Michael Hayden and the rest of the torture apologists have been wandering around all week claiming that the Administration could have won its FOIA case against ACLU and withheld the torture memos.
If this ruling from Juge Hellerstein is any indication, they couldn’t be more wrong. It did five things:
- Demanded a full "Vaughn" index for the FOIAed materials, describing the people involved and other details.
- Refused the government’s attempt to limit production of descriptions of the torture tapes to August 2002, and instead demanded all of it (through December 2002)
- Required the government to produce documents relating to the torture tape destruction through at least June 20, 2003.
- Sent the government back to reconsider the redactions on documents pertaining to the torture tapes that takes into consideration the release of the torture memos.
- Asked whether it’s too soon to hold CIA in contempt for destroying the torture tapes that were resposive to the original FOIA.
I would imagine we’re going to be seeing a lot more revealing documents get processed through Hellerstein’s Courtroom.