United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued November 6, 2009 Decided February 26, 2010 

No. 07-5385 

DAMON ELLIOTT, 

APPELLANT

v. 

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, 

APPELLEE

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 06cv00240) 

Anand V. Ramana, appointed by the court, argued the 

cause and filed the briefs as amicus curiae in support of 

appellant. 

Damon Elliott, pro se, filed briefs for appellant. 

Andrea McBarnette, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the 

cause for appellee. With her on the brief was R. Craig 

Lawrence, Assistant U.S. Attorney. 

Before: TATEL, GARLAND, and KAVANAUGH, Circuit 

Judges. 
2 

 Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge TATEL. 

TATEL, Circuit Judge: Appellant brought suit under the 

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to compel the United 

States Department of Agriculture to disclose blueprints to 

buildings located on an agricultural research campus. 

Concluding that the requested blueprints fall within FOIA 

Exemption 2, which exempts from disclosure matters “related 

solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of an 

agency,” 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(2), the district court granted 

summary judgment for the government. For the reasons set 

forth in this opinion, we affirm. 

I. 

 Appellant Damon Elliott submitted FOIA requests 

seeking architectural blueprints for all buildings on the 

campus of the United States Department of Agriculture’s 

(USDA’s) Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC). 

Elliott apparently seeks the blueprints in order to prove that 

Building 22, a residential building on the BARC campus, is 

nonfederal property. After conducting a search for responsive 

documents, the agency informed Elliott that although it 

maintains blueprints for 375 BARC buildings, it has none for 

Building 22. The agency refused to disclose any blueprints, 

however, asserting that FOIA Exemption 2 “protects sensitive 

critical infrastructure information related to security and 

safety.” Letter from Stasia A.M. Hutchison, FOIA 

Coordinator, USDA, to Damon Elliott (Dec. 29, 2005). 

 After exhausting his administrative remedies, Elliott 

brought suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of 

Columbia to compel disclosure of all blueprints responsive to 

his FOIA requests. See 5 U.S.C. § 552. Seeking summary 

judgment, the government argued that the blueprints fell 

within FOIA Exemption 2 because their disclosure would 
3 

compromise the security of BARC’s critical infrastructure and 

research programs. 

The district court granted the government’s motion in 

part, finding that although the agency had performed an 

adequate search for responsive documents, it had failed to 

sufficiently justify withholding the blueprints under 

Exemption 2. Elliott v. U.S. Dep’t of Agric., No. 06-240, 

2007 WL 1302588, at *4 (D.D.C. May 2, 2007). Following a 

renewed motion for summary judgment and additional filings 

by both parties, the court then concluded that the blueprints 

were exempt from disclosure because they are “used for 

predominantly internal purposes and their disclosure may risk 

circumvention of federal policies, statutes, or regulations.” 

Elliott v. U.S. Dep’t of Agric., 518 F. Supp. 2d 217, 221 

(D.D.C. 2007). In addition, the district court held that no 

reasonably segregable portion of the blueprints could be 

disclosed without posing a security risk. Id. Elliott appealed, 

and we appointed amicus curiae to present arguments on his 

behalf. 

II. 

 “[D]isclosure, not secrecy, is [FOIA’s] dominant 

objective.” Dep’t of the Air Force v. Rose, 425 U.S. 352, 361 

(1976). Consistent with this purpose, agencies may withhold 

only those documents or portions thereof that fall under one 

of nine delineated statutory exemptions. See 5 U.S.C. § 

552(b). These exemptions are “explicitly exclusive,” U.S. 

Dep’t of Justice v. Tax Analysts, 492 U.S. 136, 151 (1989) 

(internal quotation marks omitted), and the agency bears the 

burden of showing that withheld material falls within the 

asserted exemption, 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(B). 

