IN THE NAME OF NATIONAL SECURITY
A landmark 1953 U.S. Supreme Court ruling which affirmed the
government's use of the "state secrets" privilege to withhold
information is the focus of a new book called "In the Name of
National Security" by constitutional scholar Louis Fisher.
The 1953 case, United States v. Reynolds, revolved around a request
by three widows for access to an accident report about a military
plane crash in which their husbands died in 1948. The government
refused to release the requested report.
Confronted by this dispute, Fisher writes, the Supreme Court had at
least two valid options. It could have ruled in favor of the
widows, granting their claims for damages in full, as lower courts
had done. Or it could have subjected the disputed document to in
camera review to determine whether withholding was justified on
security grounds.
But the Court did neither. Instead, it upheld the government's
denial of the document without bothering to review it, establishing
an unfortunate precedent that would resound throughout the coming
decades up to the present day.
Fisher traces the fateful Reynolds case from its inception
throughout the litigation process to its final resolution. And he
considers the ramifications of this frequently cited case for
current national security policy.
Richly detailed, the new book combines legal scholarship, critical
analysis, and even some "Law and Order"-style suspense.
See "In the Name of National Security: Unchecked Presidential Power
and the Reynolds Case" by Louis Fisher, University Press of Kansas,
September 2006:
kansaspress.ku.edu
(PS... FYI: it has since been determined [admitted by the government] that the government LIED TO THE COURTS in this case, back in 1953. Told them things that weren't true. The Air Force officials asserted that 'national security secrets' were 'involved' in this case, and would be 'revealed' if they told the widows how their husbands died. Now the government ADMITS [and released documents prove] that that was a lie they told back then... there were NO 'national security secrets' at all that would have been revealed if they had answered the widows requests... just some bureaucrats who would have been embarrassed. So this ENTIRE LEGAL CONCEPT of a 'state's secrets privilege' was created out of thin air by the Supreme court in 1953... and was based upon a government lie.) |
