# Graymail > [!note] Stub > This is a short entry that hasn't been fully written yet. The tactic of a defendant in a national-security prosecution demanding classified material loosely connected to the charge, in order to force the government to choose between protecting the secret and continuing the case. Not blackmail — the defendant asks a court for discovery he may well be entitled to — but the leverage works the same way, because the government can lose the case without losing an argument. It is the problem the [[Classified Information Procedures Act]] was written to solve. Before 1980 the choice arrived late, often mid-trial, when a judge ordered disclosure and prosecutors had to decide on the spot. The Act's method is to move the fight to the front of the case: pretrial conferences, in camera hearings, substitute summaries and an interlocutory appeal, all before a jury is seated. The leverage has not disappeared, and it does not run in only one direction. The procedure itself is slow and expensive, which is an argument for resolving a case by plea; and a prosecutor weighing a charge under § 12 of the Act is weighing the same risk the defendant would exploit. The stage-by-stage procedure is mapped in [[How Classified Evidence Reaches a Criminal Trial]]. ## See also - [[Classified Information Procedures Act]] · [[How Classified Evidence Reaches a Criminal Trial]] - [[Espionage Act of 1917]] · [[How Information Is Classified and Declassified]] - [[United States v. Fernandez]] · [[Judiciary Hub]]