 This case concerns the scope of Exemption 2, which 

covers matters “related solely to the internal personnel rules 
4 

and practices of an agency.” 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(2). The 

courts have devoted thousands of pages of the Federal 

Reporter to the explication of these twelve words, cutting out 

some and pasting in others. As a result, like the Ship of 

Theseus, little of Congress’s original language remains. We 

think it useful to briefly review how we got to this point. 

 

 For fifteen years after FOIA’s enactment, see Pub. L. No. 

89-487, 80 Stat. 250 (1966), considerable confusion 

surrounded the scope of Exemption 2. This uncertainty 

stemmed from the seemingly contradictory interpretations of 

the exemption expressed in the House and Senate Reports. 

The Senate Report stated that Exemption 2 “relates only to the 

internal personnel rules and practices of an agency. Examples 

of these may be rules as to personnel’s use of parking 

facilities or regulation of lunch hours, statements of policy as 

to sick leave, and the like.” S. Rep. No. 89-813, at 8 (1965). 

Taking a different view, the House Report described the 

exemption as encompassing “[o]perating rules, guidelines, 

and manuals of procedure for Government investigators or 

examiners.” H.R. Rep. No. 89-1497, at 10 (1966). Even 

given these differences, however, the House and Senate 

committees both saw Exemption 2 as narrowing the public 

disclosure exemption under former section 3 of the 

Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which protected from 

disclosure “any matter relating solely to the internal 

management of an agency.” Rose, 425 U.S. at 362 (citing 

Congress’s dissatisfaction with the broad sweep of the APA’s 

exemption, 5 U.S.C. § 1002 (1964 ed.)). 

Confronting the dueling House and Senate Reports for 

the first time in Department of the Air Force v. Rose, 425 U.S. 

352 (1976), the Supreme Court declined to pick sides. On the 

one hand, the Court accepted the Senate’s interpretation of 

Exemption 2 as covering minor employment-related matters 
5 

in which the public lacked a significant interest. Id. at 369–

70. On the other hand, the Court acknowledged, but did not 

decide, that the exemption might protect the more important 

materials contemplated by the House Report “where 

necessary to prevent the circumvention of agency regulations 

that might result from disclosure to the subjects of regulation 

of . . . procedural manuals and guidelines used by the 

agency.” Id. at 364. 

With the question thus left open by the Supreme Court, 

and facing what we believed to be mutually exclusive views 

of Exemption 2, we initially adopted the Senate Report as the 

authoritative expression of Congress’s intent. In Jordan v. 

United States Department of Justice, 591 F.2d 753, 763 (D.C. 

Cir. 1978) (en banc), we stated that “personnel” refers only to 

“matters relating to pay, pensions, vacations, hours of work, 

lunch hours, parking, etc.” Applying this construction, we 

ordered the release of prosecutorial guidelines used by U.S. 

Attorneys on the ground that, as envisioned by the Senate 

Report, the guidelines fell outside Exemption 2’s scope. Id. 

 

Three years later and sitting en banc, we reversed course 

and expressly repudiated Jordan’s “limited” interpretation of 

Exemption 2 in Crooker v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & 

Firearms, 670 F.2d 1051, 1073 (D.C. Cir. 1981). There, the 

FOIA requester sought a copy of a Bureau of Alcohol, 

Tobacco & Firearms (ATF) manual used to train new agents 

in surveillance techniques. Picking up where the Supreme 

Court left off in Rose, we held that Exemption 2 protects 

nontrivial matters “where disclosure might risk circumvention 

of the law.” Id. at 1066. Accordingly, “the words ‘personnel 

rules and practices’ encompass not merely minor employment 

matters,” as we held in Jordan, “but may cover other rules 

and practices governing agency personnel, including 
6 

significant matters like job training for law enforcement 

personnel.” Id. at 1056. 

Despite Exemption 2’s reference to documents related 

“solely” to internal rules and practices, we further explained 

in Crooker that the exemption covers documents that are 

“predominantly” internal. Id. at 1056–57. This modification 

stemmed from our recognition that, if interpreted literally, the 

term “‘relating’ is potentially all-encompassing while ‘solely’ 

is potentially all-excluding.” Id. at 1056 (quoting Vaughn v. 

