Janice Rogers Brown Sings “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” as She Guts Habeas
The government has released a new version of the DC Circuit opinion in the Latif case. (Via DC Circuit Review h/t scribe)
I suppose it should comfort us that the government no longer considers this passage from Janice Rogers Brown’s opinion to be classified. [I’ve underlined the bits the government previously claimed were classified; see PDF 39-40 to compare.]
What makes Latif’s current story so hard to swallow is not its intrinsic implausibility but its correspondence in so many respects with the Report he now repudiates. Like Dorothy Gale upon awakening at home in Kansas after her fantastic journey to the Land of Oz, Latif’s current account of what transpired bears a striking resemblance to the familiar faces of his former narrative. See THE WIZARD OF Oz (MGM 1939). Just as the Gales’ farmhands were transformed by Dorothy’s imagination into the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion, it is at least plausible that Latif, when his liberty was at stake, transformed his jihadi recruiter into a charity worker, his Taliban commander into an imam, his comrades-in-arms into roommates, and his military training camp into a center for religious study.
Though it raises real questions why it was classified in the first place. Really? Our government classified a Wizard of Oz analogy! And it wonders why we doubt the men behind the curtain.
And a good thing they released it, too. It makes Rogers Brown’s comment earlier in the opinion analogizing Dorothy’s Uncle Henry to Judge Henry Kennedy look every bit as disrespectful as it did in the first draft…
Even doting Uncle Henry managed to evaluate Dorothy’s credibility when· she professed that the family and friends gathered around her bed had been with her in Oz. See THE WIZARD OF Oz (MGM 1939) (“Of course we believe you, Dorothy.”). The district court, by contrast, mustered only a guarded finding of plausibility.
But at least we know that Rogers Brown–and not Kennedy–is the one who has gotten lost in Oz.
But a look at numbered page 21 shows all you need to know about the government’s good faith in this reconsidered redaction. Read more →