STATE SECRETS, SHHHT!
You know, Tubularsock was just sitting around and guess what came to his mind?
Yep. State Secrets!
Rather funny how the mind works. Anyway, did you know that the entire legal foundation for the government use of the “state secrets privilege” is based on a false sense of faith and out right fraud?
Yeah, really.
It all happened back in the day, you know, the “good ol’ days” of 1948. A B-29 Superfortress was being used to conduct a secret military weapons program and the B-29 crashed and killed three civil engineers.
The widows sued the government for negligence, seeking compensation. The government claimed that it could not provide the accident report for national security reasons.
The US Appeals Court (1951)
found that “. . . the executive branch of government could not unilaterally refuse to hand over classified documents requested during the course of a trial, and justify its decision merely by its own say-so”.
The government appealed the case and it ends up at the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court rejected the Appeals Court decision and, in the landmark 1953 decision United States v. Reynolds, the Supreme Court first established the government's right to deny evidence based solely on executive word that it would compromise state secrets.
The reason rests on Chief Justice Fred Vinson and it went like this: We must believe the government, “. . . when it claims [the accident] would reveal state secrets. We must trust that the government is telling the truth.”
Ok, Tubularsock admits that looking at Fred you’d figure a brainless dead man would be the only guy who’d
“ . . . trust that the government is telling the truth” even in 1953 but not so. The decision was based on a 5 - 4 vote.
But here is the best part ................ jump to the year 2000.
The above mentioned accident report is declassified.
And guess what ..............
You already knew it, didn’t you. The accident report had no secret classified information in it at all, what it did show was the Air Force was negligent in the known facts that the B-29 had a history of fuel leaks and that its engines overheated and should have heat shields installed. This plane had not been installed with heat shields and the engines caught fire and it crashed. All of this information were known problems of the B-29’s so nothing in the accident report was really a secret.
The real issue was that NO ONE ON THE COURT looked at the accident report based on Vinson’s assumption “. . . that the government is telling the truth”.
It also brings to the forefront that the Air Force lawyers who did know what was in the report committed fraud in front of both the Appeals Court as well as the Supreme Court. So much for trust.
But, of course ...... the logic gets worse.
The children of the families involved with the help of a Philadelphia attorney filed a petition with the Supreme Court
aimed only at addressing the error of fact that was included in the affidavit, and thereby granting the survivors the damages to which they were originally entitled. This kind of
of petition is called a writ of error in coram nobis or in Tubelaw speak, YGFU.( “you-guys-fucked-up” if you happen not to read Tubelaw speak)
Well the Supreme Court denied the petition but it was refiled
as Herring v. United States in 2003 and the trial court found no fraud in the government's claim of privilege in 1953.
Oh yeah, it was appealed and in 2005, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit upheld the decision that there was no fraud found. The reason,”. . . there was no fraud because the documents, read in their historical context, could have revealed secret information about the equipment being tested on the plane". Dah, what? Makes you wonder if the Appeals Court judges read the accident report doesn’t it. Because the
“historical context” of the accident report contains no military secrets, but indicated that an engine fire resulting from poor maintenance had likely caused the accident, which means that the refusal to let the original court see the report on grounds of national security was merely a pretext for covering up the real truth.
Do the judges on the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit get paid for this lack of intelligence or do they do it for free?
So, you may ask, who gives a flying fu**? (fuck, for those who don’t understand **)
Well after giving you this much information you at least should get the punch line ............... AND IT’S EVEN
GOOD NEWS!
Because of this case the judges in many different cases are now questioning the entire concept of the state secret privilege and demanding more than just the governments word for it. This is just beginning to happen but it has to start someplace.
As Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University states: "What seems clear is that until a year or two ago, the judges rarely even questioned it when the government raised the 'state secrets' claim. It was a neutron bomb - no plaintiffs left standing. But we're now seeing that judges are starting to actually look behind the government's secrecy claims and see what's really there.
Now even this in Tubularsock’s mind isn’t enough because you know that at least 95% of “state secrets” claims have only to do with embarrassment or out and out fraud by government officials.
Now don’t think Tubularsock is always so negative because hey, looking from a positive point of view, 5% of “state secrets” are legitimate. Feel better?
Sunday, August 9, 2009
