Task: songer_casetyp1_4-3

What follows is an opinion from a United States Court of Appeals.
Your task is to identify the issue in the case, that is, the social and/or political context of the litigation in which more purely legal issues are argued. Put somewhat differently, this field identifies the nature of the conflict between the litigants. The focus here is on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis.
Your task is to determine the specific issue in the case within the broad category of "due process". 

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge HARRY T. EDWARDS.
Separate opinion concurring and dissenting in part filed by Circuit Judge BORK.
TABLE OP CONTENTS
Page
Introduction_____________________________ 1097
I. BACKGROUND _____ 1097
II. THE USE OP A TIME-OF-REQUEST
CUT-OPP DATE......—......... 1100
A. Applicable Law_________________ 1100
B. The Legality of the Agency’s Rule Adopting A Time-of-Request Cut-off Date......... 1102
C. The Reasonableness of the Agency’s Procedure in This Instance________ 1103
Page
III. THE REFERRAL PROCEDURE_____ 1105
A. “Agency Records” Covered by the Act.......................... 1105
B. Treatment of Documents Obtained From Other Agencies____________ 1109
IV. INVOCATION OP THE “INTELLIGENCE SOURCE” EXEMPTION.... 1112
CONCLUSION.............. ni4
HARRY T. EDWARDS, Circuit Judge:
We are asked in this case to decide several questions concerning the scope of the duties imposed on government agencies by the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA” or “the Act”). The District Court granted appellee’s motion for summary judgment on the theories that appellee had conducted a sufficiently thorough search for documents subject to disclosure and had released to appellant all of the materials required by the Act. In reaching these conclusions, the District Court upheld as reasonable an an-publicized Central Intelligence Agency (“CIA” or “the agency”) rule which had the effect of limiting the FOIA search to materials in the agency’s possession on the date when appellant made his initial request for documents. This “time-of-request cut-off” policy was approved by the trial court even though the agency failed to disclose any documents to appellant until compelled to do so by an order of the court almost two and one-half years after the original time of request. The District Court also granted appellee’s motion to dismiss from the lawsuit all records in the possession of the CIA that had been obtained from the State Department or the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”). Finally, the District Court relied solely on affidavits submitted by the CIA in upholding the nondisclosure of a number of disputed documents under FOIA exemptions (1) and (3). Because we conclude that the District Court’s rulings were founded upon misinterpretations of applicable legal standards, we reverse and remand for further proceedings.
I. Background
The outcome of this case turns substantially upon nuances in its facts. Accordingly, the procedural background to this appeal will be described at some length.
Appellant McGehee is a free-lance journalist and a relative of three victims of the gruesome demise of the “People’s Temple” in Jonestown, Guyana. Many of the circumstances surrounding the Jonestown Tragedy are well known, indeed notorious. In November, 1978, Congressman Leo J. Ryan and a portion of his staff traveled to Guyana to investigate allegations of mistreatment of some of his constituents in the Jonestown religious community. On November 18, as they were about to board a plane to leave, Ryan, three representatives of the media, and one apparent defector from the community were shot and killed. Within hours, almost all of the more than 900 members of the Jonestown congregation, including its founder, Jim Jones, either committed suicide or were murdered.
Despite the extensive attention given the Jonestown Tragedy, the character of the People’s Temple religious community, the events leading up to the catastrophe, and the manner in which so many people died remain somewhat mysterious. Proceeding on the assumption that the CIA possesses recorded information that sheds light on these matters, McGehee, on December 6, 1978, filed the FOIA request that gives rise to this controversy. McGehee initially asked for documents relating to several aspects of the development and fate of Jim Jones’ congregation. On December 22, at the suggestion of a representative of the agency, he narrowed his request to records pertaining to the “Peoples Temple.”
