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Parties Involved:
Sealed Case

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued February 20, 1997 Decided June 17, 1997 

No. 96-3124

IN RE: SEALED CASE

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 95ms00192)

-

Before: WALD, GINSBURG and ROGERS, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge WALD.

WALD, Circuit Judge: This case involves an effort by the 

Office of the Independent Counsel ("OIC") to compel performance of a subpoena duces tecum issued by the grand jury 

investigating former Secretary of Agriculture Alphonso Michael (Mike) Espy ("Espy") and served on the Counsel to the 

President ("White House Counsel"). The White House provided several folders of documents to the OIC in response to 

the subpoena but withheld 84 documents as privileged. After 

ordering that the withheld documents be produced for in 

camera review, the district court upheld the White House's 

claims of privilege in full. We now vacate the district court's 

opinion and remand for the court to conduct a more detailed 

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review of the documents consistent with the principles set out 

in this opinion.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Factual Background

Allegations that Espy may have improperly accepted gifts 

from individuals and organizations with business before the 

U.S. Department of Agriculture ("USDA") first surfaced publicly in March of 1994. These allegations led to the appointment of an Independent Counsel, on September 9, 1994, to 

investigate whether Espy had unlawfully accepted gifts and 

related matters and to prosecute any related violations of 

federal law that the Independent Counsel reasonably believed 

had occurred. See In re Alphonso (Mike) Espy, No. 94-2 

(D.C. Cir. Spec. Div. 1994); see also In re Espy, 80 F.3d 501 

(D.C. Cir. Spec. Div. 1996) (per curiam). This investigation 

into Espy's actions is still ongoing.

The same allegations also led the President of the United 

States to direct the White House Counsel to investigate 

Espy's conduct in order to advise the President on whether 

he should take executive action against Espy. On October 3, 

1994, Espy announced his resignation, effective December 31, 

1994. A little over a week later, on October 11, 1994, the 

White House publicly released a report on Espy produced by 

the White House Counsel. The report stated that the President had asked the White House Counsel to address two 

issues: "(1) whether the President should direct that any 

further action be taken with respect to Secretary Espy's 

conduct; and (2) what actions should be taken to ensure that 

similar incidents are avoided by other Members of the Cabinet." After detailing several areas in which questions had 

been raised regarding Espy's conduct, the report concluded 

that no further executive action need be taken against Espy 

since he had announced his resignation, reimbursed the cost 

of questionable transactions, recused himself from matters 

involving meat and poultry inspection and undertaken screening measures for his travel. The report also recommended 

that efforts be undertaken to ensure that all cabinet members 

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1 Another document was initially withheld on grounds of attorney 

work product privilege, but has since been released. 

2

It is clear from the briefs and oral argument in this case, as well 

as the district court's opinion, that by "executive privilege" the 

White House is referring to the privilege that attaches to confidential presidential communications. However, as we discuss below, see 

infra Part I.B, "executive privilege" is generally used to refer to a 

and other executive branch officers be given ethics training 

and be familiarized with applicable ethical standards for 

executive branch officers.

On October 14, 1994, the grand jury issued the subpoena 

duces tecum at issue in this case. The subpoena seeks all 

documents on Espy and other subjects of the OIC's investigation that were "accumulated for, relating in any way to, or 

considered in any fashion, by those persons who were consulted and/or contributed directly or indirectly to all drafts and/or 

versions" of the White House Counsel's report. Within this 

broad category of documents relating to the White House 

Counsel's report, the subpoena specifically requests notes of 

any meetings in the White House concerning Espy and of any 

conversations between Espy or his counsel and White House 

employees. On October 20, 1994, the White House issued a 

press statement stating that it had received a subpoena for 

documents relating to the White House Counsel's report and 

would comply with the subpoena. On November 17, 1994, the 

White House produced several folders of documents for the 

OIC, which the White House maintained represented all 

responsive documents except those withheld on the basis of 

privilege. On December 12, 1994, at the OIC's request, the 

White House produced a privilege log identifying the date, 

author, and recipient of each document withheld as well as a 

general statement of the nature of each document and the 

basis for the privilege on which the document was withheld. 

This privilege log indicated that 84 documents were withheld 

on grounds of the deliberative process privilege, with one 

document additionally withheld on grounds of attorney-client 

privilege.1In a later draft of the privilege log, the White 

House lists the privilege basis of all 84 documents as being 

"executive/deliberative privilege."2

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The OIC negotiated with the White House for access to the 

withheld documents for several months, finally filing a motion 

to compel production on June 7, 1995. The White House 

resisted the motion, arguing that the withheld documents 

came within both the privilege for presidential communications, recognized in United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 

(1974) (Nixon), and the deliberative process privilege that 

protects the deliberations and decisionmaking process of executive officials generally. After a hearing on the motion to 

compel, the district court ordered the White House to produce the withheld documents for in camera review and the 

White House complied. Each document produced was accompanied by an ex parte cover sheet that explained the 

purpose of the document. The OIC also made an ex parte

submission justifying the grand jury's need for the documents. On September 30, 1996, the court denied the motion 

to compel. The memorandum opinion accompanying the 

denial quoted from Nixon to the effect that the "generalized 

assertion of privilege [for presidential communications] must 

yield to the demonstrated, specific need for evidence in a 

pending criminal trial," 418 U.S. at 713, but then concluded 

that the White House had properly asserted the claimed 

privileges in this case. In reaching this conclusion, the court 

stated that it had carefully reviewed the documents, but did 

not discuss the documents in any further detail and provided 

no analysis of the grand jury's asserted need for the documents.

The OIC appeals from the district court's decision. The 

OIC argues that, at a minimum, the district court's order 

should be vacated and the matter remanded because the 

district court failed to provide any account of its reasoning in 

denying the OIC's motion to enforce the subpoena. On the 

merits, the OIC maintains that the district court erred in 

denying the motion to compel because the White House had 

____________________

wide variety of evidentiary and substantive privileges that courts 

accord the executive branch. Consequently, we refer to the privileges asserted by the White House more specifically as the presidential communications privilege, or presidential privilege, and the 

deliberative process privilege. 

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waived its claims of privilege by releasing the final White 

House Counsel report, stating it would comply with the 

subpoena, and unduly delaying in invoking privilege. The 

OIC further argues that the presidential communications 

privilege does not apply to the withheld documents because 

none of the documents was sent to or received from the 

President; the only document that the President received 

regarding the Espy investigation was the White House Counsel's final report, which was publicly released. Alternatively, 

the OIC claims that even if the withheld documents do enjoy 

the presidential privilege, the district court should have applied a less restrictive need standard than that articulated in

Nixon, because this case involves a grand jury subpoena 

instead of a criminal trial subpoena, and the grand jury's 

need for the documents is sufficient to overcome the claims of 

executive privilege raised in this case. Although the OIC 

does not separately discuss the applicability of the deliberative process privilege in any detail, it maintains in passing 

that the need to obtain evidence that may shed light on 

governmental misconduct outweighs the deliberative process 

privilege.

The White House challenges each of these arguments. It 

insists that it has not waived its claims of privilege and that 

the withheld documents come under the presidential communications privilege because they were generated in response 

to the President's request for advice on whether to retain a 

cabinet officer, one of the President's core functions under 

Article II of the Constitution. The White House also notes 

that the deliberative privilege would apply to the documents 

in their entirety because the factual material in the documents is inseparable from the documents' deliberative portions. The White House contends that the same standard of 

need applies when the presidential privilege is raised in 

response to a grand jury subpoena as when a criminal trial 

subpoena is involved, and the OIC has failed to demonstrate a 

sufficient need to justify release under either the presidential 

privilege or the deliberative process privilege. Finally, the 

White House maintains that, since the district court reviewed 

the documents in camera, it provided sufficient explanation 

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3 For a listing of the different forms of executive privilege sanctioned by courts, see Gerald Wetlaufer, Justifying Secrecy: An 

Objection to the General Deliberative Privilege, 65 IND. L.J. 845, 845 

n.3 (1990); see generally MURL A. LARKIN, FEDERAL TESTIMONIAL 

PRIVILEGES §§ 5 to 7 (1996); 3 WEINSTEIN'S FEDERAL EVIDENCE

§§ 509-10 (Joseph M. McLaughlin, ed., 2d ed. 1997). 

for its decision to deny the motion to compel even though it 

did not discuss the documents individually.

B. Legal Background: On Executive Privilege Generally 

and the Deference Due to the District Court

Since the beginnings of our nation, executive officials have 

claimed a variety of privileges to resist disclosure of information the confidentiality of which they felt was crucial to 

fulfillment of the unique role and responsibilities of the 

executive branch of our government. Courts ruled early that 

the executive had a right to withhold documents that might 

reveal military or state secrets. See United States v. Reynolds, 345 U.S. 1, 6-8 (1953); Chicago & S. Airlines, Inc. v. 

Waterman Steamship Corp., 333 U.S. 103, 111 (1948); Totten 

v. United States, 92 U.S. 105, 106-07 (1875). The courts have 

also granted the executive a right to withhold the identity of 

government informers in some circumstances, Roviaro v. 

United States, 353 U.S. 53, 59-61 (1957), and a qualified right 

to withhold information related to pending investigations. 

See Friedman v. Bache Halsey Stuart Shields, Inc., 738 F.2d 

1336, 1341-43 (D.C. Cir. 1984). Other privileges sanctioned 

by the Supreme Court include the grant of absolute immunity 

to the President from civil liability for official acts, see Nixon 

v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 731, 749 (1982) (Fitzgerald), and from 

judicial compulsion to perform a discretionary act. See 

Franklin v. Massachusetts, 505 U.S. 788, 802-03 (1992) (plurality opinion); Swan v. Clinton, 100 F.3d 973, 977-78 (D.C. 

Cir. 1996).3

The most frequent form of executive privilege raised in the 

judicial arena is the deliberative process privilege; it allows 

the government to withhold documents and other materials 

that would reveal "advisory opinions, recommendations and 

deliberations comprising part of a process by which governmental decisions and policies are formulated." Carl Zeiss 

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4 Some aspects of the privilege, for example the protection accorded the mental processes of agency officials, see United States v. 

Morgan, 313 U.S. 409, 421-22 (1941), have roots in the constitutional separation of powers. See 3 WEINSTEIN'S FEDERAL EVIDENCE

§ 509.21[3] at 509-16. 

5This characteristic of the deliberative process privilege is not an 

issue in FOIA cases because the courts have held that the particular purpose for which a FOIA plaintiff seeks information is not 

relevant in determining whether FOIA requires disclosure. See 

Sears, 421 U.S. at 149 n.16; Mink, 410 U.S. at 86; see also 

Department of Justice v. Reporters Comm'ee for Freedom of the 

Stiftung v. V.E.B. Carl Zeiss, Jena, 40 F.R.D. 318, 324 

(D.D.C. 1966), aff'd, 384 F.2d 979 (D.C. Cir. 1967); accord 

NLRB v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 421 U.S. 132, 151-53 (1975); 

EPA v. Mink, 410 U.S. 73, 86-93 (1973). Although this 

privilege is most commonly encountered in Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA") litigation, it originated as a common law 

privilege. See Wolfe v. HHS, 839 F.2d 768, 773 (D.C. Cir. 

1988) (en banc); Jordan v. Department of Justice, 591 F.2d 

753, 772 (D.C. Cir. 1978) (en banc).4 Two requirements are 

essential to the deliberative process privilege: the material 

must be predecisional and it must be deliberative. See Army 

Times Publ'g Co. v. Department of the Air Force, 998 F.2d 

1067, 1070 (D.C. Cir. 1993); Wolfe, 839 F.2d at 774. Both 

requirements stem from the privilege's "ultimate purpose[, 

which] ... is to prevent injury to the quality of agency 

decisions" by allowing government officials freedom to debate 

alternative approaches in private. Sears, 421 U.S. at 151. 

The deliberative process privilege does not shield documents 

that simply state or explain a decision the government has 

already made or protect material that is purely factual, unless 

the material is so inextricably intertwined with the deliberative sections of documents that its disclosure would inevitably 

reveal the government's deliberations. See id. at 150-54;

Mink, 410 U.S. at 87-91; Wolfe, 839 F.2d at 774; see generally Russell L. Weaver & James T.R. Jones, The Deliberative 

Process Privilege, 54 MO. L. REV. 279, 290-98 (1989).

