Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-00-05387/USCOURTS-caDC-00-05387-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 895
Nature of Suit: Freedom of Information Act of 1974
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued November 13, 2001 Decided January 25, 2002

No. 00-5387

Public Citizen,

Appellant

v.

Department of State, et al.,

Appellees

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 98cv01423)

Michael E. Tankersley argued the cause for appellant.

With him on the briefs was Alan B. Morrison.

Matthew M. Collette, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice,

argued the cause for appellees. With him on the brief were

Wilma A. Lewis, U.S. Attorney at the time the brief was

filed, Leonard Schaitman, Attorney, U.S. Department of

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Justice, and John Schnitker, Attorney, U.S. Department of

State.

Before: Edwards and Tatel, Circuit Judges, and

Silberman, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge Tatel.

Tatel, Circuit Judge: When the State Department responds to Freedom of Information Act requests, it generally

declines to search for documents produced after the date of

the requester's letter. Challenging this "date-of-request cutoff" policy, appellant claims that the Department promulgated

it without notice and opportunity to comment as required by

the Administrative Procedure Act, and that, in any event, the

policy is unreasonable both generally and as applied to appellant's particular request because it forces FOIA requesters to

file multiple requests. We reject the former claim because

the policy falls within the APA's exemption for "rules of

agency organization, procedure or practice." Finding that

the State Department has failed to substantiate its claim that

an "administrative nightmare" would result were it unable to

apply the date-of-request cut-off policy, however, we agree

with appellant that the policy is unreasonable both generally

and as applied to its FOIA request. Finally, we reject

appellant's additional claim that the Department improperly

invoked FOIA's national security exemption to withhold some

otherwise responsive information.

I.

The State Department processes FOIA requests in four

stages. During the first stage, it mails a letter to the

requester acknowledging receipt and assigning an identification number. Grafeld Decl. II p 18. This initial letter also

informs the requester that the "cut-off date ... is the date of

the requester's letter" and that "no documents ... originat[ing] after the date of [the] letter will be retrieved."

Sforza Decl. p 6. During the second stage, the Department's

Statutory Compliance & Research Division determines "which

offices, overseas posts, or other records systems within the

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Department may reasonably be expected to contain the information requested." Grafeld Decl. II p 23. The Department

then "task[s]" these various components to search for responsive documents. Id. p 28. The speed at which the tasked

component completes a search depends largely on available

personnel, the nature of the request and the number of

outstanding requests. "By far" the most frequently tasked

component is the Department's Central Foreign Policy File, a

centralized automated records system containing the "most

comprehensive authoritative compilation of documents," including documents "that establish, discuss or define foreign

policy," as well as "official record copies of incoming and

outgoing Department communications." Id. p 24. Consequently, the Central File has the "longest queue" of any

Department component. Id. p 46. During the third phase of

FOIA request processing, the Department reviews the retrieved documents to determine whether it should withhold

any, or portions thereof, pursuant to one of FOIA's nine

exemptions. During the final phase, the Department copies

the documents, redacts classified material and releases them

to the requester.

In April 1998, appellant Public Citizen, a non-profit, public

interest organization "dedicated to the study and promotion

of public health and ... consumer welfare," Appellant's Opening Br. at ii, sent a FOIA request to the Department asking

for records describing its "current system for managing word

processing files ... and electronic mail messages," as well as

"disposition schedule[s] submitted to the National Archives

concerning the transfer or disposal" of these materials. Grafeld Decl. I p 4. Three months later, the Department released

seven documents in full, as well as an eighth with portions

redacted pursuant to FOIA's first exemption, the national

security exemption, 5 U.S.C. s 552(b)(1). This final document was a thirty-five chapter "records disposition schedule,"

essentially a document index with each entry containing a

brief description of a Department record and designating the

record as "permanent" or "temporary." Ronan Decl. p 4.

Although the Department initially withheld all 119 entries

pertaining to the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, it

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eventually released all but portions of seventeen entries.

According to the Department, the withheld portions describe

"sources and methods of intelligence collection [that] would

identify substantive areas in which intelligence activities have

been carried out or might be undertaken in the future," as

well as "identif[y] persons and organizations that ... participate in ... intelligence activities." Grafeld Decl. I p 17.

Significantly for this case, the letter accompanying the released documents stated that although the Department typically declines to retrieve documents produced after the date

of the FOIA request, the Department had waived this "dateof-request cut-off" policy as a courtesy to Public Citizen. Id.

p 9.