The treatment accorded McGehee’s request during the following month is not entirely clear from the record. It appears that the agency’s Information and Privacy Division (“IPD”), the office that coordinates responses to requests for information, determined that two other divisions—the Directorate of Operations (“DO”) and the Office of Security (“OS”)—were the offices most likely to possess documents of the sort McGehee was seeking. Accordingly, those two divisions were “tasked”—i.e., asked to search for and identify relevant records. Each division apparently was instructed to confine its attention to documents received on or before December 22, 1978, the day McGehee’s request was finalized. Soon thereafter OS informed IPD that it had found no such materials. An initial search by DO, on the other hand, revealed the existence of responsive documents, but DO at this time appears not to have informed IPD of its findings. Nor does DO seem to have made any effort at this point to review or even to retrieve the identified documents. Meanwhile, IPD learned that a third division, the National Foreign Assessment Center/Office of Central Reference (“NFAC/OCR”), had completed a computer search in response to an earlier FOIA request very similar to McGehee’s (the “Douglas request”) and had identified relevant documents in the agency’s possession. However, no immediate effort was made to retrieve those documents either. Instead, McGehee’s request (which was marked with some kind of notation of the location of records that might prove responsive) was placed at the end of a “processing queue,” the CIA’s system for dealing with FOIA requests on a “first-in-first-out basis.”
This initial flurry of activity had subsided by mid-January, 1979. Between that time and December, 1980, the agency did virtually nothing about McGehee’s request. Beginning in March, 1979, McGehee periodically contacted the CIA, either directly or through counsel, to ascertain the status of his request. The agency provided him with no information regarding the steps it had taken and gave him no definite indication of when any responsive documents would be released. Never did the agency inform McGehee that it had adopted December 22, 1978 as a “cutoff date” for its searches.
On November 21, 1980, McGehee filed suit in the District Court seeking to compel the CIA to respond to his pleas. On March 3, 1981, the court set a deadline of May 5,1981, by which time the agency was to complete its processing of McGehee’s request, release all nonexempt responsive material, and submit a Vaughn index cataloging any withheld documents. Soon thereafter the court granted the agency’s motion for a protective order, shielding the CIA from discovery by McGehee. On May 5, in compliance with the court’s directive, the agency revealed (for the first time) that it possessed 84 documents responsive to McGehee’s request. It disposed of those materials as follows: 12 were released in full; 18 were released with substantial portions deleted; 26 were withheld; 28 were forwarded to other government agencies, from which the CIA had originally obtained them.
The last set of records is one of the hubs of this controversy. It is undisputed that, of the 28 “other agency” documents, 27 had originated with the State Department and one with the FBI. In accordance with its standard procedure, the CIA declined to undertake any kind of substantive review of the “other agency” records and instead sent them to the agencies that first compiled them to enable those agencies to determine whether any material was exempt from disclosure. McGehee has not submitted a FOIA request to either the State Department or the FBI, insisting that the CIA is required by the Act to evaluate and release the documents in question. Nevertheless, the State Department has voluntarily reviewed the 27 records that it originally created and has released a majority of them to McGehee. The fate of the FBI document does not appear from the record.
In the summer of 1981, McGehee accidentally learned, from a letter written by a representative of the CIA to a third party, that the agency had been treating the time of his original request as a cut-off date for its FOIA search. Moreover, comments made in that letter raised the possibility that the agency had limited its searches to files denominated “People’s Temple” and had not sought information under any closely related headings—e.g., the Reverend James Jones or Jonestown. See App. 191.
On January 19,1982, despite these revelations, the District Court issued final judgment in the case. The court denied McGehee’s motion for an in camera inspection of the withheld and edited documents to test the basis for the agency’s refusal to release them, granted the CIA’s motion to dismiss from the lawsuit the documents it had obtained from the State Department and FBI, and granted the CIA’s motion for summary judgment as to the remainder of the suit. This appeal followed.
