This American Life did a story on the origin of the State Secrets priviledge. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/383/origin-story http://ww

This American Life did a story on the origin of the State Secrets priviledge. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/383/origin-story http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/383/o... skip to 29:05. The gist of it being, in the original case where this came up, the government claimed the information in classified documents couldn't be used as evidence and thus the case couldn't proceed. The supreme court upheld that request and now the government can always waive their hand and say "classified" and the documents can't be used as evidence. 50 years later, the documents from the original case were declassified and there was no secret or classified information in them, they just proved the government was at fault.