s silence on the bill will give more fodder to critics who charge that Obama has broken a campaign promise to dramatically scale back use of the Bush legal maneuver and wants the latitude to use it himself. It also sets up a potential showdown with Senate Dems who continue to view the legislation as crucial to rolling back Bush-era abuses....
The legislation — which represented the consensus view of the Democratic Party a year ago — would drastically limit use of the state secrets privilege, which is the invocation of national security to justify government secrecy and get anti-government lawsuits tossed out of court. The bill was reintroduced this year by Senators Russ Feingold, Patrick Leahy, and Ted Kennedy in response to Obama’s use of the legal tool, with Feingold calling the need for the legislation "urgent."
Despite Obama’s campaign promise, the Obama Department of Justice has repeatedly invoked the state secrets privilege, most recently in a lawsuit against government warantless wiretapping, prompting many legal observers to conclude that Obama was mimicking Bush’s approach.
In response to my questions, a White House spokesperson declined to say whether the Obama administration would support the legislation. Earlier this month, Attorney General Eric Holder said that he had ordered a comprehensive review of the state secrets doctrine, and promised a report on it in the "not too distant future."
Complicating matters a bit further, a couple of prominent members of the Obama administration, Secretary of State Clinton and Vice President Biden, were cosponsors of the Feingold/Leahy/Kennedy legislation. This legislative effort is becoming more critical. The previous Congress failed to assert itself against the unitary executive, leaving the door open for the abuses of the Bush administration and now the the very real likelihood that those abuses will go unanswered.
Congress's actions now will determine if the balance of power in our government will be permanently shifted in favor of the unitary executive. If it's not rolled back now, in the wake of the most disgusting and extreme abuses of power imaginable, it may never be.
Update: Ambinder has more:
They no-commented me last week, and they're stonewalling Greg Sargent this week: the White House refuses to say whether the President supports the State Secrets Protection Act in Congress. As a candidate, Obama supported the principles espoused in a similar piece of legislation, but he did not sign on to the bill as a cosponsor. My reporting leads me to believe that senior administration officials, including the White House counsel, Gregory Craig, oppose the current version of the legislation because they believe it would overturn an important, established precedent and weaken the ability of the president to protect national security....
Make no mistake: Obama will be rolling back the spirit, if not the fact, of a campaign promise by opposing this bill.