Meanwhile, in response to the initial withholding, Public

Citizen had filed suit in the United States District Court for

the District of Columbia claiming that the Department promulgated the cut-off policy without the notice and comment

required by the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C.

s 553(b), and that the cut-off policy was unreasonable both

generally and as applied to its request. Public Citizen also

claimed that in withholding portions of the seventeen record

entries, the Department had improperly invoked FOIA's national security exemption.

Before anything significant occurred in the district court,

Public Citizen submitted two additional FOIA requests. The

first, made in June, sought documents relating to "international investment issues," including discussions or negotiations of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment. Grafeld

Decl. II p 43. The Department acknowledged this request

with its standard letter, which included a paragraph informing Public Citizen that it would apply its usual date-of-request

cut-off policy. The second request, made in October, sought

four specific record disposition schedules and two related

"appraisal memoranda" from the National Archives and Records Administration. Appellees' Br. at 13. The Archives

released two of these schedules in full but, after consulting

with the State Department (the relevant classification authority), invoked FOIA's national security exemption to withhold

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ed information withheld in response to Public Citizen's April

FOIA request. See id. (Archives documents "contained the

same information in the Department of State records previously withheld as classified"); Appellant's Opening Br. at 12-

13 (Archives documents "included the same information in the

database entries withheld by the Department"). Amending

its complaint in the district court, Public Citizen challenged

the application of the cut-off policy to the June request and

charged that the Department had improperly classified the

Archives material.

In May 2000, the district court dismissed Public Citizen's

challenge to the cut-off policy as applied to the April FOIA

request because the Department had in fact not applied it.

The court dismissed as unripe Public Citizen's challenge to

the cut-off policy generally, finding it insufficiently "crystallized," as well as Public Citizen's challenge to the cut-off

policy as applied to the June FOIA request, reasoning it was

"not possible ... to know" whether the cut-off policy would

be applied to that request. Pub. Citizen v. Dep't of State, 100

F. Supp.2d 10, 18 (D.D.C. 2000). Finding the policy a "rule[ ]

of agency organization ... or practice" exempt from notice

and comment, the district court also granted summary judgment for the Department on Public Citizen's APA claim. Id.

at 20-21.

Turning to the Department's invocation of FOIA's national

security exemption, the district court, after examining a classified State Department declaration in camera, found that the

Department had, for the most part, demonstrated that the

withheld material was classifiable. At the same time, however, the court ordered the "disposition dates" on the seventeen

record entries released because they were "apparently ...

meaningful" to Public Citizen and easily segregable. Id. at

25. Because in responding to Public Citizen's FOIA request,

the Department had classified some information the organization sought, the district court held that pursuant to Executive

Order 12,958, the Department and Archives had to show that

they had not previously released the withheld portions. Id.

at 22 (citing Exec. Order No. 12,958 s 1.8(d) (requiring

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quest to show that they have not previously released the

information)). Although the district court found that the two

agencies had generally satisfied this burden, it ordered the

Department to file a supplemental declaration addressing

whether it had ever previously disclosed the information

contained in the Archives documents. As part of its ruling on

the public disclosure issue, the district court rejected Public

Citizen's arguments that the government declarants lacked

"personal knowledge" of agency procedure, and thus denied

Public Citizen's motion to strike the relevant portions of the

declarations. Id. at 26 n.11. It also denied Public Citizen's

motion for additional discovery. After the Department filed

its supplemental declaration, the district court entered final

judgment for the Department.

Public Citizen appeals the district court's dismissal of its

challenges to the reasonableness of the cut-off policy as

unripe and the grant of summary judgment with respect to

the remaining claims, as well as the district court's discovery

and evidentiary rulings. We review the former de novo,

Wilson v. Pena, 79 F.3d 154, 160 n. 1 (D.C. Cir. 1996) ("Our

standard of review under Federal Rules 12(b)(6) and 56 is the

same: de novo."), and the latter for abuse of discretion, White

v. Fraternal Order of Police, 909 F.2d 512, 517 (D.C. Cir.

1990) (reviewing district court's discovery ruling for abuse of

discretion); O'Regan v. Arbitration Forums, Inc., 246 F.3d

975, 986 (7th Cir. 2001) (reviewing district court's decision to

strike parts of an affidavit for abuse of discretion).

