At the outset, the opinion stressed: "Unlike the run-of-the-mill administrative proceeding, here there is no adversary hearing, no presentation of what courts and agencies think of as evidence, no advance notice to the entity affected by the Secretary's internal deliberations."
"Any classified information on which the Secretary relied in bringing about these consequences may continue to remain secret, except from certain members of the Congress and this court," the text read.
The opinion stresses that "at this point in a judicial opinion, appellate courts often lay out the 'facts.' We will not, cannot, do so in these cases." The Court of Appeals comments: "The information recited is certainly not evidence of the sort that would normally be received in court. It is instead material the Secretary compiled as a record, from sources named and unnamed, the accuracy of which we have no way of evaluating."
"Because nothing in the legislation restricts the Secretary from acting on the basis of third hand accounts, press stories, material on the Internet or other hearsay regarding the organization's activities, the 'administrative record' may consist of little else," the judges ruled.
The opinion clarifies that "there is a provision for a 'judicial review' confined to the material the Secretary assembled before publishing the designation."
On this basis, at the end of the opinion it is concluded: "The record, as the Secretary has compiled it, not surprisingly contains 'substantial support' for her findings that the LTTE and the MEK engage in 'terrorist activities' within the meaning of 8 USC ¤ 1182 (a)(3)(B)... We therefore refuse to set aside either designation. In so deciding,... we are not allowing the reputation of the Judicial Branch to be 'borrowed by the political Branches to cloak their work in the neutral colors of judicial action.'"
The court stated: "We reach no judgment whatsoever regarding whether the material before the Secretary is or is not true. As we wrote earlier, the record consists entirely of hearsay, none of it was ever subjected to adversary testing, and there was no opportunity for counter-evidence by the organizations affected." The court added: "[The Secretary's] conclusion might be mistaken, but that depends on the quality of the information in the reports she received - something we have no way of judging."
The People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran expresses satisfaction over the emphasis by the Court of Appeals on the above facts and the court's clear opinion that there is no evidence proving the State Department's accusations against the Mojahedin. The Mojahedin Organization also preserves its right to appeal to the US Supreme Court of Justice and it will do so after consultation with its lawyers.
Once again, the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran points out that all the accusations against the Mojahedin by the US State Department in the past 14 years - since the Irangate fiasco - are completely unfounded and solely seek to appease and placate the religious, terrorist dictatorship ruling Iran. It would have been appropriate for the court to have taken note of this fact in its final conclusion, but throughout the opinion, one comes across the frustration associated with the court's powerlessness and lack of competence to enter the substance of the claim in order to rectify the injustice of the Secretary's designation.
The judges' opinion stated: "If we were not competent to pass upon the Secretary's national security finding... how can we perform the function Congress assigned to us, which is to pass upon the validity of the designation? For all we know, the designation may be improper because the Secretary's judgment that the organization threatens our national security is completely irrational, and devoid of any support. Or her finding about national security may be exactly correct. We are forbidden from saying. That we cannot pronounce on the question does not mean that we must assume the Secretary was right."
Press Office of the People's Mojahedin of Iran - Washington, DC
June 25, 1999
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