The whole truth and nothing but the truth...

Today, while driving home from a weekend camping I became kind of furious. I'm not much for fury, so this is a pretty big deal - really!

As usual when driving home at about 10 AM on a Sunday, I am listening to NPR's This American Life and this week's show was about "origins." The particular story that invoked all of my wrath concerned US v Reynolds, the US Supreme Court case from 1952 that set the precedent for the State Secrets Privilege to be used by the government to throw out court cases for the purpose of protecting state secrets and sensitive information that may be of use to enemies.

It started when 3 civilian engineers working on a "secret project" for the government where killed in a B-29 operated by the US Air Force in 1948. The widows of the engineers sued the government for negligence and won due to the fact that the government refused to provide the accident report, claiming state secrets would be revealed. The judge in the case even offered to review the report privately, in chambers, to avoid any public display of the secrets. The government refused and the judge made award to the widows by default. The government appealed and lost, but kept appealing until it reached the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court took the opposite stand, stating that they trusted the government enough not to see the accident report and that state secrets ought to be protected. After the ruling, the widows and the government settle 170,000 per family with a release of liability.

Fast forward to 2000, where the one of the daughters of the engineers finds the (now) declassified accident report containing no state secrets at all but claiming negligence on the part of the Air Force in the maintenance and operation of the B-29.

The fact is a number of cases were decided following this precedent and now, it seems we are stuck with it. If you feel like listening, I do recommend it: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/

The first act was pretty good too.