By Cliff Montgomery – Mar. 17th, 2013
A U.S. court of appeals on Friday ruled that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) cannot provide a blanket refusal to those who seek information on intelligence-related drone strikes overseas.
The decision was a clear victory for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has been employing the Freedom of Information Act in its effort to pry from the CIA at least some data on the strikes.
Perhaps the Agency’s legal argument for its across-the-board refusal to release any documents was a little weak. The CIA claimed it could neither deny nor confirm that it had any records of such drone activity – even though the overseas drone program has often been discussed in public by President Barack Obama and former U.S. land Security Adviser (now CIA Director) John Brennan.
The three judges sitting on the DC Court of Appeals panel who heard the Agency’s argument clearly didn’t buy it.
“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” if the Agency released documents which admitted the existence of such strikes, ruled the court.
The judges also declared that official public statements on the CIA’s involvement in the strikes from such individuals as the Agency’s own director make it “implausible that the CIA does not possess a single document on the subject of drone strikes.”
The ACLU still has some way to go before it can actually get any information released, however.
The D.C. Appeals panel sent the suit back down to a lower U.S. court which will rule on a number of unresolved issues, such as whether the CIA may claim that the release of any Agency data might ‘harm national security’ – or even whether the CIA would have to prove such a claim in a court of law.
Jameel Jaffer, the lawyer handling the case for the ACLU, told reporters on Friday that the appeals court ruling is an important move forward.
“It requires the government to retire the absurd claim that the CIA’s interest in the targeted killing program is a secret, and it will make it more difficult for the government to deflect questions about the program’s scope and legal basis,” said Jaffer.
“It also means that the CIA will have to explain what records it is withholding, and on what grounds it is withholding them,” he added.
