Claim of Privilege: A Mysterious Plane Crash, a Landmark Supreme Court Case, and the Rise of State Secrets

The year was 1948. As far as most Americans were concerned World War II was now in the rear view mirror and people were busy making up for lost time. Couples were building homes and having babies in ever increasing numbers. Prosperity abounded. It seemed that happy days were indeed here again. Yet there were troubling new threats looming on the horizon that those in our government and military found very compelling. The Korean peninsula had been politically divided at the conclusion of World War II and the threat of armed conflict in that region of the world appeared inevitable. Meanwhile, there were escalating political, military and economic tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union that would eventually come to be known as the Cold War. This was not a time to rest on our laurels. Beginning in 1946, the Defense Department entered into a contract with RCA to develop a guidance system for a pilot-less aircraft. They called it Project Banshee. The goal, in an era before intercontinental missiles, was to launch drone planes that could travel long distances and drop bombs on pinpoint targets. Test flights would begin just a year later on the Air Force's rather unreliable B-29 aircraft. On October 6, 1948 three RCA engineers joined an Air Force crew on one such test flight. Sadly, one of the engines caught fire and this plane would ultimately crash into a field in Waycross, GA. All three of the engineers were killed as well as a number of military personnel. The accident report prepared by Air Force investigators clearly indicated that pilot error was a factor in the crash. In addition it was learned that there were numerous mechanical problems with this particular aircraft. This mission should never have been allowed to take off! "Claim of Privilege: A Mysterious Plane Crash, A Landmark Supreme Court Case, and the Rise of State Secrets" recalls the remarkable series of events that ensued following this little known plane crash. It turns out that there was a lot more at stake here than simply compensating the families for the loss of their loved ones. For a variety of very dubious reasons the Air Force was extremely reluctant to release the facts surrounding this case. They steadfastly refused to produce the accident report citing "state secrets" and this in essence was the crux of this case. The families of Al Palya, Bob Reynolds and William Brauner, the three civilian engineers who were killed in this mishap, had no idea why the accident occurred. Release of the accident report was crucial to their understanding of what had happened to their loved ones. In 1949 the widows of these engineers approached renowned attorney Charles Biddle of the Philadelphia law firm Drinker, Biddle & Reath about representing them in this case. Biddle was a former World War I fighter pilot and was intrigued by the issues presented in the case. None of the parties involved could ever have imagined that the legal wrangling surrounding

Barry Siegel,a Pulitzer prize winning writer, offers a meticulously researched, beautifully written story of the genesis of expanded executive power and the government secrets privilige. In so doing, he puts a human face on a real tragedy for the families involved in the court case and for the entire nation.

No one questions that governments need to keep some things secret. There is no reason that I should be able to get detailed blueprints on the newest of submarines, for instance, nor need I decode the latest messages going to the generals in Afghanistan. In matters of national security, keeping secrets even from citizens is only sensible. There is a problem, though, that it is the national government that makes decisions about what is a matter of national security. There are other reasons to keep secrets, like covering up blunders or limiting financial redress against the government, and bureaucrats may be eager to claim that these must be kept secret and ask for your faith that they need the secrecy in the interest of national security. There is an important Supreme Court decision that first put the "states secrets privilege" into the law, _United States vs. Reynolds_ of 1953, and it is a basis for subsequent states secret decisions, of which , of course, there have been many. It is a shock to find out that the decision was based on lies presented by the prosecution, and that the government fallaciously insisted that the details that would have shown them to be lies were too secret for the courts to consider. In _Claim of Privilege: A Mysterious Plane Crash, a Landmark Supreme Court Case, and the Rise of State Secrets_ (Harper), journalist Barry Siegel has told the amazing, often distressing story of this case. In a riveting narrative, he tells us about the personalities behind the decision, the families that were affected by it, the historical context of the times in which it was made, and the governmental aftereffects. It has much of the David-versus-Goliath appeal of a legal thriller, while it also throws light on current governmental insistence on the privilege of keeping secrets. The decision arose out of a 1948 crash of a B-29 Superfortress bomber which was testing secret electronics, and which crashed, killing nine of thirteen men aboard. Among the dead were three civilian RCA engineers, and their widows claimed the crash was a result of government negligence. There are always accident reports after such crashes, but after the suit was brought by the widows, the Justice department claimed the accident report was a national security secret, even though it had nothing to do with the secret electronics on board. Lower courts rejected such a declaration, but the Supreme Court decided that courts should accept any executive branch claim of secrecy and not look any deeper; part of the court's deference to the government was that the political atmosphere was thick with communist plots and international threats. The lower courts decided rightly; the Supreme Court was presented with a fraud, and wrongly decided on the basis of that fraud. The latter part of this book is a satisfying human story of how children of the dead engineers and the one remaining widow got together starting in 2000 to pursue their claim, and how the original l

"Claim of Privilege" is a fascinating work of nonfiction that reads like a novel. Not only does it recount the details of a little-known military plane crash, but also our government's abuse of power. Once you read Siegel's book, you'll want to share it with others.

This book is the chronicle of a grievous travesty of justice at the highest level of our American political system. One branch of government lied to another branch of government, and 50 years thereafter the lie was discovered and its content was made public. On appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States of America it became evident that our judicial system is incapable of effecting the balance of powers that was assumed in our founding documents. A litany of successive abuses of executive privilege has proceeded from that event, protected by legal assumptions that were couched in the mechanics of the original lie. Barry Siegel gives us a detailed and meticulously documented look into this part of our American heritage, and he does it with a strong personal sense for the human beings who have been - and will be affected.