Officials Cite Danger in Revealing Detainee Data
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
New York Times
The nation’s top intelligence officials have told a federal appeals court in recent days that a July ruling requiring the government to disclose virtually all its information on Guantánamo detainees could cause “exceptionally grave damage to the national security.”
The Justice Department has filed a request to overturn that decision, issued by a federal appeals court panel on July 20. The decision was an important victory for detainees’ lawyers, who said it could pierce layers of secrecy shielding what the government knows about many of the 340 men held at the naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The intelligence officials, including the directors of the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and the National Security Agency, said in court filings that the vast disclosure would reveal counterterrorism activities and could disrupt intelligence gathering. They also said assembling the information was so time-consuming that the effort had distracted the agencies from terrorism investigations.
Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director, said in a Sept. 6 affidavit that the information the appeals panel had ordered turned over to detainees’ lawyers “would include information about virtually every weapon in the C.I.A.’s arsenal” and was likely to cause people who were providing information to stop cooperating.
“This outcome,” General Hayden wrote, “would severely restrict the U.S. government’s ability to collect intelligence and wage the war on terrorism.”
(Continued here.)
New York Times
The nation’s top intelligence officials have told a federal appeals court in recent days that a July ruling requiring the government to disclose virtually all its information on Guantánamo detainees could cause “exceptionally grave damage to the national security.”
The Justice Department has filed a request to overturn that decision, issued by a federal appeals court panel on July 20. The decision was an important victory for detainees’ lawyers, who said it could pierce layers of secrecy shielding what the government knows about many of the 340 men held at the naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The intelligence officials, including the directors of the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and the National Security Agency, said in court filings that the vast disclosure would reveal counterterrorism activities and could disrupt intelligence gathering. They also said assembling the information was so time-consuming that the effort had distracted the agencies from terrorism investigations.
Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director, said in a Sept. 6 affidavit that the information the appeals panel had ordered turned over to detainees’ lawyers “would include information about virtually every weapon in the C.I.A.’s arsenal” and was likely to cause people who were providing information to stop cooperating.
“This outcome,” General Hayden wrote, “would severely restrict the U.S. government’s ability to collect intelligence and wage the war on terrorism.”
(Continued here.)
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