SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge on Wednesday tossed out a lawsuit that accused a Boeing Co. subsidiary of illegally helping the CIA secretly fly terrorism suspects to overseas prisons to be tortured.
U.S. District Court Judge James Ware ruled that national security could be jeopardized if the lawsuit was allowed to go forward.
CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden had earlier invoked the government’s so-called “state secrets privilege,” which lets intelligence agencies bar the use of evidence in court cases that jeopardize national security.
In public and confidential statements filed with the court, Hayden urged the judge to dismiss the lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union against San Jose-based Jeppesen Dataplan Inc. because he said that covert operations overseas could be exposed.
“The court’s review of Gen. Hayden’s public and classified declarations confirm that continuing the case would jeopardize national security and foreign relations and that no protective procedure can salvage this case,” Ware wrote in his ruling.
ACLU lawyers argued Tuesday that Hayden’s security concerns were trumped because the rendition program is public knowledge. President Bush confirmed its existence in a September 2006 speech, but declined to go into details.
“Many specifics of this program, including where these detainees have been held and the details of their confinement cannot be divulged,” Bush said in the speech defending the rendition program as a vital national security tool. “Doing so would provide our enemies with information they could use to take retribution against our allies and harm our country.”
Government lawyers argued successfully that they would need to divulge many confidential details of the still-classified program to help Jeppesen defend the lawsuit. The ACLU represented five men who claimed they were swept up in the rendition program and tortured.
ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner said he would appeal the case.
“At some point, some court somewhere will have to determine the legality of the program,” Wizner said.
A Department of Justice lawyer couldn’t be reached for comment late Wednesday.
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