By Kenneth J. Theisen
On October 25th, a federal appeals court announced that it will hear the Obama’s Department of Justice (DOJ) appeal of an earlier court ruling that allowed an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit to proceed against a Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen DataPlan Inc., for its role in the Bush administration’s unlawful "extraordinary rendition" kidnapping program.
DOJ claims that allowing the case to be heard would endanger national security by disclosing “state secrets.” But the fact that the Bush regime kidnapped people and then sent them to other countries for torture is no longer a secret, but one of the well-known crimes of the Bush regime.
What the Obama administration is really involved in is the cover-up of the details of those crimes.
In April of this year, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court dismissal of the lawsuit, brought on behalf of five men who were kidnapped, forcibly disappeared, and secretly transferred to U.S.-run prisons or foreign intelligence agencies overseas where they were interrogated under torture.
The lawsuit charged that Jeppesen knowingly participated in these crimes by providing critical flight planning and logistical support services to aircraft and crews used by the CIA to forcibly disappear these men to detention and interrogation. The Bush administration had previously intervened in the civil case against Jeppesen, improperly asserting the "state secrets" privilege to have the case thrown out of court. The appeals court ruled, as the ACLU has argued, that the government must invoke the "state secrets" privilege with respect to specific evidence, not to dismiss the entire suit.
The Obama administration’s appeal of that decision will be heard by an "en banc" panel of 11 judges.
Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project had this to say about the latest appellate ruling: "We are disappointed by the court’s decision to re-hear this case, but we hope and expect that the court’s historic decision to allow the lawsuit to go forward will stand. The CIA’s rendition and torture program simply is not a ‘state secret.’ In fact, since the court’s decision in April, the government’s sweeping secrecy claims have only gotten weaker, with the declassification of additional documents describing the CIA’s detention and interrogation practices.
"The Obama administration’s embrace of overbroad secrecy claims has denied torture victims their day in court and shielded perpetrators from liability or accountability. We hope that the court will reaffirm the principle that victims of torture deserve a remedy, and that no one is above the law."
This latest legal maneuver by the Obama DOJ is consistent with the ongoing cover-ups of U.S. government crimes in the U.S. war of terror. Since taking office in January, Obama’s administration has repeatedly gone to court to defend the national security state which it inherited from the Bush regime. While Obama may have often repeated the word “change” while running for president, since taking office his administration has continued the fascist trajectory of the Bush administration. This must be opposed and exposed until all the dirty secrets of the Bush regime are uncovered and those responsible for the crimes of the U.S. government are prosecuted.
More information about the ACLU case is available online at: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/29921res20070530.html