In 1953, it seems, the US Supreme Court set the basic precedent for executive control of classified documents in legal proceedings. In United States v Reynolds, an appeal of a default judgement alleging Air Force negligence in the death of 3 civilian contradctors, the Supremes decided that a great deal of deference was due the government when it claimed National Security justification for withholding documents, and that in some cases (including Reynolds) they could deny the District Court judge access, preventing judicial review of the claim.
Problem is, says the LA Times in the first of 2 parts (and this earlier 3-part article in the South Jersey Courier-Post), the government was lying. There were no secrets -- the government just wanted to avoid liability for several civilian deaths. While, after Reynolds, the US did pay damages in a settlement, they never accepted blame for the accident, and they maintain to this day that there were valid national sercurity reasons for withholding the (now declassfied) accident report.
Last year, the widows filed an unusual motion, based on the declassified documents, with the Supreme Court asking them to reconsider their "error", and asserting that the declassified documents had no national security information. This is interesting, as every national security case since has used Reynolds as precedent, right up to 3 Patriot Act cases now before the court.
The Times article today lists all the reasons why the government was a pack of liars and thieves, out to create absolute secrecy rights for the Cold War executive branch. The ba*tards!
What is missing, and presumably will be mentioned tomorrow is that the Supreme Court rejected the petition on June 23, 2003, and that there was indeed one secret that was evident from the accident report: The B-29 SuperFortress didn't work very well and could not be relied upon in a major war. Considering that the entire US deterrent at that time was the B-29's ability to deliver atom bombs, it's not inconceivable that someone thought this should be kept quiet. After all, Stalin was still living, had forces massed to invade Western Europe, and had quite a few bombs himself by the early 50's. A bit more than the liberal cant of paranoia and McCarthyism.
Perhaps the Times will mention that tomorrow. Talk about "the jump"!! But I'm not counting on it.