State Secrets
Posted February 10, 2009, 17:02 ET Comments Off
The Obama administration has done a 180 on the “state secrets” doctrine, under which the United States might invoke a national security privilege to exclude evidence from a trial, or even to dismiss lawsuits in advance. For this, the new administration is catching flack from Glenn Greenwald in Salon. Greenwald argues cogently, but misses the basic point: it’s okay when we do it.
The doctrine calls to mind a Costa-Garvas film called Section Speciale. The was the name of a court which, under Vichy, was complicit in executing Frenchmen in a reprisal for maquis attacks on German soldiers. The lawyers for the accused sought to prove that the trial was a travesty, but their pleas were ignored under the doctrine of raison d’etat: the exigencies of the state trump individual rights. After the war the judges who participated in the case were accused of collaboration. However, the trial was shut down in turn–under the doctrine of raison d’etat!
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