The American Civil Liberties Union says there's nothing particularly remarkable about a classified document it received this fall — nothing except the government's efforts to get it back.

The civil-rights group said this week that it was handed a grand-jury subpoena from the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan on Nov. 20, nearly a month after the ACLU received the document unsolicited and soon after it refused to comply with a prosecutor's demands to turn it over.

The ACLU filed papers under seal in U.S. District Court seeking a judicial order letting it keep the 3 ½-page document, which it said pertains to anti-terrorism efforts. The group called the government's move an attempt to discourage scrutiny.

"The government's attempt to suppress information using the grand-jury process is truly chilling and is unprecedented in law and in the ACLU's history," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero. "We recognize this maneuver for what it is: a patent attempt to intimidate and impede the work of human-rights advocates like the ACLU who seek to expose government wrongdoing."

The U.S. Attorney's Office had no immediate comment, spokeswoman Yusill Scribner said.

Content not revealed

The ACLU did not reveal the content of the document but said it "provides a set of general policy guidelines on a matter of long-standing concern to the ACLU."

The group noted that its issues of long-standing concern include the government's execution of its "war on terror" and attempts to get documents related to government policies and practices regarding torture and the government's compliance with the Geneva Conventions.

The ACLU said it also has pressed the government to renounce torture and other forms of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and to hold accountable senior officials who authorized or condoned such activities.

"Mildly embarrassing"

In court papers unsealed Wednesday, the group said the document might be "mildly embarrassing" to the government but could not threaten national security and did not concern troop movements, communications methods, intelligence sources or the like.

Romero said the subpoena served no legitimate investigative purpose and trampled on fundamental First Amendment rights, adding that it was the "first time in our 86-year history we've been asked to make a document disappear from our files."

ACLU Legal Director Steven Shapiro said the most significant thing about the case was not the content of the document, "but the government's unprecedented effort to suppress it."

The ACLU said the subpoena refers to the Espionage Act, but the group has been told that it is not a target of the investigation.

In court documents, the ACLU said its lawyers could not find a reported judicial ruling that even mentions, much less enforces, a subpoena like the one it received.

"The grand jury cannot be used, as it is being used here, for the purpose of suppressing information," the ACLU said.

© 2006 Associated Press

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