II. The Use of a Time-of-Request Cut-off Date
McGehee’s first challenge concerns the CIA’s decision to limit its search to records in its possession on the date when his request was finalized. He points out that the agency did not disclose any documents to him until compelled to do so by an order of the District Court almost two and one-half years after his original request. Under these circumstances, he argues, the agency failed to discharge its statutory obligation when it retrieved and released only documents that originated with and were in the possession of the CIA during the first month following the events to which his request principally related.
A. Applicable Law
We begin by reviewing the legal principles that govern McGehee’s claim. First, it is well established that the adequacy of an agency’s response to a FOIA request is measured by a standard of reasonableness. As this court recently noted:
[A]n agency is not “ ‘required to reorganize its [files] in response to’ ” a demand for information, but it does have a firm statutory duty to make reasonable efforts to satisfy it.
Founding Church of Scientology v. National Security Agency, 610 F.2d 824, 837 (D.C.Cir.1979) (footnotes omitted) (emphasis added). This same standard of reasonableness that has been applied to test the thoroughness and comprehensiveness of agency search procedures is equally applicable to test the legality of an agency rule establishing a temporal limit to its search effort. In other words, a temporal limit pertaining to FOIA searches (such as the “time-of-request cut-off” policy that is at issue in this case) is only valid when the limitation is consistent with the agency’s duty to take reasonable steps to ferret out requested documents.
Second, we hold that the agency bears the burden of establishing that any limitations on the search it undertakes in a particular case comport with its obligation to conduct a reasonably thorough investigation. It seems to us clear that the burden of persuasion on this matter is properly imposed on the agency. The Act explicitly assigns to the agency the burden of persuasion with regard to the closely related issue of the legitimacy of the agency’s invocation of a statutory exemption to justify withholding of material. Two considerations indicate that the same rule should govern the issue before us. One is that the information bearing upon the reasonableness of any temporal or other limitation on a search effort is within the agency’s exclusive control. The other is that the Act as a whole is clearly written so as to favor the disclosure of any documents not covered by one of the enumerated exemptions. Insofar as burdens of persuasion are generally assigned to parties advancing disfavored contentions, the agency should bear the responsibility of convincing the trier of fact that its less than comprehensive search is reasonable under the circumstances
Third, the fact that the subject of this appeal is the grant of appellee’s motion for summary judgment means that the agency must satisfy a significant legal standard in order to carry its burden. The standard has been stated as follows:
It is well settled in Freedom of Information Act cases as in any others that “[s]ummary judgment may be granted only if the moving party proves that no substantial and material facts are in dispute and that he is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.”... [Moreover, the] “ ‘inferences to be drawn from the underlying facts... must be viewed in the light most favorable to the party opposing the motion.’ ”
Church of Scientology, 610 F.2d at 836 (footnotes omitted). Thus, for the CIA to have properly prevailed in the case at bar, it must have shown that no material fact relevant to the reasonableness of its use of a time-of-request cut-off date was in dispute and that the evidence established that the procedure employed was reasonable “as a matter of law.” In deciding whether the agency had made such a showing, the District Court was entitled to rely upon affidavits submitted by the agency, describing its search procedures and explaining why a more thorough investigation would have been unduly burdensome. Id. But such affidavits would suffice only if they were relatively detailed, nonconclusory and not impugned by evidence in the record of bad faith on the part of the agency. Id.
B. The Legality of the Agency’s Rule Adopting A Time-of-Request Cut-off Date
In light of the foregoing principles, we must now determine whether the District Court fairly could have concluded that the CIA’s decision to limit its search to documents in its possession as of the date of McGehee’s finalized request was consistent with its statutory obligations. The agency would have us decide this question from a generic standpoint; it argues that language in the FOIA and authoritative case law interpreting the statute establish that the use of a time-of-request cut-off date is always reasonable. However, we are convinced that none of the arguments advanced by the agency to support this sweeping claim survives scrutiny.
