|
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Jerrold Nadler (NY-08), Chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, today welcomed a ruling by Judge Vaughn R. Walker, the chief judge for the Northern District of California, that reaffirmed that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is the “exclusive means for foreign intelligence surveillance activities to be conducted.”
“On the eve of our Independence Day, I applaud this strong affirmation of the rule of law,” said Rep. Nadler. “As our Founding Fathers rejected the overreaching powers of King George over two hundred years ago, this independent court rejected President George W. Bush’s overbroad claims of executive authority. This ruling is a clear rebuke to the White House’s campaign to undermine America’s fundamental freedoms.”
The ruling also rejected the government’s claims that the suit could not proceed because it was asserting the state secrets privilege. That privilege allows the government to prevent public disclosure of testimony and materials in litigation if their disclosure would reveal information damaging to national security. However, it has been often invoked to block litigation challenging some of the most troubling aspects of the Administration’s war on terror, preventing meaningful judicial review of the government’s activity that might otherwise prove to be politically embarrassing or clearly illegal.
Rep. Nadler has introduced bipartisan legislation, H.R. 5607, the State Secret Protection Act of 2008, which would curb abuse of the privilege while providing protection for valid state secrets by providing judicial determination of the privilege.
In his ruling, Judge Walker noted that, “Congress appears clearly to have intended to – and did – establish the exclusive means for foreign intelligence surveillance activities to be conducted. Whatever power the executive may otherwise have had in this regard, FISA limits the power of the executive branch to conduct such activities and it limits the executive branch’s authority to assert the state secrets privilege in response to challenges to the legality of its foreign intelligence surveillance activities.”
|