Rosen, 523 F.2d 1136, 1150 (D.C. Cir. 1975) (Leventhal, J., 

concurring)) (internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, 

despite the fact that the withheld portions of the ATF manual 

had some effect on the public at large, we held that the 

manual fell squarely within Exemption 2 because it was used 

“for predominantly internal purposes,” it was “designed to 

establish rules and practices for agency personnel, i.e., law 

enforcement investigatory techniques,” and its “disclosure 

would risk circumvention of agency regulations.” Id. at 1073. 

 

Crooker thus resolves the apparent conflict between the 

House and Senate Reports by explaining that Exemption 2 is 

actually two exemptions wrapped in one. The so-called low 

2 exemption, tracking the Senate Report, covers 

predominantly internal documents that deal with “trivial 

administrative matters of no genuine public interest.” Schiller 

v. NLRB, 964 F.2d 1205, 1207 (D.C. Cir. 1992) (internal 

quotation marks omitted). The “high 2” exemption, following 

the House Report, applies to “[p]redominantly internal 

documents the disclosure of which would risk circumvention 

of agency statutes and regulations.” Id. 

Since Crooker, we have articulated the requirements of 

the high 2 exemption—the one at issue in this case—in terms 

of a two-step inquiry. Morley v. Cent. Intelligence Agency, 
7 

508 F.3d 1108, 1124 (D.C. Cir. 2007). First, the information 

withheld must fall within the exemption’s language. 

Schwaner v. Dep’t of the Air Force, 898 F.2d 793, 794 (D.C. 

Cir. 1990) (quoting Founding Church of Scientology of Wash, 

D.C., Inc. v. Smith, 721 F.2d 828, 830 n.4 (D.C. Cir. 1983)). 

That is, the material must be “used for predominantly internal 

purposes,” and relate to “rules and practices for agency 

personnel.” Crooker, 670 F.2d at 1073. Second, if this 

threshold step is satisfied, the agency can defeat disclosure by 

demonstrating that release of the material would significantly 

risk circumvention of federal regulations or statutes. Schiller,

964 F.2d at 1207; see Crooker at 1074. 

 “Notably, [t]his exemption does not shield information 

on the sole basis that it is designed for internal agency use.” 

Morley, 508 F.3d at 1125 (internal quotation marks omitted) 

(alteration in original). In Schwaner v. Department of the Air 

Force, 898 F.2d 793 (D.C. Cir. 1990), for example, the 

plaintiff sought disclosure of a roster containing the names 

and duty addresses of military personnel stationed at Bolling 

Air Force Base. Recognizing that Exemption 2 was a poor fit 

because “data itself is not a practice,” the district court 

nonetheless held that the list fell within the exemption 

because it was “purely internal.” Schwaner, 898 F.2d at 794 

(internal quotation marks omitted). We reversed, holding that 

“the list does not bear an adequate relation to any rule or 

practice of the Air Force as those terms are used in exemption 

2.” Id. Thus, although we have sometimes framed the first 

step of the test as one of “predominant internality,” see, e.g., 

Nat’l Treasury Employees Union v. U.S. Customs Serv., 802 

F.2d 525, 528 (D.C. Cir. 1986) (“NTEU”), at least where the 

dispositive issue concerns whether the requested information 

adequately relates to internal matters, Schwaner makes clear 

that predominant internality is necessary but insufficient to 

get past the threshold inquiry; the government must also show 
8 

that the predominantly internal material bears a sufficient 

relationship to agency rules and practices. 

