Here’s a good catch from Michael Isikoff on the new blog Declassified at Newsweek:
It looks like the Obama Administration is invoking the state secrets privilege in a lawsuit alleging illegal surveillance by the National Security Agency — and it’s using the exact wording used by the Bush Administration two years ago in the very same case.
Isikoff compares the two passages from filings in the case, now titled Shubert v. Obama:
“It is my judgment that sensitive state secrets are so central to the subject matter of the litigation that any attempt to proceed in the case will…risk exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States,” national intelligence director Dennis Blair wrote in an affidavit submitted by Justice Department lawyers on Oct. 30. If that language sounded familiar to the court, it’s because it was: “It is my judgment that sensitive state secrets are so central to the subject matter of the litigation that any attempt to proceed in the case will…risk exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States,” wrote J. Michael McConnell, Bush’s intel chief, in an affidavit filed on May 25, 2007, in the same case.
And he observes:
But despite a new policy, announced just last month, that was supposed to limit the use of the state secrets privilege, Holder (after what he called “a careful and thorough review process”) chose to stick with the same position as that taken by the Bush administration.What’s more, the Justice Department didn’t even bother changing the language of many of its arguments.
Read the whole report here.