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Nature of Suit Code: 442
Nature of Suit: Civil Rights Employment
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued February 3, 2015 Decided March 13, 2015

No. 13-5374

WILFRED SAMUEL RATTIGAN,

APPELLANT

v.

ERIC H. HOLDER, JR., ATTORNEY GENERAL,

APPELLEE

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:04-cv-2009)

Jonathan C. Moore argued the cause for appellant. With 

him on the briefs were Joshua S. Moskovitz and James R. 

Klimaski.

Charles W. Scarborough, Attorney, U.S. Department of 

Justice, argued the cause for appellee. With him on the brief 

were Stuart F. Delery, Assistant Attorney General, Ronald C. 

Machen Jr., U.S. Attorney, and Marleigh D. Dover, Attorney.

Before: GARLAND, Chief Judge, KAVANAUGH, Circuit 

Judge, and WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge.

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Opinion for the Court filed by Senior Circuit Judge

WILLIAMS. 

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge: Plaintiff Wilfred 

Rattigan claims that FBI supervisors whom he had formally 

accused of discrimination retaliated against him by sending 

the FBI’s Security Division a memo purporting to 

demonstrate that he posed a security risk. On a previous 

appeal, we held that Rattigan could prevail only by showing

“that agency employees acted with a retaliatory or 

discriminatory motive in reporting or referring information 

that they knew to be false.” Rattigan v. Holder (“Rattigan 

II”), 689 F.3d 764, 771 (D.C. Cir. 2012). We remanded to the 

district court to see whether his evidence could meet that 

standard. 

The central challenge for Rattigan on remand was that the 

memo had been prepared not by one of the accused 

supervisors, but by Special Agent Donovan Leighton, who 

was not charged by Rattigan with discrimination and thus had 

no apparent reason to retaliate against him. We find that 

Rattigan is unable to overcome the difficulty and affirm the 

district court’s entry of summary judgment for the FBI.

* * *

Rattigan is a black male of Jamaican descent who worked 

at the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia as the FBI’s 

primary liaison to the Saudi intelligence service. In October 

2001, he accused Cary Gleicher, Michael Pyszczymuka, and 

Leslie Kaciban, all supervisors in the FBI’s Office of 

International Operations, of discriminating against him on the 

basis of race and national origin. He later pursued charges

with the Equal Employment Opportunity Office.

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In November 2001, Gleicher sent Special Agent Leighton 

on a short assignment to Riyadh, where he evidently grew 

suspicious about Rattigan. On his return, Leighton brought 

his concerns first to Gleicher and then to Pyszczymuka, and, 

on Pyszczymuka’s direction, documented them in a memo

which Pyszczymuka then referred to the FBI’s Security 

Division. The Security Division conducted an investigation 

and concluded that the security risks alleged by Leighton were

“unfounded.” Rattigan II, 689 F.3d at 766. 

Rattigan filed suit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act 

of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e et seq., alleging, among other 

things, that the decision to refer Leighton’s memo to the 

Security Division amounted to unlawful retaliation. A jury 

found for Rattigan, but this court vacated the judgment on the 

ground that the district court’s instructions violated 

Department of the Navy v. Egan, 484 U.S. 518 (1988), by 

inviting the jury to second guess the Security Division’s 

decision to initiate an investigation. Rattigan v. Holder 

(“Rattigan I”), 643 F.3d 975, 986 (D.C. Cir. 2011). We then 

granted the government’s petition for rehearing and narrowed 

the realm within which Rattigan’s claim could survive under

Egan, imposing the “knowing falsehood” rule quoted above. 

Rattigan II, 689 F.3d at 771. Our remand ended in the district 

court’s grant of summary judgment for the government. See 

Rattigan v. Holder, 982 F. Supp. 2d 69 (D.D.C. 2013). 

* * *

Leighton’s memo made six claims: (1) that Rattigan 

occasionally wore Saudi national clothing that he had received 

as a gift from the Saudi security service, creating the

impression he had “gone native”; (2) that Rattigan’s Saudi 

colleagues were attempting to find him a “suitable wife”; (3) 

that Rattigan hosted wild parties attended by other agents and 

by female “nurses,” a term that might have “be[en] used 

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by . . . Rattigan as a euphemism for ‘prostitutes’”; (4) that 

Rattigan and his assistant, Gamal Abdel-Hafiz, were 

inattentive to the FBI’s investigation of the September 11 

attacks; (5) that Rattigan took an extended absence to make a 

pilgrimage to Mecca along with Abdel-Hafiz and their Saudi 

counterparts, during which he could be contacted only through 

the Saudi security service; and (6) that Rattigan refused to 

allow temporary duty staff to interact directly with the Saudi 

security service. Rattigan I, 643 F.3d at 978-79. 

