“Time and time again, the courts have upheld the careful steps the Justice Department and federal government have taken since the devastating attacks of September 11, 2001 to both investigate that atrocity and prevent terrorists from striking again. The Supreme Court decision keeps in place the D.C. Circuit's decision upholding the Justice Department’s measured steps to safeguard sensitive information about our terrorism investigations as well as the privacy of individuals who chose not to make public their link to the probe. When the September 11 investigation led us to those who had violated our nation’s laws, we enforced those laws and detained those individuals. We are pleased the court let stand a decision that clearly outlined the danger of giving terrorists a virtual roadmap to our investigation that could have allowed them to chart a potentially deadly detour around our efforts.”

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

In approving the government’s lawful, measured steps in the war on terrorism, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote on June 17, 2003, "America faces an enemy just as real as its former Cold War foes, with capabilities beyond the capacity of the judiciary to explore.... we hold that the government’s expectation that disclosure of the detainees’ names would enable al Qaeda or other terrorist groups to map the course of the investigation and thus develop the means to impede it is reasonable. A complete list of names informing terrorists of every suspect detained by the government at any point during the September 11 investigation would give terrorist organizations a composite picture of the government investigation, and since these organizations would generally know the activities and locations of its members on or about September 11, disclosure would inform terrorists of both the substantive and geographic focus of the investigation. Moreover, disclosure would inform terrorists which of their members were compromised by the investigation, and which were not. This information could allow terrorists to better evade the ongoing investigation and more easily formulate or revise counter-efforts.”

The court continued, “Knowing when and where each individual was arrested would provide a chronological and geographical picture of the government investigation. Terrorists could learn from this information not only where the government focused its investigation but how that investigation progressed step by step. Armed with that knowledge, they could then reach such conclusions as, for example, which cells had been compromised, and which individuals had been cooperative with the United States. They might well be able to derive conclusions as to how more adequately secure their clandestine operations in future terrorist undertakings.”

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