TrebleRebel,
These NSL cases actually can be related to your fear that the silica issue is being obfuscated to cover up the government’s incompetence or worse.
In the two court ACLU challenges, the District Court judges ruled that the NSL’s automatic gag orders violate the First Amendment. One judge explained:
“The self-preservation that ordinarily impels our government to censorship and secrecy may potentially be turned on ourselves as a weapon of self-destruction. … A categorical and uncritical extension of non-disclosure may become the cover for spurious ends that government may then deem too inconvenient, inexpedient, merely embarrassing, or even illicit to ever expose to the light of day. At that point, secrecy’s protective shield may serve not as much to secure a safe country as simply to save face.
Similarly, when these cases got up to the court of appeals, one Reagan-appointed judge (who I had the great pleasure of clerking for once), Richard Cardamone, said of the gag orders: “A ban on speech and a shroud of secrecy in perpetuity are antithetical to democratic concepts and do not fit comfortably with the fundamental rights guaranteed American citizens. Unending secrecy of actions taken by government officials may also serve as a cover for possible official misconduct and/or incompetence.” Doe v. Gonzales, 449 F.3d 415, 422 (2d Cir. 2006) (Cardamone, J., concurring).
Amerithrax might be said to illustrate the principle. It took a DC law firm’s willingness to devote services probably valued close to $1 million to obtain discovery that showed that the FBI conducted a totally lame media leak investigation in 2002. If a good faith and effective investigation had been conducted, the same prosecutor (Seikaly) would not then have continued the outrageous hyping of the baseless pond and bloodhound stories associated with Hatfill, derailing a balanced understanding of Amerithrax. The DC FBI Field Office head Van Harp’s unwillingness to provide a waiver of confidentiality destroyed the DOJ’s claim that it was committed to a full and successful investigation. Van Harp should have followed Lambert’s example in 2003 of voluntarily submitting to a polygraph and waiver of confidentiality to any reporter. The FBI has allowed Amerithrax to be an anchor around its neck in terms of the world’s perception of the US — it has allowed conspiracy theories to needlessly proliferate that have damaged the country’s standing in world opinion.
Friday, May 9, 2008 11:00 AM Courtroom 20
Judges Ginsburg, Rogers and Kavanaugh
08-5049
Steven Hatfill v. Baltimore Sun Company
15 min per side
“........the American public deserves a real investigation.”
http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/Connolly.pdf
Do you agree with Hatfill’s lawyer? Do we deserve a real investigation?
What do you think he meant by that?