In a letter sent to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit today, the ACLU asserted that the recently released memos graphically describe several illegal interrogation techniques that were used by the CIA against some of the plaintiffs in its lawsuit against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen DataPlan, Inc. for its role in the CIA's extraordinary rendition program. The government intervened and halted that case asserting "state secrets," relying upon former CIA Director Michael Hayden's declaration that disclosing specific interrogation techniques "would degrade the effectiveness of the United States' intelligence gathering activities by … providing terrorists information about interrogation methods."

"That rationale no longer exists, because the methods are now public, and because they have been expressly prohibited," said Ben Wizner, ACLU National Security Project attorney, in today's letter. "A program that does not exist cannot be 'degraded' by disclosures of information that is already public."

The case, Mohamed et al. v. Jeppesen, is now on appeal. Because of the government's overbroad and improper use of the state secrets privilege, no CIA torture victim yet has had his day in court.

"The CIA and its contractors have used false claims of secrecy to avoid any judicial scrutiny for grave human rights violations," said Wizner. "The notion that the extraordinary rendition program could be discussed everywhere in the world except in a U.S. courtroom has always been absurd. Now that the CIA's detention and torture program has been publicly confirmed and officially terminated, there is no basis whatsoever for denying its victims their day in court."

In addition to Wizner, attorneys in the lawsuit are Steven R. Shapiro, Steven Watt  and Jameel Jaffer of the national ACLU, Ann Brick of the ACLU of Northern California, Paul Hoffman of the law firm Schonbrun DeSimone Seplow Harris & Hoffman LLP and Hope Metcalf of the Yale Law School Lowenstein Clinic. In addition, Margaret L. Satterthwaite and Amna Akbar of the International Human Rights Clinic of New York University School of Law and Clive Stafford-Smith and Zachary Katznelson represent plaintiffs in this case.

Read the letter »
 
More on the ACLU's extraordinary rendition case against Jeppesen DataPlan »