{"id":145130,"date":"2015-03-27T16:59:29","date_gmt":"2015-03-27T16:59:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=145130"},"modified":"2015-03-27T16:59:57","modified_gmt":"2015-03-27T16:59:57","slug":"as-political-secrecy-rises-america-falls-into-darkness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/as-political-secrecy-rises-america-falls-into-darkness\/","title":{"rendered":"As Political Secrecy Rises, America Falls Into Darkness"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sunlight is Fading \u2026 and America Is Falling Into Darkness<\/em><\/p>\n

US Supreme Court Justice Brandeis\u00a0said<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases.\u00a0Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants<\/strong>; electric light the most efficient policeman.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But there\u2019s no longer much sunlight to disinfect the corruption of the government or the powers-that-be.<\/p>\n

More and more commonly, the government prosecutes cases\u00a0based upon \u201csecret evidence\u201d<\/a>\u00a0that they don\u2019t show to the defendant \u2026 or sometimes even the judge hearing the case.<\/p>\n

As just one example, government is\u00a0\u201claundering\u201d information gained through mass surveillance<\/a>\u00a0through other agencies, with an agreement that the agencies will\u00a0\u201crecreate\u201d the evidence in a \u201cparallel construction\u201d<\/a>\u00a0\u2026 so the original source of the evidence is kept secret from the defendant, defense attorneys and the judge.\u00a0 A former top NSA official says that this is the opposite of following the Fourth Amendment, but is a\u00a0\u201ctotalitarian process\u201d which shows that we\u2019re in a \u201cpolice state\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The government uses \u201csecret evidence\u201d to\u00a0spy on Americans<\/a>, prosecute\u00a0leaking<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0terrorism<\/a>\u00a0charges (even against\u00a0U.S. soldiers<\/a>) and even\u00a0assassinate people<\/a>. And see\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0this<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Secret witnesses<\/a>\u00a0are being used in some cases. And sometimes lawyers are being\u00a0prevented from reading their\u00a0own<\/em>\u00a0briefs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Indeed, even the\u00a0laws\u00a0themselves<\/em>\u00a0are now starting to be kept secret<\/a>. And it\u2019s about to\u00a0get a lot worse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

American citizens are also being detained in\u00a0Guantanamo-like conditions in Chicago<\/a>\u00a0\u2026 including being held in secret, with the government refusing to tell a suspect\u2019s lawyer whether his client is being held.\u00a0 And see\u00a0this<\/a>,\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0this<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Department of Defense has also made it a secret \u2014 even from Congress \u2014 as to the identity of the main\u00a0enemies<\/em>\u00a0of the United States<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Today, Glenn Greenwald\u00a0adds<\/a>\u00a0yet another twist to the trend towards secrecy:<\/p>\n

A truly stunning debasement\u00a0of the U.S. justice system just occurred through the joint efforts\u00a0of the Obama Justice Department and a meek and frightened Obama-appointed federal judge, Edgardo Ramos, all in order to protect an extremist neocon front group from scrutiny and accountability.\u00a0The details\u00a0are crucial for understanding the magnitude of the abuse here.<\/p>\n

At the center of it is\u00a0an anti-Iranian group calling itself\u00a0\u201cUnited Against Nuclear Iran<\/a>\u201d (UANI),\u00a0which is\u00a0very likely\u00a0a front for some combination of the Israeli and U.S. intelligence services. When launched, NBC\u00a0described its mission<\/a>\u00a0as waging \u201ceconomic and psychological warfare\u201d against Iran. The group\u00a0was\u00a0founded\u00a0and is\u00a0run and guided by aroster of U.S., Israeli and British neocon extremists<\/a>\u00a0such as Joe Lieberman, former Bush Homeland Security adviser (and current CNN \u201canalyst\u201d) Fran Townsend, former CIA Director James Woolsey, and former Mossad Director Meir Dagan. One of its key advisers is Olli Heinonen, who just co-authored\u00a0a\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0Op-Ed<\/a>\u00a0with former Bush CIA\/NSA Director Michael Hayden\u00a0arguing that Washington is being too soft on Tehran.<\/p>\n

