Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In federal courts and on Capitol Hill, challenges are brewing to a key legal strategy President Bush is using to protect a secret surveillance program that monitors phone calls and e-mails inside the United States. Under grilling from lawmakers and attack by lawsuits alleging Bush authorized the illegal wiretapping of Americans, the White House has invoked a legal defense known as the "state secrets" doctrine — a claim that the president has inherent and unchecked power to shield national security information from disclosure, either to plaintiffs in court or to congressional overseers. The principle was established a...

A federal appeals court in San Francisco today handed a major victory to the Bush administration, ruling that a lawsuit challenging the government's warrantless wiretapping program could not go forward because of the "state secrets" privilege. In a 3-0 decision, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the government, which had argued that allowing an Islamic charity's claims that it was illegally spied upon to go forward would threaten national security. In the opinion, Judge M. Margaret McKeown flatly rejected the government's argument that "the very subject matter of the litigation is a state secret." However, after reviewing...

In this opinion just released this morning, three Judges of the Ninth Circuit, including one of the most liberal anti-government judges in the Country, Harry Pregerson, sided with the Administration on its asserting of the “State Secrets” privilege in a lawsuit brought by Islamic groups and others against both the government. and the telecommunication companies that helped put in place the terrorist surveillance program that involved the use of warrantless wiretaps. The court first ruled that the existence of the program was no longer a state secret because the Admin. confirmed its existence and some of its details following the...

DOJ Will Assert Military and State Secrets Privilege and Request Dismissal of Lawsuit San Francisco - The United States government filed a "Statement of Interest" Friday in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF's) class-action lawsuit against AT&T, announcing that the government would "assert the military and state secrets privilege" and "intervene to seek dismissal" of the case. EFF's lawsuit accuses AT&T of collaborating with the National Security Agency in its massive surveillance program. EFF's evidence regarding AT&T's dragnet surveillance of its networks, currently filed under seal, includes a declaration by Mark Klein, a retired AT&T telecommunications technician, and several internal AT&T...