U.S. Deceit at Issue Before Supreme Court Law: The plaintiff says officials are liable for alleged lies about her husband's plight before he died in Guatemala.
http://latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-000020108mar19.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dnation%2Dmanual By DAVID G. SAVAGE, TIMES STAFF WRITER WASHINGTON -- A lawyer for President Bush on Monday defended alleged lying by the Clinton administration in a Supreme Court case that centers on whether government officials can be sued if they lie to cover up crucial facts. The case has nothing to do with Paula Corbin Jones or Monica S. Lewinsky but instead concerns the Clinton administration's support for the Guatemalan military. It also marked one of the rare instances in which the victim of alleged government wrongdoing argued her own case in the high court. "The government cannot engage in intentional deceit in order to prevent [you] from going to a court of law," Jennifer Harbury, a lawyer and widow of a Guatemalan guerrilla fighter, told the justices. For more than a decade, Harbury has carried on a one-woman crusade against U.S. policy in Central America. In 1991, she met and married Guatemalan rebel Efrain Bamaca Velasquez. <snip> listrelev: bigbro, govt deceipt, govt secrecy, govt accountability
