May 23, 2009 8:34 am US/Pacific
SF Judge May Declare Gov't Liable In Wire-Tap Case
SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) ―
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U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker
AP
A federal judge said in an order filed in San Francisco Friday that he is considering declaring the government liable in a warrantless wiretapping lawsuit as a penalty for failing to make a top-secret document available to lawyers for an Islamic charity.
U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker ordered Justice Department attorneys to appear before him on June 3 for a hearing on possible sanctions in the lawsuit filed against the government by the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation.
Walker said he is considering finding the government liable for alleged wiretapping and ordering it to pay financial compensation to the foundation as a penalty "for failing to obey the court's orders" to make the secret document available to foundation attorneys.
The now-defunct foundation, formerly based in Ashland, Ore., claims U.S. agents illegally wiretapped phone calls to a foundation officer in Saudi Arabia in 2004 without a warrant.
The case is one of more than three dozen domestic surveillance lawsuits pending before Walker.
It is the only one in which the plaintiffs allegedly had direct evidence of being wiretapped. The evidence, known in court papers as the sealed document, is reportedly a top-secret phone log.
It was accidentally released by the U.S. Treasury Department to the foundation in 2004 but was later retrieved by federal agents. Al-Haramain lawyers have thus far not been allowed to cite it as evidence.
In January, Walker ruled that the foundation had enough preliminary evidence from public sources to allow its lawsuit to proceed. He ordered the government to take steps to provide foundation lawyers with security clearances and allow them to look at the sealed document under secure conditions.
But the Justice Department has thus far refused to do so, saying the National Security Agency has determined that foundation representatives have no "need to know" right to see the document.
Walker wrote in Friday's order that government officials "are refusing to cooperate with the court's order because, they assert, plaintiffs' attorneys do not 'need to know' the information that the court has determined they do need to know."
In addition to scheduling the June 3 hearing, Walker instructed Justice Department lawyers to file a written response by May 29.
(© CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Bay City News contributed to this report.)
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