With this background in mind, we turn to the 

government’s argument that the requested blueprints are 

protected by the high 2 exemption. We review the district 

court’s grant of summary judgment de novo, remaining 

mindful that “Congress intended that Exemption 2 be 

interpreted narrowly and specifically,” Rose, 425 U.S. at 365 

(internal quotation marks omitted), and that “the ‘burden is on 

the agency’ to show that requested material falls within” 

Exemption 2, Nat’l Ass’n of Home Builders v. Norton, 309 

F.3d 26, 32 (D.C. Cir. 2002) (internal quotation marks 

omitted). 

III. 

The government argues that the blueprints satisfy 

Exemption 2’s threshold test because the “USDA uses 

blueprints,” and “few individuals outside the USDA have 

seen the blueprints.” Appellee’s Br. 12, 13. Record evidence 

supports the first of these claims, which amicus does not 

contest: Agency personnel use the blueprints to perform 

building repairs, “add room number, room description and 

square footage information” to building databases, coordinate 

office and laboratory moves, conduct “security assessment 

upgrades,” and identify watering responsibilities for BARC 

greenhouse staff. Bynum Decl. ¶ 3, July 27, 2007; Taylor 

Decl. ¶ 2. 

As to the government’s second point, that “few 

individuals outside the USDA have seen the blueprints,” 

amicus argues that the blueprints are not predominantly 

internal because the USDA has released blueprints for various 

BARC buildings to the Maryland Historical Trust. But we 

agree with the government that disclosure of some blueprints 
9 

to an outside group does not vitiate the predominantly internal 

nature of the blueprints on file at BARC and used in the 

course of the abovementioned activities. After all, Elliott is 

presumably not seeking those blueprints that are housed at the 

Maryland Historical Trust, but rather wants those that remain 

exclusively under the agency’s control. We therefore agree 

with the district court that the withheld blueprints satisfy 

Exemption 2’s predominant internality requirement. 

As explained above, however, to fall within Exemption 

2’s language documents withheld must also relate to “rules 

and practices governing agency personnel.” Crooker, 670 

F.2d at 1056. Satisfying this component of the threshold test 

presents little difficulty in cases where the withheld material 

itself constitutes an agency personnel rule or practice. 

Crooker, the canonical high 2 case, fits this mold, as the ATF 

training manual at issue there instructed government agents 

how to perform their official job duties. Other materials 

falling within this category include instructions to agency 

employees implementing the Equal Access to Justice Act, 

Schiller, 964 F.2d at 1206, Customs Service plans used to 

evaluate the qualifications of job applicants, NTEU, 802 F.2d 

at 527, and portions of the Manual for U.S. Marshals 

pertaining to the use of weapons and other law enforcement 

practices, Cox v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 601 F.2d 1, 3–4 (D.C. 

Cir. 1979). These cases clearly reflect the House Report’s 

conception of Exemption 2 as covering “[o]perating rules, 

guidelines, and manuals of procedure for Government 

investigators or examiners.” H.R. Rep. No. 89-1497, at 10 

(1966). 

True, unlike manuals and guidelines, blueprints give 

agency employees little explicit guidance about how to do 

their jobs. Information need not take the form of a rule or 

practice, however, to fall within the high 2 exemption. 
10 

Rather, the exemption expressly protects from disclosure 

material “related” to agency rules or practices. In Schwaner

we described two categories of material that could satisfy this 

relatedness requirement. One such category is exemplified by 

Rose, where the plaintiffs sought summaries of cases decided 

by the Air Force Academy’s Honor Committee. Although 

case summaries are not themselves rules and practices, we 

explained that they “manifest and implement the rules and 

practices” of the agency relating to the conduct of cadets, who 

must conform their conduct not just to the Academy’s Honor 

Code itself, but also to the Committee’s decisions 

implementing the Code. Schwaner, 898 F.2d at 795; see also 

Milner v. U.S. Dep’t of the Navy, 575 F.3d 959, 968 (9th Cir. 

2009) (protecting from disclosure Navy maps depicting 

explosives’ blast radii on the ground that the maps, created 

pursuant to a Navy manual, “constitute one part of the internal 

policies and procedures that [Navy] personnel are bound to 

follow when handling and storing explosive ordnance”). 

