FBI invoked privacy right protections for Osama bin Laden

Judicial Watch is an American conservative organisation which claims to fight government corruption. At the end of April it announced some staggering news. It obtained a document through the Freedom of Information Act which the FBI invoked privacy right protections on behalf of Osama bin Laden.

Yes, the leader of al Qaeda and America’s most wanted (and least mentioned) man. The declassified September 2003 FBI report obtained by Judicial Watch was subjected to Exemption 6 of the Freedom of Information Act on behalf of bin Laden. This allows the government to withhold all information about U.S. persons in “personnel and medical files and similar files” when the disclosure of such information “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”

So the privacy of Osama bin Laden has a higher priority for the Bush Junta than the public’s right to know what happened after 911. This, it should be stressed, follows the usual pattern of Bush and enquiries into that atrocity. You could start to think they had something to hide.