image pending ... Al Haramain, an Oregon group that the
government declared to be a terrorist organization in 2004, and which
has since gone out of business, sued the Bush administration in 2006.
It claimed that federal authorities had illegally listened in on its
lawyers' phone calls and is seeking damages. Its officials denied the
group was a terrorist outfit. Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, who has rebuffed Bush and
Obama administration requests to dismiss the suit, did not reveal his
views on the legality of the program. But he told a government lawyer
that Al-Haramain had presented strong evidence that it had been
wiretapped and had the right to sue. The hearing was the first in California, and the second in the
nation, to address the constitutionality of Bush's post-Sept. 11 order
to intercept communications between Americans and suspected foreign
terrorists without a warrant. Since the New York Times revealed the program, and Bush confirmed
it, in December 2005, would-be plaintiffs have struggled to prove they
were targeted for surveillance and were entitled to challenge it. A federal judge in Michigan declared the program unconstitutional
in 2006, in the only other instance in which the issue has gone to
court. But an appeals court threw the case out because none of the
plaintiffs could show that their calls had been intercepted. Al-Haramain's lawsuit is unique because the charity was
inadvertently sent a classified document in 2004 that reportedly showed
that its lawyers had been wiretapped. Nevertheless, said a lawyer for Obama's Justice Department,
Al-Haramain can't prove it was subject to electronic surveillance,
because the document - which the group returned to the government, at
officials' request - and virtually everything else about the program
are secrets. People can't sue over a confidential government program "based on
speculation," said Justice Department attorney Anthony Coppolino. A ruling on the legality of the program "is simply inappropriate,"
he told Walker, and even a decision on whether Al-Haramain has the
right to sue would reveal information about "intelligence sources and
methods." Walker, however, has already ruled that public statements by Bush
administration officials indicated that the Islamic organization had
probably been wiretapped. The judge told Coppolino that Al-Haramain "has presented a
substantial array of evidence" that indicated it had been subject to
electronic surveillance. Walker did not say what he would do next. He could limit his ruling
to whether Al-Haramain has the right to sue, and allow either side to
appeal. Or he could decide whether Bush's program violated
Al-Haramain's rights.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/24/MNQB19RL8R.DTL
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