Exemption 2 also encompasses “materials that are so 

closely related to rules and practices that disclosure could lead 

to disclosure of the rule or practice itself.” Schwaner, 898 

F.2d at 796. For example, in Founding Church of Scientology 

of Washington, D.C., Inc. v. Smith, 721 F.2d 828, 829 (D.C. 

Cir. 1983), we allowed the FBI to withhold from disclosure 

routing instructions appearing on documents “to protect 

sensitive administrative instructions for the handling of the 

documents,” and in Lesar v. United States Department of 

Justice, 636 F.2d 472, 485 (D.C. Cir. 1980), we concluded 

that Exemption 2 protected “symbols used to refer to FBI 

informants in FBI documents and records.” As we explained 

in Schwaner, the “materials in these cases fall handily within 

the statutory requirement of being ‘related’ to agency rules or 

practices in that they bear upon, or cast light upon, those 

practices.” Schwaner, 898 F.2d at 796. The notations in 
11 

Founding Church of Scientology revealed the agency’s 

internal routing and distribution practices, and the redacted 

symbols in Lesar shed light on the FBI’s practice of using 

symbols to communicate about secret informants. In contrast, 

the Air Force personnel lists requested in Schwaner shed little 

light on any agency practice other than the practice of 

collecting the data itself. 898 F.2d at 795–96. Although the 

agency had argued that the lists reflected Air Force duty 

assignment practices, we found any such link too “tenuous 

and indirect” to satisfy the “related” requirement. Id. at 798. 

In Schwaner, moreover, we distinguished between high 2 

and low 2 cases, observing that “[j]udicial willingness to 

sanction a weak relation to ‘rules and practices’ may be 

greatest when the asserted government interest is relatively 

weighty.” Id. at 796. Thus with respect to high 2 materials, 

where the asserted government interest is, by definition, to 

prevent circumvention of law, the threshold inquiry may be 

somewhat less demanding than for low 2 matters, for which 

we require a tighter nexus between the withheld information 

and personnel rules and practices. 

Acknowledging this more forgiving standard applicable 

to high 2 materials, amicus nonetheless complains that the 

“record is completely devoid of any explanation as to how the 

BARC blueprints relate to the rules that govern USDA 

employees, or the practices of those employees.” Amicus 

Curiae’s Br. 38 (emphasis added). Although this somewhat 

overstates the case, it is true that the government’s briefs in 

both the district court and on appeal focus primarily on the 

predominant internality component of Exemption 2’s 

threshold test, rather than on the requirement that withheld 

material relate to rules and practices governing agency 

personnel. But that is because in the district court Elliott 

never challenged the relatedness of the blueprints to the 
12 

practices of USDA employees. In his opposition to the 

government’s summary judgment motion, Elliott cited Jordan 

for the proposition that Exemption 2’s reference to 

“personnel” rules and practices refers only to matters relating 

to “pay, pensions, vacations, hours of work, lunch hours,” and 

parking. Mem. in Opp’n to Summ. J. 4 (quoting Jordan, 591 

F.2d at 763). Elliott also suggested that the USDA did not use 

the blueprints for “internal” purposes. Id. at 2. The district 

court rejected Elliott’s first argument, explaining that we have 

since abandoned Jordan’s interpretation of “personnel” as 

encompassing only minor employment matters. Elliott, 2007 

WL 1302588, at *4. The district court nonetheless denied in 

part the government’s summary judgment motion on the 

grounds that the government had failed to establish the 

predominant internality of the blueprints or articulate clearly 

the connection between release of the blueprints and the 

particular statutes at risk of circumvention. Id. at *5. 

