The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the government’s national security interests can block a Guantanamo Bay detainee’s effort to get testimony from two CIA contractors about operations allegedly in Poland where he says he was detained and tortured.
The ruling allows the government to officially keep secret some of the most basic information about the government’s use of so-called black sites to detain enemy combatants in foreign countries in the initial years responding to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The court split along how the justices should approach the case, which centered on whether a discovery request meant the contractors would confirm or deny whether there was a black site in Poland. The United States hasn’t done so, and neither has Poland, though information about that has come from public sources, such as a Senate report that spoke of “Detention Site Blue” in lieu of “Poland” more than 60 times, the Supreme Court’s ruling states.
