April 29, 2009 9:48 PM

Obama Hints At Change To "State Secrets" Privilege

By
Declan McCullagh
Topics
100 Days Analysis
(CBS)


President Barack Obama has suggested that his administration might back away from its controversial decision to adopt a Republican legal strategy aimed at derailing lawsuits alleging government wrongdoing.

During a press conference held to mark his 100th day in office, Mr. Obama said that Attorney General Eric Holder and White House Counsel Greg Craig were reviewing the use of the so-called state secret privilege.

"But searching for ways to redact -- to carve out certain cases -- to see what can be done so that a judge in chambers can review information without it being in open court, you know, there should be some additional tools so that it's not such a blunt instrument," Mr. Obama said.

Aggressive invocation of the state secret privilege -- which is what the Obama administration has chosen to do -- has led to charges of hypocrisy and outrage from some liberal commentators. As a candidate for president, Mr. Obama blasted Republicans for "ignoring" existing rules and misusing the so-called state secrets privilege to derail lawsuits alleging government wrongdoing.

But as soon as Mr. Obama took office in January, his administration adopted the same Bush administration policies that he had criticized just a few months earlier.

That led Salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald to write that "what was abusive and dangerous about Bush's use of the State Secrets privilege was the preemptive, generalized use of this privilege to force dismissal of entire lawsuits in advance, even where the supposed secret to be concealed was the allegedly criminal activity itself. And that is exactly the usage that the Obama administration is now defending."

A few weeks later, the Obama administration made even more extreme claims in court about presidential authority than its predecessor ever did. (Fellow Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold awarded the president a barely-passing grade of a "D" as a result.)

In his remarks on Wednesday, Mr. Obama partially blamed lack of time to review the cases. "We come in to office -- we're in for a week, and suddenly we've got a court filing that's coming up," he said. "And so we don't have the time to effectively think through, what exactly should an overarching reform of that doctrine take? We've got to respond to the immediate case in front of us."

Obama's First 100 Days



  • Declan McCullagh is the chief political correspondent for CNET. Declan previously was a reporter for Time and the Washington bureau chief for Wired and wrote the Taking Liberties section and Other People's Money column for CBS News' Web site.

Add a Comment
by cbsteve June 7, 2009 11:05 PM EDT
This is why I voted for McCain. I knew that Obama didn't have enough political experience to make promises that he could keep.

Transparency? Well as far as it extends to his opulent nights on the town as the press tries to recreate Kennedy's camelot.

Transparency on Torture? Well at least until he realized it would cost American service men their lives and prepare the enemies of our nation against us.

No taxes on health care benefits? Well, until he realizes that McCain was right and it was one of the best options to fund health care reform.



60% approval rating is being touted as a mandate. Well no offense but every candidate that's ever been elected has had that approval rating or higher for longer than the first 100 days. Obama is nothing special yet.

Well, he is the first visibly black president.

I was never taught in school who the first white person to do stuff was. I was just taught who the person was.

I was taught that George Washington was a great patriot, that Jesse Owens was a great man who was a tremendous athlete when the world needed him, that Benjamin Bannicker was a tremendous engineer, and that Neil Armstrong was a great man who lead a great team to a historical landing on the moon. I wasn't taught that Jesse owens was a great black man and that Neil Armstrong was a great white man.

As a nation and as people we each rise or fall on our merits.

I sincerely hope the one thing the Obama presidency can achieve is the tearing down of the notion that skin color matters and capability and character does, and maybe to put the word "American" before latin african chinese or whatever. It's time for people to become Americans behind a man who whill hopefully become a competent president due to the quality of his on the job training.

If he does screw up though, I gotta admit I won't be above saying "I didn't vote for him."

s
Reply to this comment
by Culture_Warrior_in_09 May 7, 2009 2:29 AM EDT
Obama Hints At Change To "State Secrets" Privilege

-There's that "Change" you can believe in for ya.

What a joke.
Reply to this comment
by flreason April 30, 2009 11:02 AM EDT
BTW, Rowdy...Obama didn't destroy intelligence gathering capabilities. The illegal and short-sighted policies of the Bush Administration did that. When your potential sources know that you engage in torture to get the answers you want (as opposed to accurate intel info), the only foreign contacts who will cooperate with you are unprincipled criminals whose motivation is either power or greed. When you out your own operatives when you have a grievance with them--as the Bush Administration did with Valerie Plame--your own intel people don't trust you, and the effectiveness of the whole organization is compromised.
Reply to this comment
by flreason April 30, 2009 10:54 AM EDT
Rowdy,

Invective doesn't qualify as a solution. What policy, exactly, do you think is appropriate for sensitive material regarding the Executive branch decision-making process?

My personal feeling is that anything that doesn't involve decisions directly related to national security should be open. How else do you get the consent of the governed? Our leaders should be willing to educate the electorate to gain their consent. They're not going to get 100% buy-in on any issue, but most folks are reasonable if you are willing to do the leg work to persuade them of the necessity for a particular action. I think the Obama Administration gets that, and that they are adult enough to admit when they make mistakes. This was a big one.
Reply to this comment
by Trust_me_ April 30, 2009 10:13 AM EDT
Rowdy108

I could not write this any better myself!
thank you sir
Reply to this comment
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