We have already recognized that Rattigan had conceded 

the truth of the facts underlying allegations (1), (2), (5), and 

(6). Rattigan II, 689 F.3d at 772. He now complains that 

Leighton’s memo presented these facts in a “misleading”

manner. But Rattigan II is clear that the “knowingly false” 

standard cannot be satisfied by assertion of a fact that, though 

true, is falsely framed so as to suggest a security concern. Id. 

Accordingly, these four allegations are not in dispute. 

As to the remaining allegations, Rattigan focuses on 

demonstrating that Leighton knew these were false. But this 

is another dead end. Under Rattigan II there can be liability 

for a security investigation referral only where “agency 

employees acted with a retaliatory or discriminatory motive in 

reporting or referring information that they knew to be false.”

Id. at 771. Motive and knowing falsity must unite in the same 

person. But there is no evidence that Leighton, who was not 

the object of Rattigan’s original discrimination claim, had any 

unlawful retaliatory motive when he documented his 

concerns. Rattigan did issue a lengthy email complaint about

Leighton, but only after Leighton had already brought his 

concerns to Pyszczymuka, and on the same day that Leighton 

had submitted the first draft of his memo. While this email 

condemned Leighton for statements about the conduct of the 

FBI mission in Riyadh, it never imputed any discriminatory 

motivation or behavior to Leighton. Only weeks after he sent 

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this critique and Leighton submitted the first version of the 

memo to Pyszczymuka did Rattigan allege discrimination—in 

the course of an email follow-up to his initial complaint. 

Leighton did have an opportunity thereafter to revise the 

memo, but, as discussed below, Rattigan does not allege that 

he added any falsehoods at this stage. Thus, even if Rattigan

could convince a reasonable jury that Leighton knew his 

allegations were false, his claim would fail. 

Rattigan proposes to cobble together his supervisors’

alleged retaliatory motive and Leighton’s alleged knowing 

falsehoods. In some circumstances, the law allows a plaintiff 

to impose liability on a principal by aggregating the 

unlawfully motivated report of one agent with the act of 

another. See, e.g., Staub v. Proctor Hosp., 131 S. Ct. 1186, 

1191, 1192 (2011); Griffin v. Washington Convention Ctr., 

142 F.3d 1308, 1311 (D.C. Cir. 1998). But Rattigan II, as 

we’ve said, requires joinder in at least one person of the 

retaliatory purpose with the knowing falsehood. There is no 

evidence that either Kaciban or Gleicher played any role in 

the referral. Thus Rattigan can prevail only by showing that

Pyszczymuka knew that the facts underlying allegations (3) or 

(4) were not true. 

Rattigan cannot pass this test. He himself testified that 

Pyszczymuka had “no firsthand knowledge of anything that 

happened in Riyadh.” Deposition of William [sic] S. Rattigan 

at 195:6-9, Rattigan v. Ashcroft, 04-cv-2009 (D.D.C. Dec. 7, 

2007). And he offers no evidence that Pyszczymuka 

encouraged Leighton to include falsehoods in his memo. 

Rattigan does point to a note by Pyszczymuka’s assistant, 

Walt Smith, to Pyszczymuka, saying that Leighton’s first draft 

“is much too long, and in some cases, inflammatory and 

unsupported in fact-innuendo, hearsay, etc.” But the note also 

proposed that Leighton should prepare a “redacted/edited” 

version of the memo for forwarding to the Security Division, 

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and Pyszczymuka so directed. In a somewhat selfcontradictory argument, Rattigan says that “Leighton made 

the directed changes, but many of the inflammatory 

allegations and innuendo . . . remained” in the memo. 

Appellant’s Br. 12. Taking the argument at its strongest, and 

assuming Pyszczymuka to have been fully on notice of Walt 

Smith’s grasp of the facts, this seems to be no more than a 

claim that Pyszczymuka made inadequate efforts to get the 

memo cleansed of propositions “unsupported in fact.” See 

Oral Argument at 11:30-15:41. But that is a far cry from 

knowingly reporting false statements. 

Rattigan also points to a meeting between Leighton and 

Pyszczymuka in which Leighton reported his concerns and 

Pyszczymuka directed him to write them up, but nothing 

indicates that either man said anything about the inclusion of 

allegations known to be false. Finally, he claims that he had 

personally “alerted” Pyszczymuka and the two others whom 

he had accused (and who therefore may have had a retaliatory 

motive) to the existence of “false accusations” in the memo. 

But all this shows is that Pyszczymuka was faced with two 

competing versions of events—not that Pyszczymuka knew 

Leighton’s account was erroneous. Because Rattigan has not 

identified a “genuine dispute” as to whether any agency 

employee “acted with a retaliatory or discriminatory motive in 

reporting or referring information that they knew to be false,” 

the FBI is entitled to summary judgment. See Rattigan II, 689 

F.3d at 771; Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a).

