Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-98-05535/USCOURTS-caDC-98-05535-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Accuracy in Media
Appellant
National Park Service
Appellee

Document Text:

<<The pagination in this PDF may not match the actual pagination in the printed slip opinion>>

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued October 4, 1999 Decided October 26, 1999

No. 98-5535

Accuracy in Media, Inc.,

Appellant

v.

National Park Service,

Appellee

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 97cv02109)

Larry E. Klayman argued the cause for appellant. Brett

M. Wood and Allan J. Favish were on the briefs.

Robert M. Loeb, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice,

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

David W. Ogden, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Leonard Schaitman, Attorney, and Wilma A. Lewis, U.S. Attorney.

USCA Case #98-5535 Document #472404 Filed: 10/26/1999 Page 1 of 9
<<The pagination in this PDF may not match the actual pagination in the printed slip opinion>>

Before: Edwards, Chief Judge, Wald and Williams,

Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge Williams.

Williams, Circuit Judge: Accuracy in Media, Inc. ("AIM")

applied under the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C.

s 552 ("FOIA"), for photos of the body of the late Deputy

White House counsel Vincent W. Foster, Jr., taken at the

scene of his death and at the autopsy (as well as other

documents about which there is no longer any dispute). The

National Park Service, custodian of the documents because

the United States Park Police conducted the initial investigation, resisted disclosure, invoking FOIA exemption 7(C), 5

U.S.C. s 552(b)(7)(C), which shelters records compiled for law

enforcement purposes if their production would "constitute an

unwarranted invasion of personal privacy." The district court

granted summary judgment for the Park Service. The first

question is whether, when the subject of a document has

himself died, the personal privacy protected by 7(C) may

include interests of the subject's surviving kin or posthumous

privacy interests of the subject himself. If so, then the

question arises whether AIM has met the "balancing" test

under 7(C) by advancing "compelling evidence" of illegal

government activity and of the need for the photos to confirm

or refute that evidence. See SafeCard Services, Inc. v. SEC,

926 F.2d 1197, 1205-06 (D.C. Cir. 1991). We have already

held that the protected privacy interests do extend beyond

the interests of a document's subject while alive, see Campbell v. U.S. Department of Justice, 164 F.3d 20, 33-34 (D.C.

Cir. 1998), and we adhere to that view. Further, AIM's

evidence does not satisfy the SafeCard standard. Accordingly, we affirm the district court.

* * *

At about six PM on July 20, 1993, a private citizen alerted

two off-duty Park Service employees to a dead body in Ft.

Marcy Park in suburban Northern Virginia. Their immediate 911 call summoned police and rescue personnel to the

scene, where Foster lay dead with a .38 caliber revolver in his

USCA Case #98-5535 Document #472404 Filed: 10/26/1999 Page 2 of 9
<<The pagination in this PDF may not match the actual pagination in the printed slip opinion>>

right hand and a gunshot wound to his head. The House and

Senate launched inquiries into the death. See Summary

Report by William F. Clinger, Jr., Ranking Republican, Committee on Government Operations, U.S. House of Rep., on the

Death of White House Deputy Counsel Vincent W. Foster, Jr.

(Aug. 12, 1994); S. Rep. No. 103-433, 103d Cong., 4 (1995).

There were also two separate independent counsel inquiries.

See Report on the Death of Vincent W. Foster, Jr., by the

Office of Independent Counsel In re Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan Association (Oct. 10, 1997) ("Starr Report");

Report of the Independent Counsel Robert B. Fiske, Jr., In

re Vincent W. Foster, Jr. (June 30, 1994). All of these

inquiries concluded that Foster committed suicide. See Starr

Report at 2, 7-8.

To support its 7(C) privacy claim for the photos, the Park

Service presented the declaration of Sheila Foster Anthony,

Foster's sister, who described how release of the photos

would invade the privacy of the Foster family (including his

widow and children) and would cause extreme emotional

anguish. It also submitted a so-called Vaughn index1 describing each of the responsive documents found and the basis for

withholding or redacting the document.

AIM contested application of the privacy exemption on two

grounds. First it argued that because only Foster's privacy

was at stake, his death terminated any valid privacy interest.

If that were so, the Park Service's exemption claim would

automatically fail. In the alternative, AIM argued that it

satisfied SafeCard's "compelling evidence" requirement, saying that "there is much controversy about the nature of Mr.

Foster's wounds," and that "[t]he photos of Mr. Foster's body

are crucial for getting the truth." The district court rejected

both theories.

* * *

Exemption 7(C) allows non-disclosure of "records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes" when such

__________

1 See Vaughn v. Rosen, 484 F.2d 820, 826-27 (D.C. Cir. 1973).

USCA Case #98-5535 Document #472404 Filed: 10/26/1999 Page 3 of 9
<<The pagination in this PDF may not match the actual pagination in the printed slip opinion>>

material "could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy." 5 U.S.C.

s 552(b)(7)(C). AIM rightly points out that in United States

Dep't of Justice v. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the

Press, 489 U.S. 749 (1989), the Supreme Court recited a

number of definitions of privacy under which only the subject

could hold the interest. For example, it quoted A. Breckenridge, The Right to Privacy 1 (1970), defining it as "the

individual's right to control dissemination of information

about himself." 489 U.S. at 764 n.16 (emphasis added). In

text, in fact, the Court used a possibly broader notion,

speaking of information as being private if "intended for or

restricted to the use of a particular person or group or class

of persons: not freely available to the public." Id. at 763-64.

