Secret Government

This link was passed on to me by my friend Ben Greenberg.
Last Friday’s episode of This American Life, the public radio documentary show, is about “Secret Government”. It contains three investigative stories on different aspects of US governmental secrecy since Sept. 11. You can listen to it as real audio stream at the This American Life web site.
The three articles cover:
1. Secret deportations of immigrants. Some smart ACLU lawyers contacted foreign embassies requesting names of deportees. Pakistan gave them a list. David Kestenbaum went to Pakistan and interviewed some of the deportees about their experiences.
2. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court. This secret court authorizes wire taps on people who could be foreign spies. In this court the standards of probable cause necessary in criminal investigations do not apply. In the 24 years it has existed, the court has never said no to any wire tap request from the government. This past spring the 7 conservative judges, all appointed by Chief Justice Rhenquist, ruled that Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Justice Department had gone too far. The judges on the court felt strongly enough about Justice Dept abuses to make their ruling public and to allow the ACLU to file a brief during the Justice Department’s appeal of the court’s decision.
3. The story of Jose Padilla, and American citizen designated as an “enemy combatant.” He has been held without charges, stripped of all rights, in a military jail, since last spring. The story suggests that the less evidence the government has against a suspected terrorist, the fewer rights it allows the suspect.