This\u00a0group of neocon extremists was\u00a0literally just immunized by a federal court\u00a0from the rule of law. That was based on the claim \u2013 advocated by the Obama DOJ and accepted by Judge Ramos\u00a0\u2013 that subjecting them to litigation for their actions would risk disclosure of vital \u201cstate secrets.\u201d The court\u2019s ruling was based on assertions\u00a0made through completely secret proceedings between the court and the U.S. government, with everyone else \u2013 including the lawyers for the parties \u2013\u00a0kept in the dark.<\/p>\n

In May 2013, UANI\u00a0launched<\/a>\u00a0a \u201cname and shame\u201d campaign designed to publicly identify \u2013 and malign \u2013 any individuals or entities\u00a0enabling trade with Iran. One of the accused was the shipping company of Greek billionaire Victor Restis, who vehemently denies the accusation. He hired an American law firm and sued UANI for defamation in a New York federal court, claiming the \u201cname and shame\u201d campaign destroyed his reputation.<\/p>\n

Up until that point, there was nothing\u00a0unusual\u00a0about any of this: just a garden-variety defamation case brought in court by someone who claims that public statements made about him are damaging and false. That happens every day. But then something quite extraordinary happened: In September of last year, the U.S. government, which was not a party, formally intervened in the lawsuit, and demanded that the court refuse to hear Restis\u2019s claims and instead dismiss the lawsuit against UANI before it could even start, on the ground that allowing the case\u00a0to proceed would damage national security.<\/p>\n

When the DOJ intervened in this case and asserted the \u201cstate secrets privilege,\u201d it confounded almost everyone.\u00a0The New York Times\u2019s Matt Apuzzo\u00a0noted<\/a>\u00a0at the time\u00a0that \u201cthe group is not affiliated with the government, and lists no government contracts on its tax forms. The government has cited no precedent for using the so\u00ad-called state\u00ad secrets privilege to quash a private lawsuit that does not focus on government activity.\u201d He quoted the ACLU\u2019s Ben Wizner as saying: \u201cI have never seen anything like this.\u201d\u00a0Reuters\u2019s\u00a0Allison Frankel\u00a0labeled<\/a>\u00a0the DOJ\u2019s involvement a \u201cmystery\u201d and said \u201cthe government\u2019s brief is maddeningly opaque about its interest in a private libel case.\u201d<\/p>\n

Usually, when the U.S. government asserts the\u00a0\u201cstate secrets privilege,\u201d it is because they are a party to the lawsuit, being sued\u00a0for their own allegedly illegal acts (such as torture or warrantless surveillance), and they claim that national security would be harmed if they are forced to defend themselves. In rare cases, they do intervene and assert the privilege in lawsuits\u00a0between private parties, but only where the subject of the litigation is a government program and one of the parties is a government contractor involved in\u00a0that program\u00a0\u2013 such as when torture victims sued a Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen, for its role in providing airplanes for the rendition program and the Obama DOJ insisted (successfully) that the case not go forward, and the victim of U.S. torture was thus\u00a0told that he could not even have a day in court<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But in this case, there is no apparent U.S. government conduct at issue in the lawsuit. At least based on what they\u00a0claim about themselves<\/a>, UANI is just \u201ca not-for-profit, non-partisan, advocacy group\u201d that seeks to \u201ceducate\u201d the public about the dangers of Iran\u2019s nuclear program. Why would such a group like this even possess \u201cstate secrets\u201d? It would be illegal to give them such material. Or\u00a0could it be that\u00a0the CIA or some other U.S. government agency has created and controls the group, which would be a form of government-disseminated propaganda, which\u00a0happens to be illegal?<\/p>\n

