Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
The Obama administration continues its pattern of invoking the State Secrets Privilege in every single case filed by anyone against any operation taken in alleged pursuit of the war on terrorism. The new case was filed by an American citizen named Amir Mohamed Meshal who was arrested and taken to a secret CIA prison in Somalia.
Meshal says that U.S. officials threatened him with torture, forced disappearance and other serious harm unless he confessed to ties with al-Qaida in Somalia.Meshal became caught up in anti-terrorism operations in the Horn of Africa. He and thousands of other civilians fled Somalia where he says he had gone in 2006 to study Islam. Ethiopian troops invaded Somalia with tacit U.S. government backing in support of a weak, but internationally backed, government and Meshal was apprehended in a joint U.S.-Kenyan-Ethiopian operation along the Somalia-Kenya border.
The government now admits that Meshal has done nothing wrong and has no ties to Al Qaeda. The judge in the case, according to the Washington Post, reacted skeptically to the Obama administration's invocation of the SSP.
Lawyers for some of the defendants said Meshal's lawsuit should be thrown out because of the sensitivity of national security operations outside the United States.Court precedents counsel caution in such circumstances against letting lawsuits go forward, Justice Department attorney Mary Mason argued.
Sullivan disagreed, saying that no aspect of the case involves matters taking place in a war zone and that federal courts routinely deal with sensitive national security issues.
That's a good thing, but who knows what an appeals court might do.
Politics
Comments
Yep. We're all Nazis now. We do whatever the hell we want, there's no accountability, and the citizens are screwed. Seig heil.
Posted by: Tualha | July 19, 2011 12:11 PM
It's sad, given how chaotic Southern Somalia is, that even in places where the United States is present, the law still does not apply.
Posted by: Imrryr | July 19, 2011 12:33 PM
It's clear [This comment has been redacted in accordance with United States v. Reynolds (345 U.S. 1)]!
Posted by: NJ | July 19, 2011 1:12 PM
well there's your answer:
"a joint U.S.-Kenyan-Ethiopian operation along the Somalia-Kenya border"
no one must ever know what happened during operation birf cerfikit
Posted by: khefera | July 19, 2011 1:39 PM
Ha Ha, khefera beat me to it.
Posted by: Doug Little | July 19, 2011 2:12 PM
Well it HAS to be a State Secret. If they don't keep it a secret then people would know that someone did something bad, and that would make the States look bad!
Posted by: Stevarious | July 19, 2011 2:36 PM
Ed,
Have you looked at the Obama DOJ and this whole "Gunwalker", or "Fast & Furious" scandal?
Posted by: Mad Rocket Scientist | July 19, 2011 2:48 PM
I have to say that it is a real disappointment that the Obama administration has been ignoring transparency and civil liberties. One wonders if this is an attitude that the president always had, or if it is a symptom of the presidency.
I recently watched a TED talk by Phillip Zimbardo, of the Stanford Prison Experiment. One thing that struck me about his story is that, while he was supervising the experiment, Zimbardo did not recognize how monstrously wrong things were going. The acceptance of atrocious acts had affected him as much as his experimental subjects. It was not Zimbardo who recognized that the experiment had gone off the rails, it was his fiancee. When she visited the 'prison' site, she immediately challenged Zimbardo on the terrible things that were going on there, and even threatened to end their engagement if he did not stop the experiment immediately.
This could easily have gone either way, but Zimbardo cared for her, and so ended the study.
My point is this: Even a trained psychologist, who was in the position of supervising the experiment and its conditions, lost all perspective and could not recognize that it had become a monstrous exercise. It took an outside observer to see what was happening, and it took a challenge from this highly valued observer to change the supervisor's viewpoint.
I am thinking that the person who needs to be contacted about the abuses of the State Secrets rules is not the president, but his wife. She may be distanced enough from the daily operations of the white house that she can see the crime being perpetrated, but valued enough by the president to influence him.
It may not be a matter of the president being a bad guy. Zimbardo's experiment demonstrated that the situation can make people do bad things. He describes it as not about bad apples, but apples put into a bad barrel. The one to write to is Michelle Obama.
Posted by: Daniel Kim | July 19, 2011 4:15 PM
@8 Daniel Kim:
A very interesting point there. I read that interview as well, though I hadn't made the connection to Obama. As a constitutional scholar, he certainly should know better. If your hypothesis is correct, then perhaps he's a bit more deserving of sympathy. But in the end, we can only hope that it's not too late to change things.
Posted by: Infophile | July 20, 2011 4:02 AM
"I have to say that it is a real disappointment that the Obama administration has been ignoring transparency and civil liberties. One wonders if this is an attitude that the president always had, or if it is a symptom of the presidency."
Well, Daniel, it's mostly a symptom of wanting to get reelected. Obama has learned a lot in the past 2 and a half years in office, he's shifted a great deal of his approach from neoliberalism to political centrism, because he knows the former isn't going to win him any hearts and minds in this nation. One of the things I hypothesize that he's learned during that transition is that Presidents usually throw whatever moral obligations they have to the public out the window if it will help their chances at reelection, especially if it involves revealing whatever dirt they have on themselves in private. Not that they are obligated to do so when a reelection isn't at stake, merely that they certainly won't be a year before.
As for contacting his wife, well... how do we know Zimbardo isn't some isolated event, as opposed to Josef Mengele who couldn't be bothered to care about the well-being of his test subjects if he were visited by God in the flesh? Why would Obama even listen to his wife as opposed to several advisers and a highly professional campaign manager advising him not to divulge anything and to continue moving forward as if nothing has changed? And how would someone even go about getting an audience with his wife?
No, Obama is not a university scientist. He's a world leader and he and his family are guarded by a highly elite, praetorian-esque guard known as the Secret Service. You'd have better chances with a write-in campaign, and why not, considering that even if all goes well you could only prevent another year of misdeeds.
Posted by: Kapkao | July 21, 2011 2:21 AM
@Kapkao We don't know that the president would listen to his wife over his professional advisors. I know that I would put a lot of weight on my wife's opinion, especially in matters of morality vs. policy. My point was that the relationship the president has with his wife is of a different order than that with his staff, and the relationship of the first lady with the white house is different from that of the working staff and the white house. She is not a government employee in the way that advisors and staff are.
Of note is another official's wife who weighed in on her husband's government duties: Pontius Pilate was told by his wife to "Have nothing to do with that innocent man." To be sure, Pilate eventually had Jesus beaten and crucified, but he first attempted to get the crowd to reconsider their complaints. He also tried to shift the authority over Jesus to Herod, and tried to satisfy the crowd with a severe beating. He offered a devil's bargain between Jesus and Barabbas, to force the crowd to forgive Jesus, thinking they would never allow a notorious murderer to be released. Finally, he washed his hands and let Jesus be crucified under the authority of the crowd itself; not necessarily under the laws of Rome. Even the sign put on the cross, naming Jesus 'King of the Jews' seemed to say that he was being executed for something other than a regular crime against Rome.
OK, I do go on, but still the precedent is there. Even Pilate listened to his wife, and did his best to turn the tide of prophecy. It's not a bad bet that the president might do the same.
Posted by: Daniel Kim | July 21, 2011 9:44 AM