You would think that the Bush apologists at the Justice Department would know better than to rely on their well-worn and tiresome appeal to State Secrets Privilege when trying to keep American courts from reviewing the myriad of spy programs that W has put in place when the cases in question–e.g., CCR v. Bush–rely not on secret (or even leaked) documents but on evidence readily available to the public (see here and here for details).  After all, how can the government hide behind the cloak of secrecy when the evidence before the court does not involve any secrets in the first place?  A similar situation arose with the recent "leak" by the New York Times concerning governmental snooping into financial transactions (see here and here for my earlier discussion of these issues).  What’s even more troubling is the possibility that the Bushies started setting up domestic spying programs several months before September 11th, which would further undermine their chief (if not sole) justification for the programs–namely, protecting Americans from the bad guys in the wake of 9-11 (see here and here for details).