1461, a statute enacted in 1948 to create the USIA and to establish the USIA's role as our government's spokesperson abroad. Nowhere in the text does the statute specifically forbid disclosure. Nonetheless, the majority opinion holds that it is proper to infer that Congress intended the ban on dissemination to be a bar on FOIA disclosure. By holding that the Smith-Mundt Act is an Exemption 3 statute, the majority opinion radically departs from the precedents of the Supreme Court and this Court holding that Congress's intent to exempt matters from disclosure be express and manifest in the actual words of the statute. Rather than following settled law that an Exemption 3 statute must contain a clear and unmistakable statement from Congress in the statutory text that the records requested must be withheld with no room for decisionmaking at the agency level, the majority opinion embraces an analysis that is at odds with precedent.
Majority slip op.
A prohibition against domestic dissemination or distribution is not synonymous with a prohibition against domestic disclosure . Dissent slip op. Dissemination and distribution are synonyms for each other. After all, while Congress intended to promote active dissemination of program materials to foreign audiences, it also intended to restrict the USIA from becoming a domestic propaganda machine. The majority opinion constitutes a marked departure from Exemption 3 case law.