Opinion ID: 1188885
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Plaintiffs' Opposition

Text: Following the filing of the government's motion and accompanying papers, the plaintiffs' counsel wrote to the Assistant United States Attorney assigned to the case. Counsel requested reasonable access to an unredacted copy of the Complaint, which counsel had himself prepared and which was apparently in the files of the CIA; CIA-facilitated secure communication, which would enable him to contact his client in her present location with secure telecommunications equipment to discuss potentially classified information; CIA-facilitated secure transmission between counsel and his clients of documents containing potentially classified information; and access for himself and Jane Doe's spouse to a CIA computer at a designated location of [the CIA's] choice in order to draft the relevant substantive factual documentation, which he conceded would contain information that the CIA considered classified. Letter of Mark S. Zaid to AUSA Sarah Normand, Apr. 3, 2006, at 1-2. Counsel sought the information in order to support his clients' contemplated opposition to the state-secrets invocation and the defendants' motion to dismiss. All these requests were denied by the government. Notwithstanding the government's continued refusal to provide such assistance, the plaintiffs opposed the government's motions, addressing not whether the CIA's invocation of the state secrets privilege was appropriate [or whether] the plaintiffs' case must be dismissed in its entirety as a result, but whether the First Amendment has been violated by the government's denial of counsel's procedural requests. Pls.' Oppos'n to Defs.' Mot. To Dismiss, June 22, 2006, at 4-5. The opposition characterized that denial as interference with the attorney-client relationship and deprivation of the plaintiffs' meaningful access to the courts. Id. at 5; see also id. at 2 ([I]n light of the unconstitutional denial of the plaintiffs' First Amendment right to counsel and meaningful access to this Court, the CIA's Motion must be initially denied without a decision on the merits of the invocation of the privilege.).