A Setback

A judge dismissed our FOIA lawsuit for a CIA report on the al-Jamadi case

I have some bad news. We lost.

A federal judge granted the CIA’s request to dismiss our lawsuit seeking disclosures from a report by the agency’s Inspector General into the November 2003 death of Manadel al-Jamadi in Abu Ghraib prison. I’ve posted the ruling here.

One of the questions before Judge James Boasberg was whether the CIA cover-up in this case could properly be deemed classified. After conducting an in camera review of the Inspector General’s report, Judge Boasberg ruled that “information relating to the cover-up is inextricably intertwined with the rest of the report and cannot be released in any intelligible form.”

As readers of this site know, Jamadi was a suspect in the October 2003 bombing of the Red Cross offices in Baghdad that killed 12. He was captured in a nighttime raid by Navy SEALs on November 4, 2003. The SEALs handed him over to the CIA, which took him to the notorious Abu Ghraib prison for interrogation. Within hours, he was dead. The only people in the roo…