II.

We begin with Public Citizen's claim that the Department

unlawfully promulgated the cut-off policy without the notice

and opportunity to comment required by the APA. The

Department responds that its cut-off policy is procedural and

thus covered by the APA's exemption from notice and comment for "rules of agency organization, procedure, or practice," 5 U.S.C. s 553(b)(3)(A). According to Public Citizen,

the cut-off policy cannot be considered procedural because it

"substantially ... affects rights" by "needlessly multipl[ying]

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the number of FOIA requests that must be submitted to

obtain access to records." Appellant's Opening Br. at 33-34.

We have, however, characterized agency rules as procedural

even where their effects were far harsher than the Department's date-of-request cut-off policy. For example, in Ranger v. FCC, we found an agency rule establishing a cut-off date

for the filing of radio license applications to be procedural

even though the failure to observe the rule cost appellants a

radio broadcast license. 294 F.2d 240, 243-44 (D.C. Cir.

1961).

As we recognized in American Hospital Ass'n v. Bowen,

"[o]ver time, our circuit in applying the s 553 exemption for

procedural rules has gradually shifted focus from asking

whether a given procedure has a 'substantial impact' on

parties to ... inquiring more broadly whether the agency

action ... encodes a substantive value judgment." 834 F.2d

1037, 1047 (D.C. Cir. 1987) (citation omitted). This "gradual

move," we noted, "reflects a candid recognition that even

unambiguously procedural measures affect parties to some

degree." Id. More recently, in JEM Broadcasting Co. v.

FCC, we found that FCC "hard look rules," which required

the dismissal of flawed license applications without leave to

amend, were procedural despite their sometimes harsh effects. 22 F.3d 320, 327-28 (D.C. Cir. 1994). In doing so, we

rejected the argument that the rules encoded substantive

value judgments because they valued applications without

errors over those with minor errors. Id. Clarifying the

American Hospital standard, we held that in referring to

"value judgments" in that case, we had not intended to

include "judgment[s] about what mechanics and processes are

most efficient" because to do so would "threaten[ ] to swallow

the procedural exception to notice and comment, for agency

housekeeping rules often embody [such] judgment[s]." Id. at

328.

Because the Department's cut-off policy applies to all FOIA

requests, making no distinction between requests on the basis

of subject matter, it clearly encodes no "substantive value

judgment," Am. Hosp., 834 F.2d at 1047. To be sure, the

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off promotes the efficient processing of FOIA requests, but a

"judgment about procedural efficiency ... cannot convert a

procedural rule into a substantive one." James V. Hurson

Assocs., Inc. v. Glickman, 229 F.3d 277, 282 (D.C. Cir. 2000)

(internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Consequently, we agree with the district court that the Department's cutoff policy represents a prototypical procedural rule properly

promulgated without notice and comment.

III.

Before considering the merits of Public Citizen's alternative

argument--that the cut-off policy is unreasonable--we must

address the Department's assertion, embraced by the district

court, that the policy is unripe for review either generally or

as applied to the June request. Ripeness inquiry requires

that we evaluate "the fitness of the issues for judicial decision

and the hardship to the parties of withholding court consideration." Texas v. United States, 523 U.S. 296, 300-301 (1998)

(quoting Abbott Labs. v. Gardner, 387 U.S. 136, 149 (1967)).

"[U]nder the ripeness doctrine, the hardship prong ... is not

an independent requirement divorced from the consideration

of the institutional interests of the court and agency." Payne

Enters., Inc. v. United States, 837 F.2d 486, 493 (D.C. Cir.

1988). A case is ripe "when it presents a concrete legal

dispute [and] no further factual development is essential to

clarify the issues, ... [and] there is no doubt whatever that

the challenged agency practice has crystallized sufficiently for

purposes of judicial review." Rio Grande Pipeline Co. v.

FERC, 178 F.3d 533, 540 (D.C. Cir. 1999) (alterations in

original) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).

The Department argues that Public Citizen's generic challenge is unripe because it does not apply an "across-the-board

cut-off rule." Appellees' Br. at 26. In fact, the Department

contends, it will "on occasion" perform a "more comprehensive search." Id. The record, however, provides little if any

support for the notion that the cut-off policy is flexible. The

Department's published guidance states unequivocally that

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"the Department has established that the cut-off date ... is

the date of the initial request," http: //foia.state.gov/

faqs.asp#Q15 (last visited Jan. 4, 2002), and all Department

acknowledgment letters refer to the cut-off policy as a "condition[ ] which govern[s] all [FOIA] requests," Sforza Decl. p 6.

