United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued May 7, 2014 Decided June 17, 2014

No. 13-5176

ALL PARTY PARLIAMENTARY GROUP ON EXTRAORDINARY 

RENDITION, ET AL.,

APPELLANTS

v.

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, ET AL.,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:09-cv-02375)

Dominic F. Perella argued the cause for appellants. With 

him on the briefs were Audrey E. Moog, Jonathan L. Abram, 

and Mary H. Wimberly. 

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

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

were Stuart F. Delery, Assistant Attorney General, Ronald 

Machen, U.S. Attorney, and Matthew Collette, Attorney.

Before: TATEL, GRIFFITH, and PILLARD, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge TATEL.
2

TATEL, Circuit Judge: Under the Freedom of Information 

Act, although generally any legal entity may request records 

from federal agencies, U.S. intelligence agencies are prohibited 

from releasing records to foreign government entities or to their 

“representatives.” In this case, a member of the British House of 

Commons, an informal British parliamentary caucus, and an

American lawyer representing both all filed FOIA requests

seeking various records from the CIA and other intelligence

agencies. The agencies denied these requests, claiming that the 

requesters all qualified as “representatives” of the British 

government. The district court agreed and dismissed their suit to 

compel disclosure. For the reasons stated in this opinion, we 

reverse.

I.

Appellant Andrew Tyrie is a member of the British 

Parliament and co-chair of Appellant the All Party Parliamentary 

Group on Extraordinary Rendition (“APPG”), an informal 

parliamentary caucus. Seeking to expose the United Kingdom’s 

alleged involvement in extraordinary rendition, Tyrie and the 

APPG, along with their American lawyer, Appellant Joe Cyr, 

filed FOIA requests with various federal agencies, including 

some—the CIA and components of the Departments of Defense,

Justice, State, and Homeland Security—that are part of the 

“intelligence community.” See 50 U.S.C. § 3003(4) (listing 

agencies that comprise the “intelligence community”). Declining 

to release relevant records, these agencies invoked FOIA’s socalled Foreign Government Entity Exception. That exception—

unique among FOIA provisions in that it limits access based on 

the identity of the requester rather than the content of the 

requested records—precludes intelligence agencies from

“mak[ing] any record available . . . to—(i) any government 

entity, other than a State, territory, commonwealth, or district of 
3

the United States, or any subdivision thereof; or (ii) a 

representative of a government entity described in clause (i).”

5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(3)(E). According to the intelligence agencies, 

all three FOIA requesters qualify as “representatives” of the 

British government.

The FOIA requesters sued to compel disclosure. They 

argued that in order to qualify as a “representative” of a foreign 

government entity, the FOIA requester must be an agent of that 

entity, and because they had no authority to file these requests on

behalf of the British government, the intelligence agencies could 

not invoke the Foreign Government Entity Exception.

The district court dismissed the complaint, reasoning that 

“the term ‘representative’ is not synonymous with ‘agent’ for the 

purposes of [FOIA] . . . , and when Congress uses different 

words a court must assume that the difference was intentional.”

All Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition v. 

U.S. Department of Defense, 851 F. Supp. 2d 169, 175 (D.D.C. 

2012). Finding that Tyrie “wields the power to act with the 

government’s imprimatur,” the district court concluded that he

qualifies as a “representative” of the British Parliament, a 

foreign government entity. Id. at 175. “Because Joe Cyr is 

Andrew Tyrie’s legal representative,” the district court 

continued, “Cyr’s request is similarly barred.” Id. at 177. And as 

to the APPG, an organization composed “exclusively of public 

officials,” the district court concluded that it is itself a 

“‘subdivision’ of a foreign ‘government entity’ within the 

language of the [Foreign Government Entity Exception].” Id. at 

175–76. 

The three FOIA requesters now appeal, reiterating 

arguments they made in the district court. For their part, the

intelligence agencies do not defend the district court’s 

conclusion that the APPG constitutes a subdivision of a foreign 
4

government entity. Instead, they argue that all three FOIA 

requesters qualify as “representatives” of the British 

government: Tyrie as a member of Parliament, the APPG as an 

organization made up entirely of members of Parliament, and 

Cyr as their legal representative. “We review de novo the district 

court’s grant of a motion to dismiss, as well as its resolution of 

this pure question of statutory interpretation,” Gonzalez-Vera v. 

