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kestrel9 ago

What is 'State Secrets' and how upheld in the SC?

Under its original formulation, the state secrets privilege was meant only to exclude a very narrow class of evidence whose revelation would harm national security. However, in a large percentage of recent cases, courts have gone a step further, dismissing entire cases in which the government asserts the privilege, in essence converting an evidentiary rule into a justiciability rule.

The government response has been that in certain cases, the subject of the case is itself privileged. In these cases, the government argues, there is no plausible way to respond to a complaint without revealing state secrets.

On January 22, 2008, Senators Edward Kennedy and Arlen Specter introduced S. 2533, the State Secrets Protection Act.[27] https://www.congress.gov/bill/111th-congress/senate-bill/417

Sibel Edmonds

The privilege was invoked twice against Sibel Edmonds. The first invocation was to prevent her from testifying that the Federal Government had foreknowledge that Al-Qaeda intended to use airliners to attack the United States on September 11, 2001; the case was a $100 trillion action filed in 2002 by six hundred 9/11 victims' families against officials of the Saudi government and prominent Saudi citizens. ..

Notra Trulock

In February 2002 it was invoked in the case of Notra Trulock, who launched a defamation suit against Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee, charged with stealing nuclear secrets; President Bush stated that national security would be compromised if Trulock were allowed to seek damages from Lee... though it resulted in the case being dismissed, another suit was launched directly attacking then-FBI Director Louis Freeh for interfering and falsely invoking the state secrets privilege.

Wen Ho Lee: The New York Times article on March 6, 1999 reported that nuclear secrets stolen from a US government laboratory had enabled China to make a leap in nuclear weapons development: the miniaturization of its bombs. It said there was a suspect, a Chinese-American scientist at Los Alamos. It cited comments by unidentified officials that the White House had minimized the espionage investigation for political reasons. http://www.pherson.org/PDFFiles/WHLCaseStudy.pdf