Secrecy Plea Ties Up Torture Flights Case
A lawsuit accusing a San Jose flight-planning company of helping the CIA transport prisoners to overseas torture chambers must be dismissed because it would risk exposing state secrets, a Bush administration lawyer argued Tuesday to a federal judge, who seemed to reluctantly agree.
The five plaintiffs can’t prove that Jeppesen International Trip Planning subjected them to wrongful imprisonment and torture without first showing that the company aided the CIA, that foreign governments collaborated, and that the so-called extraordinary rendition program subjected them to brutal treatment, Justice Department attorney Michael Abate said at a hearing in San Jose. Each one of those assertions depends on classified information that can’t be aired in court, he said.
“Without the information in question, this case cannot be litigated,” Abate told U.S. District Judge James Ware. The result of allowing the government to keep its secrets out of court “can be harsh,” he said, but under the state-secrets doctrine recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court since 1953, “private parties bear that burden on behalf of society.”
Ware did not issue a ruling after the 70-minute hearing, and made it clear that he considered some aspects of the government’s position to be extreme. He questioned Abate’s argument that the imprisonment and interrogation of each plaintiff remained an official secret, even though the men knew how they were treated.
“If they’re in the program, the secret’s disclosed, at least to them,” the judge said. When Abate insisted that legal precedents require official government confirmation to remove the veil of secrecy, Ware said the doctrine known as the state-secrets privilege “should be called a state privilege to do whatever it wants.”
But Ware later questioned the plaintiffs’ ability to prove Jeppesen’s alleged role without secret information. Ben Wizner, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing five people who say they were tortured or abused in overseas prisons, said statements by a company official and records of foreign governments tie Jeppesen to the CIA program, but Ware said he wasn’t sure he could consider them as long as the government claims its relationships with private operators are confidential.
Even when individual liberties are at stake, Ware said, he has to “walk the line” between those liberties and the government’s need to protect military secrets. He promised a prompt ruling.
Jeppesen, a subsidiary of a company owned by Boeing Co., provides a variety of flight-planning services, including routing, weather forecasting, fueling and arranging ground transportation. The suit accused the company of arranging at least 70 flights since 2001, including those of the plaintiffs, as part of the CIA’s program of extraordinary rendition - transporting terrorism suspects to countries beyond the reach of U.S. law for interrogation and detention.
Three of the plaintiffs, still in prison, were tortured in Morocco and Egypt, the suit said. The other two were allegedly abused at a U.S. airbase in Afghanistan and later released.
The Bush administration has acknowledged the existence of the rendition program, which began on a smaller scale under the Clinton administration, but has denied taking prisoners to countries where they were likely to be tortured and says it has been given assurances of humane treatment. The lawsuit, filed last July, named only Jeppesen as a defendant, but the government intervened, as it has done in other cases, and moved for dismissal.
Wizner, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, told Ware the case relies heavily on information that has already been made public. He said President Bush and other top officials have defended the rendition program, CIA Director Michael Hayden has provided numerous details in public appearances, and a Council of Europe report last June identified Jeppesen as the CIA’s aviation services provider.
Wizner also cited a court declaration by former Jeppesen employee Sean Belcher, who said company director Bob Overby told new employees in August 2006 that the company handled “all the extraordinary rendition flights … the torture flights.”
If the suit is dismissed, the ACLU attorney said, “no court will ever be able to say whether the program is legal.” He said the government “has engaged in vigorous public debate” about the rendition program and shouldn’t be allowed to avoid judicial scrutiny of its role.
But Abate, the government’s lawyer, said other courts have recognized that any attempt to decide the legality of rendition - which he called the “terrorist detention and interrogation program” - would require probing the inner workings of the program and of the CIA itself, both off-limits to the judiciary.
E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.
© 2008 The San Francisco Chronicle
Catch 22
Ipso facto. If the government wasn’t guilty and Jeppesen involved, it wouldn’t have intervened. QED, they’re guilty as sin.
Stalin would love this style of government.
