American Civil Liberties Union

The Library of Congress missed a chance to right its wrong and reinstate Col. Morris Davis to his post at the Library's Congressional Research Service (CRS) back in December. Col. Davis, former head prosecutor in the Guantánamo military commissions, was fired from CRS because of opinion pieces he wrote about the military commissions system that ran in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post on November 11, 2009.

Last Friday, we got a list, called a Vaughn index, of records related to the CIA's destruction of videotapes that showed the torture and abusive interrogation of detainees in U.S. custody overseas. Among the most interesting revelations in the index are the precise date the tapes were destroyed, and evidence that the Bush White House was involved in early discussions about the tapes' destruction.

Listed in the index released late last week are a November 8, 2005, cable from a CIA field office to CIA headquarters requesting permission to destroy the 92 tapes, and a November 9, 2005, cable confirming their destruction. The precise date of destruction confirms that the tapes were destroyed immediately after the Washington Post reported the existence of the CIA black sites and the New York Times reported that the CIA Inspector General had questioned the legality of the agency’s torture program.

Today the Obama Justice Department petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal of a federal court ruling that they must turn over photos depicting the abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody overseas.

An appeals court had soundly rejected all of the government’s arguments for withholding the photos in response to an ACLU Freedom of Information Act lawsuit , and it’s unfortunate that the government has chosen to contest that decision.

On Friday, Steve Bierfeldt, treasurer of Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty, and Larry Schwartztol, fearless ACLU attorney, appeared on CNN to talk about our new lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security.

We filed the lawsuit on Steve's behalf after he was detained in a small room at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and interrogated by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials for nearly half an hour for passing a metal box containing cash through a security checkpoint X-ray machine. He was carrying the cash in connection with his duties as the Director of Development for the Campaign for Liberty, a political organization that grew out of Congressman Ron Paul's presidential campaign.