The CIA first points to the statutory provision requiring that the materials sought by a FOIA request be “reasonably describe[d].” That provision pertains to the subject matter, location and form of materials sought by a request, not to the times at which responsive documents are acquired. The CIA next directs our attention to two cases holding that an agency has no duty continuously to update its responses to a FOIA request. The doctrine tentatively established by those decisions is inapposite. The question presented in this case is whether, when an agency first releases documents to a requester, it may use as a cut-off date the time of his original demand. That an agency has no obligation, after it has once responded fully to a FOIA request, “to ‘run what might amount to a loose-leaf service’ ” for the benefit of the applicant has little bearing on the issue before us. Finally, the CIA points to case law suggesting that one cannot modify a FOIA request in mid-litigation. Those decisions establish, at most, that a requester is not permitted to alter or refine the subjects to which he originally directed attention; they have nothing to do with the legality of the use of the time of a request as a temporal limit to a FOIA search.
C. The Reasonableness of the Agency’s Procedure in This Instance
Having concluded that neither the terms of the statute nor the case law interpreting them supports a claim that the use of a time-of-request cut-off date is always proper, we are compelled to turn to the particular facts of the case before us to assess the reasonableness of the agency’s conduct. MeGehee directs our attention to circumstances that, on their face, east considerable doubt on the merits of the agency’s procedure. The CIA took almost two and one-half years to respond to McGehee’s request. Yet, when it finally released documents, the CIA chose to limit itself to records that originated with and were possessed by the agency during the first 35 days following the Jonestown Tragedy. Were these facts all that appeared in the record, we would be very hard pressed to sustain the agency’s actions.
The CIA attempts to dispel the skepticism to which the foregoing circumstances give rise by arguing that it would be exceedingly difficult to conduct its processing of FOIA requests on any other basis. In the affidavit of John Bacon submitted to the District Court, in its brief to this court, and in oral argument, the agency has consistently maintained that uniform use of a time-of-request cut-off date is essential to avoid an “administrative nightmare.” To support this claim, the agency points to the benefits of “precispon]” (the value of having a single cut-off date that all agency divisions know in advance), the “confusion” that might be engendered by different agency components using different cutoff dates (e.g., each division using the date at which it commenced searching for documents), the alleged cost and inconvenience to the agency of conducting the successive, duplicative searches that might be necessary if the date of a final response or the date of litigation were employed as a cutoff date, and the disruption of the agency’s fee schedules that would accompany the use of anything other than its present procedure.
In the absence of more detailed substantiation, these claims strike us as either unpersuasive or irrelevant. Indeed, alternative procedures, without the flaws of the time-of-request cut-off policy and without any real potential for the administrative nightmares alleged by appellee, readily come to mind. The following procedure is an example:
Sample Procedure Applying a Reasonable “Cut-off” Date to a FOIA Search
Soon after the CIA first receives a request, IPD “tasks” divisions of the agency it considers likely to have access to responsive documents. Those divisions determine whether they have any such materials and so inform IPD. IPD then notifies the requester that the agency possesses some relevant documents and will process his request as soon as it has completed processing all requests it received earlier. When the request nears the head of the “queue,” IPD instructs each agency division that it thinks might possess relevant records to conduct, at that time, a thorough search for all responsive documents in its possession, to retrieve identified records forthwith, and to submit them to the central office for evaluation by persons able to determine whether any material is exempt. Substantive review follows promptly and all nonexempt material is released.
We do not offer the foregoing Sample as a directive to the agency, a procedure with which it is henceforth bound to comply. Nor do we mean to endorse a procedure fraught with excessive time delays. In designing the system, we have taken for granted the fact that the CIA is experiencing inordinate delays in processing FOIA requests; a different procedure might be more suitable for an agency that responds to requests on a relatively current basis. In sum, we set forth the Sample Procedure merely to indicate that one can easily imagine a system that incorporates a cut-off date much later than the time of the original request, that results in a much fuller search and disclosure than the procedure presently used by the agency, that forecloses the necessity for an excessive number of supplementary demands (see note 42 infra), and that does not appear unduly burdensome, expensive, or productive of “administrative chaos.”
