Absurdity of court cases involving secrets
If you want to get a taste of how absurd the spy agencies/agents can sometimes be in their quest for secrecy look no further than the current case in front of the Supreme Court on whether CIA can neglect seemingly non-existing verbal contracts with their ex-spies.
To give you a taste...
- John and Jane Doe claim CIA promised them relocation to the US and financial assistance in return for spying activities on their home countries (and who knows how else). They are now claiming (some number of years later) that the CIA is ignoring their requests for assistance for help in finding a new job (it is somewhat obvious that a defected high-ranking diplomat couldn't claim the knowledge he/she possesses on a resume)
- They ended up suing the CIA in order to obtain CIA's internal procedures for handling people such as them and the case ended up in the Supreme Court after lower courts found in their favor
- Arguments in the Supreme Court are nothing short of senseless. No one knows who these people are (not even their lawyer) and it appears that neither side wants to even officially recognize that they were spies.
So, to summarize: non-existent non-spies without any written contract are trying to get access to internal CIA procedures in order to better understand their non-existent benefits.
Granted I have absolutely no knowledge of law, but I don't understand how this ended up in the Supreme Court. I feel for these people, whoever they are, but I don't see how any government in their right mind would yield to such a request.
To give you a taste...
- John and Jane Doe claim CIA promised them relocation to the US and financial assistance in return for spying activities on their home countries (and who knows how else). They are now claiming (some number of years later) that the CIA is ignoring their requests for assistance for help in finding a new job (it is somewhat obvious that a defected high-ranking diplomat couldn't claim the knowledge he/she possesses on a resume)
- They ended up suing the CIA in order to obtain CIA's internal procedures for handling people such as them and the case ended up in the Supreme Court after lower courts found in their favor
- Arguments in the Supreme Court are nothing short of senseless. No one knows who these people are (not even their lawyer) and it appears that neither side wants to even officially recognize that they were spies.
So, to summarize: non-existent non-spies without any written contract are trying to get access to internal CIA procedures in order to better understand their non-existent benefits.
Granted I have absolutely no knowledge of law, but I don't understand how this ended up in the Supreme Court. I feel for these people, whoever they are, but I don't see how any government in their right mind would yield to such a request.
posted by z @ 2:54 AM
2 Comments:
At 11:27 AM,
Rama said…
Mr. John Doe's stipend decreased as his salary went up. Now, because of downsizing, he wants aid in finding employment or a reinstatement of the stipend. Well, the CIA offered to get them settled in the US, which they fulfilled. He now has work experience, courtesy of the job the CIA found for him. Coming from an Eastern bloc country, they should know better than to trust the government's word explicitly.
At 5:12 PM,
z said…
Agreed. It seems to me that the bottom line here is that without an actual written contract things should come down to "he said, she said". I would think that the only way it got to the Supreme Court was by requesting internal documents on how cases like their's are handled rather than looking for a judgement in their favor. Seems a bit pointless though.
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