* * *

Rattigan also argues that the district court abused its

discretion in denying his requests for additional discovery. In 

support, he invokes our instruction in Rattigan II that the 

district court should decide the issue of knowing falsehood

only “after permitting any necessary discovery,” and our 

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acknowledgment that “[b]ecause we set forth this knowingly 

false standard for the first time on appeal, Rattigan had little 

reason to thoroughly develop evidence of knowing falsity in 

the district court.” 689 F.3d at 773. 

Rattigan responded by seeking additional discovery that, 

despite successive rejections by the district court, was well 

beyond the range opened by Rattigan II. He first requested 

additional discovery on several topics, including “[t]he 

complete personnel records of Donovan Leighton, Cary 

Gleicher, Leslie Kaciban, Walt Smith and Michael 

Pyszczymuka.” Joint Status Report 2, Rattigan v. Holder, 04-

cv-2009 (D.D.C. May 15, 2013), ECF No. 144. At a hearing, 

the district court rejected this request as insufficiently tailored 

to the sole issue that our decision had left open. Transcript of 

Status Conference 2:16-17, Rattigan v. Holder, 04-cv-2009 

(D.D.C. May 22, 2013).

At the same hearing the court then gave Rattigan’s 

counsel several opportunities to narrow the request, but he 

failed to do so. For instance, he repeatedly sought discovery 

on Leighton’s credibility to demonstrate that the supervisors 

“should have known” he was unreliable. Id. at 23:15-22, 

27:21-28:3, 37:22-23. The district court repeatedly rejected 

these requests, reminding Rattigan’s counsel that his burden 

was to demonstrate what Pyszczymuka actually knew, not 

what he should have known. Id. at 23:23-24, 28:4-5, 38:5-12. 

The district court then gave Rattigan a third opportunity 

to focus his desired discovery, namely by including a 

discovery request in his response to the FBI’s motion for 

summary judgment under Rule 56(d). Id. at 32:8-9, 33:19-

21, 35:14-19, 42:15-16, 47:14-15. The court could hardly 

have been more clear in its instruction that the request should 

be specifically framed and narrowly targeted to the issue of 

knowing falsity on the part of the employees with a motive to 

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retaliate. See id. at 47:1-19 (“You then will give the specifics 

that you need: I need to depose Leighton about X. I need to 

depose so-and-so because I’m going to learn Y. So far when 

you say, I’m going to learn that he’s not a credible individual, 

that will be discovery that is not specific enough.”); see also 

id. at 23:25-24:1, 36:10-12, 45:18-20, 46:8-9, 47:7-8. 

Rattigan then sought discovery on four topics: (1) 

Leighton’s background and credibility; (2) Leighton’s 

knowledge of the truth or falsity of his allegations; (3) specific 

incidents not directly related to the case but invoked by the 

FBI in its motion for summary judgment; and (4) the “process 

that led to the creation” of the Leighton memo. See Decl. of 

Jonathan C. Moore in Opp’n to Def.’s Mot. For Summary 

Judgment ¶¶ 5-10, Rattigan v. Holder, 04-cv-2009 (D.D.C. 

Aug. 9, 2013), ECF No. 150-4. 

None of the first three requests bears directly on the key 

issue of knowing falsehood on the part of the three alleged 

retaliators, and so the district court was easily within its

discretion in denying these requests. While evidence 

undermining Leighton’s credibility might suggest that 

Pyszczymuka should have known that the information in the

memo was unreliable, it would not demonstrate what Rattigan 

II requires—that Pyszczymuka actually knew Leighton was 

lying. And, as explained above, evidence that Leighton

himself knew his memo contained falsehoods would not help

Rattigan because Leighton had no retaliatory motive, and his

knowledge cannot be automatically attributed to 

Pyszczymuka. 

In contrast, Rattigan’s fourth subject does at least 

encompass the key issue. On that subject, he elaborated only 

by explaining that he sought information regarding “the 

interactions that took place between and amongst Michael 

Pyszczymuka, Walt Smith, Cary Gleicher, Leslie Kaciban and 

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Donovan Leighton” in order to determine whether any of the 

supervisors “knew or should have known that the information 

was knowingly false.” See Moore Decl. ¶ 10. But, so 

formulated, even the fourth subject alone was by no means 

targeted to features of “the interactions” among the five that 

were crucial under Rattigan II. Rattigan had three chances to 

frame his discovery request in specific terms. The district 

court did not abuse its discretion in declining to give him a 

fourth.

* * *

The order of the district court is

Affirmed. 

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