It is possible that circumstances unknown to us or to the District Court do indeed render unfeasible any such alternative, more responsive procedure. If so, the agency’s argument that its present practice is “reasonable” would be powerful. We therefore remand this portion of the case with instructions to afford the agency an opportunity to adduce additional relevant testimony. It should be clear, however, that to prevail on this issue, the agency will have to do better than it has thus far.
One additional aspect of this general problem merits brief attention. It would be extremely difficult for the CIA to convince us that it may “reasonably” use any cut-off date without so informing the requester. Such notification would involve an insignificant expenditure of time and effort on the part of the agency. And it would enable the requester to submit supplementary demands for information if he felt so inclined. Unless on remand some extraordinary showing is forthcoming of why the agency should not be required to inform requesters of the dates it is using, the CIA’s unpublicized temporal limitation of its searches should be held invalid.
III. The Referral Procedure
McGehee’s second allegation of error is that the District Court improperly granted the CIA’s motion to dismiss from the lawsuit the records it had obtained from the State Department and FBI. As was true with regard to the issue just discussed, the general principles governing McGehee’s claim are well known but their application to the specific question presented has never been resolved.
A. “Agency Records” Covered by the Act
The Supreme Court has recently clarified the conditions under which a federal court may compel an agency to release documents. In Kissinger v. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 445 U.S. 136, 100 S.Ct. 960, 63 L.Ed.2d 267 (1980), the Court held:
The FOIA represents a carefully balanced scheme of public rights and agency obligations designed to foster greater access to agency records than existed prior to its enactment. That statutory scheme authorizes federal courts to ensure private access to requested materials when three requirements have been met. Under 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(B) federal jurisdiction is dependent upon a showing that an agency has (1) “improperly”; (2) “withheld”; (3) “agency records.” Judicial authority to devise remedies and enjoin agencies can only be invoked, under the jurisdictional grant conferred by § 552, if the agency has contravened all three components of this obligation.
Id. at 150, 100 S.Ct. at 968.
The CIA argues vigorously that the District Court’s decision in the instant case was proper under the third branch of this test. Records that are in the possession of the agency to which a FOIA request is submitted but that were originally compiled by another agency, the CIA insists, are not “agency records” within the meaning of the Act. So stated, the argument seems rather implausible, but this was indeed the theory on which the District Court rested its ruling.
Evaluation of this argument proves surprisingly difficult because of the absence of statutory or precedential guidance. As has often been remarked, the Freedom of Information Act, for all its attention to the treatment of “agency records,” never defines that crucial phrase. A reading of the legislative history yields insignificant insight into Congress’ conception of the sorts of materials the Act covers. And we gain little by ransacking the case law interpreting the FOIA; no appellate court has expressed an opinion on the question of the legal status of documents prepared by one agency in the possession of another
This and other courts have, on occasion, been called upon to decide whether other materials of ambiguous form or origin fall within the category of “agency records.” It is upon some of those decisions that the District Court and the CIA principally rely in justifying the position they take in the instant ease. Unfortunately, none of the cases in question is apposite. It has been held that, under certain circumstances, records in an agency’s possession that originated with Congress do not constitute “agency records” for the purpose of the FOIA. Likewise, materials prepared by or for the judiciary that eventually find their way into the hands of an agency eovered by the Act have been held to fall outside the crucial category. The same is true of documents prepared by the President or his personal staff. But two factors distinguish all of these cases from the situation before us. First, each of the departments of government listed above is itself exempt from the coverage of the FOIA. Second, special policy considerations militate against a rule compelling disclosure of records originating in these three bodies merely because such documents happen to come into the possession of an agency. Congress, we have held, should not be forced to abandon either its long-acknowledged right to keep its records secret or its ability to oversee the activities of federal agencies (a supervisory authority it exercises partly through exchanges of documents with those agencies “to facilitate their proper functioning in accordance with Congress’ originating intent”). The courts, similarly, have an important interest in controlling the dissemination of their documents to the public, yet, to facilitate the operation of the penal system, often must make those records available to departments of government covered by the Act. Finally, the importance of the confidentiality of communications between the President and his immediate advisors, combined with the likelihood that records of those exchanges will find their way into portions of the “Executive Office of the President” covered by the Act, render undesirable a per se rule that such documents are “agency records.” In the present case, by contrast, the organs of government that first compiled the records—the State Department and FBI—clearly are covered by the Act. And no policy considerations comparabie to those requiring special protection for documents emanating from Congress, the courts or the President’s personal staff are applicable.
