Justice Department Lawyers Try to Block Withers' File Release
The Commercial Appeal
October 17, 2011
Charles D. "Chuck" Tobin- Washington
Litigation Partner Chuck Tobin, chair of the firm's Media Law Team, was quoted in an article in The Commercial Appeal titled "Justice Department lawyers try to block Withers' file release."
The article reports that Justice Department lawyers in Washington filed a pleading asking U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson for "leave to file (a) post-argument memorandum" opposing The Commercial Appeal's bid to review civil rights photographer Ernest Withers' FBI informant file. The Justice Department wants to file an additional five-page brief "to address more fully several issues raised by the Court" at an Oct. 4 hearing. The brief aims to underscore the government's argument that information about a confidential informant, even a dead one, isn't releasable under the Freedom of Information Act unless the FBI first "officially confirms" an individual as an informant. The newspaper's lawyers argue that the law cited by Justice was intended to protect living informants from retaliation by drug cartels, not a deceased informant whose cases are 40 years old. "The judge was clearly worried about giving the FBI blanket discretion to keep decades-old secrets about our government spying on peaceful protestors,'' said Mr. Tobin, who is representing the newspaper. "I don't think she is going to be persuaded by this belated brief. More discretion and secrecy, which is what the FBI says it now wants, is never better for the democracy than a public accounting."
To read the article, click here.
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