The deliberative process privilege is a qualified privilege 

and can be overcome by a sufficient showing of need.5 This 

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need determination is to be made flexibly on a case-by-case, 

ad hoc basis. "[E]ach time [the deliberative process privilege] is asserted the district court must undertake a fresh 

balancing of the competing interests," taking into account 

factors such as "the relevance of the evidence," "the availability of other evidence," "the seriousness of the litigation," "the 

role of the government," and the "possibility of future timidity by government employees." In re Subpoena Served Upon 

the Comptroller of the Currency, 967 F.2d 630, 634 (D.C. Cir. 

1992) (internal quotations omitted) (quoting In re Franklin 

Nat'l Bank Securities Litig., 478 F. Supp. 577, 583 (E.D.N.Y. 

1979)); see also Tuite v. Henry, 98 F.2d 1411, 1417 (D.C. Cir. 

1996) (describing need in the context of the law enforcement 

investigatory privilege, which involves balancing similar factors, as "an elastic concept"); Developments in the Law

Privileged Communications, 98 HARV. L. REV. 1450, 1621 

(1985) ("courts simply engage in an ad hoc balancing of the 

evidentiary need against the harm that may result from 

disclosure"); LARKIN, supra, § 5.03 at 5-89 to 5-92 ("need for 

[privileged materials] may vary considerably, depending on 

the circumstances"). For example, where there is reason to 

believe the documents sought may shed light on government 

misconduct, "the privilege is routinely denied," on the 

grounds that shielding internal government deliberations in 

this context does not serve "the public's interest in honest, 

effective government." Texaco Puerto Rico, Inc. v. Department of Consumer Affairs, 60 F.3d 867, 885 (1st Cir. 1995); 

see also In re Comptroller of the Currency, 967 F.2d at 634 

("the privilege may be overridden where necessary ... to 

'shed light on alleged government malfeasance' ") (quoting 

Franklin Nat'l Bank, 478 F. Supp. at 582); Wetlaufer, supra,

at 852 n.25, 855 (listing cases).

Although executive privilege in general is no stranger to 

the courtroom, one form of the executive privilege is invoked 

________________________

Press, 489 U.S. 749, 771-72 (1989) (determination of whether disclosure of information constitutes an unwarranted invasion of privacy 

under FOIA's exemption 7(c) turns on nature of document and what 

document reveals about operation of government and not on identity or purpose of requestor).

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6Marshall's conclusion was presaged by the argument before the 

Court, where then-Attorney General and former Secretary of State 

Levi Lincoln had resisted testifying about the whereabouts of 

Marbury's commission on the grounds that such information was an 

only rarely and that is the privilege to preserve the confidentiality of presidential communications. Hints of a presidential 

communications privilege made an early appearance in Marbury v. Madison where Chief Justice Marshall suggested that 

for a court to intrude "into the secrets of the cabinet" would 

give the appearance of "intermeddl[ing] with the prerogatives 

of the executive." 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 170 (1803). Four years 

later, in 1807, Marshall again addressed the presidential 

privilege during the trial of Aaron Burr on charges of treason. President Jefferson asserted the privilege in an effort to 

avoid producing a letter that he had received from General 

Wilkinson, one of Burr's main accusers. Marshall, sitting on 

circuit, issued a subpoena for the letter, ruling that "[i]f [the 

letter] does contain any matter which it would be imprudent 

to disclose, which it is not the wish of the executive to 

disclose, such matter, if it be not immediately and essentially 

applicable to the point, will, of course, be suppressed." United States v. Burr, 25 F. Cas. 30, 37 (CC Va. 1807) (No. 

14,692d). Although Burr was acquitted in his treason trial 

before there were further proceedings on his subpoena, he 

was immediately put on trial again on misdemeanor charges 

and as a result sought production of another letter Wilkinson 

had sent to Jefferson. See Paul A. Freund, The Supreme 

Court, 1973 TermForeword: On Presidential Privilege, 88 

HARV. L. REV. 13, 22-31 (1974).

In neither instance, however, was Marshall forced to definitively decide whether such a presidential privilege existed and 

if so, in what form. In Marbury, Marshall found that the 

question of whether a commission as justice of the peace had 

been issued was a matter of legal and public record, not a 

confidential cabinet matter, setting the stage for the Court's 

pronouncement there that "[i]t is, emphatically, the province 

and duty of the judicial department, to say what the law is." 

5 U.S. at 177.6In the Burr misdemeanor trial, Jefferson 

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official secret he had learned in his position as Secretary of State. 

The Court had responded that "[t]here was nothing confidential to 

be disclosed. If there had been he was not obliged to answer it ... 

but that the fact whether such commissions had been in the office 

or not, could not be a confidential fact." Marbury, 5 U.S. (1 

Cranch) at 144. 

7

Jefferson then proceeded to transmit a copy of the letter 

identifying portions he believed should be deleted to Hay. But 

since Burr was again acquitted, he did not seek production of the 

letter until a third set of proceedings, these on the issue of whether 

he should be committed to custody for trial in Ohio on other 

charges. Ruling from the bench, Marshall denied Burr's request 

for the letter, stating "[a]fter such a certificate from the president 

of the United States as has been received, I cannot direct the 

production of those parts of the letter, without sufficient evidence of 

their being relevant to the present prosecution." Freund, supra, at 

29. Marshall instead held that the deleted portions could be 

inferred to support Burr. Id. at 30. Although Marshall never 

definitively ruled on the President's claims of privilege, his decision 

to issue the subpoena against President Jefferson has had lasting 

significance in establishing that "the President is subject to judicial 

process in appropriate circumstances." Clinton v. Jones, No. 

95-1853, 1997 WL 273679 at *12 & n.38. 

8 Two cases, Mink and Soucie v. David, 448 F.2d 1067 (D.C. Cir. 

1971), involved reports that were prepared pursuant to a presidential request and reviewed by the President, but in both cases the 

courts viewed the privilege claim at issue as being simply an 

assertion of the general deliberative process privilege, embodied in 

exemption five of the Freedom of Information Act, rather than a 

responded to the subpoena by sending Wilkinson's letter to 

George Hay, the U.S. Attorney prosecuting Burr, with instructions that the U.S. Attorney should determine what 

portions should be withheld. This delegation induced Marshall to order that the letter be provided to Burr in its 

entirety, because "[t]he propriety of withholding [the letter] 

must be decided by [the President] himself." United States 

v. Burr, 25 F. Cas. 187, 192 (CC Va. 1807) (No. 14,694).7

The presidential communications privilege did not resurface 

in court for over a hundred and fifty years.8 Presidential 

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distinct privilege for presidential communications. See Mink, 410 

U.S. at 91-93; Soucie, 448 F.2d at 1071-72, 1075-78. 

9

See, e.g., Robert Kramer & Herman Marcuse, Executive PrivilegeA Study of the Period 1953-1960: Part I, 29 GEO. WASH. L.

REV. 623, 682-87, 692-93 (1961) (describing President Eisenhower's 

refusal to allow any executive branch officers to reveal to Congress 

internal deliberations on official matters). Although scholars dispute how often Presidents have actually refused to provide Congress with information on grounds of executive privilege, debate 

over the President's ability to withhold confidential information 

from Congress has occurred since the early years of our nation, 

when President George Washington discussed with his cabinet in 

1792 how to respond to a congressional inquiry into the military 

misfortunes that beset General St. Clair's expedition. See Archibald Cox, Executive Privilege, 122 U. PA. L. REV. 1383, 1395-1405 

(1974); see generally RAOUL BERGER, EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE: A CONSTITUTIONAL MYTH (1974); ADAM C. BRECKENRIDGE, THE EXECUTIVE 

PRIVILEGE: PRESIDENTIAL CONTROL OVER INFORMATION (1974); DANIEL 

N. HOFFMAN, GOVERNMENTAL SECRECY AND THE FOUNDING FATHERS: A

STUDY IN CONSTITUTIONAL CONTROLS (1981); MARK J. ROZELL, EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE: THE DILEMMA OF SECRECY AND DEMOCRATIC ACCOUNTABILITY (1994). Interestingly, it appears that Congress has at times 

accepted executive officers' refusal to testify about conversations 

they had with the President, even as it was insisting on access to 

other executive branch documents and materials. See, e.g., ROZELL, 

supra, at 44; Robert Kramer & Herman Marcuse, Executive 

PrivilegeA Study of the Period 1953-1960: Part II, 29 GEO. WASH.

L. REV. 827, 872-73 (1961). A very early instance of such a refusal 

by an executive officer came in the course of the House's investigation into why Alexander Hamilton had deposited into the Bank of 

the United States certain funds intended to pay off foreign debt. 

The House sought to know Hamilton's authority for this act, to 

which Hamilton replied that he would not provide any instructions 

President Washington had given him, because "[t]hat question 

must, then, be a matter purely between the President and the 

agent, not examinable by the Legislature." HOFFMAN, supra, at 

claims of a right to preserve the confidentiality of information 

and documents figured more prominently in executivecongressional relations, but these claims too were most often 

essentially assertions of the deliberative process privilege.9

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122. However, the House rejected the claim of privilege, and 

Hamilton eventually provided the material sought. Id. at 118-24. 

10It appears that the courts have been drawn into executivecongressional disputes over access to information on only three 

recent occasions. These were: United States v. AT&T, 551 F.2d 

384 (D.C. Cir. 1976), appeal after remand, 567 F.2d 121 (D.C. Cir. 

1977); Senate Select Comm'ee on Presidential Campaign Activities 

v. Nixon (Senate Committee ), 498 F.2d 725 (D.C. Cir. 1974); 

United States v. House of Representatives, 556 F. Supp. 150 

(D.D.C. 1983). 

11 See supra note 2. 

Moreover, given the restrictions on congressional standing 

and the courts' reluctance to interfere in political battles, few 

executive-congressional disputes over access to information 

have ended up in the courts.10 As a result, it was not until 

the 1970s and Watergate-related lawsuits seeking access to 

President Nixon's tapes as well as other materials that the 

existence of the presidential privilege was definitively established as a necessary derivation from the President's constitutional status in a separation of powers regime.

In this case, the White House is asserting both the deliberative process privilege and the presidential communications 

privilege.11 Our review of the withheld documents indicates 

that several documents are either wholly factual or contain 

segregatable factual sections that would not come under the 

deliberative process privilege. Consequently, we must decide 

whether the White House properly asserted the presidential 

communications privilege over the documents.

As a preliminary matter we must first explain the standard 

under which we should review the district court's ruling that 

the presidential privilege applied to the withheld documents. 

Ordinarily, this court will review a district court's ruling on a 

subpoena for the production of documentary evidence only for 

arbitrariness or abuse of discretion. See In re Comptroller of 

the Currency, 967 F.2d at 633; In re Sealed Case, 877 F.2d 

976, 981-82 (D.C. Cir. 1989). No deference is given, however, 

if the ruling "rests upon a misapprehension of the relevant 

legal standard or is unsupported by the record." In re 

Subpoena on Comptroller of Currency, 967 F.2d at 633. In 

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order to defer we also need to have some articulation of the 

district court's reasons for its ruling. See In re Sealed Case 

(Government Records), 950 F.2d 736, 738 (D.C. Cir. 1991) 

(appeals court cannot apply deferential standard when district 

court did not provide reasons for denying subpoena or did not 

review documents in camera).

Here, the district court provided no explanation of its 

denial of the motion to compel. The denial took the form of a 

blanket ruling, with no individualized discussion of the documents. Since the district court reviewed the withheld documents in camera before denying the OIC's motion to compel, 

the absence of detailed findings would not, on its own, preclude us from according our usual deference to the district 

court's opinion. However, the court also failed to provide any 

explanation of its legal reasoning. It did not address the 

OIC's claim that the White House had waived its privileges or 

analyze whether the presidential communications privilege 

applies to documents not seen by the President. Moreover, 

while the court quoted Nixon's statement to the effect that 

the presidential privilege must yield to a specific demonstration of need, it never discussed why Nixon applies to grand 

jury subpoenas as well as trial subpoenas nor indicated why 

the OIC's demonstration of need was deficient. Because the 

district court not only failed to make factual findings but also 

failed to provide any explanation of its legal reasoning, we 

believe that no deference to the district court's denial of the 

OIC's motion to compel is appropriate.

II. WAIVER

We turn first to the OIC's contention that the White House 

has waived its privilege claims; if we find that waiver has 

occurred, we need not proceed further. In support of its 

waiver argument, the OIC notes that the White House publicly released the White House Counsel's report, issued a press 

statement indicating it would comply with the OIC's subpoena, and did not formally invoke privilege until after the OIC 

filed a motion to compel. Only after the briefs in this appeal 

were submitted did the White House inform us that it had 

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provided Espy's counsel with a document nearly identical to 

one of the withheld documents, document 63, the only difference being that document 63 contained certain handwritten 

notations that the released version lacked. The OIC argues 

that the release of document 63 is further evidence of a 

privilege waiver.