In sum, the question whether a document in the possession of one agency that originated in another constitutes an “agency record” for the purposes of the FOIA is not governed by either the terms of the statute, the legislative history or precedent. To resolve the issue, we are thus compelled to look to the general principles that underlie the Act as a whole.
It has often been observed that the central purpose of the FOIA is to “open[ ] up the workings of government to public scrutiny.” One of the premises of that objective is the belief that “an informed electorate is vital to the proper operation of a democracy.” A more specific goal implicit in the foregoing principles is to give citizens access to the information on the basis of which government agencies make their decisions, thereby equipping the populace to evaluate and criticize those decisions. Each of these objectives—and particularly the last—would be best promoted by a rule that all records in an agency’s possession, whether created by the agency itself or by other bodies covered by the Act, constitute “agency records.”
This conclusion is buttressed by consideration of the probable practical effect of a different rule. If records obtained from other agencies could not be reached by a FOIA request, an agency seeking to shield documents from the public could transfer the documents for safekeeping to another government department. It could thereafter decline to afford requesters access to the materials on the ground that it lacked “custody” of or “control” over the records and had no duty to retrieve them. The agency holding the documents could likewise resist disclosure on the theory that, from its perspective, the documents were not “agency records.” The net effect could be wholly to frustrate the purposes of the Act.
B. Treatment of Documents Obtained From Other Agencies
Our conclusion that the documents the CIA obtained from the State Department and FBI constitute “agency records” does not settle the fate of those materials. Two branches of the test delineated by the Supreme Court remain to be satisfied. The District Court should have compelled disclosure of the documents only if they were “(1) ‘improperly’; (2) ‘withheld’” by the CIA. Kissinger v. Reporters Committee, 445 U.S. at 150, 100 S.Ct. at 968. Unfortunately, the recent vintage of the Court’s three-pronged test means that there is very little case law directly concerned with the meaning of those crucial terms. Nor does the legislative history of the Act provide us much guidance. Once again, therefore, we are cast back upon the premises and objectives of the FOIA as a whole. Those considerations suggest the following definitions:
“ WithholdingCertainly a categorical refusal to release documents that are in the agency’s “custody” or “control” for any reason other than those set forth in the Act’s enumerated exemptions would constitute “withholding.” Interpretive problems arise only in the context of processing or referral procedures that are likely to result eventually, but not immediately, in the release of documents. The legal status of such procedures seems to us best determined on the basis of their consequences. We conclude, in other words, that a system adopted by an agency for dealing with documents of a particular kind constitutes “withholding” of those documents if its net effect is significantly to impair the requester’s ability to obtain the records or significantly to increase the amount of time he must wait to obtain them.
“Improper’’: We are persuaded by Justice Stevens’ opinion in Kissinger that sensible explication of the term “improper” in this context requires incorporation of a standard of reasonableness. Thus, “withholding” of the sort just described will be deemed “improper” unless the agency can offer a reasonable explanation for its procedure. The form such an explanation would be most likely to take would be a showing that the procedure significantly improves the quality of the process whereby the government determines whether all or portions of responsive documents are exempt from disclosure. Naturally, the more serious the resultant impediments to obtaining records or the longer the resultant delay in their release, the more substantial must be the offsetting gains offered by the agency to establish the reasonableness of its system. At the extreme, a procedure that, in practice, imposed very large burdens on requesters (eg., by compelling them to pay huge processing costs or to submit separate requests to a number of independent bodies) or that resulted in very long delays would be highly difficult to justify.
