[Just A Nobody]

The government can trash a citizen's reputation causing undeterminable harm to that individual and simply answer "whoops, my bad"?

There is precedent:
Scooter Libby
Tom DeLay
Joe McCarthy
The Haditha Marines
Illario Pantano

...for starters

[infidel29]

There is precedent:

Ramos and Compean... certainly precedent. Precedent still doesn't make it right in my view.