What else could explain the basis for the U.S. government\u2019s argument that allowing UANI to be sued would risk the disclosure of vital \u201cstate secrets\u201d besides a desire to cover up something quite untoward if not illegal? What \u201cstate secrets\u201d could possibly be disclosed\u00a0by suing a nice, little \u201cnot-for-profit, non-partisan, advocacy group\u201d?<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know the answers to those questions, nor do the lawyers for the plaintiffs whose lawsuit the DOJ wants dismissed. That\u2019s because, beyond the bizarre DOJ intervention itself, the extreme secrecy that shaped the judicial proceedings is hard to overstate. Usually, when the U.S. government asserts the \u201cstate secrets privilege,\u201d at least some information is made public about what they are claiming: which official or department is invoking the privilege, the general nature of the secrets allegedly at risk, the reasons why allowing the claims to be adjudicated would risk disclosure, etc. Some\u00a0redacted version of the affidavit<\/a>\u00a0from the government official making the secrecy claim is made part of the case.<\/p>\n

Here, virtually everything has been hidden, even from the plaintiffs\u2019 lawyers. Not only did the U.S. government provide no clue as to what the supposedly endangered \u201cstate secrets\u201d are, but they concealed\u00a0even the identity of the agency making the claim: was it the CIA, the Treasury Department, the State Department, some combination? Nothing is known about any of this, not even\u00a0who\u00a0is making the secrecy claim.<\/p>\n

Instead, the DOJ\u2019s arguments about why \u201csecrecy\u201d compels dismissal of the entire lawsuit were made\u00a0in a brief that\u00a0only Judge Ramos (and not even the parties) gets to read, but even more amazingly, were elaborated on\u00a0in secret meetings by\u00a0DOJ lawyers\u00a0in the judge\u2019s chambers with nobody else present.\u00a0Were recordings or transcripts of these meetings made? Is\u00a0there any record of what the U.S. government whispered in the ear of the judge to scare him into believing that National Security Would Be Harmed\u00e2\u201e\u00a2 if he allowed the case to proceed? Nobody knows.\u00a0The whole process is veiled in total secrecy, labeled a \u201cjudicial proceeding\u201d but containing none of the transparency, safeguards or adversarial process that characterizes minimally fair courts.<\/p>\n

This sham worked. This week, Judge Ramos issued his\u00a0ruling dismissing the entire lawsuit<\/a>\u00a0(see below). As a result of the DOJ\u2019s protection, UANI cannot be sued. Among other things, it means this group of neocon extremists\u00a0now has a license to defame anyone they want. They can destroy your reputation with false accusations in a highly public campaign, and when you sue them for it, the DOJ will come in and whisper in the judge\u2019s ear that national security will be damaged if \u2013 like everyone else in the world \u2013 UANI\u00a0must answer in a court of law for their conduct. And\u00a0subservient judicial officials\u00a0like Judge Ramos will obey the U.S. government\u2019s dictates and dismiss your lawsuit before it begins, without your having any idea why that even happened.<\/p>\n

Worse, in his written ruling, the judge expressly acknowledges that dismissal of the entire lawsuit at the start on secrecy grounds is what he calls a \u201charsh sanction,\u201d and also acknowledges that \u201cit is particularly so in this case because\u00a0Plaintiffs not only do not get their day in court, but cannot be told why<\/strong>\u201d (emphasis added). But he does it anyway, in a perfunctory 18-page opinion that does little other than re-state some basic legal principles, and then just concludes that everything the government whispered in his ear should be accepted. Just read for yourself what Judge Ramos said in defending his dismissal to see how wildly disparate it is from everything we\u2019re propagandized to believe about the U.S. justice system:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What kind of \u201cjustice system\u201d allows a neocon \u201cadvocacy\u201d group to be immunized from the law, because the U.S. government waltzed into court, met privately with the judge, and whispered in secret that he had better dismiss all claims against that group lest he harm national security?\u00a0To describe what happened here is to illustrate what a perverse travesty it is.\u00a0Restis\u2019s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement this week:<\/p>\n

We are disappointed that some secret relationship between UANI and the government allows UANI to hide from disclosing that association or to defend what has now been proven to be its false and defamatory allegations directed at Mr. Restis and his company. We are mystified that the U.S. government has such a stake in this case that it would take such extraordinary steps to prevent full disclosure of the secret interest it has with UANI or others. And, we are concerned that, in our court system, such a result could occur on the basis of sealed, one-sided filings and meetings in which we were not allowed to participate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Indeed, the government is\u00a0going to incredible lengths<\/a>\u00a0to keep secrets, including:<\/p>\n