12/26/06

Government gives up New York fight with ACLU over secret document

NEW YORK (AP) -- After demanding that the American Civil Liberties Union turn over a classified document it had been given and prove it had destroyed every copy of it, the government agreed to make the document about photographs of detainees public.

The document -- marked "secret" in bold but small print on the top of its first page _ described when and how the military Public Affairs Office permits the media to photograph enemy prisoners of war and detainees in Iraq. It was dated more than a year after the release of pictures of American soldiers tormenting Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

"We were in a standoff, and the government blinked," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero.

The civil rights group has said that it was handed a grand jury subpoena from the U.S. attorney's office on Nov. 20, nearly a month after the ACLU received the document unsolicited and soon after it refused to comply with a prosecutor's demands to turn it over.

The ACLU fought the request, claiming the government's move was an attempt to discourage scrutiny.

The document says that the news media and the Public Affairs Office are permitted to photograph prisoners and detainees as long as the photography cannot be interpreted as holding the subjects of the photographs "up to public curiosity." It also says U.S. soldiers were prohibited from photographing prisoners and detainees unless that was required as part of a photographer's official duties.

It was declassified Dec. 15, said U.S. Attorney Jennifer G. Rodgers.

In a Dec. 18 letter to U.S. District Judge Jed. S. Rakoff, she asked for the subpoena to be withdrawn "in light of changed circumstances," including that the grand jury can get the information it needs elsewhere. She said the subpoena was issued only after the ACLU's attorneys asked for it to establish a "process" for handing over the papers.

Rakoff said that going forward, all court filings in the matter will be "presumptively public" unless he orders otherwise.

Romero said the document was "at best mildly embarrassing" because it might indicate that the government had waited a long time after the Abu Ghraib scandal to strengthen its photography guidelines.