A #FOIA lawsuit by a #Georgetown Law adjunct prof could compel the Office of Personnel Management to reveal how many people have been denied federal employment because they have not registered with Selective Service.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg sided in part with Leah M. Nicholls, an adjunct and staff attorney with Georgetown Law's Institute for Public Representation. In her original FOIA request, and subsequent lawsuit, Nicholls sought OPM's records on the numbers and categories of men who were either fired or denied employment because they failed to meet the draft registration requirement.

Could prove interesting, these numbers. The personnel folks, though, replied that they didn't have any relevant records. Nicholls sued.

Judge Boasberg rejected OPM's request to dismiss the lawsuit, and ordered the federal agency to conduct another search.

An #appeals #court has upheld the #Native American settlement in the massive Cobell litigation that tied the Bureau of Indian Affairs up in knots for years.

In a 24-page decision Tuesday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals turned away the challenge by Kimberly Craven, who called the settlement unfair.

The original case, recall, dates back to 1996, when Eloise Cobell and four other Native Americans filed a class action alleging a breach of fiduciary duties by the Interior Department. After much haggling, the final settlement called for members of the class to be paid out of a $1.5 billion settlement fund. This amounts to $1,000 per individual. An additional $1.9 billion is to to go a land fund.

Note: the winning attorneys were awarded some $99 million.

Ms. Craven challenged the settlement on multiple grounds; among other things, the circuit court reasoned:

"Viewed, then, not in the hypothetical light cast by Craven’s challenge, but in the actual light illuminating the parties’ negotiations, the district court reasonably concluded that the class settlement agreement offered a fair resolution of the plaintiff classes’ claims..."

 

 

 

 

#Iran and #Syria must pay $332 million to a family ravaged by a 2006 terrorist bombing, a federal judge ruled Monday.

The decision is the latest by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in a series of similar cases filed by survivors and surviving family members, under the state-sponsored terrorism exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. All told, the bill for Iran is now easily over $1 billion.

This latest judgment arises out of the April 17, 2006 suicide bombing attack at the Rosh Ha’ir restaurant in Tel Aviv, Israel. The explosion killed eleven people and wounded dozens of others. Sixteen-year-old Daniel Wultz died from his injries, his father Yekutiel “Tuly” Wultz was injured.

Judge Lamberth noted that Iran's intelligence service and the Syrian Ministry of Defense, Syrian Military Intelligence, and Syrian Air Force Intelligence Directorate are "essential parts of the political structure of Iran and Syria and acted as conduits for the states’ provision of funds to terrorist organizations."

Heartrendingly, Judge Lamberth further takes note of the family's pain, writing in part:

"One moment Tuly Wultz was enjoying a peaceful meal with his son. The next, Tuly watched his son’s body shredded by bomb shrapnel while he too was severely injured. After the explosion, Tuly spent twenty-seven days in great distress as he watched Daniel slowly pass away. The profoundness of Tuly’s mental anguish is reflected in his own words: “Why am I here? What am I here and not Daniel?"

#FOIA can't touch a #secret #CIA history of the Bay of Pigs debacle, a judge ruled Thursday.

In a 13-page ruling that's a blow to historians and right-to-know advocates, U.S. District Judge Glady Kessler rejected the bid by the National Security Archive for  Volume V of the Official History of the Bay of Pigs Operation.  Former CIA historian Dr. Jack B. Pfeiffer compiled the history in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The intrepid folks at the National Security Archive filed requests for the multi-volume history in 2005. Last year, the CIA provided three volumes, but not the volume that was entitled “CIA’s Internal Investigation of the Bay of Pigs Operations."

"The CIA has offered no explanation as to why it failed to provide any materials to the NSA in the five years and seven months that elapsed between acknowledgment of the FOIA requests and the filing of this lawsuit, but was able to release extensive materials three months after this lawsuit was filed," Judge Kessler noted.

