San Francisco federal judge rules
for need to look at secret goverment documents

By Julia Cheever, Bay City News Service

June 7, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) - A federal judge in San Francisco has ruled that that he needs to look at classified government documents before he can proceed with presiding over a surveillance lawsuit filed against AT&T Corp.

U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, in an order issued on Tuesday, instructed Justice Department lawyers to make the confidential documents available to him by Friday.

The documents explain why the government claims that a lawsuit filed against AT&T must be dismissed because proceeding with the case would allegedly endanger national security.

The lawsuit, filed by the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation on behalf of four Californians, alleges that AT&T has given the National Security Agency records of millions of Americans' telephone and Internet communications.

The classified documents include key parts of a government brief seeking dismissal along with parts of sworn statements by National Intelligence Director John Negroponte and NSA Director Keith Alexander.

In an unsealed part of his statement, Negroponte said there would be "exceptionally grave danger to the national security of the United States" if the lawsuit is allowed to proceed and government secrets are revealed.

Walker will hear the government's request for dismissal of the case on June 23.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs had urged him to decide on that motion without looking at the secret documents.

But Walker said in his order that "the only prudent way" for him to balance the due process rights of the plaintiffs and the government's national security claim is to review the documents.

At a hearing last month, a government lawyer told the judge that the documents are being held at a secure site at the Justice Department in Washington D.C. and can be flown to San Francisco for him to review.

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