We do not credit the OIC's arguments for waiver. The 

White House press statement did not explicitly declare that 

the White House would forego any and all claims of privilege 

that might apply to the documents. Instead, it described the 

documents sought in the subpoena and noted "[t]he subpoena 

requires that documents be produced on November 10, 1994. 

The White House will comply." The OIC agreed to extend 

the return date of the subpoena to November 17, and on that 

date the White House did in fact produce several folders of 

documents. "Since executive privilege exists to aid the governmental decisionmaking process, a waiver should not be 

lightly inferred." SCM Corp. v. United States, 473 F. Supp. 

791, 796 (Cust. Ct. 1979); see also Nixon v. Sirica (Sirica), 

487 F.2d 700, 717 (D.C. Cir. 1973) (explicit statement by 

President Nixon that "[e]xecutive privilege will not be invoked" considered one factor in assessing need to preserve 

confidentiality of subpoenaed materials, but not held to constitute a waiver). The press statement was not an official 

response to the subpoena, and it is clear from the record that 

the OIC was well aware the White House would be asserting 

privileges in regard to certain documents. Shortly after the 

statement was issued the White House Counsel informed the 

OIC that it believed some of the material was privileged, 

provoking lengthy negotiations between the two over the 

status of the withheld documents. There is nought to indicate that the press statement misled the OIC.

Nor did the White House have an obligation to formally 

invoke its privileges in advance of the motion to compel. In 

its response to the subpoena, the White House informed the 

OIC that it believed the withheld documents were privileged, 

thus satisfying Rule 45(c)(2)(B) and Rule 45(d)(2) of the 

Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which together require that 

"a party objecting to a subpoena on the basis of privilege 

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must both (1) object to the subpoena and (2) state the claim of 

privilege within [the stipulated period] of service." Tuite, 98 

F.2d at 1416; see also In re Sealed Case, 856 F.2d 268, 272 

n.3 (D.C. Cir. 1988) (where government's claim of privilege is 

well taken, remedy for any delay is not waiver but fees and 

sanctions). The motion to compel was the first event which 

could have forced disclosure of the documents. Cf. 3 WEINSTEIN'S FEDERAL EVIDENCE § 503.09[4] at 503-44 (failure to 

assert attorney-client privilege at a hearing at which privileged information is sought may result in waiver of the 

privilege). Since the OIC was clearly aware in advance of the 

motion to compel that the White House likely would be 

asserting privilege, it was not prejudiced by any alleged delay 

in the White House's formally invoking its privileges.

The White House's release of the White House Counsel's 

final report also does not constitute waiver of any privileges 

attaching to the documents generated in the course of producing the report. It is true that voluntary disclosure of 

privileged material subject to the attorney-client privilege to 

unnecessary third parties in the attorney-client privilege context "waives the privilege, not only as to the specific communication disclosed but often as to all other communications 

relating to the same subject matter." In re Sealed Case, 676 

F.2d 793, 809 (D.C. Cir. 1982); accord In re Sealed Case, 29 

F.3d 715, 719-20 (D.C. Cir. 1994); see generally 3 WEINSTEIN'S FEDERAL EVIDENCE § 511. But this all-or-nothing 

approach has not been adopted with regard to executive 

privileges generally, or to the deliberative process privilege in 

particular. Instead, courts have said that release of a document only waives these privileges for the document or information specifically released, and not for related materials. 

See Mobil Oil Corp. v. EPA, 879 F.2d 698, 700-02, 703 (9th 

Cir. 1989); Mehl v. EPA, 797 F. Supp. 43, 47-48 (D.D.C. 

1992); LARKIN, supra, § 5.05 at 5-114.7 to 5-114.14; see also 

Russell v. Department of the Air Force, 682 F.2d 1045, 1048-

49 (D.C. Cir. 1982) (although not addressing waiver directly, 

holding that deliberative process privilege applies to early 

drafts of Air Force report on use of herbicides in Vietnam 

despite public release of the final report). This limited 

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approach to waiver in the executive privilege context is 

designed to ensure that agencies do not forego voluntarily 

disclosing some privileged material out of the fear that by 

doing so they are exposing other, more sensitive documents. 

See Assembly of the State of California v. Department of 

Commerce, 968 F.2d 916, 922 n.5 (9th Cir. 1992); Mobil Oil 

Corp., 879 F.2d at 701; Mehl, 797 F. Supp. at 47-48.

On that basis, we find that the White House's release of the 

final report does not waive the privilege in regard to the 

documents the White House generated in producing the 

ultimate version. However, the White House has waived its 

claims of privilege in regard to the specific documents that it 

voluntarily revealed to third parties outside the White House, 

namely the final report itself and the typewritten text of 

document 63, which was sent to Espy's Counsel. Our review 

reveals that none of the withheld documents is identical to the 

final White House Counsel report, that no other withheld 

document is identical to document 63 and that document 63 

has handwritten notations that the White House claims were 

not on the document sent to Espy's counsel. Thus, although 

the White House has waived its privileges regarding the 

typed text of document 63, the handwritten notations remain 

subject to our privilege analysis, and if found privileged can 

be redacted from document 63 before it is released to the 

grand jury.

In sum, with the exception of document 63 we find that the 

White House has not waived its privileges as to the withheld 

documents. We therefore proceed to determine the merits of 

the White House's claims of privilege.

III. THE PRESIDENTIAL COMMUNICATIONS PRIVILEGE

Judicial discussion of the presidential communications privilege exploded in the early to mid-1970s when the investigation into the Watergate break-in uncovered the fact that 

President Nixon had made, and still had in his possession, 

tape recordings of his conversations in the Oval Office and 

other locales. This revelation led the Watergate Special 

Prosecutor to subpoena the tapes for use in the criminal 

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investigation of the break-in. President Nixon asserted the 

presidential communications privilege in response, and also in 

several subsequent lawsuits that sought access to the tapes 

and other presidential materials generated by his administration. These lawsuits, referred to generically as the Nixon 

cases, remain a quarter century later the leadingif not the 

onlydecisions on the scope of the presidential communications privilege. We begin our analysis of the White House's 

assertion of the presidential privilege in this case by examining in detail the precedent in the Nixon cases. We will then 

address two specific issues regarding the scope and operation 

of the privilege presented by this case that are not expressly 

answered by the earlier decisions: how far down the line of 

command from the President does the presidential privilege 

extend, and what kind of demonstration of need must be 

shown to justify release to a grand jury of materials that 

qualify for such a privilege.

A. The Nixon Cases and the General Contours of the Presidential Communications Privilege

We first addressed President Nixon's assertion of the 

presidential privilege over the Watergate tapes in Sirica. 

Sirica involved a subpoena for nine tapes issued by the grand 

jury investigating the Watergate break-in. The district court 

had ordered President Nixon to produce the tapes for in 

camera review, and on appeal we affirmed that decision, 

stating that "application of Executive privilege depends on a 

weighing of the public interest protected by the privilege 

against the public interests that would be served by disclosure in a particular case." 487 F.2d at 716. We initially 

recognized a "great public interest" in preserving "the confidentiality of conversations that take place in the President's 

performance of his official duties" because such confidentiality 

is needed to protect "the effectiveness of the executive decision-making process," as a result, we said, presidential conversations "are presumptively privileged." Id. at 717. But 

we further held that this privilege could be overcome by a 

sufficient showing of need by a grand jury, and ruled that 

President Nixon's assertion of privilege "must fail in the face 

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12The Court implied, however, that particularized claims of privilege for military and state secrets would be close to absolute, and 

expressly held only that the presidential communications privilege, 

cutor in this case." Id. We ordered that the tapes be turned 

over to the court for in camera review, however, rather than 

given to the grand jury directly, to ensure that only material 

relevant to the Watergate inquiry was released. Id. at 719-

22.

President Nixon did not appeal our decision in Sirica, and 

thus it was not until a year later, in Nixon, that the question 

of whether an executive privilege of confidentiality for presidential communications existed reached the Supreme Court. 

Nixon concerned a subpoena issued by the Watergate Special 

Prosecutor for additional tapes, this time for use in the 

pending trial of seven individuals indicted by the Watergate 

grand jury. In a unanimous opinion, the Court agreed that 

there was "a presumptive privilege for Presidential communications," 418 U.S. at 708, founded on "a President's generalized interest in confidentiality." Id. at 711. It found such a 

privilege necessary to guarantee the candor of presidential 

advisors and to provide "[a] President and those who assist 

him ... [with] free[dom] to explore alternatives in the process of shaping policies and making decisions and to do so in a 

way many would be unwilling to express except privately." 

418 U.S. at 708. Although not expressly provided for in the 

Constitution, the privilege nonetheless has constitutional origins; it is "inextricably rooted in the separation of powers 

under the Constitution," id., and also "flow[s] from the nature 

of enumerated powers" of the President. Id. at 705 & n.16. 

But, the Court insisted, "neither the doctrine of separation of 

powers, nor the need for confidentiality of high-level communications, without more, can sustain an absolute, unqualified 

Presidential privilege of immunity from judicial process under 

all circumstances." Id. at 706. Turning to the precise issue 

at hand, the Court held that an assertion of executive privilege "based only on the generalized interest in confidentiality 

.... must yield to the demonstrated, specific need for evidence in a pending criminal trial." Id. at 713.12 The Court 

remanded for the district court to perform an in camera

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which is based only on a generalized interest in confidentiality, can 

be overcome by an adequate showing of need. See Nixon, 418 U.S. 

at 710-11, 713. 

13The operation of the presidential communications privilege was 

addressed in a few other criminal cases. In United States v. 

Haldeman, 559 F.2d 31 (D.C. Cir. 1976), and United States v. 

Ehrlichman, 546 F.2d 910 (D.C. Cir. 1976), John Ehrlichman, an 

assistant to President Nixon, challenged his convictions stemming 

from the Watergate investigation on the grounds that the district 

court had improperly denied requests for information in White 

House files. However, in neither case is there any significant 

discussion of the privilege, because Ehrlichman had failed "to argue 

with specificity the materiality and reasonableness of his discovery 

request" and thus would have not been entitled to access to this 

evidence under Rule 17(c) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure even if it were not presumptively privileged. Ehrlichman, 546 

F.2d at 931-32; see also Haldeman, 559 F.2d at 76-77. In United 

States v. Poindexter, 727 F. Supp. 1501 (D.D.C. 1989) and United 

States v. North, 713 F. Supp. 1448 (D.D.C. 1989), two prosecutions 

arising out of the Iran-Contra investigation, former National Security Advisor John Poindexter and Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North 

subpoenaed President Reagan to testify about conversations; Poindexter also subpoenaed President Reagan's diaries. Although in 

both cases the courts noted that the subpoenas implicated the 

presidential communications privilege, they only addressed the 

question of whether the subpoenas satisfied Rule 17(c). Poindexter's initial conviction was reversed by this court on other grounds, 

United States v. Poindexter, 951 F.2d 369 (D.C. Cir. 1991), and 

President Bush subsequently pardoned Poindexter, thus forestalling 

further appellate review of the district court's order in his case.

This court held that any error in the district court's refusal to 

subpoena President Reagan to testify at North's trial was harmless 

review in which relevant and admissible evidence in the tapes 

would be isolated for release to the Special Prosecutor; the 

confidentiality of non-relevant material on the tapes was to be 

preserved. On remand, the President was also to be given an 

opportunity to raise more particularized claims of privilege. 

Id. at 714-15 & n.21.

The Nixon Court explicitly limited its ruling to demands 

for presidential materials relevant to a criminal trial, stating 

"[w]e are not here concerned with the balance between the 

President's generalized interest in confidentiality and the 

need for relevant evidence in civil litigation, nor with that 

between the confidentiality interest and congressional demands for information." Id. at 712 n.19. It fell to the 

remaining Nixon cases to address the scope of the presidential communications privilege in other contexts.13 In Senate 

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because there was no indication he would have provided evidence 

that was material or favorable to North. As a result, the issue of 

presidential privilege was only addressed by Judge Silberman in 

dissent. United States v. North, 910 F.2d 843, 888-92 & n.25 (D.C. 

Cir.), vacated in part, 920 F.2d 940 (D.C. Cir. 1990); id. at 932, 950-

54 (Silberman, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). 

Committee, a decision that pre-dated Nixon, this court refused to enforce a subpoena for tapes issued by the Senate 

Committee investigating illegal activities connected to the 

1972 election, on the grounds that the Senate Committee had 

not demonstrated that the tapes were "demonstrably critical 

to the responsible fulfilment of the Committee's functions." 

