The Administration continually intones the national security mantra when trying to justify its secret policies. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court said that's okay in the case of the detainees, Center for National Security Studies v. DOJ . More caution is needed.

Via Victor at Balasubramania's Mania:

Timothy Lynch has an interesting Wash Post piece about a bid to reopen a half-century old case involving the government's withholding of information based on the national security rationale. The long and short of the story is that in that case a plaintiff sued under the Federal Tort Claims Act. In refusing to turn over certain documents the U.S. government claimed a national security privilege. The case resulted in a Supreme Court decision reaffirming the national security privilege (the government's right to withhold information based on national security interests). Years later, the national security claim was found to have been bogus (the documents contained nothing that could be reasonably characterized as classified). And now the plaintiffs are seeking to reopen the case. Interesting story that should serve to caution the courts and citizens against blindly accepting the national security rationale. According to Mr. Lynch, "[t]he only way to minimize . . . abuses is to treat legal claims of national security with a healthy dose of skepticism."