Torture can and DOES work.
Torturer to torturee, as he is waterbording the detainee: __ “Are you a terrorits?”
Grugling reply: __ “YUP”
Next wuestion: __ “Do you know any other terrorists?”
Reply: __ “Yup, just take a look around the room.”
“terrorist detention and interrogation program” is Accurate, but who is the terrorist?
I can’t take it anymore!!! There is no “Exit” door. We’re all trapped in this nightmare. Not in my name? I have no choice or recourse.
We all doomed, I tell ya. The only decision left is whether to leave the country or not. If we have no tools to fight with left to us, what is the point of staying?
I guess I’ll hang out a while longer. See if there is an election or not. Maybe we’ll get lucky and there will be an economic collapse. People do funny things for food and shelter……
I something is known by everyone, it’s not a secret!
Is Senator Feinstein feeding that airplane Big Macs and Big Gulps? It seems overweight. Maybe Silicon Valley’s overweight. What percent of the military-industrial complex is located in California’s bay area? Los Angeles? And San Diego? These are places where Hillary Clintock “earned” many delegate votes, ehh? Is Hillary helping to feed the airplane? How many terror plots did they avert through disappearing American citizens to the torture dungeons of “the international community”?? It’s a good thing liberal California tolerates the military-industrial complex or we might have had a terrier strike on the “west coast”.
If the courts allow no justice, one can at least exercise ones right to free speech and picket Jeppesen - and picket those who use them. It needs to be made clear that using an organization that aids and abets torture is shameful and unAmerican. Moves of this kind usually attract the attention of business CEOs.
I’ve never heard this said so I’ll say it:
Our president and the third of the populace who supports him is extremely neurotic. That includes the pro-war and
pro-torture presidential candidates.
The Cuban cartoon of a rather fat Statue of Liberty ducking away from a little, overhead fly was perceptive and accurate.
(The title was “homeland insecurity.”)
We need more stable leaders who aren’t so one-sided, who understand that you’re equally dead when killed by a hurricane, a tornado, automobile, poor health care, or stupidity pills attributable to stunted education.
The terrorists damaged us more through fanning this domestic neurosis than through destroying two buildings with the people inside of them.
Bottle: Excellent comment!
Brilliant. You can’t hear about it because it’s secret, even though it’s publicly acknowledged.
Folks, it’s time to trash the place. What’s to stop us? The law?
Who will throw the first brick?
A bush admin lawyer flew all the way to San Jose to coerce a judge to dismiss a case? Not one representing the CIA or something, but bush!!!!
Should have waited to introduce this one to the docket until after the election.
The UN’s chief torture investigator criticised the US government yesterday for defending the use of “waterboarding”, an interrogation method often described as a form of torture.
Manfred Nowak, the special rapporteur on torture, said: “This is absolutely unacceptable under international human rights law. [The] time has come that the government will actually acknowledge that they did something wrong and not continue trying to justify what is unjustifiable.”
Since our government is no longer legitimate must we still pay taxes?
You only have to pay taxes if you earn less than $200,000 a year. If you earn less than $45,000 a year, you won’t recieve a $600.00 refund check from the money Bush will borrow from China. Everything is just rosy, take a stroll down the primrose lane.
i fully support the forced removal of this administration.
by ANY MEANS NECESSARY.
Rebel Farmer, I share your frustration. However small, the tide is turning. Please stay for the rebirth, you will be badly needed. Yours are the skills and attitudes that form the nucleus of the new American lifeways. I too freak out on occasion, but I never let go of the rudder. I honk and shout and even have an occasional cosmic whimpout, but in the end I owe it to my ancestors and their enormous sacrifices to give voice and life to their beliefs in this new age. I suspect that you will too.
The value of this administration is to see the stark and dark truth of it. It serves as a beacon of darkness so that we might steer clear of it. We need to reach into it and from it’s darkness, pull the light of a new path and give life to it. I can see that happening at Common Dreams. I must admit to enjoying the cynicism and humor though. It lets me know that good conscience is alive and well.