A principle implicit in the foregoing definitions is that, when an agency receives a FOIA request for “agency records” in its possession, it must take responsibility for processing the request. It cannot simply refuse to act on the ground that the documents originated elsewhere.
There is insufficient evidence in the record to determine what result should be reached by applying these standards to the instant case. Neither the decision below nor the affidavits on which it was based make clear the nature of the referral procedure or exactly what advantages were gained by referring each of the documents obtained from the State Department and FBI to the originating body. Nor is the extent of the accompanying impairment of McGehee’s ability to gain access to those records apparent. We therefore remand the case with instructions to afford the parties opportunity to adduce additional relevant evidence.
We recognize that the standards we adopt today are not “bright line” tests. The District Court may find it difficult, given the absence of other germane precedent, to apply our holdings to the instant case even when all the facts have been ascertained. To mitigate that uncertainty, and to provide some guidance to courts confronted with similar problems in future cases, we set forth below a model for a referral system. We do not suggest that agencies are bound to accept our plan; we describe it merely to indicate one set of practices that would comport with the general principles embodied in the Act:
Sample Procedure for Processing Documents Originating with Other Agencies
An agency in possession of documents, responsive to a FOIA request, that it has received from another agency would forward them to the originating body (in lieu of processing them itself) if and only if they satisfied an “intent to control” test. Specifically, an intention on the part of the originating agency that it retain the authority to decide if and when materials are released to the public would have to be made evident by either (i) explicit indications to that effect on the face of each document or (ii) the circumstances surrounding the creation and transfer of the documents.
To minimize the resultant delay, the referral would have to be prompt and public. In other words, as soon as the agency retrieved responsive documents, and possibly even before it | undertook ah examination of their contents to determine whether they were exempt from disclosure, it would identify those records that originated elsewhere and, if they passed the aforementioned “intent to control” test, would immediately (i) inform the requester of the situation, (ii) notify the originating agency and, (iii) if necessary, forward to the latter copies of the relevant documents. To minimize the burden on the requester, this notification and referral would be accorded the status of a FOIA request; the person seeking information would thereby be relieved of the duty to submit a separate demand to the originating agency.
The system we outline, by promoting (i) the processing by the agencies to which requests are submitted of a substantial percentage of the “other agency” records in their possession and (ii) the rapid referral to the originating bodies of the remainder, would mitigate the two most serious hardships associated with the extant automatic referral systems: the inconvenience to requesters of being compelled to assert their rights in two or more independent administrative fora and the long delays resulting from the superimposition of two or more processing sequences.
If, in a given case, the “intent to control” test were satisfied but the agency to which the request was first submitted had not followed the procedures suggested above by the time litigation commenced, the district court would still have some options at its disposal that would enable it to ensure that the petitioner’s request was processed expeditiously without sacrificing the benefits accruing from a substantive review by the originating agency. The court might, for example, allow the defendant agency to submit affidavits or present witnesses from the originating agency, explaining which documents are exempt and why. Alternatively, the court could require the originating agency to appear as a party to the suit pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 19(a). But these options would be makeshift arrangements; the preferable situation would be adherence to a set of review and referral guidelines of the sort described above.
IV. Invocation of the “Intelligence Source” Exemption
McGehee’s final allegation of error concerns the District Court’s decision to grant summary judgment on the ground that all material withheld by the agency was properly exempt from disclosure under the Act. The CIA defends the ruling below on the ground that it has established that the material in question is covered by FOIA exemptions (1) and (3). In the context of the instant case, the agency observes, those two provisions are functionally equivalent: both shield all information whose disclosure would result in revelation of the identities of “intelligence sources.”
