In reversal, Obama seeks to block abuse photos

The reactions were a reverse of what happened after Obama's decision last month to release documents that detailed brutal interrogation techniques used by the CIA against terrorism suspects. Those also came out in response to an ACLU lawsuit, and his decision then brought harsh and continuing criticism from Republicans.

This time he is kicking the decision back into court, where his administration still could be forced to release the photos.

Indeed, there is some evidence that the administration has little case left.

Gibbs said the president instructed administration lawyers to challenge the photos' release based on the national security implications. He said that argument was not used before.

But the Bush administration already argued against the release on national security grounds, and lost.

"It is plainly insufficient to claim that releasing documents could reasonably be expected to endanger some unspecified member of a group so vast as to encompass all United States troops, coalition forces, and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan," the three-judge appeals panel wrote in September 2008.

Rejected arguments
The Justice Department had concluded that further appeal would probably be fruitless, and last month, Gibbs said the president had concurred with that conclusion, although without commenting on whether Obama would support the release if not pressed by a court case.

Justice filed a notice of its new position on the release, including that it was considering an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court. The government has until June 9 to do that.

Thus, the administration assured a federal judge that it would turn over the material by May 28, including one batch of 21 photos and another of 23 images. The government also told the judge it was "processing for release a substantial number of other images," for a total expected to be in the hundreds.

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The court also has already rejected another argument the president and his spokesman made, that the photos add little of value to the public's understanding of the issue. "This contention disregards FOIA's central purpose of furthering governmental accountability," the appeals court panel concluded in the same decision.

Obama's own Jan. 21 memorandum on honoring the Freedom of Information Act also takes a different line. "The government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears," it said.

Generals oppose release
The president informed Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, of his decision during a White House meeting on Tuesday.

Gen. David Petraeus, the senior commander for both wars, also had weighed in against the release, as had Gen. David McKiernan, the outgoing top general in Afghanistan.

Military commanders' concerns were most intense with respect to Afghanistan. The release would coincide with the post-winter thaw that usually heralds the year's toughest fighting there, and it would come as thousands of new U.S. troops head into Afghanistan's volatile south.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he once had held the view that it might be best to "go through the pain once" and release a large batch of images now, since so many are at issue in multiple lawsuits. But he and the president changed their minds when Odierno and McKiernan expressed "very great worry that release of these photographs will cost American lives," Gates said before the House Armed Services Committee in the House of Representatives.

"That's all it took for me," Gates said.

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