The only evidence of flexibility that the Department points to

is the fact that it did not apply the cut-off policy to Public

Citizen's initial FOIA request. But we have never allowed

agencies to defeat judicial review of their standards by occasionally waiving them in individual cases. See, e.g., Better

Gov't Ass'n v. Dep't of State, 780 F.2d 86, 91 (D.C. Cir. 1986)

(holding challenge to fee waiver policy as applied moot because agency had waived fees, but finding challenge to "facial" validity of fee waiver ripe). This general principle

applies with special force here: At oral argument, Department counsel was unable to give any reason for the waiver,

leading us to suspect that the Department waived the cut-off

policy only to avoid having it attacked by a vigorous litigant

like Public Citizen.

Equally unconvincing is the Department's argument that

the generic challenge is unripe because the reasonableness of

the cut-off policy turns on "the particular circumstances of

the case." Appellees' Br. at 27. As a non-profit organization

that has "submitted ... and plans to continue to submit

FOIA requests" to the Department, First Amend. Compl.

p 27, Public Citizen seeks a declaration that the Department's

reflexive application of the date-of-request cut-off policy to all

FOIA requests is unreasonable. Public Citizen does not

argue that the Department may never under any circumstances reasonably apply a date-of-request cut-off to a particular FOIA request. Although such a claim might well be

impossible to adjudicate outside the "particular circumstances" of one or more FOIA requests, the claim Public

Citizen mounts in this case, by its very nature, is not.

Finding no "institutional interests," Payne Enters., 837 F.2d

at 493, in deferring review, we think Public Citizen's generic

challenge is ripe.

We reach the same conclusion with respect to Public Citizen's challenge to the cut-off policy as applied to its June

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request, even though the record before the district court does

not indicate whether the Department in fact "exercised its

discretion to retrieve documents created after the date of the

request." Pub. Citizen, 100 F. Supp. 2d at 17-18. As we

said in Better Government, "[w]here ... the agency has

stated that the action in question governs and will continue

to govern its decisions, such action must be viewed as final in

our analysis of ripeness." 780 F.2d at 93. Here, the Department sent Public Citizen a letter expressly saying that it

considered the date of the letter to be the "cut-off" date, thus

creating a controversy ripe for judicial review.

Public Citizen argues that the cut-off policy is unreasonable

because it forces the organization to "periodically ... resubmit the identical request in order to get more recent records."

Appellant's Opening Br. at 30. In support of this argument,

Public Citizen relies on our decision in McGehee v. CIA, 697

F.2d 1095 (D.C. Cir. 1983). In that case, a freelance journalist filed a FOIA request with the Central Intelligence Agency

seeking all documents relating to the infamous Jonestown

Massacre. Id. Following its usual practice, the CIA's Information and Privacy Division "tasked" the divisions most likely

to possess relevant documents. Id. at 1098. Though the

journalist made the initial request in December 1978, by

November 1980, almost two years later, the CIA had neither

released any documents nor provided any meaningful information about the status of the request. Id. at 1099. The

journalist sued, claiming that the CIA's use of a date-ofrequest cut-off policy was unreasonable. Id.

We began by rejecting the CIA's contention that because

the "language in ... FOIA and authoritative case law interpreting the statute establishes that the use of a time-ofrequest cut-off is always reasonable," we should "decide [the]

question from a generic standpoint." Id. at 1102. In particular, we rejected the CIA's reliance on cases holding that

FOIA does not require "an agency ... [to] continuously ...

update its responses," reasoning that "the question presented

in this case is whether, when an agency first releases documents ... it may use a [date-of-request] cut-off." Id. "That

an agency has no obligation, after it has once responded fully

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to a FOIA request," we noted, "has little bearing on the issue

before us." Id.

We then considered the reasonableness of the date-ofrequest cut-off policy as applied to the journalist's particular

FOIA request. The CIA defended the policy as necessary to

avoid an "administrative nightmare." Id. at 1103. "Confusion," the CIA argued, "might be engendered by different

agency components using different cut-off dates," fee schedules would be "disrupt[ed]" without such a policy, and it

would experience increased costs from the "successive ...

searches that might be necessary if the date of a final

response or the date of litigation were employed as a cut-off."