The CIA argued Volume V, which ended up being a draft much criticized by other Agency employees was exempt from disclosure because it was part of the Agency's internal "deliberative" process. Kessler agreed, stating:

"While Dr. Pfeiffer’s approach may have had its deficiencies, it clearly contained controversial opinions and therefore disclosure of Volume V would have a chilling effect on CIA’s current historians who would henceforth be inhibited from trying out innovative, unorthodox or unpopular interpretations in a draft manuscript."

The first #Iraq war #contract case tried in the federal #court of claims has resulted in an $11.8 million judgment for Kellog Brown & Root Services.

This, of course, is by no means the end of war contracting litigation. The United States, after all, is suing KBR in a separate action for some $100 million in allegedly false claims made for its lucrative Iraq War work.

Still, in a 97-page decision, originally filed under seal in late April, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims has awarded the judgment for KBR's logistics work during the early years of the Iraq War and subsequent United States occupation of Iraq. The contracts in question before the claims court were under the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program.

This is a long and complicated case, yielding a long and complicated opinion, albeit with some scintillating details including allegations of kickbacks. In the particular contract issue before the claims court, it was determined that the questioned contract was not driven by corruption. Reasoned Claims Court Judge Christine Odell Cook Miller:

"No 'tainted transaction' was involved in this case; rather, two unsophisticated, unscrupulous employees took advantage of a chaotic wartime situation by accepting money on the side."

 

An #Army #appeals court has reversed a troubled soldier's conviction, on at least some charges, in a case that revealed a little Catch-22 in action. Or, maybe it's better described as a classic double-bind: you're trapped, whatever you do.

Consider these circumstances: Army Private Andrew L. Gean was referred by his commanding officer to see a psychiatrist, who was to evaluate the young man. The psychiatrist directed Mr. Gean to tell her about threats he supposedly made. Mr. Gean told her. He was then charged with, and ultimately convicted of communicating those very threats.

The April 30 decision by the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals reversed that part of Mr. Gean's conviction, but left standing his bad conduct discharge on other charges of going AWOL. Reasoned the court:

"Compelled by command direction and the demands of the evaluating psychiatrist to respond, PV2 Gean responded honestly in hopes of receiving help for his problems coping with anger and stress. In doing so he uttered what might be considered threats...The law is not so dim as to damn a soldier for responding honestly to a psychiatrist when compelled by command directive and psychiatric need to do so."

An #appellate #court ruling rejecting a #Gitmo detainee's habeas corpus petition has now been unsealed, with no apparent redactions.

In a 22-page opinion dated April 27 but released publicly Thursday, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the arguments of Mashour Abdullah Muqbel Alsabri. The Yemeni native had reportedly fought with the Taliban before being seized in Pakistan and conveyed to Guantanamo Bay.

The appellate court states:

"Alsabri concedes that, at some point before traveling to Afghanistan, he stayed for approximately two weeks at a boardinghouse in Sana’a, Yemen with a group of veteran fighters. At least two of them were members of the Taliban or al Qaeda; one would go on to become one of the suicide bombers of the U.S.S. Cole."

Alsabri now maintains that he traveled to the front lines solely “out of curiosity and to visit a friend." His attorneys further argued that mere presence in a guesthouse or the fact of being trained does not amount to proof of membership in the Taliban or al Qaeda.

#Scotus has now been tainted by the pervasive anti-Washington sentiment, as a new survey shows the court's public favorability ratings at the lowest level in a quarter century.

Fifty two percent of U.S. residents surveyed expressed a favorable view of the Supreme Court, down from 58 percent in 2010. Twenty nine percent of those surveyed by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press voiced an unfavorable view of the court.

Compared to rock-bottom Congress, the court's numbers are still awfully good. Nonetheless, researchers noted that "the decline in court ratings has occurred across party lines." Among Democrats, for instance, the court's "relatively high" popularity through 2010 has since "fallen steeply."