498 F.2d at 731. Subsequently, the Court of Claims held that 

the presidential communications privilege could be overcome 

by the evidentiary demands of a civil trial, see Sun Oil Co. v. 

United States, 514 F.2d 1020, 1024 (Ct. Cl. 1975), and in 

Dellums v. Powell this court agreed, holding that an adequate 

showing of need in a civil trial would also defeat the privilege 

"at least where, as here, the action is tantamount to a charge 

of civil conspiracy among high officers of government to deny 

a class of citizens their constitutional rights and where there 

has been sufficient evidentiary substantiation to avoid the 

inference that the demand reflects mere harassment." 561 

F.2d 242, 247 (D.C. Cir. 1977); see also Dellums v. Powell, 

642 F.2d 1351 (D.C. Cir. 1980) (remanding to give President 

Nixon further opportunity to assert more particularized 

claims of privilege).

The Supreme Court had its next encounter with the presidential communications privilege in Nixon v. Administrator 

of General Services (GSA), which concerned the operation of 

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14The presidential communications privilege also surfaced in the 

district court's opinion in Wayte v. United States, which later was 

appealed to the Supreme Court. Wayte alleged that the government's enforcement policy on military draft registration requirements was unconstitutional, and sought discovery of presidential 

documents and testimony regarding the policy from the White 

House Counsel. The Court, however, decided the case on other 

grounds, and the only discussion of the presidential privilege is 

found in Justice Marshall's dissent. 470 U.S. 598, 614, 615-23 

(1985). 

15 This court subsequently upheld the regulations promulgated by 

GSA to govern access to the Nixon materials. See Nixon v. 

Freeman, 670 F.2d 346 (D.C. Cir. 1982); see also Nixon v. United 

the privilege in the context of congressional legislation.14

Congress enacted the Presidential Recordings and Materials 

Preservation Act ("PRMPA"), which transferred custody of 

the Nixon tapes along with a vast number of other presidential documents from the Nixon administration to the custody 

of the General Services Administrator. President Nixon 

challenged PRMPA as unconstitutional, in part because it 

infringed on the presidential privilege. The Court first held 

that a former President could assert the privilege on his own, 

but his claim would be given less weight than that of an 

incumbent President. 433 U.S. 425, 449 (1977). Moreover, it 

said the privilege was "limited to communications 'in performance of [a President's] responsibilities,' 'of his office,' and 

made 'in the process of shaping policies and making decisions.' " Id. at 449 (quoting Nixon) (citations omitted). The 

Court then noted that the only intrusion into the confidentiality of presidential communications in the case was the screening of the materials by archivists, since the statute provided 

that the Administrator would promulgate regulations which 

allowed claims of privilege to be raised before public access 

occurred. This screening by government archivists who had 

performed the same task for past Presidents without any 

apparent interference with presidential confidentiality was 

viewed by the Court as "a very limited intrusion," and also as 

justified in light of the substantial public interests served by 

the Act. Id. at 450-55.15

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States, 978 F.2d 1269 (D.C. Cir. 1992) (holding that PRMPA acted 

as a taking of President Nixon's materials so as to require just 

compensation). 

16In Nixon, Sirica and GSA, President Nixon personally asserted the presidential communications privilege, and thus these cases 

do not establish whether the privilege must be invoked by the 

President as opposed to a member of his staff. In discussing the 

military and state secrets privilege in Reynolds the Supreme Court 

stated that "[t]here must be a formal claim of privilege, lodged by 

the head of the department which has control over the matter," 345 

U.S. at 7-8, which might suggest that the President must assert the 

presidential communications privilege personally. See Center on 

Corp. Responsibility, Inc. v. Shultz, 368 F. Supp. 863, 872-73 

(D.D.C. 1973) (White House Counsel's affidavit indicating that he is 

authorized to say that the White House was invoking executive 

privilege over tapes and documents in White House files is insufficient to invoke the privilege); see also Burr, 25 F. Cas. at 192 

(ruling that President Jefferson had to personally identify the 

passages he deemed confidential and could not leave this determination to the U.S. Attorney). We need not decide whether the 

privilege must be invoked by the President personally, since the 

record indicates that President Clinton has done so here; in his 

affidavit former White House Counsel Abner J. Mikva stated "the 

President ... has specifically directed me to invoke formally the 

applicable privileges over those documents." Moreover, although 

the OIC challenged the adequacy of the White House's invocation of 

privilege before the district court, the OIC did not pursue this issue 

on appeal. 

The Nixon cases establish the contours of the presidential 

communications privilege. The President can invoke the 

privilege when asked to produce documents or other materials that reflect presidential decisionmaking and deliberations 

and that the President believes should remain confidential. 

If the President does so, the documents become presumptively privileged.16 However, the privilege is qualified, not absolute, and can be overcome by an adequate showing of need. 

If a court believes that an adequate showing of need has been 

demonstrated, it should then proceed to review the documents in camera to excise non-relevant material. The remaining relevant material should be released. Further, the 

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President should be given an opportunity to raise more 

particularized claims of privilege if a court rules that the 

presidential communications privilege alone is not a sufficient 

basis on which to withhold the document.

While the presidential communications privilege and the 

deliberative process privilege are closely affiliated, the two 

privileges are distinct and have different scopes. Both are 

executive privileges designed to protect executive branch 

decisionmaking, but one applies to decisionmaking of executive officials generally, the other specifically to decisionmaking of the President. The presidential privilege is rooted in 

constitutional separation of powers principles and the President's unique constitutional role; the deliberative process 

privilege is primarily a common law privilege. See Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. at 753 & n.35. Consequently, congressional or 

judicial negation of the presidential communications privilege 

is subject to greater scrutiny than denial of the deliberative 

privilege. See 26A CHARLES ALAN WRIGHT & KENNETH W.

GRAHAM, JR., FEDERAL PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE § 5673, at 37; 

contra Freund, supra, at 20 (commenting that question of 

whether presidential privilege is rooted in the common law or 

the Constitution is not "very meaningful," but not discussing 

effect different derivation has on congressional power).

In addition, unlike the deliberative process privilege, the 

presidential communications privilege applies to documents in 

their entirety, and covers final and post-decisional materials 

as well as pre-deliberative ones. Even though the presidential privilege is based on the need to preserve the President's 

access to candid advice, none of the cases suggest that it 

encompasses only the deliberative or advice portions of documents. Indeed, Nixon argued that the presidential privilege 

must be qualified to ensure full access to facts in judicial 

proceedings, thereby assuming that factual material comes 

under the privilege. 418 U.S. at 709; but see LARKIN, supra,

§ 6.01 at 6-1 (asserting, without explanation, that the presidential privilege does not "protect purely factual material"). 

There is no indication either that the presidential privilege is 

restricted to pre-decisional materials. GSA cautioned that 

the privilege only applies to communications made in the 

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17 In some cases, the White House's ex parte contacts with 

outside agencies may be subject to disclosure by statute, see, e.g., 

Portland Audubon Soc'y v. Endangered Species Comm'ee, 984 F.2d 

1534, 1543-48 (9th Cir. 1993), but this court has refused to require 

disclosure of conversations between an agency and the President or 

White House staff, at least where the proceeding was not adjudicatory and the statute did not specifically require disclosure, because 

of the President's need to oversee executive agencies. See Sierra 

Club v. Costle, 657 F.2d 298, 404-08 (D.C. Cir. 1981). 

process of arriving at presidential decisions, but by this we 

believe the Court meant that the privilege was limited to 

materials connected to presidential decisionmaking, as opposed to other executive branch decisionmaking, and not that 

only pre-decisional materials were covered. 433 U.S. at 449. 

Nor would exclusion of final or post-decisional materials make 

sense, given the Nixon cases' concern that the President be 

given sufficient room to operate effectively. These materials 

often will be revelatory of the President's deliberationsas, 

for example, when the President decides to pursue a particular course of action, but asks his advisors to submit follow-up 

reports so that he can monitor whether this course of action 

is likely to be successful. The release of final and postdecisional materials would also limit the President's ability to 

communicate his decisions privately, thereby interfering with 

his ability to exercise control over the executive branch.17

Finally, while both the deliberative process privilege and 

the presidential privilege are qualified privileges, the Nixon 

cases suggest that the presidential communications privilege 

is more difficult to surmount. In regard to both, courts must 

balance the public interests at stake in determining whether 

the privilege should yield in a particular case, and must 

specifically consider the need of the party seeking privileged 

evidence. But this balancing is more ad hoc in the context of 

the deliberative process privilege, and includes consideration 

of additional factors such as whether the government is a 

party to the litigation. Moreover, the privilege disappears 

altogether when there is any reason to believe government 

misconduct occurred. On the other hand, a party seeking to 

overcome the presidential privilege seemingly must always 

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18The elements of this showing of need are discussed in greater 

detail infra in Part III.C. 

provide a focused demonstration of need, even when there are 

allegations of misconduct by high-level officials.18 In holding 

that the Watergate Special Prosecutor had provided a sufficient showing of evidentiary need to obtain tapes of President 

Nixon's conversations, the Supreme Court made no mention 

of the fact that the tapes were sought for use in a trial of 

former presidential assistants charged with engaging in a 

criminal conspiracy while in office. Accord Senate Committee, 498 F.2d at 731 (noting that presidential privilege is not 

intended to shield governmental misconduct but arguing that 

showing of need turns on extent to which subpoenaed evidence is necessary for government institution to fulfill its 

responsibilities, not on type of conduct evidence may reveal); 

contra 26A WRIGHT & GRAHAM, supra, § 5673, at 53-54 (quoting Senate Committee's not-a-shield language and arguing 

that allegations of misconduct qualify the privilege, but not 

addressing Senate Committee's comment that need showing 

turns on function for which evidence is sought and not on 

conduct revealed by evidence).

These differences between the presidential communications 

privilege and the deliberative privilege demonstrate that the 

presidential privilege affords greater protection against disclosure. Consequently, should we conclude as to any document that the presidential privilege applies but that the OIC 

has demonstrated a sufficient showing of need, there is no 

reason to examine whether the documents also come under 

the deliberative process privilege. A fortiori, if release is 

required under the presidential privilege, it will certainly be 

required under the deliberative process privilege. Hence, we 

would need to address application of the deliberative process 

privilege as to any document only if we determine that the 

withheld document is not subject to the presidential privilege.

B. How Far Down the Line Does the Presidential Communications Privilege Go?

The withheld documents in this case include materials used 

in the investigation and formulation of several earlier drafts 

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19 Commentators have noted that the Nixon opinion did not 

address this question of who qualifies for the privilege. See Raoul 

Berger, The Incarnation of Executive Privilege, 22 UCLA L. REV. 

4, 22-26 (1974) (hereinafter Berger, Incarnation). 

of the White House Counsel's report, notes of meetings 

among White House advisors, and draft press briefings. It is 

undisputed that none of these documents was actually viewed 

by the President. As a result, the key issue in this case is 

whether any, and if so which, of these documents come under 

the presidential communications privilege. Does the privilege 

only extend to direct communications with the President, or 

does it extend further to include communications that involve 

his chief advisors? And if the privilege does extend past the 

President, how far down into his circle of advisors does it 

extend?

Most of the Nixon cases involved subpoenas for tapes of 

conversations in which President Nixon was a participant, and 

did not call upon the courts to determine whether the presidential privilege also covered communications in which the 

President did not directly participate.19 The language used 

to describe the scope of the privilege in the opinions vacillates 

between broad and narrow depictions of the privilege. In 

Nixon the Court referred to "[a] President's acknowledged 

need for confidentiality in the communications of his office," 

418 U.S. at 712-13 (emphasis added) and elaborated that "[a] 

president and those who assist him must be free to explore 

alternatives in the process of shaping policies and making 

decisions," id. at 708 (emphasis added), suggesting that actual 

presidential involvement in the communication is not a prerequisite to privilege. See also id. at 705 (privilege grounded 

in the need to protect "communications between high Government officials and those who advise and assist them in the 

performance of their manifold duties"). But Nixon also uses 

language that appears to tie the privilege to the President; 

the opinion repeatedly refers to the privilege as a "privilege 

of confidentiality of Presidential communications," id. at 705 

(emphasis added), and as rooted in "[t]he expectation of a 

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respondence." Id. at 708 (emphasis added). Similar variation can be found in Sirica, which describes the privilege 

interchangeably as designed to "protect the effectiveness of 

the executive decision-making process" and as intended to 

"maintain[ ] the confidentiality of conversations that take 

place in the President's performance of his official duties." 

