State Secrets Privilege
The State Secrets Privilege is a privilege enjoyed by the government which can ask the court to exclude evidence from a legal case by submitting an affidavit stating that the disclosure of the evidence might put sensitive information at risk endangering national security. The privilege is an evidentiary rule similar to the privilege enjoyed in the doctor-patient, lawyer–client scenarios.
The privilege allows the removal of the material or the evidence from the litigation completely. The case proceeds with the court determining the outcome, keeping in mind the affects of the unavailability of the evidence. A similar privilege is also enjoyed in the British law which is also thought to be the origin of its existence in the US law system.
US Supreme Court officially recognized the privilege for the first time in1953. The Decision was in the US v.Reynolds case. It followed the incident of crashing of a B-29 Super fortress military bomber. When the widows of the 3 civilian crew members sought the reports on the crash, they were told that the information could not be provided as compromising the details and location of the plane would put the national security of the nation in jeopardy.
As important as it may be to its use in the debate on national secutiry , it has often been cited for its misuse by the government. As a footnote to the above incident, when the information was declassified in 2000, it was revelaed that the argument put forward under the State Secrets Privilege Act was fraudulent and contained no such secret information. Infact, it revealed the poor state of the plane.
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