Re: a sort of truth commission: FOIA
- From: "Jerry Okamura" <okamuraj005@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 3 Sep 2009 18:02:43 -1000
Would it have been better to kill these guys rather than detain them and perhaps treat some of them inhumanely?
"arthur wouk" <awouk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1251658670.257630@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
A.C.L.U. Lawyers Mine Documents for Truth
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON -- In the spring of 2003, long before Abu Ghraib or secret
prisons became part of the American vocabulary, a pair of recently hired
lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union
noticed a handful of news reports about allegations of abuse of prisoners
in American custody.
The lawyers, Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh, wondered: Was there a broader
pattern of abuse, and could a Freedom of Information Act request uncover
it? Some of their colleagues, more experienced with the frustrations of
such document demands, were skeptical. One made a tongue-in-cheek offer of
$1 for every page they turned up.
Six years later, the detention document request and subsequent lawsuit are
among the most successful in the history of public disclosure, with 130,000
pages of previously secret documents released to date and the prospect of
more.
The case has produced revelation after revelation: battles between the
Federal Bureau of Investigation and the military over the treatment of
detainees at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp; autopsy reports on prisoners
who died in custody in Afghanistan and Iraq; the Justice Department's
long-secret memorandums justifying harsh interrogation methods; and
day-by-day descriptions of what happened inside the Central
Intelligence Agency's overseas prisons.
"This is certainly a landmark case in every respect, including in the
history of the Freedom of Information Act," said Steven Aftergood, director
of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American
Scientists and an expert on the act.
But Mr. Aftergood said the case also illustrated how costly litigation was
often necessary to unearth documents the government preferred to protect.
"The law gives you standing to fight," he said. "It doesn't guarantee
victory."
In fact, the A.C.L.U. and its partners, a New Jersey law firm, Gibbons
P.C., and four other advocacy groups, estimate that they have put more than
10,000 hours of legal work into the case. The parties have filed more than
100 motions before Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the United States
District Court in Manhattan; appeared for formal court arguments a dozen
times; and twice taken disputes to the Court of Appeals for the Second
Circuit. And now, for the first time, the government is seeking a hearing
before the Supreme Court.
The total costs in lawyers' time and other expenses may exceed $2 million,
and under the law, the plaintiffs are entitled to seek reimbursement from
the government if they "substantially prevail" in their quest -- a standard
almost certainly met in this case.
The Freedom of Information Act has a mixed reputation with advocates,
journalists and companies who use it regularly. It can be notoriously slow
to generate results, and in the case of classified documents -- the vast
majority of the records at issue in the A.C.L.U. case -- the pages often
come back with all or most of the content blacked out.
Agencies sometimes do not take a case seriously until the requestor takes
the government to court. The A.C.L.U.'s initial October 2003 request for
documents on the treatment of prisoners produced a single document -- an
innocuous set of State Department "talking points" -- before the
organization filed suit in June 2004, joined by the Center for
Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common
Sense and Veterans for Peace.
Documents began to flow only after September 2004, when Judge Hellerstein
issued a ruling criticizing the "glacial pace" of the government's response
and added, "If the documents are more of an embarrassment than a secret,
the public should know of our government's treatment of individuals
captured and held abroad."
Mr. Jaffer, 37, a Canadian-born lawyer who left a lucrative practice with a
private firm to join the A.C.L.U., said, "Maybe our inexperience was a good
thing, because we actually thought we might get something."
Ms. Singh, 40, the daughter of the Indian prime minister, Manmohan
Singh, graduated from Yale Law School, is married to an American and holds
dual Indian and American citizenship.
Ms. Singh recalls being teased by a senior colleague in 2003 who asked,
" `Are you clearing out shelf space for all the documents you'll get?' "
The joke backfired, as reams of paper began to arrive. The organization
eventually had to create a new computer system to handle the large
electronic database, and in 2007 the two lawyers published a book-length
collection of the documents obtained by then, called "Administration of
Torture."
The largest share of documents (2,814) have come from the Defense
Department, the A.C.L.U. said, followed by the State Department (998), the
F.B.I. (872), other units in the Justice Department (145) and the C.I.A.
(49).
A C.I.A. spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, said the agency "takes very seriously
-- and devotes considerable resources to meeting -- its legal obligations
under the Freedom of Information Act" and has released tens of millions of
pages of documents over the years.
But the recent C.I.A. disclosures caused deep unease inside the agency.
Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the former C.I.A. director, said releasing
documents the agency had designated as top secret could undermine crucial
cooperation from foreign intelligence services. The decision by
President Obama in April to release Justice Department memorandums
describing C.I.A. interrogation methods is leading to a cascade of
disclosures, General Hayden said.
Four former C.I.A. directors and the current one, Leon E. Panetta, had
all argued unsuccessfully against the release, which had not yet been
ordered by the court in the A.C.L.U. case, though the plaintiffs' lawyers
said they believed that the release would eventually happen.
"We got publicly rolled," General Hayden said. "So our foreign partners may
say there is no value to our promise in the future that `Don't worry, we
can keep this secret.' "
In May, Mr. Obama decided to fight the release of hundreds of photographs
of abuse, saying they could encourage attacks on American troops abroad. It
is the photo issue that the administration is taking to the Supreme Court.
The A.C.L.U.'s success has led some news organizations to take a new look
at the potential of the Freedom of Information Act to expose government
secrets. But the A.C.L.U. lawyers note that their effort has repeatedly fed
off the work of investigative reporters who have identified cases of abuse,
legal opinions and other documents that the organization then pursued in
court.
Their lawsuit continues. On Monday, the government faces yet another
court-imposed deadline to turn over more documents -- including the 2001
presidential directive authorizing the secret prisons -- or explain why
they must be withheld.
2 Detainees Released to Portugal
LISBON (AP) -- Two Syrians previously held at the American detention center
at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have arrived in Portugal as free men, the
government said Saturday.
The Internal Administration Ministry said there were no charges against the
two, who were not identified. "They expressed an interest in being given
shelter by Portugal, are not subject to any charges, are free men and will
live in residences granted by the state," the ministry said in a statement.
The Syrians can move freely around the country and can leave it if they
obtain visas, the ministry said.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
--
"be wary of mathematicians..especially when they speak the truth."
--sT. Augustine
to email me, delete blackhole. from my return address
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