Id. at 1103-04 (internal quotation marks omitted). The CIA

also claimed that it needed the date-of-request cut-off policy

to preserve the "expeditious[ ] processing [of] relatively simple requests." Id. at 1104 n. 41. Finding the CIA's arguments "either unpersuasive or irrelevant" in the "absence of

more detailed substantiation," we hypothesized an "alternative procedure[ ] without the flaws of the [date]-of-request

cut-off policy and without any real potential for ... administrative nightmares," namely, that at minimum, the CIA could

use as the cut-off date the date on which the Information and

Privacy Division determined which components to "task." Id.

at 1103-04.

According to Public Citizen, McGehee controls this case and

requires that we find the State Department's cut-off policy

unreasonable both generally and as applied to the June

request. The Department urges us not to address these

questions but instead to remand to the district court, which

because it dismissed Public Citizen's claims as unripe, never

reached the merits of the McGehee issue. We see no reason

to remand. Not only was the Department aware of McGehee,

but given the procedural posture of this case--cross-motions

for summary judgment--it had every opportunity to justify

its policy. See Frito-Lay, Inc. v. Willoughby, 863 F.2d 1029,

1032-33 (D.C. Cir. 1988) (holding that court must enter

summary judgment against nonmovant who bears the burden

of production and fails to meet that burden).

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We need not linger long over the Department's attempts to

justify its reflexive application of the cut-off policy to every

request regardless of circumstances. McGehee expressly rejected the proposition that under FOIA, the "use of a time-ofrequest cut-off date is always reasonable." McGehee, 697

F.2d at 1102. Although specific circumstances in some agencies may render an across-the-board rule reasonable, the

Department has made no showing that warrants such an

approach in its case.

The Department advances two justifications for its cut-off

policy as applied to Public Citizen's June request. It first

argues that although the use of a "later cut-off date" might

have resulted in the retrieval of more documents, Public

Citizen would have had to "wait a longer time." Appellees'

Br. at 34. As noted above, however, McGehee rejected a

similar argument advanced by the CIA, 697 F.2d at 104-05

n.41, and we find the claim likewise unsubstantiated here.

Because the Department has a large "backlog" of FOIA

requests, Grafeld Decl. II p 2, and because Public Citizen has

no way of knowing whether the Department created new

responsive documents after the date of its June request, the

policy's net result is to increase processing time by forcing

Public Citizen to file multiple FOIA requests to obtain documents that the Department would have released in response

to a single request had it used a later cut-off date.

Second, the Department points out that because the June

request was not limited to a "central records system," the

Department must "task various offices and components" to

search for responsive records. Since searches may take place

in "different components ... at vastly different times for the

same FOIA request," the Department argues, a "date-ofrequest" cut-off policy avoids the "confusion of having multiple cut-off dates on a given request, and provides requesters

with a clear basis for determining whether a subsequent

request might be necessary." Appellees' Br. at 35-36.

Again, we rejected just such a claim in McGehee, hypothesizing an alternative procedure that would utilize a "cut-off date

much later than the time of the original request ... [and]

result[ ] in a much fuller search and disclosure." 697 F.2d at

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1104. The same is true here: Because the Central File is

typically the component searched last--it possesses the longest queue--and because, as the Department concedes, the

Central File contains the "most comprehensive" collection of

Department documents, Grafeld Decl. II p 46, the current

policy of releasing only documents prepared before the request date permits the Department to withhold, with little or

no justification, a potentially large number of relevant documents. At the very least, we think that with minimal administrative hassle, the Department could apply a date-of-search

cut-off to the Central File.

In short, like the CIA in McGehee, the State Department

has failed to substantiate its claim that an "administrative

nightmare," 697 F.2d at 1103, would result were it unable to

apply the date-of-request cut-off policy to Public Citizen's

June request. In reaching this conclusion, we emphasize that

nothing in this opinion precludes either the Department or

any other federal agency from attempting a more compelling

justification for imposing a date-of-request cut-off on a particular FOIA request.

IV.

This brings us to Public Citizen's challenge to State's and

Archives' invocation of FOIA's national security exemption.

According to Public Citizen, the district court erred when it

concluded that the Department (which has sole classification

authority) has shown that the information withheld relates to

national security. Public Citizen also argues that even if the

material does relate to national security, the two agencies

must show that they have never previously released the

material publicly. We disagree with both contentions.