487 F.2d at 717 (emphasis added); see also Dellums, 561 F.2d 

at 246, 247 (describing the privilege at one point as covering 

"confidential communications with the President" and at another as "attach[ing] to the communications, submissions and 

deliberations essential to the conduct of the office of the 

[P]resident").

The scope of the presidential communications privilege did 

arise in GSA and in Sun Oil, but was not decided in either 

opinion. Many of the documents which PRMPA gave over to 

GSA custody had never been seen by the President. After 

remarking that President Nixon could "legitimately assert the 

Presidential privilege, of course, only as to those materials 

whose contents fall within the scope of the privilege," the 

Court noted that "[o]f the estimated 42 million pages of 

documents and 880 tape recordings whose custody is at stake, 

the District Court concluded that the appellant's claim of 

Presidential privilege could apply at most to the 200,000 items 

with which the appellant was personally familiar." 433 U.S. 

at 449 (emphasis added); see also id. at 454 (only a "small 

fraction of the materials ... implicate Presidential confidentiality"). Since, however, the Court found that the public 

interests served by PRMPA were sufficient to overcome the 

presidential communications privilege, it never had to decide 

which materials came under the privilege. The threemember district court that upheld the statute had explicitly 

commented that it need not consider "whether the privilege 

that attaches to presidential communications extends to communications never directly received by the President but 

rather channelled in a variety of ways to him or his advisors," 

because it believed the statute would be constitutional "even 

if a large proportion of the materials falling within the Act 

were thought protected." Nixon v. Administrator of General 

Servs., 408 F. Supp. 321, 345 n.29 (D.D.C. 1976). The same 

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20In Wolfe v. HHS, 815 F.2d 1527 (D.C.Cir.1987), a panel of this 

court held that the privilege did not protect communications of the 

Office of Management and Budget that did not involve the President, stating that such an "extension of the presidential privilege 

... is unprecedented and unwarranted .... [and] would create an 

unnecessary sequestering of massive quantities of information from 

the public eye." Id. at 1533. However, the opinion was later 

situation occurred in Sun Oil, which involved a claim of 

presidential communications privilege over memoranda that 

circulated between two presidential aides. The Court of 

Claims never discussed whether the memoranda actually 

came under the privilege, but rather assumed the privilege 

applied and held that even so the memoranda should be 

released because the plaintiffs had made out a sufficient 

showing of need. 514 F.2d at 1022, 1024.

A case that did directly touch on the question of how far 

down the line the presidential communications privilege extends was Association of American Physicians and Surgeons 

v. Clinton (AAPS). AAPS involved an effort to enjoin President Clinton's Task Force on National Health Care Reform 

and its subgroups from meeting unless they complied with 

the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). In holding 

that FACA's exemption for advisory groups composed solely 

of officers or employees of the government applied to the 

Task Force even though it was chaired by the President's 

wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, this court commented that an 

interpretation of FACA as covering a Task Force that reports 

directly to the President might well represent an unconstitutional intrusion on the presidential communications privilege. 

This privilege, we argued, "attaches not only to direct communications with the President, but also to discussions between his senior advisors[, who] ... must be able to hold 

confidential meetings to discuss advice they secretly will 

render to the President." 997 F.2d 898, 909 (D.C. Cir. 1993). 

But in AAPS this court did not actually rule on the scope of 

the privilege, or determine whether the public interests underlying FACA justified interference with the privilege, since 

it found that "a strong argument" could be made for exempting the Task Force based on the statutory text. Id. at 905.20

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There are acknowledgedly strong arguments in favor of 

holding that the presidential communications privilege applies 

to only those communications that directly involve the President. This approach comports with the principle that "the 

President's unique status under the Constitution distinguishes 

him from other executive officials," Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. at 

750, particularly in separation of powers analysis. See Wetlaufer, supra, at 901-02. The Constitution after all vests the 

executive power not in the executive branch, but in the 

President; it is the President who, as "the chief constitutional 

officer of the Executive branch, [is] entrusted with supervisory and policy responsibilities of the utmost discretion and 

sensitivity." Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. at 750. Nixon identified 

the President's Article II powers and responsibilities as the 

constitutional basis of the presidential communications privilege. 418 U.S. 705 & n.16. Since the Constitution assigns 

these responsibilities to the President alone, arguably the 

privilege of confidentiality that derives from them also should 

be the President's alone. The uniqueness of the President 

has frequently led courts to recognize that the President 

enjoys more extensive privileges than other executive branch 

officers. For example, the President is absolutely immune 

from damages liability for official acts, but presidential aides 

receive only qualified immunity. Compare Fitzgerald, 457 

U.S. at 749-54, with Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 808-

13 (1982); see also Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 520-24 

(1985) (holding whether an executive official receive absolute 

immunity depends on the function the official was performing 

when she engaged in the actions being challenged). In 

Franklin the Court emphasized that the separation of powers 

concerns that arise when the President is personally subjected to judicial process are not implicated when a court exercises jurisdiction over other executive branch officials. 505 U.S. 

at 801-02. And in In re Kessler, this court recently rejected 

the claim that because the President is allowed to appeal a 

discovery order without being held in contempt the Commis-

_________________________

vacated by the court en banc, and the government abandoned its 

presidential privilege claims before the full court. See Wolfe, 839 

F.2d at 773 n.5. 

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sioner of the Food and Drug Administration should be able to 

do so as well, noting that "for purposes of separation of 

powers, the President stands in an entirely different position 

than other members of the executive branch." 100 F.3d 1015, 

1017 (D.C. Cir. 1996).

An additional reason to restrict the presidential communications privilege to direct communications with the President 

is the general rule, underscored by the Supreme Court in 

Nixon, that privileges should be narrowly construed: "exceptions to the demand for every man's evidence are not lightly 

created nor expansively construed, for they are in derogation 

of the search for truth." 418 U.S. at 710; accord Jaffee v. 

Redmond, 116 S. Ct. 1923, 1932, 1933 (1996) (Scalia, J., 

dissenting); Trammel v. United States, 445 U.S. 40, 50 

(1980); In Re Grand Jury Subpoena Duces Tecum, 112 F.3d 

910, 918 (8th Cir. 1997). The argument for a narrow construction is particularly strong in cases like this one where 

the public's ability to know how its government is being 

conducted is at stake. In performing his constitutional duties 

the President may obtain advice and assistance from a broad 

array of executive officialscabinet officers, employees in the 

Executive Office of the President, and agency staff with 

special expertise, as well as individuals whose sole function in 

the White House is to provide the President with advice and 

assistance. See, e.g., Meyer v. Bush, 981 F.2d 1288, 1293-94 

(D.C. Cir. 1993) (holding President's Task Force on Regulatory Relief was intended only to advise and assist the President 

and was not subject to FOIA, even though the Task Force 

included cabinet officers as members). Indeed, it has been 

publicly noted that the parts of the executive branch which 

"directly report[ ] to the President ha[ve] grown dramatically 

in the past few decades," Peter M. Shane, Legal Disagreement and Negotiation in a Government of Laws: The Case of 

Executive Privilege Claims Against Congress, 71 MINN. L.

REV. 461, 463 (1987); see also THOMAS E. CRONIN, THE STATE OF 

THE PRESIDENCY 243-47 (2d ed. 1980) (discussing growth of 

White House staff and its effects).

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Extending presidential privilege to the communications of 

presidential advisors not directly involving the President inevitably creates the risk that a broad array of materials in many 

areas of the executive branch will become "sequester[ed]" 

from public view. Wolfe, 815 F.2d at 1533. President Nixon's attempt to invoke presidential privilege to prevent release of evidence indicating that high level executive officers 

engaged in illegal acts is perhaps the starkest example of 

potential for abuse of the privilege. And openness in government has always been thought crucial to ensuring that the 

people remain in control of their government. According to 

James Madison,

[a] popular Government, without popular information, or 

the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or 

a Tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever 

govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their 

own Governors, must arm themselves with the power 

which knowledge gives.

Letter from James Madison to W.T. Barry (Aug. 4, 1822), in

9 WRITINGS OF JAMES MADISON 103 (Gaillard Hunt, ed. 1910); 

see also Soucie, 448 F.2d at 1080 (In enacting FOIA, "Congress recognized that the public cannot make intelligent 

decisions without [adequate] information, and that governmental institutions become unresponsive to public needs if 

knowledge of their activities is denied to the people and their 

representatives"). The very reason that presidential communications deserve special protection, namely the President's 

unique powers and profound responsibilities, is simultaneously the very reason why securing as much public knowledge of 

presidential actions as is consistent with the needs of governing is of paramount importance.

But a very powerful case can also be made for extending 

the presidential communications privilege beyond those materials with which the President is "personally familiar," and at 

the end of the day we find the arguments for a limited 

extension of the privilege beyond the President to his immediate advisors more convincing. Nixon does not specifically 

establish how far down the chain of command the presidential 

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communication privilege extends, but it does make absolutely 

clear that the privilege itself is rooted in the need for 

confidentiality to ensure that presidential decisionmaking is of 

the highest caliber, informed by honest advice and full knowledge. Confidentiality is what ensures the expression of "candid, objective, and even blunt or harsh opinions" and the 

comprehensive exploration of all policy alternatives before a 

presidential course of action is selected. See Nixon, 418 U.S. 

at 708; see also GSA, 433 U.S. at 449. Several commentators 

have argued that presidential advisors may not be as likely to 

"temper candor with a concern for appearances and for their 

own interests to the detriment of the decisionmaking process," Nixon, 418 U.S. at 705, as the Supreme Court feared. 

See, e.g., Wetlaufer, supra, at 886-90; 26A WRIGHT & MILLER, 

supra, § 5673 at 38-39. Buteven if we were free to ignore 

Nixon, which we are notwe are not so sanguine that 

presidential advisors will never be dissuaded from expressing 

unpopular but correct opinions out of a fear of disclosure, or 

that able individuals will not shrink from assuming a position 

as presidential advisor in the first place if by doing so they 

step unprotected into the limelight. And the critical role that 

confidentiality plays in ensuring an adequate exploration of 

alternatives cannot be gainsaid. If presidential advisors must 

assume they will be held to account publicly for all approaches that were advanced, considered but ultimately rejected, they will almost inevitably be inclined to avoid serious 

consideration of novel or controversial approaches to presidential problems.

Presidential advisors do not explore alternatives only in 

conversations with the President or pull their final advice to 

him out of thin airif they do, their advice is not likely to be 

worth much. Rather, the most valuable advisors will investigate the factual context of a problem in detail, obtain input 

from all others with significant expertise in the area, and 

perform detailed analyses of several different policy options 

before coming to closure on a recommendation for the Chief 

Executive. The President himself must make decisions relying substantially, if not entirely, on the information and 

analysis supplied by advisors. "Even the most sensitive 

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issues of national security must be brought to the point of 

presidential decision by staff, who assemble data and views, 

and then winnow and shape them for the President." Peter 

L. Strauss, The Place of Agencies in Government: Separation of Powers and the Fourth Branch, 84 COLUM. L. REV. 573, 

661 (1984). In the vast majority of cases, few if any of the 

documents advisors generate in the course of their own 

preparation for rendering advice to the President, other than 

documents embodying their final recommendations, will ever 

enter the Oval Office. Yet these pre-decisional documents 

are usually highly revealing as to the evolution of advisors' 

positions and as to the different policy options considered 

along the way. If these materials are not protected by the 

presidential privilege, the President's access to candid and 

informed advice could well be significantly circumscribed.

The protection offered by the more general deliberative 

process privilege will often be inadequate to ensure that 

presidential advisors provide knowledgeable and candid advice, primarily because the deliberative process privilege does 

not extend to purely factual material. As we remarked in 

AAPS, preservation of the President's confidentiality requires 

that a "[g]roup directly reporting and advising the President 

must have confidentiality at each stage in the formulation of 

advice to him." 997 F.2d at 910. In many instances, potential exposure of the information in the possession of an 

advisor can be as inhibiting as exposure of the actual advice 

she gave to the President. Without protection for her 

sources of information, an advisor may be tempted to forego 

obtaining comprehensive briefings or initiating deep and intense probing for fear of losing deniability. Exposure of the 

factual portions of presidential advisors' communications also 

represents a substantial threat to the confidentiality of the 

President's own deliberations. Knowledge of factual information gathered by presidential advisors can quickly reveal the 

nature and substance of the issues before the President, since 

"[i]f you know what information people seek, you can usually 

determine why they seek it." Id.

