WASHINGTON — In a new challenge to President Bush’s use of executive power, Senate Democrats want to make the government produce evidence for a judge to review when it claims disclosing such information would endanger national security.
The Senate Judiciary Committee’s chairman is developing legislation aimed at reining in the administration’s use of a state-secrets privilege to argue for dismissing cases that might reveal misconduct.
Democrats contend the administration has used that tactic in cases involving suspected terrorists interrogated overseas and in the president’s secretive surveillance program.
“It has taken a legal doctrine that was intended to protect sensitive national security information and seems to be using it to evade accountability for its own misdeeds,” the chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said Wednesday.
