A US District Court has ruled (pdf) that the Pentagon cannot keep secret the list of graduates from the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), the re-branded version of the notorious School of the Americas.
Founded in 1946 as a “anti-communist” training camp for Latin American nations, the school taught some of Central and South America’s most brutal human rights violators, and openly taught courses in torture.
A group called School of the Americas Watch (SOAW) had compiled a list of all attendees and instructors from 1946 through 2003, noting the enormous number of torturers and war criminals the school had produced. The Pentagon claims policies have changed and human rights protections are now being emphasized in the training.
But since 2004 the Pentagon has refused to issue lists of attendees, claiming “national security” and privacy concerns and even going so far as to classify the data. Congressional calls to mandate the publication of the data were ignored with a “national security” waiver, as were FOIA requests aimed at seeing if the promised changes were really leading to fewer torturers being trained.
The Pentagon had been citing privacy exemptions in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) allowing them not to release certain details like third party medical records to justify refusing to release any names at all. The court ruled that the Pentagon failed to show any evidence that simply producing names and countries of origin would qualify for such a waiver, and is ordering the Pentagon to make the data public within a month.
Wow.., is the judge still alive….?
It takes a little while to re-target the drones.
Wait for the court of appeals and their renegade Judges who even thumb thier noses at Supreme Court specific rulings on matters they will agree with the pentagon! So off it will go to the Supremes, I hope they rule as the District court has!
Since no Democrat nor Republican would ever appoint a judge to the Appeals court or the Supreme Court who would dare to rule against the Pentagon, don't hold your breath.
One of the ways in which the founder's system of checks and balances has broken down and now fails to protect our liberties has been the unwillingness of the courts to do their job and stand up for American citizen rights against the other branches of government. All the justice dept or Pentagon has to do is to say the magic words 'national security' and the courts have now consistently packed it up and gone home and basically said that rules and laws and rights no longer apply.
If you want to change that, start voting for Presidents and Senators who would appoint judges who would be there to defend our rights first and foremost. They are on the ballots, but they never get most people's votes.