The crucial issue, as this matter appears before us, is whether the District Court was warranted in granting the CIA’s motion for summary judgment solely on the basis of affidavits submitted by the agency. Here at last we have the benefit of a well-established body of precedent. A long line of cases, decided in this circuit and elsewhere, have prescribed the standards for reviewing claims of exemptions in this procedural context:
[Sjummary judgment on the basis of such agency affidavits is warranted if the affidavits describe the documents and the justifications for nondisclosure with reasonably specific detail, demonstrate that the information withheld logically falls within the claimed exemption, and are not controverted by either contrary evidence in the record nor by evidence of agency bad faith.
Military Audit Project v. Casey, 656 F.2d 724, 738 (D.C.Cir.1981) (footnote omitted).
The CIA in the instant case satisfies the first and second branches of this composite test. The affidavits submitted by Louis J. Dube describe in considerable detail the grounds for the exemptions claimed by the agency and the reasons why each relevant document falls into one of the categories delineated. The agency likewise passes the third component of the test; no representation made in the Dube affidavits is controverted by other evidence in the record.
On the fourth and final requirement, however, the CIA stumbles. We find that the record contains significant evidence suggesting that the agency has not processed McGehee’s request in good faith. Our conclusion is founded principally on the combination of two facts: First, it took almost two and one-half years before the CIA processed McGehee’s reasonably straightforward request; indeed, the agency made no substantive response whatsoever until compelled to do so by order of the District Court. Second, the CIA failed to disclose the fact that it was using December 22, 1978, as a cut-off date. The cumulative weight of this evidence of bad faith is enough to vitiate the credit to which agency affidavits are ordinarily entitled. Accordingly, the District Court’s grant of summary judgment was erroneous.
It remains to be decided what should be the proper remedy on remand. McGehee urges two solutions on us. First, he requests an instruction to the District Court to permit him to conduct discovery to ascertain the basis of the agency’s claim that disclosure of the withheld material would reveal the identities of “intelligence sources.” Second, he seeks a directive to the District Court to conduct an in camera examination of the documents in question to determine whether the invocations of exemptions were justified.
With regard to the first option, the CIA argues vigorously that an explanation for its actions any fuller than that already made would itself compromise national security. Such a claim should not be disregarded lightly. Although evidence of agency bad faith, as we have shown, undermines the credibility of many of the CIA’s allegations, we are unwilling to respond by exposing the agency to McGehee’s discovery, at least if there exists any alternative method of testing the agency’s right to rely upon the statutory exemptions.
We turn, therefore, to the second proposed remedy. In a recent case, we summarized the considerations that should guide a district court in deciding whether to conduct an in camera inspection of withheld records. In Allen v. CIA, 636 F.2d 1287, 1298-99 (D.C.Cir.1980), we identified the following as relevant factors: (a) the number and length of the documents at issue; (b) whether further public justification of the invocation of exemptions is inappropriate because “such justification[ ] would reveal the very information sought to be protected”; (c) the existence and strength of “evidence of bad faith on the part of the agency”; (d) whether the contents of the documents are in dispute; (e) the agency’s acquiescence in such a proceeding; and (f) the strength of the public interest in disclosure of the withheld materials (particularly applicable when the question of whether the agency is “properly serving its public function” is involved). Factors (e) and (f), in the instant case, provide McGehee little aid; the CIA actively resists an in camera inspection and the “public interest” in revelation of what the CIA knows about the Jonestown incident seems minor. Factors (a) through (d), however, support McGehee’s plea. A total of only 44 documents (most of them apparently short) are involved; the CIA itself insists that further public justification is impossible; there is considerable evidence in the record of agency bad

Question: What is the specific issue in the case within the general category of "due process"?
A. denial of fair hearing or notice - government employees (includes claims of terminated government workers)
B. denial of hearing or notice in non-employment context
C. taking clause (i.e., denial of due process under the "taking" clause of the 5th or 14th Amendments)
D. freedom of information act and other claims of rights of access (includes all cases involving dispute over requests for information even if it does not involve the freedom of information act)
E. other due process issues
Answer:

Answer: D