Supreme Court rejects CIA officer's appeal (AP)

Well, round 2, STRIKE 2 against the truth by the Supreme Court! All the more reason to fillibuster Alito! First they are helping to coverup Sibel Edmonds' story. Now they're playing the same B.S. to Jeffrey Sterling's appeal too, with what looks like another invocation of the State Secrets "coverup" privilege! I think this sort of question on how Alito views the States Secret privilege HAS to be a question that's asked of him this week. Don't let your congress critter NOT ask him of it for the public to hear. At least that shouldn't be invoked in asking HIM that question now. At least this is going across the AP wires today and getting better than average attention!

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/13585226.htm

Posted on Mon, Jan. 09, 2006
Supreme Court rejects CIA officer's appeal
GINA HOLLAND
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court rejected an appeal on Monday from a former covert CIA officer who accused the agency of race discrimination.

Jeffrey Sterling, who is black, had sued the CIA's director and 10 employees. A judge dismissed the case on grounds that the litigation would require the disclosure of highly classified information.

Justices refused without comment to consider reinstating Sterling's lawsuit.

In November, the court refused to take up a similar case involving former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, who claimed she was fired for reporting wrongdoing. The Justice Department claimed then too that allowing the lawsuit to go forward would threaten "state secrets," or national security.

Sterling's lawyer, George Doumar, said in the appeal that the claim "is now commonly involved against federal employees in order to defeat allegations of executive branch wrongdoing." He said there is proof in declassified files that Sterling suffered from discrimination.

Sterling worked in the Near East and South Asia division of the CIA from 1993-2001. He said that a supervisor told him he was not eligible for certain positions because of his skin color.

The government did not file any arguments with the Supreme Court in Sterling's case.

...

Alito on the bench?

An even sicker joke.

will be able to infiltrate into al-quida?

'but its SEEEEEEKRET!!!!'

that seems to be their excuse for everything doesn't it. 'national security matter'. poor fellow. but exactly what to expect from this court.

They are a shit court, an organization of corporate towel boys. Alito will be that majority suit to enforce corporate law in the land of Wal-Mart. If you're religious then I recommend praying for our future generations.

We still need to stop this.

but, while the SCOTUS should hear this case, I am left with the feeling that there may be some merit to the CIA's claim.

One poster in this thread commented about "blond haired, blue eyed, farsi speakers", and I am sure as anything that this is what the CIA was talking about. I would expect, were I an agent of the CIA, that the same statement would be made toward me as a red haired, blue eyed, freckled American male would not have the necessary ethnic similarity to pull off an effective cover or even encourage the trust required to gain intelligence, in many of the areas of the world where we have enemies or need spies.

I know nothing about the case and I could be WAY far off, but the SCOTUS could at least hear the arguments (even if certain specifics needed to be redacted). Making this decision with no paperwork submitted by the government claiming that classified information could be revealed during the proceedings is not only playing the parts of patsies to the administration, it makes me wish there was recourse for the removal of SCOTUS judges.

But the real problem with this case, just like with Sibel's, is that they are using this one "get out of jail free" card, to not even have the case heard, "because it might jeopardize our states secrets", when the plaintiff's lawyer said that there was plenty of evidence to be heard that had nothing to do with legitimate secure information.

What we have now is the license for the government to do anything without accountability, until we get in a congress that is willing to look at what's happening in these cases and impeach judges where necessary when they are abrogating their duty to allow everyone to have equal access to due process that our constitution is supposed to allow them to get.

Maybe we can get some more supreme court selections after the chimperor is gone if we can show where some of these Supreme Court justices are committing impeachable offenses. This is one more case on the list to add ammunition to such a case.

there has to be a way that they can hear and judge this case, even with redacted information. Why would the SCOTUS side with the transient administration and not hear cases that could damage it?

There may be some obligatory feelings from the justices appointed since (and from) the Regan Administration, but one would think, since the Executive has no power over the supreme court, that they would operate outside of any political agenda. That is the way it is supposed to work.

So what do you think we are talking about here: Fear of assassination? Blackmail? Payoff? Extortion? what?

Probably a combination of fear and extortion of some kind. Maybe not extortion in terms of money, etc. but there's a lot of that going around in Congress too I think. My guess that in Washington now there is a heavy climate of fear that pervades there and noone wants to stick their neck out too far for fear of getting caught in the grinder when it comes down.

I'm guessing we still don't know half of the crap that's going on, that if we did, we'd all be scared sh*tless as well! Since a lot of the congress has already been privvy to a lot of the stuff we've not heard about for the 9/11 committee hearings, etc. one would think that they would as responsible individuals want to see coverup oriented stuff exposed to the public, unless it really has a lot of "what goes around, comes around" feel to it. Sibel herself said that it's not just Republicans that are in this mess.

Even if this guy had something that was completely outside of the conspiracy cases that Sibel and Plamegate are all about (which a discrimination case could and probably should be), they're probably concerned about the precedent set if even one of these cases goes through them that might allow another to get through and expose the mess they are covering up later. That just shows you the criminality of what's being covered up. A prinicipled court would issue an opinion that the body of evidence doesn't support his charges or something to that effect, or let them hear his case with only testimony of non-secret info being heard.

In a democratic country, there should be few if any secrets kept from the American public. The only secrets that should be kept would be ones that, if they got in the hands of the enemy, would cause harm to the United States.

In the case of Sibel Edmonds, it is obvious that the information being suppressed is already in the hands of the enemy. The Justice Dept. is using "State Secrets" to prevent damaging information from coming out that would implicate Turkey and Pakistan in the nuclear market, as well as the corruption of people like Dennis Hastert and Marc Grossman. This is not, in my view, a legitimate reason to suppress such evidence.

I guess our only hope is to get a new Congress, and write a law governing government secrets that would more clearly define when something can be classified and when it can't.