The greater ease with which the deliberative process privilege can be overcome is another reason to doubt its efficacy in 

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ensuring candid presidential advice. In Nixon the Supreme 

Court recognized that some possibility of disclosure is unlikely to affect the advice the President receives, stating "we 

cannot conclude that advisers will be moved to temper the 

candor of their remarks by the infrequent occasions of disclosure [that might occur if their] ... conversations will be 

called for in the context of a criminal prosecution." 418 U.S. 

at 712. The risk of a chill increases, however, as the possibility of disclosure rises, especially if there are situations in 

which the privilege may virtually disappear, such as when 

government misconduct is alleged. Nor does it suffice to 

respond that the public interest in honest and accountable 

government is stymied if presidential advisors are allowed 

even a qualified privilege when government misconduct is 

charged. The President's supervisory control over executive 

branch officials is an important means of ensuring that abuse 

of office is uncovered and swiftly addressed, and the President needs access to candid and informed advice if he is to 

exercise this control effectively. In this regard it is worth 

emphasizing that the presidential communications privilege is, 

at all times, a qualified one, so that an expansion to cover 

communications of presidential advisors which do not directly 

involve the President does not mean that these communications will become permanently shielded; they will remain 

available upon a sufficient showing of need.

Of course, the risk that release of factual information may 

reveal a policymaking official's area of focus is true at all 

levels of government. But the President does not represent 

simply one level of executive branch, but rather the ultimate 

level of decisionmaking in the executive branch, and intrusion 

into presidential deliberations is therefore more serious. In 

ruling on whether General Wilkinson's letter should be released Chief Justice Marshall remarked that "[i]n no case of 

this kind would a court be required to proceed against the 

president as against an ordinary individual." Burr, 25 Fed. 

Cas., at 192. Neither should a court be required to proceed 

against the President as against any other executive branch 

official. See Clinton, 1997 WL 273679 at *12 n.39 (quoting 

Burr and noting "[s]pecial caution is appropriate if the mateUSCA Case #96-3124 Document #279612 Filed: 06/17/1997 Page 34 of 55
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rials or testimony sought by the court relate to a President's 

official activities"). Indeed, if the President's immediate advisors were only covered by the deliberative process privilege, 

courts might feel compelled to extend the deliberative privilege to cover factual material in order to ensure that the 

President had sufficient freedom from public review to operate effectively. This result might make the deliberative 

process privilege better able to meet the particular needs of 

presidential decisionmaking, but it would hardly advance the 

goal of open government since it would mean that more 

factual information was shielded at all levels of the executive 

branch.

The ultimate question is whether restricting the presidential communications privilege to communications that directly 

involve the President will "impede the President's ability to 

perform his constitutional duty." Morrison v. Olson, 487 

U.S. 654, 691 (1988); see also Loving v. United States, 116 

S. Ct. 1737, 1743 (1996) ("[e]ven when a branch does not 

arrogate power to itself, ... the separation-of-powers doctrine requires that a branch not impair another in the performance of its constitutional duties"). If it does, the constitutional separation of powers will be violated. In Nixon the 

Court recognized that the President's access to honest and 

informed advice and his ability to explore possible policy 

options privately are critical elements in presidential decisionmaking. Given the President's dependence on presidential 

advisors and the inability of the deliberative process privilege 

to provide advisors with adequate freedom from the public 

spotlight, we conclude that limiting the privilege in this 

fashion would indeed impede effective functioning of the 

presidency.

We believe therefore that the public interest is best served 

by holding that communications made by presidential advisors in the course of preparing advice for the President come 

under the presidential communications privilege, even when 

these communications are not made directly to the President. 

Given the need to provide sufficient elbow room for advisors 

to obtain information from all knowledgeable sources, the 

privilege must apply both to communications which these 

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21 For example, Professor Berger commented on the Nixon decision: "The real problem is not posed by confidentiality between the 

President and his immediate advisors, members of his cabinet and 

the like; it arises from the fact that the claim for executive privilege 

has sprawled far beyond presidential precincts." Berger, Incarnation, supra, at 23. 

advisors solicited and received from others as well as those 

they authored themselves. The privilege must also extend to 

communications authored or received in response to a solicitation by members of a presidential advisor's staff, since in 

many instances advisors must rely on their staff to investigate an issue and formulate the advice to be given to the 

President. We are aware that such an extension, unless 

carefully circumscribed to accomplish the purposes of the 

privilege, could pose a significant risk of expanding to a large 

swath of the executive branch a privilege that is bottomed on 

a recognition of the unique role of the President.21 In order 

to limit this risk, the presidential communications privilege 

should be construed as narrowly as is consistent with ensuring that the confidentiality of the President's decisionmaking 

process is adequately protected. Not every person who plays 

a role in the development of presidential advice, no matter 

how remote and removed from the President, can qualify for 

the privilege. In particular, the privilege should not extend 

to staff outside the White House in executive branch agencies. 

Instead, the privilege should apply only to communications 

authored or solicited and received by those members of an 

immediate White House advisor's staff who have broad and 

significant responsibility for investigating and formulating the 

advice to be given the President on the particular matter to 

which the communications relate. Only communications at 

that level are close enough to the President to be revelatory 

of his deliberations or to pose a risk to the candor of his 

advisors. See AAPS, 997 F.2d at 910 (it is "operational 

proximity" to the President that matters in determining 

whether "[t]he President's confidentiality interest" is implicated) (emphasis omitted).

Of course, the privilege only applies to communications that 

these advisors and their staff author or solicit and receive in 

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22 The Constitution does not explicitly grant the President the 

power to remove executive branch officials, but it is well established 

that this power, at least in regard to some officials, can be inferred 

from the President's other enumerated powers and responsibilities. 

See Morrison, 487 U.S. at 689-90; Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 

52, 117, 163-64 (1926). While the President's removal power over 

some executive branch officials is limited, the President has unqualified power to appoint and remove cabinet officers. See Myers, 272 

U.S. at 134 ("[The President's] cabinet officers must do his will.... 

The moment he loses confidence in the intelligence, ability, judgment, or loyalty of any one of them, he must have the power to 

remove him without delay"). 

the course of performing their function of advising the President on official government matters. This restriction is 

particularly important in regard to those officials who exercise substantial independent authority or perform other functions in addition to advising the President, and thus are 

subject to FOIA and other open government statutes. See 

Armstrong v. Executive Office of the President, 90 F.3d 553, 

558 (D.C. Cir. 1996), cert. denied, 65 U.S.L.W. 3572 (U.S. May 

27, 1997). The presidential communications privilege should 

never serve as a means of shielding information regarding 

governmental operations that do not call ultimately for direct 

decisionmaking by the President. If the government seeks to 

assert the presidential communications privilege in regard to 

particular communications of these "dual hat" presidential 

advisors, the government bears the burden of proving that 

the communications occurred in conjunction with the process 

of advising the President.

In this case the documents in question were generated in 

the course of advising the President in the exercise of his 

appointment and removal power, a quintessential and nondelegable Presidential power.22 In many instances, presidential powers and responsibilities, for example the duty to take 

care that the laws are faithfully executed, can be exercised or 

performed without the President's direct involvement, pursuant to a presidential delegation of power or statutory framework. Cf. Morrison, 487 U.S. at 691-92 (requirement that 

Independent Counsels can be removed only for good cause is 

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not an unconstitutional restriction on the President's powers). 

But the President himself must directly exercise the presidential power of appointment or removal. As a result, in this 

case there is assurance that even if the President were not a 

party to the communications over which the government is 

asserting presidential privilege, these communications nonetheless are intimately connected to his presidential decisionmaking. In addition, confidentiality is particularly critical in 

the appointment and removal context; without it, accurate 

assessments of candidates and information on official misconduct may not be forthcoming. See, e.g., Wash. L. Found. v. 

Department of Justice, 691 F. Supp. 483, 495 (D.D.C. 1988), 

aff'd sub nom. Public Citizen v. Department of Justice, 491 

U.S. 440 (1989) (underscoring the "unique need for confidentiality" in the President's appointment of federal judges).

Finally, we underscore our opinion should not be read 

as in any way affecting the scope of the privilege in the 

congressional-executive context, the arena where conflict over 

the privilege of confidentiality arises most frequently. The 

President's ability to withhold information from Congress 

implicates different constitutional considerations than the 

President's ability to withhold evidence in judicial proceedings. See, e.g., ROZELL, supra, at 142-57; Norman Dorsen & 

John H.F. Shattuck, Executive Privilege, the Congress and 

the Courts, 35 OHIO ST. L.J. 1, 16-22, 24-33 (1974). Our 

determination of how far down into the executive branch the 

presidential communications privilege goes is limited to the 

context before us, namely where information generated by 

close presidential advisors is sought for use in a judicial 

proceeding, and we take no position on how the institutional 

needs of Congress and the President should be balanced.

C. Standard of Need

The question of whether the presidential communications 

privilege applies to communications that do not involve the 

President is only the first issue we must resolve before 

turning to an application of the privilege here. We must also 

determine what type of showing of need the OIC must make 

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in defense of the grand jury subpoena in order to overcome 

the privilege.

Nixon, GSA, Sirica, and the other Nixon cases all employed a balancing methodology in analyzing whether, and in 

what circumstances, the presidential communications privilege can be overcome. Under this methodology, these opinions balanced the public interests served by protecting the 

President's confidentiality in a particular context with those 

furthered by requiring disclosure. Since Nixon and Sirica

clearly establish that the presidential communications privilege can be overcome by a sufficient showing that subpoenaed 

evidence is needed for a criminal judicial proceeding, our task 

is not to weigh anew the public interest in preserving confidentiality against the public interest in assuring fair trials and 

enforcing the law. Rather, our task is to determine precisely 

what guidance these cases provide on what counts as a 

sufficient showing of need in our situation, and more specifically to clarify whether there is any difference between the 

need standard this court established in Sirica in regard to a 

grand jury subpoena and the standard articulated by the 

Supreme Court one year later in Nixon for a criminal trial 

subpoena.

At the end of its discussion of the presidential communications privilege in Nixon, the Supreme Court stated that the 

privilege "must yield to the demonstrated, specific need for 

evidence in a pending criminal trial." 418 U.S. at 713. What 

the Court meant by a "demonstrated, specific need" is debatable. Compare Cox, supra, at 1414-15 ("[t]he critical test 

[under Nixon] is probably relevance and admissibility") with

Freund, supra, at 31 (Nixon appears to require "a stronger 

showing of need" than just relevancy). After setting forth 

this need standard, the Court tersely commented that "[o]n 

the basis of our examination of the record we are unable to 

conclude that the District Court erred" in finding that the 

Watergate Special Prosecutor had made a sufficient showing 

of need to overcome the presidential privilege; it never 

explained what parts of the record led it to this conclusion. 

Id. at 714. The only occasion where the Court discusses in 

any detail the showing of need that the Special Prosecutor 

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actually made comes in its analysis of whether the subpoena 

satisfied Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 17(c), which 

governs all subpoenas for documents and materials made in 

criminal proceedings. The Court concluded that the subpoena met Rule 17(c)'s tripartite requirement of relevancy, admissibility and specificity; the Special Prosecutor's supporting materials, which listed the date, time and participants in 

the conversations sought and provided testimony regarding 

the content of some conversations, established "a sufficient 

likelihood that each of the tapes contains conversations relevant to the offenses charged in the indictment" and that these 

conversations would be admissible. Id. at 700. The Nixon

Court's failure to elaborate on the demonstrated, specific 

need standard or provide any further analysis of the Special 

Prosecutor's showing led one judge to comment that to 

overcome presidential privilege "the Court does not appear to 

have meant anything more than the showing that satisfied 

Rule 17(c)." North, 910 F.2d at 952 (Silberman, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Further, the Court 

offered varying characterizations of when the presidential 

communications privilege would be overcome, at one juncture 

suggesting the privileged material must be " 'essential to the 

justice of the [pending criminal] case,' " Nixon, 418 U.S. at 

713 (quoting Burr, 25 Fed. Cas. at 192), and at others simply 

that the material must be "preliminarily shown to have some 

bearing on the pending criminal cases." Nixon, 418 U.S. at 

713; see also id. at 712 n.19 (referring to the "constitutional 

need for relevant evidence) (emphasis added).

It would be strange indeed if Nixon required nothing more 

to overcome presidential privilege than the initial showing of 

relevancy, admissibility and specificity necessary to satisfy 

Rule 17(c) in all cases, even in cases where no claim of 

privilege is raised. If this were true, the privilege would have 

no practical benefit. That the Nixon Court believed overcoming the presidential privilege required something more 

than the ordinary Rule 17(c) showing is apparent from its 

statement, made at the outset of the discussion of presidential 

privilege, that "[h]aving determined that the requirements of 

Rule 17(c) were satisfied, we turn to the claim that the 

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subpoena should be quashed because it demands confidential 

conversations between a President and his close advisors." 

