In a filing late Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder argued that national security would be damaged if the feds were forced to reveal who was the focus of mosque-spying operation in 2006, and how it was done, the Sac Bee reports.
(Politico also has a good report here.)
A look at the lawsuit that has caused all this State Secrets invoking, makes one wonder a bit.
Peter Bibring of the So Cal ACLU, for one, is not convinced.
The Sac Bee reports:
ACLU attorney Peter Bibring said it was extremely unusual for the government to invoke the state secrets privilege, especially in a domestic case being investigated by a domestic law enforcement agency. The secrecy rules are usually only requested in extraordinary matters overseas, such as the targeted killing by drones or extraordinary rendition.
“The government’s position here is the FBI’s conduct should be beyond the review of the courts, which would render the protections of the constitution meaningless,” Bibring said. “Following the government’s argument, any domestic law enforcement operation deemed to effect national security would be beyond review.”
Bibring said the ACLU would oppose the government’s motion.
The So Cal ACLU filed the suit in February and this Washington Post article has most of the details. Here’s a clip:
An FBI informant who infiltrated a California mosque violated the constitutional rights of hundreds of Muslims by targeting them for surveillance because of their religion, the ACLU and a Muslim group said in a lawsuit Tuesday.
The lawsuit, filed against the FBI and seven of its agents and supervisors, focuses on the actions several years ago of Craig Monteilh, a paid FBI informant. Monteilh has said he was instructed to spy on worshipers at an Irvine mosque in a quest for potential terrorists, allegations that prompted fierce criticism of the FBI from some Muslims in Southern California and nationwide.
The lawsuit alleges that Monteilh was ordered by his FBI handlers to conduct “indiscriminate surveillance” of Muslims, violating their First Amendment right to freedom of religion. Filed on behalf of three Muslim plaintiffs, the 64-page document seeks class action status, unspecified damages and a court order instructing the FBI to destroy or return the information Monteilh collected.
“The FBI should be spending its time and resources investigating actual threats, not spying on every American who happens to worship at a mosque,” said Peter Bibring, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Southern California, which filed the complaint along with the Los Angeles office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
And then for a personal story about being a target of the spying, see KPCC’s Frank Stoltz report. Here’s an excerpt:
Civil rights groups on Wednesday said they’ve sued the FBI for allegedly violating the First Amendment by spying on Orange County Muslims inside mosques. KPCC’s Frank Stoltze says the case focuses on the activities of a paid informant for the federal law enforcement agency.
One plaintiff in the lawsuit is 26-year-old Ali Malek. He recalled his initial encounter with Craig Monteilh.
“I first met Monteilh when he testified to his faith in front of roughly 1,000 people at the mosque in Irvine,” said Malek. “It was a ceremony in which you become a Muslim.”
Malek said his imam asked him to teach the convert about his new religion. He said Monteilh had other interests.
“Constantly he would ask me about jihad and what I thought about it,” said Malek. “My reaction initially was, he is a new Muslim, he just became Muslim, perhaps has some misconstrued ideas and perceptions of the religion and I was more than happy to clarify those misconceptions.”
When Monteilh continued his questions about jihad and began showing up at the gym where he worked out, Malek became suspicious.
“I thought he was weird and so I just wanted to keep my distance,” Malek said. “And I wanted to give it some time to see how the situation developed. And then when the case came out, all the pieces of the puzzle came together.”
Monteilh, it turned out, was working for the FBI…
Eric Holder is firm in contending that there is legit reason for all this secrecy stuff, but it is hard not to be reminded of the book by my friend and colleague Barry Seigel, Claim of Privilege, that documents the rise of the State Secrets Act and shows how cavalierly the government invoked it—way back then—not for matters of national security, but because of an uncontrollable desire to cover its own butt.
Eric Holder – Head of the “State Secret Police”.
I don’t see sufficient information to judge the validity of Holder’s actions. It appears that he is contesting a *public* release of information, and if so, that is different from assertion ““The government’s position here is the FBI’s conduct should be beyond the review of the courts.”
If the FBI is resisting turning the information over to the courts, that’s a more serious matter.
No matter how many innocents they surveiled, they may have also monitored some people far from innocent.
The information is not available. Let a judge access it and decide.
Actually, John, I think you’re quite right. The action makes me personally grumpy on the face of it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not warranted. We honestly don’t know enough to know.