The government has the initial burden of demonstrating

that requested material is classifiable. Halperin v. CIA, 629

F.2d 144, 147 (D.C. Cir. 1980). Summary judgment may be

granted on this issue "on the basis of agency affidavits [only]

if they contain reasonable specificity of detail rather than

merely conclusory statements, and ... they are not called

into question by contradictory evidence in the record or by

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evidence of agency bad faith." Id. at 148. In this case, the

Department's declaration states as follows:

Withheld ... information ... relates directly to intelligence activities, sources or methods, discussed in detail

in the Document Description shown below. Disclosure of

this information could enable foreign governments or

foreign persons or entities opposed to United States

foreign policy objectives to identify U.S. intelligence activities, sources or methods and to undertake countermeasures that could frustrate the ability of the U.S.

Government to acquire information necessary to the formulation and implementation of U.S. foreign policy. Disclosure of this information, therefore, "... reasonably

could be expected to result in damage to the national

security...."

Machak Decl. II p 11. In Halperin, we found similar language sufficient to sustain the government's burden. In that

case, the CIA stated that if the names of its attorneys were

revealed "representatives of hostile, foreign intelligence services working in this country [could], by a variety of techniques, ... undertake courses of action to ascertain ... other

contacts [or] other locations, and then arrive at determinations whether [the attorney] is doing any other function for

the [CIA]." Halperin, 629 F.2d at 149. The sworn statement in this case--that "[d]isclosure ... could enable foreign

persons or entities opposed to United States foreign policy

objectives to identify U.S. intelligence activities, sources or

methods"--is equally specific and detailed. To be absolutely

sure, like the district court, we reviewed the classified portion

of the declaration and are satisfied that the government has

sustained its burden.

In the face of the Department's reasonably detailed declaration, Public Citizen points to only one source of "contradictory evidence," id.: the fact that after reviewing the Archives

documents, the Department turned over certain information

that it had earlier refused to release in response to Public

Citizen's first FOIA request. Yet we have previously declined to find subsequent disclosure as evidence of bad faith,

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reasoning that "to effectively penalize an agency for voluntarily declassifying documents would work mischief by creating an incentive against disclosure." Pub. Citizen v. Dep't of

State, 11 F.3d 198, 203 (D.C. Cir. 1993) (internal quotation

marks and citation omitted). That principle applies here as

well.

Public Citizen next claims that the government's declarations are insufficient to demonstrate that the information

withheld had never been previously released because the

declarants did not rely on "personal knowledge." Appellant's

Opening Br. at 39. This argument rests on a misunderstanding of the burden of production. Although it is true that

under certain circumstances, previously released information

"cannot be withheld under exemption[ ] one," we have made

clear that "a plaintiff asserting a claim of prior disclosure

must bear the initial burden of pointing to specific information in the public domain that appears to duplicate that being

withheld." Afshar v. Dep't of State, 702 F.2d 1125, 1129 (D.C.

Cir. 1983). "This is so," we have explained, "because the task

of proving the negative, that the information has not been

revealed, might require the government to undertake an

exhaustive, potentially limitless, search." Davis v. Dep't of

Justice, 968 F.2d 1276, 1279 (D.C. Cir. 1992). Public Citizen

points to no "specific information in the public domain" that

might "duplicate that being withheld." Afshar, 702 F.2d at

1130. Instead, it argues that if researchers had requested

the documents, Archives employees might have shown the

documents to them. Such speculation neither satisfies Public

Citizen's burden of production, cf. Cottone v. Reno, 193 F.3d

550, 554 (D.C. Cir. 1999) (plaintiff met burden by demonstrating that audio tapes containing information had been "aired

publicly in open court"), nor demonstrates that the district

court's denial of the organization's request for further discovery amounted to an abuse of discretion, see White, 909 F.2d at

517.

V.

In sum, we conclude that (1) the cut-off policy is a procedural rule properly promulgated without notice and comment,

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(2) Public Citizen's McGehee challenges to the cut-off policy

generally and as applied to its June request are ripe, (3) the

cut-off policy is unreasonable both generally and as applied to

Public Citizen's June request and (4) the Department and

Archives properly withheld material pursuant to FOIA's national security exemption. Thus, we affirm in part, reverse in

part, and remand to the district court for further proceedings

consistent with this opinion.

So ordered.

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