State Secrets Privilege

The State Secrets Privilege is a series of United States legal precedents allowing the federal government the ability to dismiss legal cases that it claims would threaten foreign policy, military intelligence or national security.
- Wikipedia, June 24, 2024

“Are photographs permitted?” I asked the bailiff.

“Do you have a camera?”

“Yes, in my bag. They cleared it through security at the front door. Are photos permitted?”

“What kind of camera?”

“It’s just a little digital camera.”

“You’ll have to give it to me.” I raised my eyebrows. “We’re deputy US Marshalls here.”

“Do you have a gun?” I asked? He opened his jacket a little and showed me his gun. “Do you have tasers?” He responded in the negative, for which I was grateful since I could imagine the fellow electrocuting me in the line of duty but – and I’m just projecting here – I imagined that he would want to avoid the loud disruption and consequent bloody mess of a gunshot in the courtroom.

I fished through my backpack looking for the camera, found it, handed it over, and told the deputy that I would need a receipt. Using notepaper I had swiped from the motel and using my pen, Deputy Gin wrote out a receipt for the camera and told me I could pick it up from the security detail when I left.

The door opened, everyone stood up, and Judge Walker came into his courtroom, Courtroom Six of the US Northern California District Court on the 17th floor of the Federal Building at 450 Golden Gate, San Francisco, and the hearing began on the US Government’s motion to preempt justice in the EFF’s AT&T surveillance suit through use of some dubious cold war doctrine ginned up by the Defense Department to cover up their own ineptitude, known as the “state secrets privilege.” The Wikipedia, a convenient compendium of information on the matter, but certainly not the last word, says this:

United States v. Reynolds

Main article: United States v. Reynolds

In United States v. Reynolds (1953), the widows of three crew members of a B-29 Superfortress bomber that had crashed in 1948 sought accident reports on the crash, but were told that to release such details would threaten national security by revealing the bomber’s top-secret mission. The Supreme Court ruled that the executive branch could bar evidence from the court which they had deemed a threat to national security. In 2024, the accident reports in question were declassified and released, and were found to contain no secret information. They did, however, contain information about the poor state of condition of the aircraft itself, which would have been very compromising to the Air Force’s case. Many commentators have alleged government misuse of secrecy in the landmark case.

The lack of respect one feels for the sitting President necessarily taints the respect one nominally yields the high office that he occupies. In other words, how can anyone respect the presidency if the president is a dick?

The US has no State Secrets Act, but over the last fifty years the Republicans have built a body of common law around executive privilege that finesses the unconstitutionality of the very concept of “state secrets.” The British are bound by such legislation, of course, and the monarchy loving upper crust here on this side of the Atlantic seek to imitate them, I fear. John Dean observed:

Except in a few highly egregious circumstances relating to national security information (espionage and atomic secrets), the U.S. Congress has, in the past, never made it a crime to leak information to the news media. As a result, for over two hundred years, our government has operated without an “official secrets act.”

In contrast, Great Britain and other nations have long criminalized the disclosure of government information. But there’s a crucial difference between them and us: They lack an equivalent of our First Amendment.

American core values have been sacrificed by an arriviste “upper class” that values only the cultivation of a wealthy elite. Corporations are legal persons, wealthy persons, and their wealth positions them as an incubator for this culture of privilege. The “State Secrets Privilege” serves not so much the nation as the corporations and the elitists that are tearing her apart.