The good news is, this move prevents SCOTUS from doing anything nutty. The bad news is, intelligence sources can be revealed in discovery. Andrew McCarthy has more.
There are rules in place, of course, but they are very elastic and they will be construed by a judge. The judge's responsibility is not national security but to provide due process for the accused. We are still at war, al Qaeda is still trying to attack us, and it goes to school on the trove of information that comes out of civilian trials — both information in our files that must be disclosed and information that comes out in the courtroom during the public hearings and trial proceedings. The Justice Department's best lawyers (who are very good) can try to draft narrow charges to minimize the potential damage, but — as Moussaoui's case showed — they can't control the judge (who, in Moussaoui's case, authorized extensive discovery of intelligence gleaned from detained terrorists, at one point dismissed the indictment because she thought the government wasn't disclosing enough, and even delved into interrogation tactics despite the fact that those tactics had no relevance to Moussaoui).
