Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca2-13-03792/USCOURTS-ca2-13-03792-1/pdf.json

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

---

WESLEY, Circuit Judge, concurring:

I concur in Judge Raggi’s opinion because I am reluctant to deviate from

the conclusions reached by the Office of Legal Counsel and the D.C. Circuit

concerning the question before us, which have been in effect for over twenty

years, and which Congress has declined to overturn in all that time.  See Freedom

of Information Act (5 U.S.C. § 552)—Nat’l Sec. Council—Agency Status Under FOIA,

2 Op. O.L.C. 197 (1978), withdrawn by Memorandum from Walter Dellinger,

Acting Ass’t Att’y Gen., Office of Legal Counsel, to Alan J. Kreczko, Spec. Ass’t

to the President and Legal Adviser, Nat’l Sec. Council (Sept. 20, 1993); see also

Armstrong v. Exec. Office of the President, 90 F.3d 553 (D.C. Cir. 1996).

I completely agree with my colleagues that there is no doubt that the core

function of the National Security Council proper is a purely advisory one.  The

Council meets to give advice to the President, who chairs its meetings, and who

is the sole “decider” on the questions that come before the Council.  The question

becomes more complicated, however, when one looks not just at the Council but

at the entire NSC System—as we all agree we must do in this case.  Subsections

of the National Security Act establish Committees that do not include the

President but are nonetheless authorized to, among other things, “establish[]

priorities,” “establish[] policies,” “coordinate policies of the United States,” and

Case 13-3792, Document 96, 01/26/2016, 1691320, Page1 of 3
2

“direct activities of the United States Government.”    50 U.S.C. § 3021(g)–(i).   

These functions sound like those of a government agency that has authority to

act on important matters.    Moreover, Congress created and empowered these

NSC Committees over the express objection of the President.    See Presidential

Statement on Signing the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1997, 2

Pub. Papers 1813 (Oct. 11, 1996).   

The majority opinion carefully reviews the statutory language in question

and concludes those sections can be understood only in the context of the core

function of the Council to which the Committees and their staffs report—to act as

an advisor to the President on national security matters.   There is considerable

force to that analysis.  Furthermore, the notion that the purely advisory Council

might somehow morph into an agency by reason of authorizing statutes for its

subunits seems, frankly, peculiar, particularly since it is not clear whether these

subunits are actually populated and functioning.    We are not in the habit of

making law from shadows.   

When Congress last spoke to this question, it seemed poised to make FOIA

applicable to all important units of the Executive Office of the President.  In an

ambiguous last‐minute compromise, it drew back from that result, indicating

Case 13-3792, Document 96, 01/26/2016, 1691320, Page2 of 3
3

instead that some units were sufficiently advisory, sufficiently close to the

President, and sufficiently lacking in independent authority that they should

remain exempt from FOIA.  For over twenty years, the Executive Branch and the

Court of Appeals that most frequently interacts with FOIA as applied to the chief

offices of government have concluded that the NSC is one of those exempt units,

and as noted above, that conclusion apparently has been accepted by the

Congress without much controversy.  Whether that conclusion is wise policy, or

whether it accurately captures the intent of the Congress in adopting the FOIA

amendments, is best considered a political issue for Congress and the President,

not for this Court.   

Case 13-3792, Document 96, 01/26/2016, 1691320, Page3 of 3