A federal court dealt the Obama administration a major setback over its attempts to shroud overseas drone strikes in secrecy. Calling the CIA’s reasoning in withholding information indefensible and a fiction, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia revived an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit asking for CIA records. (Reuters, March 1, 2013, by David Ingram)
There were strong arguments that the administration had already acknowledged the information was of vital interest to the public. “The ACLU pointed out in court documents that President Obama, former counterterrorism advisor John Brennan (now CIA director) and former CIA Director Leon Panetta all made public statements about a U.S. drone strike program. ‘Given these official acknowledgments that the United States has participated in drone strikes, it is neither logical nor plausible for the CIA to maintain that it would reveal anything not already in the public domain to say that the agency ‘at least has an intelligence interest’ in such strikes,’ the judges’ opinion, released Friday, stated.” (Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, March 19, 2013, by Lila Chapa) -db