ACLU Challenges Government Classification Of Every Word Detainees Speak In Gitmo Trials

What's classified in a Gitmo detainee's trial? No less than every word spoken by a detainee. Yep. Everything a defendant says is presumptively classified, notwithstanding the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of a "speedy and public trial." So much for the "public" part! Read what Pro Publica's Cora Currier documents for us. Here's Currier on the ACLU's action:

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The ACLU filed a brief in May saying that the government’s order of presumptive classification and the forty-second delay [in the livecast of trials to American news agencies] violate the public’s right of access to the trial. The ACLU’s motion takes issue with the idea that the government has declared detainees’ “personal knowledge of their detention and treatment in U.S. custody” classified. Their exposure to classified information was forced upon them, the ACLU states, in CIA detention and interrogation programs that are now outlawed.

The ACLU argues that an executive order on classification signed by Obama in 2009 says in part that, in order to be properly classified, information must be “under the control of the United States Government.” The ACLU’s brief challenges whether that authority could be extended “categorically to human beings under the government’s control.” [emphasis in original]. The ACLU also argues that the detainees were not in any kind of contractual relationship which would make them liable for the classified information they were exposed to.

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It's just another battle in the bipartisan war on rights and liberties.

Once again, we need to remind our leaders that the Bill of Rights is written to apply to all persons, not just citizens. That fact and five bucks will get you a frappuccino at Starbucks...