Senate panel advances state secrets bill

A Senate panel advanced a bill Thursday that would limit how and when a president can withhold evidence from courts considering lawsuits against some of his most controversial policies.

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Democrats Seek to Narrow Secrets Law

In a new challenge to President Bush's use of executive power, Senate Democrats want to make the government produce evidence for a judge to review when it claims disclosing such information would endanger national security.

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Challenges Brew Over 'State Secrets'

In federal courts and on Capitol Hill, challenges are brewing to a key legal strategy President Bush is using to protect a secret surveillance program that monitors phone calls and e-mails inside the United States.

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The Obama administration invoked the controversial "state secrets" privilege again on Friday, arguing that if U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker were to permit a legal case against the government to proceed, he would be putting national security at risk.

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The Obama administration has, yet again, asserted the broadest and most radical version of the "state secrets" privilege -- which previously caused so much controversy and turmoil among loyal Democrats (when used by Bush/Cheney) -- to attempt to block courts from ruling on the le …

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After seven years of forced silence, a government whistleblower is opening up on what she learned while working as a Turkish translator for the FBI in the wake of 9/11.

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The Obama administration will announce a new policy Wednesday making it much more difficult for the government to claim that it is protecting state secrets when it hides details of sensitive national security strategies such as rendition and warrantless eavesdropping, according t …

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'American Conservative' mag's description of interview with previously-gagged FBI whistleblower as 'explosive' may prove to be a gross understatement Blackmail, bribery, infiltration, theft and sale of nuke secrets by Turkey, Israel explained in clearer detail than ever before.. …

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Thinking of doing business with the Chinese government? You'd be wise to take note of how it's handling the Rio Tinto steel and iron ore case: allegations of a long-running conspiracy to steal state secrets and thereby manipulate the annual benchmark prices of iron ore.

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North Korea has a reputation as one of the most secretive, authoritarian, repressive countries in the world. But that doesn't stop Curtis Melvin, a PhD student at George Mason University, from trying to shine some light into the country's dark corners.

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Former Vice President Cheney says that President Obama's reversal of Bush-era terrorism policies endangers American security.

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An American court has cleared the way for two British residents released from Guantanamo Bay to sue a subsidiary of the international aviation company Boeing over complicity in their rendition.

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Is the Obama administration mimicking its predecessor on issues of secrecy and the war on terror?

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Having inherited an undifferentiated mass of legal "war on terror" doctrine from the Bush administration's constitutional chop shop, President Obama finds himself in the position of being Bush's Secret-Keeper.

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WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration has lost its argument that a potential threat to national security is a good enough reason to stop a lawsuit challenging the government's warrantless wiretapping program.

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[Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation], a now-defunct charity, was inadvertently sent a document in 2004 that reportedly showed it had been wiretapped during an investigation that led to its classification as a terrorist group.

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Ninth Circuit Appellate Justices were taken aback when Obama's Dep't of Justice showed up wearing the same blank executioner's mask worn by Ashcroft, Gonzales and Mukasey during the Bush years.

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The Obama administration failed — miserably — the first test of its commitment to ditching the extravagant legal claims used by the Bush administration to try to impose blanket secrecy on anti-terrorism policies and avoid accountability for serial abuses of the law.

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The Justice Department said Monday it is reviewing litigation inherited from the Bush administration in which the so-called state-secrets privilege was invoked.

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Judge Walker held that the president lacks the authority to disregard the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA -- which means Bush's warrantless electronic surveillance program was illegal.

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The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act provides the "exclusive means" for electronic eavesdropping within the US, a federal district court judge in California ruled yesterday, and explicitly supersedes the government's claim that it may invoke the "state secrets" privilege to  …

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The US government has taken some extreme measures to silence former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds.

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He was 9 years old when his mother woke him before dawn half a century ago in Cold War America. Eric Olson came blinking into the living room of their Frederick, Md., home, where his father's boss and friend, Col. Vincent Ruwet, sat with the family doctor.

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Summaries and transcripts from a recent interview with VPW concerning allegations of illegal activities by US State Dept. officials and the exposure of CIA *front* operation, Brewster Jennings to Middle Eastern countries.....

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With no explanation, the Supreme Court has denied a day in court to a German citizen of Lebanese descent who says he was kidnapped by the CIA and imprisoned and tortured, all because he was mistaken for a terrorist with a similar name.

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Lawyers for the Bush administration encountered a federal appeals court Wednesday that appeared deeply skeptical of a blanket claim that the government's surveillance efforts cannot be challenged in court because the litigation might reveal state secrets.

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"The Oversight Committee has learned that over the objections of the National Archives, you exempted the Office of the Vice President from the presidential executive order that establishes a uniform, government-wide system for safeguarding classified national security information …

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Larisa Alexandrovna points out that two government officials acting out of their conscience to expose President Bush's plans to bomb journalists are found guilty, and she supposes that the next time the EU demands that Russia investigate the murder of countless Russian journalis …

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