Focusing, then, on these two deficiencies, the 

government filed a renewed summary judgment motion. In 

his opposition to that renewed motion, however, Elliott never 

addressed whether the blueprints fall within the scope of 

Exemption 2. Rather, he complained only that the 

government’s affidavits were “made in bad faith,” citing in 

support 7 U.S.C. § 2243, which authorizes the USDA 

Secretary to sell “photographic prints (including bromide 

enlargements), lantern slides, transparencies, blueprints, and 

forest maps.” Mem. in Opp’n to Renewed Mot. for Summ. J. 

1. Because Elliott failed to raise the issue in the district court, 

amicus may not challenge the blueprints’ relationship to 

agency practices for the first time on appeal. See Adams v. 

Rice, 531 F.3d 936, 945 (D.C. Cir. 2008) (refusing to consider 

argument never made in district court). 
13 

IV. 

Determining whether the blueprints qualify as 

predominantly internal documents that relate to agency 

personnel rules and practices does not end our analysis. As 

noted above, to withhold material under Exemption 2 the 

government must also demonstrate that “disclosure 

significantly risks circumvention of agency regulations or 

statutes.” Crooker, 670 F.2d at 1074. Claiming this to be the 

case, the government asserted in the district court that 

disclosure of the blueprints “would render BARC vulnerable 

to potential threats and unnecessary risk in maintaining 

physical security over the research programs and critical 

infrastructure assets at BARC.” Thessen Decl. ¶ 3, Aug. 13, 

2007. According to the government, BARC buildings house 

various biological agents and toxins, illicit narcotics, and 

radioactive materials, and the campus contains critical 

infrastructure such as wastewater treatment plants, water 

distribution stations, and power transfer stations—all of which 

could be threatened by release of the blueprints. The 

government cited a variety of federal laws and policies that 

obligate the agency to protect these assets, including the 

Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and 

Response Act of 2002, 107 Pub. L. No. 107-188, 116 Stat. 

594 (2002), which provides for USDA regulation of certain 

biological agents and toxins, and presidential directives that 

set forth policies regarding the protection of critical 

infrastructure and food and agricultural systems against 

deliberate attacks, see Homeland Security Presidential 

Directive 7 (Dec. 17, 2003); Homeland Security Presidential 

Directive 9 (Jan. 30, 2004). Agreeing with the government, 

the district court found that disclosure of the blueprints “may 

risk circumvention of federal policies, statutes, or 

regulations.” Elliott, 518 F. Supp. 2d at 221. 
14 

 On appeal, amicus contends that the government failed to 

demonstrate that release of the blueprints would pose a 

“significant risk” to national security, Amicus Curiae’s Br. 

40, and that the “USDA failed to identify any specific USDA 

regulation or statute that could be circumvented by the release 

of the BARC blueprints,” id. at 42. Amicus further argues 

that the district court “erred when it summarily concluded that 

none of the information contained in the blueprints can be 

segregated and disclosed.” Id. at 43; see 5 U.S.C. § 552(b) 

(“Any reasonably segregable portion of a record shall be 

provided to any person requesting such a record after deletion 

of the portions which are exempt.”); Mead Data Cent. v. U.S. 

Dep’t of Air Force, 566 F.2d 242, 260 (D.C. Cir. 1977); 

(noting that “non-exempt portions of a document must be 

disclosed unless they are inextricably intertwined with exempt 

portions”). 

 But here again, Elliott failed to press these arguments in 

the district court. Even so, the government did address 

segregability in both of its summary judgment motions, 

arguing that release of redacted—i.e., partially blacked out—

blueprints would necessarily reveal the location of sensitive 

areas depicted on those blueprints. Similarly, the government 

argued, if the agency released some blueprints but not others, 

it would effectively tip off intruders that potential targets such 

as biological agents are located in buildings whose blueprints 

were withheld. 