For photos of a gunshot victim, the deceased's next of kin

might well constitute such a group.

But the primary weakness of AIM's reading of Reporters

Committee is not so much that some of the quoted definitions

are broader than those it has selected, but that the decision's

focus was utterly removed from our current problem. At

issue were "rap sheets," individualized collections of data on

persons' arrests, charges and convictions. The government

had theorized that there could be no privacy interest in

information that was scattered through public courthouse files

and accessible, in theory, to anyone ready to devote enough

resources to the task. In advancing the scholarly and dictionary definitions exemplified above, the Court sought only to

explain its rejection of this narrow theory of privacy, not to

present a hermetically sealed definition of privacy.

Further, our circuit has squarely rejected the proposition

that FOIA's protection of personal privacy ends upon the

death of the individual depicted. In Campbell v. United

States Dep't of Justice, 164 F.3d 20 (D.C. Cir. 1998), a scholar

researching the life of James Baldwin made a FOIA request

for Baldwin's "FBI file." The FBI claimed some material

was protected from disclosure under exemption 7(C). Campbell challenged this claim, arguing that exemption 7(C) does

not "protect the privacy of people who are dead." Id. at 33.

We responded:

USCA Case #98-5535 Document #472404 Filed: 10/26/1999 Page 4 of 9
<<The pagination in this PDF may not match the actual pagination in the printed slip opinion>>

[D]eath clearly matters, as the deceased by definition

cannot personally suffer the privacy-related injuries that

may plague the living. A court balancing public interests

in disclosure against privacy interests must therefore

make a reasonable effort to account for the death of a

person on whose behalf the FBI invokes exemption 7(C).

The court must also account for the fact that certain

reputation interests and family-related privacy expectations survive death. As was recently pointed out by the

Supreme Court in Swidler & Berlin v. United States, 524

U.S. 399 (1998), the attorney-client privilege survives the

death of the client, who "may be concerned about reputation, civil liability, or possible harm to friends or family."

Id. at 33-34 (emphasis added) (citations omitted). While we

did not resolve "[t]he scope and weight of these interests"

because the record in Campbell was underdeveloped, see id.

at 34, the terms of our remand clearly depended on our view

that the 7(C) privacy interest survives death of the subject.

The parties struggle over whether language in some of our

prior cases, seeming to endorse either a posthumous privacy

interest or a privacy interest held by the subject's survivors,

is dictum or holding. See New York Times Co. v. NASA, 920

F.2d 1002, 1005 (D.C. Cir. 1990) (en banc); Badhwar v.

United States Department of the Air Force, 829 F.2d 182,

185-86 (D.C. Cir. 1987). We need not pursue that dispute:

Campbell was an unequivocal holding, and the others at a

minimum provide supporting dicta.

It is true that we have not said much by way of explanation. But obviously AIM cannot deny the powerful sense of

invasion bound to be aroused in close survivors by wanton

publication of gruesome details of death by violence. One has

only to think of Lindbergh's rage at the photographer who

pried open the coffin of his kidnapped son to photograph the

remains and peddle the resulting photos. While law enforcement sometimes necessitates the display of such ghoulish

materials, there seems nothing unnatural in saying that the

interest asserted against it by spouse, parents and children of

the deceased is one of privacy--even though the holders of

USCA Case #98-5535 Document #472404 Filed: 10/26/1999 Page 5 of 9
<<The pagination in this PDF may not match the actual pagination in the printed slip opinion>>

the interest are distinct from the individual portrayed. We

need not here explore whether the interest belongs to living

close survivors (in which case it might end at their deaths), or

alternatively may inhere posthumously in the subject himself

(in which case it would seem to be of indefinite duration), or

both.

AIM quite rightly notes that exemption 7(C) protects

against unwarranted "invasions" of privacy, not against grief

per se. There is no grief exemption. It is the "invasion" that

triggers a weighing of the public interest against the private

harm inflicted, NASA, 920 F.2d at 1005, not the grief or any

feeding frenzy of media coverage, even though the latter

constitute the private harm. But the release of photos of the

decedent at the scene of his death and autopsy qualifies as

such an invasion.

* * *

To show that the invasion of privacy was not "unwarranted," AIM must show "compelling evidence that the agency

denying the FOIA request is engaged in illegal activity, and

access to the [photos] is necessary in order to confirm or

refute that evidence." SafeCard, 926 F.2d at 1205-06.

AIM's theory is that known contradictions in the published

materials are adequate evidence of government foul play, and

that, because those contradictions relate to the nature of the

bullet wounds, the photos would likely shed critical light.

