{"id":4332,"date":"2010-09-08T23:19:29","date_gmt":"2010-09-09T03:19:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=4332"},"modified":"2010-09-09T00:32:39","modified_gmt":"2010-09-09T04:32:39","slug":"this-road-does-not-need-a-fork","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2010\/09\/08\/this-road-does-not-need-a-fork\/","title":{"rendered":"this road does not need a fork&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<br \/>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"center\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/emptywheel.firedoglake.com\/2010\/09\/08\/9th-circuit-the-government-can-do-anything-to-you-and-hide-it-under-state-secrets\/\" target=\"_blank\">9th Circuit:<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n<div align=\"center\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/emptywheel.firedoglake.com\/2010\/09\/08\/9th-circuit-the-government-can-do-anything-to-you-and-hide-it-under-state-secrets\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Government Can Kidnap and Torture You and Then Hide It Under State Secrets<\/a><br \/>                \t          By: emptywheel<\/strong><br \/>      September 8, 2010<\/div>\n<p>    <\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ca9.uscourts.gov\/datastore\/opinions\/2010\/09\/07\/08-15693.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">This<\/a><\/strong> &ndash; a decision in the Jeppesen Dataplan suit upholding the government&rsquo;s invocation of state secrets &ndash; is really bad news.<\/div>\n<ul>\n<div align=\"justify\">  This case requires us to address the  difficult balance the state secrets doctrine strikes between fundamental  principles of our liberty, including justice, transparency,  accountability and national security. Although as judges we strive to  honor all of these principles, there are times when exceptional  circumstances create an irreconcilable conflict between them. On those  rare occasions, we are bound to follow the Supreme Court&rsquo;s admonition  that &ldquo;even the most compelling necessity cannot overcome the claim of  privilege if the court is ultimately satisfied that [state] secrets are  at stake.&rdquo; United States v. Reynolds, 345 U.S. 1, 11 (1953). After much  deliberation, we reluctantly conclude this is such a case, and the  plaintiffs&rsquo; action must be dismissed. Accordingly, we affirm the  judgment of the district court.  <\/div>\n<\/ul>\n<div align=\"justify\">So basically, the government can kidnap you and send you to be  tortured &ndash; as they did with Binyam Mohamed &ndash; yet even if your contractors  acknowledge what they were doing, if the government wants to call their  own law-breaking a secret, the most liberal Circuit Court in the country  agrees they can.<\/div>\n<p>    <\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\"><strong>Update:<\/strong> The ACLU&rsquo;s Ben Wizner on the decision:<\/div>\n<ul>\n<div align=\"justify\"> This  is a sad day not only for the  torture victims whose attempt to seek  justice has been extinguished,  but for all Americans who care about the  rule of law and our nation&rsquo;s  reputation in the world. To date, not a  single victim of the Bush  administration&rsquo;s torture program has had his  day in court. If today&rsquo;s  decision is allowed to stand, the United States  will have closed its  courtroom doors to torture victims while providing  complete immunity to  their torturers. The torture architects and their  enablers may have  escaped the judgment of this court, but they will not  escape the  judgment of history.  <\/div>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\"><em>Remember this name. You&#8217;re going to hear it again when the British Torture Inquiry begins:<\/em>  <\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\">\n<ul><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Binyam_Mohamed\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Binyam Ahmed Mohamed<\/strong><\/a>&nbsp; (Arabic: \u00d8\u00a8\u00d9\u2020\u00d9\u0160\u00d8\u00a7\u00d9\u2026 \u00d9\u2026\u00d8\u00ad\u00d9\u2026\u00d8\u00af&lrm;) (also described as Benjamin Mohammed, Benyam (Ahmed) Mohammed and Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi) (born 24 July 1978) is an Ethiopian national, who was detained in Guantanamo Bay prison between 2004 and 2009. He was captured and transported under the US extraordinary rendition program. Mohamed&#8217;s military representative reported that he had admitted while he was detained that he had trained in the Al-Qaeda terrorist training camp Al Farouq, but has since claimed that the evidence against him was obtained using torture.  After charges against him were dropped, he was eventually released and  arrived in the United Kingdom on 23 February 2009. In February 2010, the  UK Court of Appeal ruled that he had been subjected to &quot;cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by the United States authorities&quot;.<\/ul>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\">I think the hardest thing is the double bind in all of this. Of course, state secrets trump transparency. But in these cases, the secrecy was consciously used to hide misdeeds, not to protect national security. That was the Bush Administration&#8217;s standard M.O. &#8211; secret Torture Program, secret Domestic surveillance, secret Energy Conferences, secret firing of Department of Justice Attorneys, secret records and emails, secret destruction of C.I.A. Tapes. Most of it was secrets in the service of hiding things from scrutiny rather than helping the country.  <\/div>\n<p align=\"justify\">I think the judges are mindful of precedent, and so even in a case like this, affirming the principle that national security is a foremost need. Thus, &quot;<strong><font color=\"#200020\">After much  deliberation, we reluctantly conclude this is such a case,  and the  plaintiffs&rsquo; action must be dismissed. Accordingly, we affirm  the  judgment of the district court.<\/font><\/strong>&quot; In this case, the result adds to the shameful fact that &quot;<strong><font color=\"#200020\">not a  single victim of the Bush  administration&rsquo;s torture program has had his  day in court.<\/font><\/strong>&quot; Some of the victims were bad guys. Some were not. And we&#8217;ll never know the difference. And in either case, their treatment was against the treaties and principles of the American system.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">It&#8217;s been said in many different ways &#8211; in these cases, we&#8217;re denying the basic premise that no one is above the rule of law. We&#8217;ll regret doing that somewhere down the road. This road does not need a fork in it, and we&#8217;re creating that fork in response to the manipulations of some immoral leaders who need to be exposed&#8230;<\/p>\n<hr size=\"1\" \/>\n<div align=\"justify\"><strong>Update:<\/strong> see also: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/09\/09\/us\/09secrets.html?ref=global-home\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Court Sides With C.I.A. on Seizure of Terror Suspects<\/strong><\/a> <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>9th Circuit: The Government Can Kidnap and Torture You and Then Hide It Under State Secrets By: emptywheel September 8, 2010 This &ndash; a decision in the Jeppesen Dataplan suit upholding the government&rsquo;s invocation of state secrets &ndash; is really bad news. This case requires us to address the difficult balance the state secrets doctrine [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}