Although Elliott challenged these assertions in neither of 

his motions opposing summary judgment, the district court, 

consistent with its “affirmative duty to consider the 

segregability issue sua sponte,” passed on the issue, ultimately 

concluding that no reasonably segregable portion of the 

blueprints could be released without presenting a risk of 

circumvention. Morley, 508 F.3d at 1123 (quoting Trans-
15 

Pac. Policing Agreement v. U.S. Customs Serv., 177 F.3d 

1022, 1028 (D.C. Cir. 1999)). This is therefore not a case 

where “both the [agency] and the district court appear to have 

overlooked the segregability requirement.” Schiller, 964 F.2d 

at 1209. And, contrary to amicus’s contention, “because the 

district court . . . was satisfied that [the agency’s] affidavits 

properly placed the withheld documents within the scope of 

Exemption [2], it did not need to reach the question of in 

camera review,” Juarez v. Dep’t of Justice, 518 F.3d 54, 60 

(D.C. Cir. 2008), particularly given that Elliott never disputed 

the content of the requested documents, cf. Allen v. CIA, 636 

F.2d 1287, 1299 (D.C. Cir. 1980), overruled on other grounds 

by Crooker, 670 F.2d 1051, as recognized in Founding 

Church of Scientology, 721 F.2d at 829. 

Elliott has benefited from the assistance of skilled 

appellate amicus, and we too are grateful for its diligent 

efforts, which have helped us understand the issues before us. 

Amicus’s arguments, however, stray beyond those Elliott 

raised in the district court, and although we recognize that 

Elliott was pro se, and therefore held to less stringent pleading 

and forfeiture standards, we will not consider for the first time 

on appeal arguments that a plaintiff entirely failed to raise in 

the trial court. See Greenhill v. Spellings, 482 F.3d 569, 572 

(D.C. Cir. 2007). That is particularly true where, as here, 

those arguments entail fact-intensive inquiries such as 

whether requested documents relate sufficiently to agency 

rules and practices or whether such documents—or portions 

thereof—could be released without compromising security 

and circumventing federal law. 

V. 

One final issue remains. To prevail on summary 

judgment, the “agency must show beyond material doubt . . . 

that it has conducted a search reasonably calculated to 
16 

uncover all relevant documents.” Weisberg v. U.S. Dep’t of 

Justice, 705 F.2d 1344, 1351 (D.C. Cir. 1983). “[E]ven if the 

protected records could be withheld under one of the FOIA 

exemptions, that does not absolve the [agency] of its duty to 

identify responsive documents, claim the relevant exemptions 

. . . , and explain its reasoning for withholding the documents 

in its affidavit.” Morley, 508 F.3d at 1120. In response to 

Elliott’s FOIA requests, USDA employees searched the 

records of the Real Property Section and the Engineering and 

Construction Branch, the only locations where BARC 

blueprints are stored. 

Amicus argues that given the amount of time devoted to 

these searches—about two hours apiece—the agency’s search 

was inherently inadequate. Although this argument is not 

forfeited—Elliott challenged in the district court the adequacy 

of the agency’s search—we disagree. The government’s 

affidavits describe these searches in detail, and amicus has 

presented no evidence calling into question the efficacy of the 

search beyond speculating as to the employees’ ability to 

thoroughly search a filing cabinet or electronic database 

within the indicated time period. See id. at 1116 (noting that 

courts can rely on agency affidavits that are reasonably 

detailed and nonconclusory). 

 

 Amicus next complains that although the employee 

tasked with searching the Real Property Section looked for all 

BARC blueprints on file, the employee who searched the 

Engineering and Construction Branch looked only for 

blueprints for Building 22. Thus, amicus argues, the agency 

failed to conduct a search reasonably calculated to uncover 

the blueprints to all BARC buildings, as Elliott requested. 

Again, we disagree. In her declaration, the agency’s FOIA 

coordinator stated that the agency had in fact compiled a list 

of “architectural drawings on file at the Engineering and 
17 

Construction Branch.” Hutchison Decl. ¶ 6. Absent 

countervailing evidence, we have no basis to question the 

agency’s assertion.

VI. 

We affirm the grant of summary judgment to the 

government. 

So ordered.