CIA Director William Burns has filed a State Secrets Privilege demand to withhold information in a lawsuit against the agency by four American journalists and attorneys who were spied on during their visits to Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. State secrets privilege is a US evidentiary rule designed to prevent courts from revealing state secrets during civil litigation; the CIA began the process of invoking it with the Assange lawsuit earlier this year. Burns argues: “I am asserting the state secrets and statutory privileges in this case as I have determined that either admitting or denying that CIA has information implicated by the remaining allegations in the Amended Complaint reasonably could be expected to cause serious — and in some cases, exceptionally grave — damage to the national security of the United States. After deliberation and personal consideration, I have determined that the complete factual bases for my privilege assertions cannot be set forth on the public record without confirming or denying whether CIA has information relating to this matter and therefore risking the very harm to U.S. national security that I seek to protect.” Which is obviously a load of horse shit. As Assange himself tweeted in 2017, “The overwhelming majority of information is classified to protect political security, not national security.” Burns isn’t worried about damaging “the national security of the United States,” he’s worried about the potential political fallout from information about the CIA spying on American lawyers and journalists while visiting a journalist who was being actively targeted by the legal arm of the US government. Political security is also why the US is working to punish Julian Assange for publishing inconvenient facts about US war crimes. The Pentagon already acknowledged years ago that the Chelsea Manning leaks for which Assange is being prosecuted didn’t get anyone killed and had no strategic impact on US war efforts, so plainly this isn’t about national security. It’s just politically damaging for the criminality of the US government to be made public for all to see.
@caitoz Serious question for ya (and anyone else): do officials react more furiously to egg on their faces than real people being endangered?
@caitoz Everyday it is clearer that the world needs someone to whistleblow this.
@caitoz How can you assert state secrets when it’s not even a secret?
@caitoz "It’s just politically damaging for the criminality of the US government to be made public for all to see." Burns is using self referencial subjects that the courts will either love or hate. IE, we can't tell you the damage bc that would also damage US national security!
@caitoz We are ran by the CIA....and nobody even questioned when all of a sudden a previously unknown head of the CIA became president of the US just a few decades after a President who was suspiciously assassinated shortly after literally saying "I will scatter the CIA to 1000 pieces"🤦