Townley, 595 F.3d 379, 381–82 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (internal 

quotation marks and citation omitted), and give the intelligence 

agencies’ interpretation of FOIA no deference, see Al-Fayed v. 

C.I.A., 254 F.3d 300, 307 (D.C. Cir. 2001) (“[I]t is precisely 

because FOIA’s terms apply government-wide that we generally 

decline to accord deference to agency interpretations of the 

statute, as we would otherwise do under Chevron . . . .”).

II.

At the outset, we think it important to place this case in its 

proper context. For one thing, contrary to the intelligence 

agencies’ suggestion that interpreting “representative” to mean 

“agent” would expose government secrets to terrorists, national 

security is not at issue here. Because one of FOIA’s traditional 

exemptions prevents disclosure of classified records, no 

classified information will see the light of day regardless of how 

we decide this case. See 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(1) (precluding 

disclosure of records “specifically authorized under criteria 

established by an Executive order to be kept secret in the interest 

of national defense or foreign policy”). Moreover, whatever the 

Foreign Government Entity Exception’s “representative” 

provision means, it is unlikely to pose a serious barrier to the 

release of unclassified records. Since the exception does not 

apply to FOIA requests filed by any person, foreign or domestic, 

other than foreign government entities and their representatives,

a requester concerned about the exception can steer clear of it

simply by waiting for a likeminded requester to seek the same 
5

information. Cf. Oral Arg. Rec. 21:10–:40 (noting that several 

FOIA requesters who fall well outside the Foreign Government 

Entity Exception have recently filed requests identical to those at 

issue here). But because Tyrie, the APPG, and Cyr filed these

requests themselves, prompting the intelligence agencies to 

invoke the Foreign Government Entity Exception, we must 

determine the scope of the exception’s “representative” 

provision—a question of first impression in this or any circuit. 

Although the intelligence agencies insist that these FOIA 

requesters are “representatives” of a foreign government entity,

they never clearly explain how they would have us define 

“representative.” In their brief, they urge us to hold that the 

Foreign Government Entity Exception applies, “at a minimum, 

to FOIA requests filed by members of the legislative bodies of 

foreign governments, groups comprised solely of such 

individuals, and their legal representatives.” Appellees’ Br. 10. 

When pressed at oral argument to provide a definition of the 

term that would apply more broadly, counsel suggested that

“representatives” of foreign government entities include all 

those who have the capacity to act on behalf of such entities. 

Oral Arg. Rec. 17:00–18:20, 22:25–23:00. But counsel seemed 

less willing to defend this interpretation once he realized that it 

might capture personal secretaries, cafeteria employees, and 

janitors. Id. at 25:15–28:50.

By contrast, the FOIA requesters have consistently posited a 

clear interpretation of the term “representative.” As they see it,

“representative” means “agent.” Thus, “representatives” of 

foreign government entities include only those who have been

empowered to file certain types of FOIA requests on behalf of 

such entities and only when they file those types of requests.

Authority to act as an agent of a foreign government entity for 

purposes of FOIA is likely inherent in certain positions, such as 
6

head of state and ambassador, obviating any need to inquire into 

whether officials holding such positions have specific authority 

to file particular sorts of FOIA requests. Other officials, such as 

cabinet ministers, likely also have inherent authority to submit 

FOIA requests so long as the requests relate to matters within 

the jurisdiction of their offices. The intelligence agencies 

concede that under the FOIA requesters’ theory, Tyrie, the 

APPG, and Cyr fall outside the Foreign Government Entity 

Exception.

The FOIA requesters have the better of this argument. To 

begin with, consider the meaning of the word “representative.” 

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “representative,” in part, 

as “[o]ne who represents another, as agent, delegate, substitute, 

successor, or heir.” XIII OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY 660 (J.A. 

