Claim of Privilege: A Mysterious Plane Crash, a Landmark Supreme Court Case, and the Rise of State Secrets
By Barry Siegel
4.5/5
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About this ebook
On October 6, 1948, a U.S. Air Force B-29 Superfortress crashed soon after takeoff, killing three civilian engineers and six crew members. In June 1949, the engineers' widows filed suit against the government, determined to find out what exactly had happened to their husbands and why the three civilians had been on board the airplane in the first place. But it was the dawn of the Cold War and the Air Force refused to hand over any documents, claiming they contained classified information. The legal battle ultimately reached the Supreme Court, which in 1953 handed down a landmark decision that would, in later years, enable the government to conceal gross negligence and misconduct, block troublesome litigation, and detain criminal suspects without due-process protections.
Claim of Privilege is a mesmerizing true account of a shameful incident and its lasting impact on our nation—the gripping story of a courageous fight to right a past wrong and a powerful indictment of governmental abuse in the name of national security.
Barry Siegel
Barry Siegel is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and the author of seven books. Born in St. Louis and raised in Los Angeles, he joined the Los Angeles Times in 1976 as a staff writer and became a roving national correspondent in 1980. His articles have garnered dozens of honors, including the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing, two PEN Center USA West Literary Awards in Journalism, the Livingston Award for Young Journalists, and the American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award. In 2003, Siegel left the Los Angeles Times to become founding director of the literary journalism program at the University of California, Irvine. His books include the Chumash County trilogy of legal thrillers; the Edgar Award finalist A Death in White Bear Lake: The True Chronicle of an All-American Town (1990); and, most recently, Manifest Injustice: The True Story of a Convicted Murderer and the Lawyers Who Fought for His Freedom (2013).
Read more from Barry Siegel
A Death in White Bear Lake: The True Chronicle of an All-American Town Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Manifest Injustice: The True Story of a Convicted Murderer and the Lawyers Who Fought for His Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for Claim of Privilege
4 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Really good, actually -- Siegel writes about law in a way that doesn't make me immediately think, "Oh, this guy isn't a laywer," which is rare. How many newspaper stories or books have you read where the writer just doesn't seem to know how to put legal words together in the same way that a lawyer does? Siegel avoids that.
More importantly, though, Siegel tells a story that draws clear parallels between the dawning of the Cold War and the post-9/11 era without beating us over the head with it. He makes the story much more personal, a sad tale of the government lying to three widows and largely getting away with it. But he doesn't ignore the larger ramifications, either -- he weaves them in skillfully, pointing us in the right direction without making the book his own crusade for truth and justice.