A U.S. citizen asked a simple question: was his own government trying to kill him? In September 2019, a federal court decided he was not entitled to an answer.

The plaintiff was Bilal Abdul Kareem, an American journalist who said five near-miss airstrikes in Syria suggested he had been placed on a U.S. targeted-killing list. His case had already cleared a hurdle that few claims of its kind survive. In 2018, U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer had ruled that Kareem, as a citizen, could press a due-process challenge to his alleged inclusion on that list. That opening did not last.

After settlement talks between Kareem's lawyers and the government collapsed, the government invoked the state secrets privilege, arguing that even confirming or denying his presence on any list would expose intelligence sources and methods and might help a target evade capture. Collyer agreed the government's authority to withhold that information was "absolute," and she dismissed the suit in a 14-page opinion. She named the tension directly, asking what constitutional right could be more essential than due process before the government takes a life, then concluding that federal courts hold only limited authority to resolve such questions, even when they touch constitutional rights.

Tara J. Plochocki, today a partner at Sequor Law, represented Kareem and pushed the matter as far as the doctrine allowed. Her reaction drew the line plainly: "For the first time ever, a United States federal court ruled that the government may kill one of its citizens without providing him the information necessary to prove that he is being wrongly targeted."

An early win recognized the right to be heard. The state-secrets dismissal then left that right unenforceable. Secrecy, in other words, can decide a case before a court ever reaches its merits. That collision between a citizen's claim and the executive's classification powers is the kind of problem Plochocki has built a career around, litigating where constitutional rights, international law, and national security meet.

Her work at Sequor Law runs on the same instinct: securing evidence that adversaries would rather keep hidden, and pressing claims through federal courts and on appeal. Cross-border asset recovery and financial fraud both turn on prying loose concealed information. The Kareem case is a stark reminder of what is at stake when a court cannot compel its disclosure. The full account appeared in The Washington Post.