Supreme Court Allows Secrecy for 9/11 Detainees

[Dreamer128]

Mon January 12, 2004 11:45 PM ET

By James Vicini
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Bush administration to keep secret the names and other basic details about hundreds of foreigners detained after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Without comment, the top court refused to hear an appeal by civil liberties and other groups challenging the secret arrests and detentions for violating the Freedom of Information Act and constitutional free-speech rights under the First Amendment.

The justices let stand a U.S. appeals court ruling that disclosing the names could harm national security and help "al Qaeda in plotting future terrorist attacks or intimidating witnesses in the present investigation."

Although the high court stayed out of the dispute about whether the government must release information about those detained, it has agreed to hear other cases arising from the administration's war on terror.

Those cases involve the president's power to detain American citizens captured abroad and declared "enemy combatants," and whether foreign nationals can use American courts to challenge their incarceration at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The appeals court said the government could keep secret the names of more than 700 individuals detained on immigration violations and those arrested as material witnesses in the investigation into the hijacked plane attacks that the United States blames on Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

The appeals court said the government could also keep secret the dates and locations of the arrest, detention and release of all detainees, including those charged with federal crimes, and the names of the lawyers representing them.

Attorneys for the groups expressed disappointment that the Supreme Court rejected their appeal and will not consider whether the government acted properly.

SECRECY SAID TO COVER UP MISCONDUCT

"The Justice Department is keeping the names secret to cover up its misconduct -- holding people incommunicado and without charges," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, one of the groups that brought the lawsuit.

"The cover-up maintains the fiction that the government was going after terrorists when it instead was rounding up hundreds of innocent Arabs and Muslims," she said in a statement.

Steven Shapiro of the American Civil Liberties Union said he still believes the secret arrest of more than 700 people violates basic due process rights. He said the government's own reports have documented mistreatment and arbitrary detentions.
"Such abuses are always more likely when the government is allowed to operate in secrecy," he said.

Attorneys for the groups said the appeals court erred in failing to recognize that the First Amendment prohibits secret arrests, except in the most compelling circumstances.

They said the appeals court gave unprecedented deference to government explanations that were "unpersuasive on their face, overly broad and without any support in the record."

A number of news media companies and groups supported the appeal.

The Justice Department, urging the high court to reject the appeal, said it was entitled to an exception that allows information to be withheld for law enforcement investigations.

Department lawyers said disclosure of the list of people interviewed and detained would provide terrorists with "a road map" of the investigation.

Disclosure also could "expose the identified individuals to harassment and intimidation and could destroy any ongoing intelligence value they might have," the lawyers said.

[Source: Reuters.com]

[Timber Loftis]

I will note that all of the ACLU's arguments addressed whether the arrests/detentions were proper, whether they should be held incommunicado, and whether they were having the due process rights violated.

NONE of which addresses the issue of whether the rest of us can be denied knowledge of their names. This case is not the case to take against the Patriot Act. Others are, and we'll see them shortly.