The U.S. Government asserted the state secrets privilege last week in a private lawsuit to which the government is not a party and moved for dismissal of the case.

Greek businessman Victor Restis had filed a lawsuit last year against the private advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), alleging that the group had falsely and maliciously accused Restis of engaging in illict commerce with Iran. UANI, whose advisory board includes numerous former government officials, said the Restis complaint was “meritless.”

On Friday, an unidentified agency within the U.S. Government asserted the state secrets privilege in the case, for reasons that were not disclosed, and asked the court to dismiss the entire proceeding.

“A formal claim of privilege has been asserted by the head of the concerned federal agency based upon his or her personal consideration of the matter,” according to an unclassified memorandum filed by the government. “The identity of the concerned federal agency, the particular information at issue, and the bases for the assertion of the state secrets privilege cannot be disclosed without revealing classified and privileged matters.”

“Further, while the United States takes this position reluctantly and only after careful consideration, the only appropriate course in light of this privilege assertion is to dismiss this action in its entirety,” the government memorandum said.

This is a peculiar and seemingly illogical state of affairs, according to Abbe D. Lowell, attorney for the plaintiff Victor Restis.

He told the court in an April letter that there are three possible categories of documents at stake in the case: “(1) those created by UANI itself; (2) those received from third parties other than the Government; and (3) those received from the Government itself.”

“No privilege can apply to the first two categories,” Mr. Lowell wrote, “and with respect to the third category, any privilege that could have applied has been waived if the Government gave them to Defendants.”

Meanwhile, because of the assertion of privilege, Mr. Lowell wrote in a June letter, “Defendants [UANI] do not have to defend their conduct because they can hide behind the U.S. Government and refuse to produce the bulk of relevant documents.”

The government acknowledged in its privilege memorandum that its proposal to dismiss the case on state secrets grounds was unfair to the parties, but it said that it was the lesser of two evils.

“Although dismissal of claims is undeniably a harsh result, ‘the results are harsh in either direction’ because harm to national security is also at issue, and ‘the state secret doctrine finds the greater public good — ultimately the less harsh remedy — to be dismissal.”

Furthermore, “dismissal should not be taken to mean that any of the alleged defamatory statements concerning the plaintiffs and their activities that are at issue in this lawsuit are either true or false,” the government memorandum said. “Dismissal … is not being sought by the United States on behalf of the defendants, and should not be understood to reflect a favorable or unfavorable determination as to the the truth or falsity of defendants’ statements…. Rather, the privilege is being asserted, and dismissal is being sought by the United States, solely to protect against a reasonable danger of harm to national security interests.”

Although an assertion of the state secrets privilege in private litigation is unusual, it is not unheard of. A 2011 review of pending cases by the Department of Justice said that “Several of the cases in which the privilege was invoked involved purely private litigation — not challenges to Executive Branch conduct.”

The Justice Department’s 2009 revision of its policy on asserting the state secrets privilege has had little visible impact. There has been no known case in which assertion of the privilege was “narrowly tailored” to permit an affected lawsuit to proceed, as the revision proposed. Nor is there any known case in which a privileged matter has been referred to an agency Inspector General for adjudication, as had been suggested. As for the Department’s commitment to provide “periodic reports” to Congress on use of the privilege, it has yielded only a single such report, more than three years ago.

It is entirely proper for a court to conduct in camera review of documents and testimony that the government asserts are subject to the state secrets privilege, said the plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the “no fly” list.

The Justice Department had argued that judicial review of privileged documents was “inappropriate” and asked Judge Anthony J. Trenga of the Eastern District of Virginia to reconsider his order requiring such review. (Gov’t Resists Court Review of State Secrets, Secrecy News, August 27.)

But “the state secrets privilege… was never intended to provide the federal government with a blank check to usurp the rights of Americans in novel and profound ways,” countered Gadeir Abbas, attorney for Gulet Mohamed, who is challenging the “no fly” procedure.

“This Court’s August 6th Order [requiring in camera review of the contested documents] is an appropriate exercise of its authority to subject the federal government’s limiting-principle-free assertion of the state secrets privilege to some scrutiny,” Mr. Abbas wrote in his September 5 response.

A ruling from the Court is pending.

Whether the government’s argument prevails or not, Mr. Abbas noted that the 2013 Watchlisting Guidance which the government sought to withhold has been published online by The Intercept.

Attorney General Holder “had asserted the state secrets privilege over this document, but because it is now publicly available, the Court can consider it in its entirety,” he wrote.

It is “not appropriate” for a court to conduct its own independent review of evidence that the government asserts is protected by the state secrets privilege, attorneys for the government argued last week.

They were objecting to an order that was issued in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the “no fly” list in the case of Gulet Mohamed v. Eric Holder. On August 6, Judge Anthony J. Trenga of the Eastern District of Virginia ordered the government to submit for in camera review a copy of all documents and testimony relevant to the case that it asserts fall under the state secrets privilege.

Instead, government attorneys asked Judge Trenga in an August 22 motion to reconsider his order “on the ground that the required submission [of assertedly privileged material] is not appropriate or necessary for evaluation of whether the state secrets privilege should be upheld or whether dismissal is necessary, in light of the information already provided to the Court on those issues.”

“The Government has provided… a thorough description of the harm to national security that would result from the disclosure of the privileged information. The additional submissions ordered by the Court would not assist in that determination,” they added.

But the kind of in camera review that the government attorneys objected to is actually among the “best practices” that should be adopted in all state secrets cases, according to a 2008 Senate Judiciary Committee report on the State Secrets Protection Act, a bill that was intended to regulate the use of the privilege.

