White House: Cleric’s lawsuit would reveal state, military secrets

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

The Obama administration on Saturday invoked the state-secrets privilege, which would kill a lawsuit on behalf of U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a suspected terrorist said to be targeted for death or capture under a U.S. government program.

Believed to be hiding in Yemen, al-Awlaki has become the most notorious English-speaking advocate of terrorism directed at the United States.

E-mails link al-Awlaki to the Army psychiatrist accused of the killings at Fort Hood, Texas, last year. Al-Awlaki has taken on an increasingly operational role in al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the Justice Department said in a court filing, including preparing Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in his attempt to detonate an explosive device aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.

In its court papers, the Justice Department said that the issues in the case are for the executive branch of government to decide rather than the courts.

The department also said the case entails information that is protected by the military and state-secrets privilege.

The courts have sufficient grounds to throw out the lawsuit without resorting to use of the state-secrets privilege, the Justice Department said in its filing.

“The idea that courts should have no role whatsoever in determining the criteria by which the executive branch can kill its own citizens is unacceptable in a democracy,” the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights said in a statement. “In matters of life and death, no executive should have a blank check.”

Al-Awlaki’s father, through the CCR and the ACLU, filed the case in federal court in Washington.

“This lawsuit asks for an American court to block the government from protecting its own citizens,” Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.

“It strains credulity to argue that our laws require the government to disclose to an active, operational terrorist any information about how, when and where we fight terrorism,” he added.

In a declaration filed in federal court, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he was invoking the military and state-secrets privilege on information concerning possible military operations in Yemen, procedures the Defense Department may use in such operations and information concerning Yemen’s counterterrorism efforts.