The ultimate weapon in the War on Truth

When mistakes are made, the U.S. government classifies the data and gets any attempted lawsuits thrown out by bringing out the ultimate weapon on truth, State Secrets Privilege.

The NSA wiretapping cases could be dismissed. The cases involving mistaken identities -- Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian and Khaled el-Masri, a German of Kuwaiti descent -- in which innocent men were tortured, have already been dismissed on those very grounds.

Sibel Edmonds, who alleged an FBI coverup pertaining to 9/11, still hasn't been able to tell her story; her lawsuit has likewise been dismissed.

The sad truth, as the New York Times reports, is that this privilege, determined in a 1953 case by the Supreme Court was itself based on a government lie, the same sort of lies we're fed now.

But critics of the use of the privilege point out that officials sometimes exaggerate the sensitivities at risk. In fact, documents from the 1953 case that defined the modern privilege, United States v. Reynolds, have been declassified in recent years and suggest that Air Force officials misled the court.

An accident report on a B-29 bomber crash in 1948 was withheld because the Air Force said it included technical details about sensitive intelligence equipment and missions, but it turned out to contain no such information, said Wilson M. Brown III, a lawyer in Philadelphia who represented survivors of those who died in the crash in recent litigation.

'The facts the Supreme Court was relying on in Reynolds were false,' Mr. Brown said in an interview. 'It shows that if the government is not truthful, plaintiffs will lose and there's very little chance to straighten it out.