U.S. Supreme Court justices let stand a ruling by a federal appeals court that had accepted President Bush's rationale for refusing to disclose either the identities of those it arrested, most of whom have since been deported for immigration violations unrelated to terrorism, or the circumstances of the arrests.
Disclosing a list of the detainees' names "would give terrorist organizations a composite picture of the government investigation," a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said in a 2-to-1 ruling in the summer of 2003. Said the court: "The judiciary owes some measure of deference to the executive in cases implicating national security."
According to the dissenting judge, David S. Tatel, the majority had "converted deference into acquiescence" by accepting a categorical secrecy policy without requiring the government to show why the names of those who had been cleared of terrorist connections could not be made public. Of the nearly 1,000 people arrested, the government eventually released the names of 129 against whom it brought criminal charges.
The Supreme Court now ends one of the most significant court cases related to the World Trade Center terrorist attack on 9/11.
This case came to a head when a federal district judge, Gladys Kessler, ruled in August 2002 in response to a Freedom of Information Act suit brought by a coalition of civil liberties groups that the government had to disclose most of the names.
The litigtion was commenced by the 22-member coalition, which included the Center for National Security Studies, the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA and the Council of American Islamic Relations, cited the Freedom of Information Act as well as the First Amendment. The group sought the names of the people and those of the lawyers representing them, the dates and circumstances of each arrest, any criminal charges filed and the basis for keeping the records of each case under seal.
The federal government's defense was based on an exemption provided by the Freedom of Information Act for "law enforcement records," and the Justice Department argued that the proponents of disclosure were seeking investigatory material that would not be made available even in routine cases.
