The US government is seeking a legal injunction to prevent civil courts from revealing whether the US woman who killed a British teenager was an intelligence agent as claimed.
Anne Sacoolas was driving her Volvo XC90 on the wrong side of the road when she hit 19-year-old motorcyclist Harry Dunn head-on in August 2019, killing him.
She had just left the RAF Croughton airbase in Northamptonshire, where her Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative husband Jonathan worked at a US Air Force listening post on the site.
The “protective order” filed by the US government at a Virginia civil court on Friday sates that “although defendants were employees of the United States government at the time” of the crash, “information concerning the United States government has little to no relevance to an adjudication of any remaining issues in this case”.
A motorbike convoy follows Harry Dunn's last ride as a tribute to the teenager who died when his motorbike was involved in a head-on collision in August 2019, near to RAF Croughton airforce base, in Brackley, England
© AP Photo / Andrew Matthews
Sacoolas escaped prosecution by promptly fleeing the UK for the US without informing police investigating Dunn's death.
Former US president Donald Trump's administration refused to extradite her on the basis that she was entitled to diplomatic immunity claimed by her husband — before it emerged that he was in fact a spy. The current US government of President Joe Biden has not reversed that decision.
But fugitive's claim to diplomatic immunity was called into question in February when her lawyer John McGavin implied in the Virginia court that she was also employed by an intelligence agency, saying she absconded for "security reasons and her work was “especially a factor” in that decision.
“In general terms, the United States seeks protection … because of the impact the disclosure of information regarding the government in this litigation could reasonably be expected to have on national security”. Friday's injunction application claimed.
It requested “foreclosing discovery or disclosure of information in this civil action implicating the United States government that is in any way, either directly or indirectly" related to the defendant or other individuals' federal employment.
Radd Seiger, the US-based legal spokesman for Dunn's family, warned the motion would be “resisted strenuously”.
“It now appears that Mr and Mrs Sacoolas have brought in their employers, the US government, to help them minimise what happened to Harry on the night he died in an attempt to prevent both the family and public at large from knowing the full truth,” Seiger added.