Simpson & E.S.C. Weiner eds., 2d ed. 1989); see also 

WEBSTER’S THIRD NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY 1926 

(Philip Babcock Gove ed., 3d. ed. 1993) (defining 

“representative,” in part, as “constituting the agent for another

esp. through delegated authority”). Indeed, this Court recently 

observed as much with respect to the same word in a different 

statute: “‘representative’ is traditionally and commonly defined 

as an agent with authority to bind others.” Loving v. I.R.S., 742 

F.3d 1013, 1016 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (citing various dictionaries, 

including specialized legal dictionaries, and various statutory 

definitional provisions). Given that “agent” is a traditional and 

common definition of “representative,” and given that reading 

“representative” of a foreign government entity to mean “agent” 

of a foreign government entity makes perfect sense, we suspect 

that Congress would have used a different word—perhaps 

“official,” “employee,” or “affiliate”—had it wanted to avoid 

incorporating agency principles into the Foreign Government 

Entity Exception. 
7

The structure of the Foreign Government Entity Exception 

reinforces this conclusion. Recall that the exception first 

precludesintelligence agencies from considering FOIA requests 

filed by foreign government entities and immediately thereafter 

precludes such agencies from considering requests filed by

“representatives” of such entities. The U.S. Code is chock-full of 

provisions that first mention some entity and then refer to that 

entity’s “representatives” in order to ensure that the provision

applies not only to the entity itself but also to that entity acting 

through others. See, e.g., 7 U.S.C. § 7464(a) (establishing a

National Kiwifruit Board consisting in part of “10 members who 

are producers, exporters, or importers (or their 

representatives)”); 30 U.S.C. § 1271(a)(2) (authorizing “the 

Secretary [of the Interior] or his authorized representative” to 

“order a cessation of surface coal mining and reclamation 

operations” upon finding certain environmental violations). 

Granted, many of these provisions refer to an entity and its 

representatives in a single phrase whereas FOIA section 

552(a)(3)(E) splits entities and their representatives into separate 

subsections, but the lengthy definition of foreign government 

entity in subsection 552(a)(3)(E)(i) likely required Congress to 

employ separate subsections here. See 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(3)(E)(i) 

(referring to “any government entity, other than a State, territory, 

commonwealth, or district of the United States, or any 

subdivision thereof”). We therefore think it reasonable to infer

that Congress included the “representative” provision in order to 

prevent foreign government entities from evading the Foreign 

Government Entity Exception by filing FOIA requests through 

agents, not to create a separate and independent class of 

disfavored FOIA requesters.

The intelligence agencies argue that “representative” means 

something other than “agent.” They emphasize two points. 
8

First, while acknowledging that “agent” is one possible 

definition of “representative,” they suggest that Congress drafted 

this statute in a way that requires us to adopt a different 

definition. Echoing the district court, they primarily argue that

had Congress wanted to establish an agency requirement, it 

would have used the more precise word “agent” instead of 

“representative.” But as the intelligence agencies’ counsel 

conceded at oral argument, the words “representative” and 

“agent” are synonyms. Oral Arg. Rec. 15:40–16:00. To take just 

one example, The Random House Thesaurus lists 

“representative” as the first synonym for “agent,” and vice versa. 

THE RANDOM HOUSE THESAURUS COLLEGE EDITION 30, 599

(Jess Stein & Stuart Berg Flexner eds., 1984); see also ROGET’S 

INTERNATIONAL THESAURUS 412 (Robert L. Chapman ed., 5th 

ed. 1992) (listing “representative” as the third synonym for 

“agent”); F. STURGES ALLEN, ALLEN’S SYNONYMS AND 

ANTONYMS 323 (T.H. Vail Motter ed., 1938) (listing “agent” as 

the first synonym for “representative”). Where, as here, two 

words share at least one common meaning, we read nothing into 

Congress’s use of one rather than the other. See Tyler v. Cain, 

533 U.S. 656, 664 (2001) (“Congress, needless to say, is 

permitted to use synonyms in a statute.”).

In further support of their argument that Congress drafted 

this statute in a way that precludes interpreting “representative” 

to mean “agent,” the intelligence agencies argue that since 

“representative” can also be defined as “member of a legislative 

body,” we should interpret “representative” to include, at least, 

all members of foreign legislative bodies. We disagree. Even 

though some dictionaries list “member of a legislative body” as 

one definition of “representative,” and even though members of 

Congress are known as “representatives,” members of legislative 

bodies are “representatives” because they act on behalf of their 

constituents, not because they are representatives of foreign 
9

government entities. See, e.g., XIII OXFORD ENGLISH 

DICTIONARY at 660 (defining “representative,” in part, as “one 

who . . . represents a number of persons in some special 

capacity; spec. one who represents a section of the community as 

member of a legislative body”). 

