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Judge moves on Senate-CIA report

In another case of a jurist being unafraid to take notice of the news, a federal judge in Washington is gauging the legal fallout from the Senate Intelligence Committee's vote to seek declassification of parts of its report on Central Intelligence Agency interrogation practices during the Bush era.

In a brief order Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg ordered the parties in a pair of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits to advise him on Friday whether the Senate panel’s action changes the stance of the two cases. The government argued earlier that the interrogation report is not subject to FOIA because it remains a Senate document.

However, the committee voted last week to seek public release of the findings in the report as well as an executive summary that runs to several hundred pages. And some senators said they’d like to see the full report declassified. (Technically, anyone can request declassification of the report. Whether it would or could be released is a different question.)

Boasberg set a conference call for Friday (and later rescheduled it to Monday) to discuss whether the committee’s “decision to submit the Report’s executive summary, findings, and conclusions to the White House for declassification review” alters the posture of the cases and whether they should be put on hold while the declassification process goes forward.

One of the lawsuits was filed by independent journalist Jason Leopold. The other was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.

UPDATE (Thursday, 10:50 A.M.): This post has been updated to note the judge moving the scheduled conference call to Monday.