Specifically, AIM relies on three statements about Foster's

wounds that differ from the conclusion reached by the two

congressional inquiries and the two independent counsels,

namely, that Foster had an entrance wound in the mouth and

an exit wound in the back of the head, which are consistent

with suicide. First, a paramedic who was at the scene,

reported the wound as an entrance wound at the neck.

Second, a Dr. Donald Haut, of the Fairfax County medical

examiner's office, examined Foster at Ft. Marcy Park and

filed a report that described Foster's wounds on one page as

"perforating gunshot wound mouth-head" and on the next as

USCA Case #98-5535 Document #472404 Filed: 10/26/1999 Page 6 of 9
<<The pagination in this PDF may not match the actual pagination in the printed slip opinion>>

"mouth to neck." Finally, an FBI memo states there was no

exit wound at all.

We find AIM's evidence considerably below the threshold.

The Starr Report characterizes the exit wound as three

inches from the top of the head. Starr Report at 31. Depending on what one views as the "top" of the head, the

discrepancy between this and assertions of a neck exit wound

may be matters of characterization. Further, the paramedic,

after reviewing photos (presumably ones belonging to the

disputed set), admitted that he may have been mistaken

about Foster having a neck wound. Starr Report at 34 n.77.

Dr. Haut's report is internally inconsistent, with one assertion

consistent with the later reports from Congress and the two

independent counsels. AIM asserts that the consistent entry

on Dr. Haut's report was the product of an alteration. On

the photocopy that is part of our record, there does appear to

be a deletion on Dr. Haut's typed report just before the word

"head," so we cannot rule out AIM's speculation that "neck"

had appeared but was deleted. Without more, however, the

possibility that "neck" ever appeared in the now-empty space

is hardly "compelling evidence" that any government actor

has behaved illegally. At least while completing that part of

the report, Dr. Haut presumably thought "head" correct.

Finally, the FBI memo reporting that there was no exit

wound is a puzzling document of unknown origin. But it

merely purports to offer "preliminary results" and is datestamped "July 23, 1993," only three days after Foster died.

When multiple agencies and personnel converge on a complex scene and offer their hurried assessments of details,

some variation among all the reports is hardly so shocking as

to suggest illegality or deliberate government falsification.

Nor does it suggest that the congressional or independent

counsel inquiries got anything wrong regarding Foster's

wounds. The Starr Report is altogether credible in its assertion that the photos are "[s]ome of the best evidence" of the

nature of Foster's wounds, Starr Report at 16, and those who

have viewed them have concluded that Foster suffered an

entrance wound in the mouth and an exit wound in the back

of the head. The likelihood that the photos contradict the

USCA Case #98-5535 Document #472404 Filed: 10/26/1999 Page 7 of 9
<<The pagination in this PDF may not match the actual pagination in the printed slip opinion>>

statements of all four investigating agencies seems remote.

While we agree that falsification by the agencies would show

government illegality--under the present facts, indeed, illegality on a massive scale--there is no persuasive evidence of

such falsification, much less compelling evidence.

* * *

Two final issues: First, AIM contends that the district

court should have at least inspected the photos in camera.

We review its decision not to do so for abuse of discretion,

Spirko v. United States Postal Serv., 147 F.3d 992, 996 (D.C.

Cir. 1998), and have said that such review "may be particularly appropriate when either the agency affidavits are insufficiently detailed to permit meaningful review of exemption

claims or there is evidence of bad faith on the part of the

agency." Quinon v. FBI, 86 F.3d 1222, 1227-28 (D.C. Cir.

1996). None of the evidentiary discrepancies is evidence of

bad faith on the part of the Park Service. AIM suggests that

the Vaughn index falls short in not revealing just how graphic

each of the photos is, following up with the suggestion that in

camera inspection might identify some photos tame enough to

be released with little invasion of personal privacy. Given the

subject matter, we cannot imagine any photos that could both

elucidate the true nature of Foster's wounds and yet not be

disturbingly graphic. We find no abuse of discretion.

Second, AIM seeks further discovery on the theory that the

Park Service has failed to search adequately for missing

photos, handwritten notes, telephone records, and other documents. AIM's claim of need rests on highly speculative

criticism of the Park Service's search. For example, it observes that type-written reports from those who attended the

autopsy were quite detailed--so detailed, it says, that there

must also be some handwritten notes because the attendees

could not have typed or dictated the reports from memory.

But "[m]ere speculation that as yet uncovered documents

may exist does not undermine the finding that the agency

conducted a reasonable search for them." SafeCard, 926

USCA Case #98-5535 Document #472404 Filed: 10/26/1999 Page 8 of 9
<<The pagination in this PDF may not match the actual pagination in the printed slip opinion>>

F.2d at 1201. We find no abuse of the court's exercise of its

discretion to manage the scope of discovery.

* * *

The decision of the district court is

Affirmed.

USCA Case #98-5535 Document #472404 Filed: 10/26/1999 Page 9 of 9