DOJ Asserts Its Desire To Live In A Fantasy World Where Publicly-Disclosed Documents Haven't Been Publicly Disclosed | Techdirt

"The DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) is still trying to keep its memos related to extrajudicial drone killings a secret. The push for secrecy isn't surprising. The surprising part is how much the DOJ continues to fight this lost battle. Quick recap: the New York Times and ACLU sued the DOJ in an FOIA suit for the release of the OLC's drone-killing memo. The DOJ, of course, maintained it needed to be kept secret for national security reasons and because it was 'legal advice,' something lying outside the confines of the FOIA law. The district court saw things differently, mainly because the government -- through officials named and unnamed -- had openly discussed the contents of this memo several times. The government had also confirmed drone targets, drone operation areas and engaged in what the court referred to as "an extensive public relations campaign" to convince the public of the 'rightness' of its killer drone program. So, the court ordered the release of the memo. And then ordered the release of other, similar memos. The DOJ obviously wasn't happy with this decision, but its officials' decision to talk up the legality of drone killing over a period of several years undercut its arguments that the memos were too "secret" to be publicly disclosed. But the DOJ won't stop trying to reclaim the secrecy it gave away so frequently. Jameel Jaffer at Just Security noticed a particularly disingenuous bit of barn door-shutting being performed by the agency in its brief to the Second Circuit Court. [pdf] ..."