Supreme Court Rejects ACLU Case Against CIA

Posted on October 9, 2007

â€ The Supreme Court on Tuesday terminated a lawsuit from a man who claims he was abducted and tortured by the CIA, effectively endorsing Bush administration arguments that state secrets would be revealed if the case were allowed to proceed.

Khaled el-Masri, 44, alleged that he was kidnapped by CIA agents in Europe and held in an Afghan prison for four months in a case of mistaken identity.

The administration has not publicly acknowledged that el-Masri was detained, and lower courts dismissed his suit after the administration asserted that state secrets would be revealed if the lawsuit were not blocked. The justices rejected his appeal without comment.

The case had been seen as a test of the administrationâ€™s legal strategy to stop it and several other national security lawsuits by invoking the doctrine of state secrets. Another lawsuit over the administrationâ€™s warrantless wiretapping program, also dismissed on state secrets grounds, still is pending before the justices.â€

Naturally the ACLU and the left are quite upset.

“This Administration has invoked the state secrets privilege not to protect national security, but to protect itself from embarrassment and accountability,” said ACLU attorney Ben Wizner, who argued El-Masri’s case before the Fourth Circuit last November. “Mr. El-Masri’s case should be a powerful reminder that when our government abandons the rule of law, innocent victims suffer the consequences.”

The history-making lawsuit charges that former CIA Director George Tenet violated U.S. and universal human rights laws when he authorized agents to abduct Mr. El-Masri, beat him, drug him, and transport him to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan. The corporations that owned and operated the airplanes used to transport Mr. El-Masri are also named in the case.

Unfortunately for the ACLU lower courts and finally the Supreme Court all slapped down the case. It was probably an obvious no-brainer for all of them.

I’m with MacRanger:

Well, itâ€™s not so good for Khaled el-Masri, but then I as blogged before I - like a few such as George Tenant - doubt his story. But heâ€™s not the important point of the story.

Iâ€™m not a legal beagle, but this would apparently foretell a good result on the WTP as well.

I never understood what constitutional rights the ACLU were defending for a German against the U.S. in the first place. It must have had to do with some international law mumbo jumbo.

Captain Ed:

The US can’t just allow people all over the world to sue our intel operations to a standstill. It’s not the optimal situation, but we do have a national interest in keeping personal-injury lawyers from wrecking our homeland defense systems. That to me outweighs the interest of Masri and the precedent his suit would have set.

» Filed Under 1st Amendment, ACLU, Illegal Activities, News, War On Terror

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One Response to “Supreme Court Rejects ACLU Case Against CIA”

Scottorama on October 10th, 2007 7:56 am

Hats off to the Supreme Court. They were absolutely right in striking down this case. Protecting U.S. national security is a complicated and sometimes messy operation. Mistakes will be made, but the system does not need an overhaul. It has kept Americans safe from terror since 9/11.