Judge Sends Secret Document In NSA Lawsuit To Seattle
Well, here’s an odd story I only managed to catch thanks to a post on TalkLeft.
A secret document in an Oregon lawsuit challenging President Bush’s domestic wiretapping program will be held in a secure facility in Seattle while the judge and lawyers try to figure out how to keep it under wraps in Portland.
U.S. District Judge Garr King decided this week that the document couldn’t be held securely in a federal courthouse in Portland, and shouldn’t be held at the local office of the FBI, a defendant in the case.
Apparently, the judge hopes the mystery document can be edited for use in the case, but according to the article, the government says “the document would be so black with redactions that it couldn’t be understood.”
It seems that I also missed yesterday’s Theo article reporting that the newspaper has filed a motion to examine documents in the case.
“If the government is committing crimes against its citizens,” the paper says its attorney wrote in the filing, “the public is entitled to know the nature of the crimes.”
Update: There’s much more about this document from U.S. News & World Report.
According to the Washington Post and other sources, Treasury Department officials—who were investigating the foundation for terrorist ties—inadvertently gave a copy of the classified document, marked “top secret” and dated May 24, 2004, to an al-Haramain attorney, as part of a routine disclosure of documents the government was citing to designate the charity as a terrorist organization. In May 2004, the attorney gave the document to Belew and Ghafoor, who also represented the charity. Belew in turn gave a copy of the document to a Post reporter. In November 2004, FBI agents took the document back from Belew and the Post reporter saying it contained highly sensitive national security information, according to the Post.
“Nelson won’t say how he obtained a copy of the document,” the article reports, “except to say he did so legally.”