418 U.S. at 703 (internal quotations omitted); see also id. at 

713-14 (distinguishing between inquiry into whether a subpoena was properly issued and review of claim of privilege 

raised on return of a properly issued subpoena). However, 

the opinion also cannot be read as demanding that the 

information sought must be shown to be critical to an accurate judicial determination; such a view simply is incompatible with the Court's repeated emphasis on the importance of 

access to relevant evidence in a criminal proceeding.

We conclude that Nixon's demonstrated, specific need standard has two components. A party seeking to overcome a 

claim of presidential privilege must demonstrate: first, that 

each discrete group of the subpoenaed materials likely contains important evidence; and second, that this evidence is 

not available with due diligence elsewhere. The first component, likelihood of containing important evidence, means that 

the evidence sought must be directly relevant to issues that 

are expected to be central to the trial. In practice, this 

component can be expected to have limited impact, since Rule 

17(c) precludes use of a trial subpoena to obtain evidence that 

is not relevant to the charges being prosecuted or where the 

claim that subpoenaed materials will contain such evidence 

represents mere speculation. See, e.g., Nixon, 418 U.S. at 

699-700; United States v. Arditti, 955 F.2d 331, 345-46 (5th 

Cir. 1992); Ehrlichman, 559 F.2d at 75-76. But to the extent 

that Rule 17(c) allows a defendant to subpoena evidence that 

would be only tangentially relevant or would relate to side 

issues, the first component of the need standard would come 

into play. See, e.g., Nixon, 418 U.S. at 701 ("Generally, the 

need for evidence to impeach witnesses is insufficient to 

require its production in advance of trial."); Bowman Dairy 

Co. v. United States, 341 U.S. 214, 219 (1951) (materials can 

be reached under Rule 17(c) "as long as they are evidentiary"); In re Martin Marietta Corp., 856 F.2d 619, 622 (4th 

Cir. 1988) (upholding subpoena on grounds that materials 

were "clearly of evidentiary value"). The second component, 

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idential communications should not be treated as just another 

source of information. See North, 910 F.2d at 952 n.29 

(Silberman, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) 

(acknowledging that one possible difference between the 

showing necessary to satisfy Rule 17(c) and Nixon's need 

standard is that the latter "would also require a showing that 

the evidence is unavailable from any source other than the 

President"). Efforts should first be made to determine 

whether sufficient evidence can be obtained elsewhere, and 

the subpoena's proponent should be prepared to detail these 

efforts and explain why evidence covered by the presidential 

privilege is still needed. Of course, there will be instances 

where such privileged evidence will be particularly useful, as 

when, unlike the situation here, an immediate White House 

advisor is being investigated for criminal behavior. In such 

situations, the subpoena proponent will be able easily to 

explain why there is no equivalent to evidence likely contained in the subpoenaed materials. Finally, while our view 

of the Nixon need standard is derived from the opinion's 

language and a common-sense understanding of "need," it is 

worth noting that the factors of importance and unavailability 

are also used by courts in determining whether a sufficient 

showing of need has been demonstrated to overcome other 

qualified executive privileges, such as the deliberative process 

privilege or the law-enforcement investigatory privilege. See 

In re Comptroller of the Currency, 967 F.2d at 634; Friedman, 738 F.2d at 1342.

Nixon, however, involved a trial subpoena; what we have 

here is a grand jury subpoena. In a post-Nixon decision, 

United States v. R. Enterprises, Inc., the Court emphasized 

that the unique function of the grand jury fundamentally 

differentiates its subpoenas from trial subpoenas. "The function of the grand jury is to inquire into all information that 

might possibly bear on its investigation, ... [and a]s a 

necessary consequence of its investigatory function, the grand 

jury paints with a broad brush." 498 U.S. 292, 297 (1991); 

accord Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665, 688 (1971). Requiring grand jury subpoenas to comply with the same requirements of relevancy, admissibility, and specificity under 

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Rule 17(c) as applies to trial subpoenas would impose an 

impossible burden on the grand jury, create untoward delays, 

and threaten the secrecy of grand jury proceedings. R. 

Enters., 498 U.S. at 299. As a result, the Court concluded 

that a grand jury subpoena is presumed to be reasonable and 

the burden is on the subpoena's opponent to disprove this 

presumption. Where "a subpoena is challenged on relevancy 

grounds, the motion to quash must be denied unless the 

district court determines that there is no reasonable possibility that the category of materials the Government seeks will 

produce information relevant to the general subject of the 

grand jury's investigation." Id. at 301.

But then again, R. Enterprises concerned a challenge to a 

grand jury subpoena only on grounds of relevance; it does 

not govern a case, such as this, where the grand jury subpoena is being resisted on grounds of privilege. Instead, the 

case most directly on point in this respect is Sirica, where 

this court was specifically confronted with a claim of presidential communications privilege raised against a grand jury 

subpoena. The OIC does not appear to dispute that Sirica is 

the governing case here; instead, the OIC reads Sirica as 

establishing a significantly less demanding need standard 

than Nixon, and argues that this differential is justified in 

light of R. Enterprises' insistence that a grand jury subpoena 

is not held to the same standards as a trial subpoena. 

According to the OIC, Sirica merely requires that the grand 

jury demonstrate the evidence it seeks is directly relevant to 

its investigation in order to overcome the President's claim of 

privilege.

The OIC's position represents too selective a reading of 

Sirica. To be sure, at times in that opinion we used language 

suggesting the required demonstration was only that the 

materials sought were "directly relevant" to the grand jury's 

inquiry. For example, we commented that "[t]he exception 

that we have delineated to the President's confidentiality 

privilege depends entirely on the grand jury's showing that 

the evidence is directly relevant to its decisions." 487 F.2d at 

719 (emphasis added); see also id. at 705-06. But admittedly 

we also used language on other occasions indicating that a far 

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more substantial showing was required. We stated that the 

President's claim of privilege "must fail in face of the uniquely powerful showing made by the Special Prosecutor ... that 

the subpoenaed tapes contain evidence peculiarly necessary

to the carrying out of [the grand jury's] vital function

evidence for which no effective substitute is available," 487 

F.2d at 717 (emphasis added), and at another point characterized the Special Prosecutor's showing as being that "the 

subpoenaed recordings contain evidence critical to the grand 

jury's decisions." Id. at 706 (emphasis added). We echoed 

this latter characterization in Senate Committee, where we 

described Sirica as requiring a demonstration that "the subpoenaed evidence is demonstrably critical to the responsible 

fulfillment of the [grand jury's] functions." 498 F.2d at 731 

(emphasis added).

In this instance, we agree with the White House that the 

Sirica need standard which governs grand jury subpoenas is 

no more lenient than the need standard enunciated for trial 

subpoenas in Nixon. In both situations, to overcome the 

presidential privilege it is necessary to demonstrate with 

specificity why it is likely that the subpoenaed materials 

contain important evidence and why this evidence, or equivalent evidence, is not practically available from another source. 

See In re Grand Jury Subpoena, 112 F.3d at 927, 937 (Kopf, 

J., dissenting) (arguing that Nixon standard applies to grand 

jury subpoenas as well as trial subpoenas). On the one hand, 

to the extent that some of this court's comments in Sirica

suggest that a more substantial showing of need must be 

made when presidential privilege is raised against a grand 

jury subpoena than the Supreme Court required in regard to 

a criminal trial subpoena, we do conclude that these comments have been effectively overruled by R. Enterprises.

But R. Enterprises' emphasis on the special leeway given to 

grand jury subpoenas as opposed to criminal trial subpoenas 

absent a claim of privilege does not preclude us from finding 

that the same need standard applies when the presidential 

communications privilege is asserted. The necessary breadth 

of the grand jury's inquiries in fact supports applying a strict 

standard of need to overcome presidential privilege, because 

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it means that grand jury subpoenas may well represent a 

much more frequent threat to presidential confidentiality. 

The Supreme Court has recognized that "the longstanding 

principle that the public has a right to every man's evidence" 

is limited by valid claims of privilege in grand jury proceedings as elsewhere, even as it held that this principle "is 

particularly applicable to grand jury proceedings." Branzburg, 408 U.S. at 688 (ellipsis omitted); see also United States 

v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 344, 346 (1974) (while grand jury is 

"accorded wide latitude," "the grand jury's subpoena power is 

not unlimited" and "[j]udicial supervision is properly exercised" to protect claims of privilege).

Nor do we believe the Nixon/Sirica need standard imposes 

too heavy a burden on grand jury investigation. In practice, 

the primary effect of this standard will be to require a grand 

jury to delay subpoenaing evidence covered by presidential 

privilege until it has assured itself that the evidence sought 

from the President or his advisors is both important to its 

investigation and practically unavailable elsewhere. As was 

true in Sirica, a grand jury will often be able to specify its 

need for withheld evidence in reasonable detail based on 

information obtained from other sources. And if it has 

difficulty in obtaining evidence from other sources, this fact in 

and of itself will go far toward satisfying the need requirement. Although any showing of need has the potential of 

undercutting the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, a district 

court can ensure that such secrecy is protected by provisions 

for sealed, or when necessary ex parte, filings.

We agree with the OIC in one regard, however. R. 

Enterprises makes clear that a grand jury subpoena is not 

subject to the same Rule 17(c) requirements of "relevancy, 

admissibility and specificity" as a criminal trial subpoena. 

Since to meet the need standard the grand jury will have to 

make a specific showing of the importance of the evidence it 

seeks, its exemption from the relevancy and specificity constraints of Rule 17(c) will not be significant. But the same is 

not true of the grand jury's freedom from the requirement of 

admissibility, and in R. Enterprises the Court underscored 

that a grand jury is often allowed to consider evidence that 

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would be deemed inadmissible in a criminal trial. 498 U.S. at 

298. As a result, the fact that evidence covered by the 

presidential communications privilege may be inadmissible 

should not affect a court's determination of the grand jury's 

need for the material.

* * *

Based on our review of the Nixon cases and the purpose of 

the presidential communications privilege, we conclude that 

this privilege extends to cover communications which do not 

themselves directly engage the President, provided the communications are either authored or received in response to a 

solicitation by presidential advisors in the course of gathering 

information and preparing recommendations on official matters for presentation to the President. The privilege also 

extends to communications authored or solicited and received 

by those members of an immediate White House advisor's 

staff who have broad and significant responsibility for investigating and formulating the advice to be given to the President on a particular matter. We also hold that in order to 

overcome a claim of presidential privilege raised against a 

grand jury subpoena, it is necessary to specifically demonstrate why it is likely that evidence contained in presidential 

communications is important to the ongoing grand jury investigation and why this evidence is not available from another 

source.

IV. EXAMINATION OF THE WHITE HOUSE'S CLAIMS OF PRIVILEGE

Our final task is to apply the principles we have heretofore 

laid out to the documents withheld in this case. We have 

concluded that although all of the documents come under the 

presidential communications privilege, the OIC has demonstrated a sufficient showing of need to obtain certain information in some of the documents. Because we believe that the 

determination of exactly what evidence should be released is 

one that the district court should make in the first instance, 

we do not identify any specific portions of the documents to 

be released. However, we are supplementing our opinion 

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with a sealed appendix to assist the district court with its in 

camera review of each document on remand.

A. The Presidential Privilege Applies

The withheld documents consist primarily of outlines of 

issues and questions that needed to be investigated and drafts 

of the White House Counsel's report on the Espy investigation. There are also notes of meetings and phone conversations, lists of information on Espy, and press briefings on 

Espy. Most of the documents were authored by two associate White House Counsels, a few were authored by top 

presidential advisors, specifically the White House Counsel, 

Deputy White House Counsel, Chief of Staff and Press 

Secretary. A few documents were authored by a legal extern 

in the White House Counsel's office, and there are also three 

documents for which no author is listed. According to the 

White House privilege log, as well as the headings of the 

documents themselves, it appears that most of the documents 

circulated only within the White House Counsel's office. 

Many of the documents were sent to the White House 

Counsel or Deputy White House Counsel, or represent notes 

taken from meetings at which these top advisors and others 

were present. A sizeable number, however, were either 

authored by the two associate White House Counsels and not 

disseminated or sent only to them by others. All of the 

documents relate to the investigation of Espy that the President asked the White House Counsel to undertake.

