Seemingly out of nowhere, Judge Royce Lamberth yesterday unsealed a series of opinions that disclose a large number of lies from CIA personnel to the court. The case dates back to 1994 and has been under seal until yesterday. I strongly recommend bmaz’s tremendous summary of the case over at Emptywheel. As bmaz quotes Judge Lamberth:

If multiple attorneys of the OGC within the CIA were aware of the change in Brown’s cover status and filled to report it to the Courts it would be a material misrepresentation to both this Court and the Court of Appeals. The CIA was well-aware that the assertion of the state secrets privilege as to Brown was a key strategy in getting the case dismissed.

Lamberth has found that multiple people within the CIA lied to the court in the decision from which the quote above was taken. The timing of that particular decision is quite illuminating. It was dated February 6, 2009. Is it a mere coincidence that only three weeks later, on February 27, the government submitted a filing in the al Haramain case? In this filing, the government stated:

The Government’s ex parte, in camera classified submissions also address an inaccuracy contained in a prior submission by the Government, the details of which involve classified information that cannot be set forth on the public record.

Marcy asked in the title to her post on the al Haramain filing, "Did Bush Lie to Vaughn Walker?" Given the timing of the "correction" in relation to the then-sealed Lamberth ruling, I think we can now safely answer that question in the affirmative.

But it doesn’t stop with these two cases. Note also the other recent accusations of lying by the CIA, where they are accused of lying about who, when and how extensively they briefed on torture (especially Nancy Pelosi) and the more recent revelations of the failure to brief Congress on Cheney’s hit-squads along with the affirmative lie to Congress about shooting down the airplane with the missionary on board.

Moving back to court cases, recall this admonition from Judge Emmet Sullivan earlier this year about Department of Justice lies and deception in cases relating to Guantanamo detainees:

"To hide relevant and exculpatory evidence from counsel and from the court under any circumstances, particularly here where there is no other means to discover this information and where the stakes are so very high . . . is fundamentally unjust, outrageous and will not be tolerated," Sullivan said, according to a transcript of the hearing.

"How can this court have any confidence whatsoever in the United States government to comply with its obligations and to be truthful to the court?"

What to do about it? Sullivan warned:

Sullivan, however, was skeptical of the government’s explanation and warned that "someone’s going to pay a price" for not disclosing the information.

"The sanction is going to be high," he said. "I’ll tell you quite frankly if I have to start incarcerating people to get my point across I’m going to start at the top."

I believe that Sullivan has the answer to what is not just a random series of individual bad actors. Viewed as a whole, these incidents demonstrate the result when one branch of government, the executive, is allowed virtually unlimited power at the expense of the other two branches, the judicial and legislative.

Only when we go back to the concept of true consequences, including incarceration, and including incarceration of those "at the top", will we have any chance of returning to a time when each branch of government can be assumed to be acting in good faith when dealing with the other two branches. Otherwise, as Sullivan notes, we will have no confidence that the government will be truthful to the courts. When we have no confidence that the government is truthful, I would posit that we have no government, but instead have tyranny.