Statement on SCOTUS Refusal to Take up Challenge to Obama Secrecy on bin Laden Images

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch issued a statement today regarding the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to take up a challenge to the Obama administration’s keeping secret post mortem images of Osama bin Laden and his burial at sea.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said:

With the seeming endorsement of the judiciary, Barack Obama has rewritten the Freedom of Information Act at the expense of the American people’s right to know what its government is up to.  The idea that the “most transparent administration in history” would put the sensibilities of terrorists above the rule of law ought to concern every American.  What other laws that terrorists don’t like might be subject to unilateral change by Obama?  Obama’s appeasement places our fundamental rights and accountable government at risk.  

Judicial Watch had filed a certiorari petition with the Supreme Court of the United States to review a 2013 Appeals Court ruling against the Judicial Watch lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Dept. of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency (No. 12-5137)). The suit sought to force the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to release more than 50 photographs and video recordings of Osama bin Laden taken during and after the U.S. raid upon the terrorist leader’s compound in Pakistan on May 1, 2011.

Judicial Watch’s petition had asked the Supreme Court to “reverse this disturbing reversal,” and mandate the courts to “conduct meaningful review” and warned that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) will “continue as less of a disclosure than a “withholding statute.” 

###