The documents that were authored by the White House 

Counsel, Deputy White House Counsel, Chief of Staff and 

Press Secretary were communications connected to an official 

matter on which they were directly advising the President, 

and thus under the principles laid out in this opinion these 

documents are clearly covered by the privilege. The same is 

true of notes taken of meetings on the Espy investigation at 

which these advisors were present, since these notes reflect 

these advisors' communications, and of documents that they 

solicited and received. As established above, the presidential 

privilege applies to communications made by a member of an 

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immediate White House advisor's staff when the staff member has broad and significant responsibility for investigating 

and formulating the advice to be given the President on the 

particular matter to which the communications relate. It is 

clear from a review of the documents that the two associate 

White House Counsels exercised broad and significant responsibility for gathering information on Espy's actions and 

authoring initial drafts of the White House Counsel's report. 

Consequently, documents they authored or they solicited and 

received from others also come under the privilege.

The only question regarding application of the presidential 

communications privilege here concerns the remaining withheld documents, which consist of those documents authored 

by the legal extern in the White House Counsel's office and 

three documents for which no author is listed. It is apparent 

that the legal extern did not exercise broad and significant 

responsibility for the Espy investigation, and therefore the 

documents authored by the legal extern do not, on their own, 

qualify for the presidential privilege. However, all of the 

withheld documents authored by the extern were clearly 

created at the request of the two associate White House 

Counsels with broad and significant responsibility for the 

Espy investigation and were received by them. Therefore, 

the privilege also applies to these documents. The status of 

the three no-author documents is more difficult to resolve. 

Two of these documents were received by the Deputy White 

House Counsel, and the other by one of the associate White 

House Counsels with broad and significant responsibility for 

the Espy investigation. These documents relate to operational details of the Espy investigation. Clearly, if these documents were solicited by the Deputy White House Counsel and 

the associate White House Counsel, they would be also covered by the privilege. The current description of these 

documents provided by the White House, however, does not 

specifically indicate whether these documents were in fact 

solicited. Ordinarily, the White House would be expected to 

demonstrate that they had been, but we do not believe a 

remand for that showing is necessary here because our 

review of the documents themselves demonstrates that from 

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23The White House has also claimed attorney-client privilege in 

regard to Document 19. We do not need to examine this claim 

because it is clear, based on our review of this document, that it 

should not be released. The document comes under the presidential communications privilege as it was authored by the President's 

Chief of Staff and was sent to the individual acting as White House 

Counsel, and contains no information or evidence that could be 

relevant to the grand jury's inquiry. 

24In order to preserve the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, 

selected parts of this opinion that relate to the grounds on which we 

conclude the OIC has made out an adequate showing of need are 

ordered sealed until the OIC files his final report on his investigation, at which point they will be published. See FED. R. CRIM. P. 

6(e). 

the nature of their contents and the persons to whom they 

were directed there can be little question that they had been 

solicited. As we are setting forth for the first time the 

principles by which we will determine whether the privilege 

applies to communications of presidential advisors that do not 

directly involve the President, we believe it would be unrealistic to expect the White House to have foreseen the need to 

specifically demonstrate that the documents had been solicited.

In sum, we conclude that all of the documents withheld by 

the White House here are subject to the presidential communications privilege. As a result, we need not determine 

whether the documents would qualify for the deliberative 

process privilege.23

B. The OIC's Demonstration of Need24

A preliminary question that must be addressed before we 

turn to an examination of the OIC's demonstration of need is 

whether we should be reviewing this demonstration at all. 

The procedure envisioned by the Nixon cases, as outlined 

earlier, is that upon a sufficient showing of need, the President must turn over privileged materials for in camera

review, whereupon the court reviews the materials and determines what should be released. This case comes to us in a 

significantly different posture than Nixon and Sirica. In 

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both of those cases, President Nixon was challenging district 

court orders that instructed him to submit the subpoenaed 

tapes for in camera review. In this case, the White House 

has already turned over the subpoenaed materials for in 

camera review pursuant to the district court's order, and did 

not appeal from that order. Instead, we have before us the 

OIC's appeal of the district court's denial of the OIC's motion 

to compel. Thus, we are presented with the question of 

whether we should forego determining whether or not the 

OIC made a sufficient showing of need to obtain in camera

review, and instead simply instruct the district court to 

review the withheld documents and determine what evidence 

should be released.

How we resolve this question could have a significant 

impact on what materials are disclosed to the grand jury, 

because the standard applied to determine if the OIC has 

made a sufficient showing of need to obtain in camera review 

is much more difficult to satisfy than the standard applied 

during in camera review to determine exactly what evidence 

should be released. As we explained in the preceding section, 

the showing required to obtain in camera review is governed 

by the Nixon/Sirica need standard and entails demonstrating 

with specificity that the subpoenaed materials likely contain 

important evidence and that this evidence, or equivalent 

evidence, is not practically available from another source. 

The purpose of this initial showing is to protect the confidentiality of presidential communications; it operates on the 

presumption that these communications are privileged and 

requires the subpoena proponent to meet a certain threshold 

of need before a court will consider releasing any of the 

communications sought.

The district court's in camera review also aims to ensure 

that presidential confidentiality is not unnecessarily breached, 

but it operates on the presumption that some privileged 

materials will probably be released. The court's task during 

its in camera review is simply to ensure that privileged 

materials that would not be of use to the subpoena proponent 

are not released. Nixon, 418 U.S. at 714; Sirica, 487 F.2d at 

719-21. Nixon makes clear that the court determined what 

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evidence could be of use to the subpoena proponent by 

isolating all evidence that satisfies the applicable Rule 17(c) 

requirements of admissibility and relevance. This evidence is 

then released, while the remaining materials are returned to 

the President. 418 U.S. at 714-15. As mentioned above, 

Rule 17(c) does not impose an admissibility requirement on 

grand jury subpoenas, and requires release of evidence unless 

there is no reasonable possibility that subpoenaed evidence 

will be relevant to grand jury proceedings. See R. Enters.,

498 U.S. at 298, 301. Thus, once a grand jury has provided 

an adequate demonstration of need to obtain in camera

review of materials covered by the presidential privilege, the 

court should review the subpoenaed material and release any 

evidence that might reasonably be relevant to the grand 

jury's investigation. The question of what evidence might 

reasonably be relevant to the grand jury's investigation 

should be answered by reference to the reasons the grand 

jury gave in explaining its need for the subpoenaed materials.

We believe that the appropriate course for us is to determine whether the OIC made out a sufficient showing of need 

to obtain in camera review of the documents. Although 

Nixon established that a President is allowed to immediately 

appeal an order requiring production of subpoenaed materials 

for in camera review, the general rule is that an order 

requiring production of evidence for in camera review "is not 

final and hence not appealable." Nixon, 418 U.S. at 691; 

accord Church of Scientology v. United States, 506 U.S. 9, 18 

n.11 (1992); Kessler, 100 F.3d at 1016-17. Since the provision for immediate appeal by a President is an exception 

created because "[t]o require a President of the United States 

to place himself in the posture of disobeying an order of a 

court merely to trigger the procedural mechanism for review 

of the ruling would be unseemly," Nixon, 418 U.S. at 691-92, 

we believe that the White House should not be penalized 

because it waited until the district court issued its final ruling 

on the OIC's motion to compel. To rule otherwise would 

foster a proliferation of piecemeal appeals in cases implicating 

the presidential communications privilege. Moreover, both 

the OIC and the White House have directed their arguments 

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to the question of whether the OIC made a sufficient demonstration of need for the withheld documents, and neither 

partynor, it appears, the district courtdifferentiated between the standard that applies to the OIC's showing of need 

to obtain in camera review and the standard the district 

court subsequently applies during in camera review to determine what material should be released.

The OIC provides two arguments as to why the grand jury 

needs the documents. One is the general claim that as the 

White House investigated the same subject matter as the 

grand jury, namely whether Espy accepted improper gifts or 

otherwise abused his position, the White House documents 

will clearly be relevant to the grand jury's investigation. 

[ ] The 

OIC has submitted an ex parte affidavit and other materials 

in support of these arguments.

We find the OIC's first justification of the grand jury's 

need for the documents, that the withheld documents were 

generated by the White House Counsel's office in preparing 

its report on the same allegations regarding Espy that the 

grand jury is investigating, insufficient, at this stage, to 

constitute an adequate showing of need under the 

Nixon/Sirica standard. It is true, as the OIC contends, that 

the withheld documents likely will contain evidence that is 

directly relevant to the grand jury's investigation of Espy. 

But the OIC has not yet made a sufficient demonstration of 

its inability to obtain this information from alternative 

sources or an explanation of why it particularly needs to know 

what evidence is in the White House files. Here, unlike in 

the Nixon cases, the actions of White House officers do not 

appear to be under investigation.

We recognize the difficulty that the OIC faces in demonstrating that it has not been able to obtain the information 

contained in the White House Counsel's documents when it 

does not know what this information is. This difficulty has 

been worsened by the extremely sketchy descriptions of the 

withheld documents that the White House provided in its 

privilege log. We also realize that in order to preserve the 

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standably reluctant to detail the witnesses it has interviewed 

so far or the areas on which the investigation is focusing. 

But the OIC has not even attempted this task. For example, 

during their negotiations over the withheld documents, the 

White House Counsel's office informed the OIC that the 

documents contained notes from interviews with two USDA 

attorneys. Yet the OIC has not indicated whether it interviewed attorneys at USDA and if so whether any one of them 

admitted to having conversations with the White House Counsel's office. Again, while the OIC notes in its brief that the 

withheld documents could contain statements from witnesses 

who are no longer cooperating with the grand jury's investigation, it provides no basis on which we could conclude that 

this is in fact the case. We also note that the subpoena for 

the documents generated in compiling the White House 

Counsel's report was issued just three days after the report 

was released and five weeks after the OIC was appointed. In 

the face of this timing, it is hard to conclude that the OIC 

issued its subpoena to the White House as a last resort.

Nonetheless, it is possible that the OIC might be able to 

provide a sufficient justification for obtaining factual information in the White House files that it might not already 

possess. The White House has conceded that there is some 

factual information in the withheld documents that is not also 

contained in the documents that the White House released, 

and our own review of the documents has identified a sizeable 

number of such items of information, though many of them 

appear to be of minimal consequence. Moreover, the grand 

jury investigation into Espy's actions has now lasted over two 

years, so that if and when the OIC provides some account of 

the information the grand jury has been unable to obtain, it 

will be fair to conclude that this information is not obtainable 

elsewhere. The OIC may also be able to demonstrate a need 

for information that it currently possesses, but which it has 

been unable to confirm or disprove.

Consequently, on remand the OIC should be given an 

opportunity to supplement its showing of need for the information contained in the withheld documents. If the district 

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25[ ]

26[

]

fies the Nixon/Sirica standard, the court should review the 

documents in camera and release any information that might 

reasonably be relevant in light of this demonstration of need. 

Two caveats should be noted. First, since the grand jury is 

investigating Espy's actions, not those of the White House 

Counsel's office, the purely deliberative portions of the documents should not be released. Second, only information that 

is not contained in the documents that the White House 

earlier released should be provided to the grand jury, since 

any new release of previously disclosed information would be 

purely cumulative. See Senate Committee, 498 F.2d at 732.

The OIC's second, more narrow argument as to why the 

grand jury needs the withheld documents is much more 

powerful. [

25

26

]

The OIC's second argument of need for evidence in the 

subpoenaed documents is sufficient to obtain in camera review; the OIC has demonstrated that it is likely the subpoenaed documents contain important evidence that is not available elsewhere. On in camera review, the district court 

should isolate and release all evidence that might reasonably 

be relevant to the question [

]

We therefore hold that the OIC has demonstrated sufficient need in order to overcome the presidential communications privilege in regard to evidence of [

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] and 

that the OIC should be given an opportunity to make out a 

sufficient showing of need in regard to other evidence more 

generally. On remand, the district court should identify and 

release specific items of evidence that might reasonably be 

relevant to the grand jury's investigation into the potential 

[ ] charge. If the court deems any additional 

showing of need presented by the OIC to be sufficient, it 

should also identify any new items of information that merit 

release. We are submitting a sealed appendix to assist the 

district court with its review.

V. CONCLUSION

This case forces us to engage in the difficult business of 

delineating the scope and operation of the presidential communications privilege. In holding that the privilege extends 

to communications authored by or solicited and received by 

presidential advisors and that a specified demonstration of 

need must be made even in regard to a grand jury subpoena, 

we are ever mindful of the dangers involved in cloaking 

governmental operations in secrecy and in placing obstacles 

in the path of the grand jury in its investigatory mission. 

There is a powerful counterweight to these concerns, however, namely the public and constitutional interest in preserving 

the efficacy and quality of presidential decisionmaking. We 

believe that the principles we have outlined in this opinion 

achieve a delicate and appropriate balance between openness 

and informed presidential deliberation.

The decision of the district court is vacated and the case is 

remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

So ordered.

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