Second, the intelligence agencies point to the purpose of the 

Foreign Government Entity Exception. According to the House 

Report, the only relevant legislative history, Congress added the 

Foreign Government Entity Exception to FOIA in order to 

lessen compliance burdens: 

[F]oreign persons and governments (including those 

that may support or participate in terrorist activities) 

have generated requests that require a significant 

commitment of Intelligence Community resources to 

process. . . . Because elements of the Intelligence 

Community routinely handle classified national 

security information, the resources required to perform 

the painstaking, line-by-line reviews necessary to 

ensure the proper protection of such classified 

information are substantial. This section will prevent 

the diversion of the Intelligence Community’s limited 

declassification resources for this purpose.

H.R. REP. No. 107-592, at 27 (2002). The intelligence agencies 

argue that interpreting “representative” to mean “agent” would, 

instead of decreasing compliance burdens, actually impose new

burdens on intelligence agencies because they would have to 

engage in a time-intensive inquiry into whether each individual 

FOIA requester qualifies as an agent of a foreign government 

entity.

We hesitate to put much stock in the House Report. For one 

thing, it refers to “foreign persons” even though the statute 

applies only to certain foreign persons, i.e., foreign government 
10

entities and their representatives. Moreover, even if the report

accurately documents what the House committee—a subset of 

one house of Congress—thought about the Foreign Government 

Entity Exception, we have explained that our interpretation finds 

support in the text and structure of the statute. See, e.g., Citizens 

Coal Council v. Norton, 330 F.3d 478, 481 (D.C. Cir. 2003)

(noting that “text [and] structure” are “traditional tools of 

statutory interpretation” that must be considered alongside 

“legislative history” and “purpose” (internal quotation marks 

omitted)).

In any event, we have no reason to believe that the 

intelligence agencies’ preferred approach would prove any less 

burdensome than ours. Reading the term “representative” to 

mean something along the lines of “official,” “employee,” or 

“affiliate,” as the intelligence agencies seem to suggest, would 

leave the precise contours of the “representative” class quite 

vague. Is a parliamentary janitor or cafeteria worker a 

“representative” of a foreign government entity? What about a 

low-level civil service staffer at the U.K. Home Office? Or what 

about Tyrie’s personal secretary? The intelligence agencies 

never explain why resolving these uncertainties would prove any 

easier than identifying whether FOIA requesters are agents of 

foreign government entities. Indeed, determining whether a 

FOIA requester is a representative of a foreign government 

entity is not unlike other inquiries agencies already engage in. 

For instance, this Court has interpreted FOIA section 552(d), 

which provides that FOIA exemptions do not apply to requests 

from Congress, as requiring agencies to distinguish between 

requests made by members of Congress in their official 

capacities and those made in their individual capacities. See 

Murphy v. Department of the Army, 613 F.2d 1151, 1157 (D.C. 

Cir. 1979); see also Office of Information Policy, U.S. 

Department of Justice, Congressional Access Under FOIA, 5 
11

FOIA UPDATE 1 (1984), available at 

http://www.justice.gov/oip/foia_updates/Vol_V_1/page3.htm 

(rejecting Murphy and recommending adoption of an agency 

approach under which “[e]ven where a FOIA request is made by 

a Member clearly acting in a completely official capacity, such a 

request does not properly trigger the special access rule . . . 

unless it is made by a committee or subcommittee chairman, or 

otherwise under the authority of a committee or subcommittee”).

We thus conclude that FOIA requesters who have authority 

to file requests on behalf of foreign government entities are 

“representatives” of such entities when they file requests of the 

sort they have authority to file. Since the intelligence agencies 

concede that under this theory these three FOIA requesters fall 

outside the Foreign Government Entity Exception, the exception

poses no barrier to the FOIA requests at issue.

III.

For the foregoing reasons, we reverse and remand.

So ordered.