By GottaLaff
There's been another setback for the state secrets argument:
As a case against President Bush for withholding documents about allegedly illegal wiretapping became a case against President Obama for withholding documents about allegedly illegal wiretapping, President Obama has once again assumed the same "state secrets" arguments as his predecessor. And a judge that rejected the argument under Bush yesterday rejected the argument under Obama.
In the case, Al-Haramain v. Obama, (formerly Al-Haramain v. Bush) the leaders of a now-defunct Islamic charity, allege that the National Security Agency under President Bush engaged in illegal warrantless wiretapping.
In 2004, while preparing to defend the charity -- which had been placed on the government's terrorist watch list -- the charity's lawyers accidentally obtained a document indicating the wiretapping had taken place.
The lawyers returned the document and have ever since been denied the ability to obtain it again to use it to show the charity had been allegedly illegally wiretapped.
The Bush administration had argued that the document could not be "disclosed without causing serious harm to national security," even if the plaintiff's lawyers are given access to the document under secure conditions after extensive background checks.
U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker denied the Bush administration's argument repeatedly. The Obama administration repeated the same "national security" argument in February, and yesterday Judge Walker said that the government "should now comply with the court's orders" to hand over the documents.
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