The Act, introduced by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, the late Sen. Arlen Specter, and Sen. Patrick Leahy, would have “instruct[ed] courts to avoid excessively deferential standards of review and to retain full control over privilege determinations.”

Among other requirements, the Act required that “The Government must make all evidence it claims is subject to the privilege available for the court to review…. If the Government refuses to turn over evidence or to provide a non-privileged substitute ordered by the court, the court will resolve the relevant issue of fact or law against the Government.”

The Act’s provision for in camera judicial review of privileged materials “makes crystal-clear that the court, not the executive branch, determines which items of evidence are privileged,” the Senate report said. “It requires the court to consider the actual evidence, rather than rely on Government affidavits or representations about the evidence, in making this determination.”

This is one of the steps needed to resolve “the crisis of legitimacy currently surrounding the [state secrets] privilege,” the Senate report said.

However, several Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee disputed the need for the State Secrets Protection Act. They said in dissenting views appended to the report that the right balance had already been struck. The Act was never enacted into law and no other guidance on the use of the privilege has emerged from Congress.

Therefore, it will be up to Judge Trenga and his judicial colleagues to determine the proper scope and application of the state secrets privilege in each individual case.

Attorneys for the Plaintiff Gulet Mohamed said that they would oppose the government’s motion for reconsideration.

 

The plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the use of the “no fly list” to bar a US citizen from boarding an aircraft said last week that he would introduce a leaked copy of the government’s Watchlisting Guidance “to show just how objectionable and evidence-free Defendants’ watch listing process is.”

The government said it did not acknowledge the authenticity of the leaked document, and that the case should be dismissed since the Attorney General had invoked the state secrets privilege concerning core issues that it raised.

The lawsuit was filed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on behalf of Gulet Mohamed, who said his constitutional rights had been violated by placing him on the no fly list.

In May 2014, Attorney General Eric Holder filed a declaration asserting the state secrets privilege over documents and information that it said would be needed to litigate the case, and the government moved for dismissal of the entire matter.

Among other things, the Attorney General said that the state secrets privilege extended to the current Watchlisting Guidance that spells out the criteria and procedures for placing an individual on the no fly list.

“The Guidance sets forth, in detail, the Government’s comprehensive watchlist scheme related to the identification and placement of individuals in terrorism screening watchlists,” AG Holder wrote in his May 27, 2014 declaration asserting the privilege.

“If the Guidance were released, it would provide a clear roadmap to undermine the Government’s screening efforts, a key counterterrorism measure, and thus, its disclosure reasonably could be expected to cause significant harm to national security,” he wrote.

But then last month, the online publication The Intercept reported on the Watchlisting Guidance and published the document itself. (The Secret Government Rulebook for Labeling You a Terrorist by Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux, July 23.)

In an August 15 statement to the Court, the CAIR attorneys for Gulet Mohamed said that they would file a copy of the Guidance and another leaked document in a Notice this week.

“Plaintiff will argue that this document is relevant, not only to show just how objectionable and evidence-free Defendants’ watch listing process is, but also to how this Court handles Defendants’ state secrets privilege,” the attorneys wrote.

In the same August 15 statement, the government said it would not confirm that the documents to be filed by CAIR are authentic, or even that they had actually been leaked.

“Defendants do not acknowledge the authenticity of the purportedly leaked documents, and will respond to the proposed Notice in due course,” attorneys for the government stated.

While withholding confirmation, however, they have stopped short of affirmatively disputing that the documents are authentic.

The Gulet Mohamed case is believed to be the most recent instance of the government’s use of the state secrets privilege.

In a 2011 report to Congress, the Justice Department had said it would try not to employ the privilege in a way that would require dismissal of an entire complaint.

“While invocation of the privilege may result in the dismissal of some claims, the Department’s policy seeks to avoid that result whenever possible, consistent with national security interests.”

But in this case, the government told the Court that nothing short of complete dismissal would do.

“If the Attorney General’s privilege assertion is upheld, as it should be, the law requires that the Court then consider the consequences of the exclusion of the privileged information,” the Department said in a May 28 memo elaborating its position. “Here, because properly protected national security information would go to the core of the claims and defenses, this case cannot proceed in the absence of that information, and, under established Fourth Circuit authority, the case must be dismissed.”

Attorneys for the plaintiff disputed that view, and said the case could and should proceed.

“Simply put, just as federal courts in Latif and Ibrahim [other cases involving the no fly list] found a way to litigate the merits of No Fly List claims without imperiling state secrets, this Court can do so here as well,” the CAIR attorneys wrote in a July 7 rejoinder. “Though Plaintiff will seek additional non-privileged information from Defendants, it is important to note at the outset that Plaintiff can, if need be, litigate this case without further discovery from Defendants,” they wrote.

The case is being heard by Judge Anthony J. Trenga of the Eastern District of Virginia. He has yet to rule on the pending Government motion for dismissal on state secrets grounds.

In a move that may imply a degree of skepticism concerning the proposed application of the privilege, Judge Trenga ordered the government to submit for in camera review a copy of all documents and a summary of all testimony relevant to the case that it asserts fall under the state secrets privilege. The materials are to be provided to the Court under seal by September 7, Judge Trenga wrote in an August 6 order.

For further background, see 2008 Obama Would Have Slammed 2014 Obama for This Government Secrecy Case by Nick Baumann, Mother Jones, July 14, 2014; and Over Government Objections, Rules on No-Fly List Are Made Public by Charlie Savage, New York Times, July 23, 2014.