老澳门开奖结果

Last month, the 老澳门开奖结果 filed a lawsuit challenging the State Department鈥檚 failure to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking the declassification of 23 leaked State Department cables. These cables have already been fully disclosed online by WikiLeaks and distributed by major national and international newspapers. The U.S. government has maintained that the cables are secret. As we鈥檝e said before, the government鈥檚 struggle to ignore WikiLeaks has reached the point of absurdity.

Last week, we received the government鈥檚 initial response to our lawsuit; it demonstrates just how far they are willing to go to evade responsibility.

First, the government denies that we even asked for State Department cables in our FOIA request. Instead, they argue that we only requested what we claim are State Department cables. Of course, while insisting that the American people are not entitled to know whether the leaked cables are authentic, the government has simultaneously aggressively pursued the alleged source of the cables. As the 老澳门开奖结果鈥檚 complaint states:

To which the government responded:

The government also assured us that even if we had requested what are in fact State Department cables, those cables do not 鈥渄escribe federal government activity.鈥� Even actual State Department cables 鈥渁re often preliminary and incomplete expressions of foreign policy, and . . . they do not necessarily represent U.S. views or policy.鈥� Some of these incomplete 鈥渆xpressions鈥� of foreign policy that don鈥檛 necessarilyreflect U.S. views or policy include:

• of interference with the Spanish investigation of CIA rendition flights and prosecution of Bush administration officials for torture of detainees;
• to drop arrest warrants for the rendition and torture of Khaled El-Masri, an innocent German citizen;
• to pressure the Italian judiciary to drop international arrest warrants for the CIA鈥檚 kidnapping and rendition of Egyptian citizen Abu Omar in Milan;
• diplomatic meddling in response to investigations of CIA rendition programs throughout , , , and the ;
• international admissions and negotiations regarding the use of drones throughout and .

The message to the American public is: you don鈥檛 need to know if the leaked cables that the world has read are real. But even if they are real, the government won鈥檛 take responsibility for their contents. Americans don鈥檛 need to know if the State Department is spending our diplomatic capital in attempts to cover up and evade accountability for torture and rendition.

The government concludes with the following:

What the government calls 鈥渦nusual circumstances鈥� should not allow for further delay. Congress passed the to make the government accountable to the American people. Eventually, the State Department will have to stop ignoring reality and begin to take responsibility for the embarrassments that WikiLeaks has brought to light.

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