WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration is laying out a new secrecy defense in an effort to end a court battle about the White House visits of now-imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
The administration agreed last year to produce all responsive records about the visits "without redactions or claims of exemption", according to a court order.
But in a court filing Friday night, administration lawyers said that sometime in the past year the Secret Service identified a category of highly sensitive documents that might contain information sought in a lawsuit about Abramoff's trips to the White House.
The Justice Department declared that the contents of the "Sensitive Security Records'' cannot be publicly revealed even though they could show whether Abramoff made more visits to the White House than those already acknowledged.
"The simple act of doing so ... would reveal sensitive information about the methods used by the Secret Service to carry out its protective function", the Justice Department argued.
(...)To date, the government has turned over Secret Service records referring to seven White House visits by Abramoff - six of them in the early months of the Bush administration in 2001 and the seventh in early 2004 just before Abramoff came under criminal investigation.
(...)Time magazine reported that its reporters had been shown five photographs of Bush and Abramoff. Most of them, the magazine said, had the formal look of photos taken at presidential receptions".
The Justice Department probe of Abramoff and his team of lobbyists has led to convictions of a dozen people, including former Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, former White House official David Safavian and former Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles.
Abramoff is serving six years in prison on a criminal case out of Florida. He has not yet been sentenced on charges of mail fraud, conspiracy and tax evasion stemming from the influence-peddling scandal in Washington.
Comment: So now, the Bush administration is defining these records as "Sensitive Security Records", to avoid having them made public?Daniel Hopsicker reported that days before the 9/11 attack, Mohamed Atta and several other alleged hijackers were invited on Abramoff’s casino boats
And the motion was filed in the dead of night, so that the story would get buried during the weekend?
Someone, somewhere, is sweating precisely what those records would reveal.
And trust me, this has absolutely nothing to do with revealing "...sensitive information about the methods used by the Secret Service to carry out its protective function".
If this accusation turns out to be true, this is evidence that the hijackers were patsies for the Zionists. Furthermore, Abramoff’s connections with AIPAC, Tom Delay, and other people should be investigated.
Professor Cole describes Jack Abramoff’s “charity” as a front for Zionist terrorism.