Big Break From Bush on ‘State Secrets’ Unlikely Under Obama

By Daphne Eviatar, Washington Independent

In an interview that aired Wednesday night on the CBS Evening News, Attorney General Eric Holder suggested to Katie Couric that the Obama administration is unlikely to depart dramatically from the Bush administration’s position on the use of the state secrets privilege, noting just one case out of about 20 currently under review in which the Justice Department is seriously considering changing its stance. He did not say which case that was...

For example, in a federal court in San Francisco on Friday, the Obama Justice Department moved to dismiss the Jewel case based in part on the state secrets privilege. The AT&T customers who filed suit, represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, claim the National Security Agency illegally intercepted their calls and obtained their phone records as part of a broad-reaching, ongoing national security surveillance program and in violation of the First and Fourth Amendments of the United States Constitution, the separation of powers doctrine and federal statutes.

Related Issues: NSA Spying

Related Cases: Jewel v. NSA

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