What follows is an opinion from a United States Court of Appeals.
Intervenors who participated as parties at the courts of appeals should be counted as either appellants or respondents when it can be determined whose position they supported. For example, if there were two plaintiffs who lost in district court, appealed, and were joined by four intervenors who also asked the court of appeals to reverse the district court, the number of appellants should be coded as six.
In some cases there is some confusion over who should be listed as the appellant and who as the respondent. This confusion is primarily the result of the presence of multiple docket numbers consolidated into a single appeal that is disposed of by a single opinion. Most frequently, this occurs when there are cross appeals and/or when one litigant sued (or was sued by) multiple litigants that were originally filed in district court as separate actions. The coding rule followed in such cases should be to go strictly by the designation provided in the title of the case. The first person listed in the title as the appellant should be coded as the appellant even if they subsequently appeared in a second docket number as the respondent and regardless of who was characterized as the appellant in the opinion.
To clarify the coding conventions, consider the following hypothetical case in which the US Justice Department sues a labor union to strike down a racially discriminatory seniority system and the corporation (siding with the position of its union) simultaneously sues the government to get an injunction to block enforcement of the relevant civil rights law. From a district court decision that consolidated the two suits and declared the seniority system illegal but refused to impose financial penalties on the union, the corporation appeals and the government and union file cross appeals from the decision in the suit brought by the government. Assume the case was listed in the Federal Reporter as follows:
United States of America,
Plaintiff, Appellant
v
International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
Defendant, Appellee.
International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
Defendants, Cross-appellants
v
United States of America.
Widgets, Inc. & Susan Kuersten Sheehan, President & Chairman
of the Board
Plaintiff, Appellants,
v
United States of America,
Defendant, Appellee.
This case should be coded as follows:Appellant = United States, Respondents = International Brotherhood of Widget Workers Widgets, Inc., Total number of appellants = 1, Number of appellants that fall into the category "the federal government, its agencies, and officials" = 1, Total number of respondents = 3, Number of respondents that fall into the category "private business and its executives" = 2, Number of respondents that fall into the category "groups and associations" = 1.
Note that if an individual is listed by name, but their appearance in the case is as a government official, then they should be counted as a government rather than as a private person. For example, in the case "Billy Jones & Alfredo Ruiz v Joe Smith" where Smith is a state prisoner who brought a civil rights suit against two of the wardens in the prison (Jones & Ruiz), the following values should be coded: number of appellants that fall into the category "natural persons" =0 and number that fall into the category "state governments, their agencies, and officials" =2. A similar logic should be applied to businesses and associations. Officers of a company or association whose role in the case is as a representative of their company or association should be coded as being a business or association rather than as a natural person. However, employees of a business or a government who are suing their employer should be coded as natural persons. Likewise, employees who are charged with criminal conduct for action that was contrary to the company policies should be considered natural persons.
If the title of a case listed a corporation by name and then listed the names of two individuals that the opinion indicated were top officers of the same corporation as the appellants, then the number of appellants should be coded as three and all three were coded as a business (with the identical detailed code). Similar logic should be applied when government officials or officers of an association were listed by name.
Your specific task is to determine the total number of appellants in the case that fall into the category "the federal government, its agencies, and officials". If the total number cannot be determined (e.g., if the appellant is listed as "Smith, et. al." and the opinion does not specify who is included in the "et.al."), then answer 99.

Opinion:
UNITED STATES of America, Appellant, v. THURMAN, Harvin R.
No. 82-1196.
United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.
Submitted Under Third Circuit Rule 12(6) Aug. 3, 1982.
Decided Aug. 12, 1982.
Peter F. Yaira, U. S. Atty., Walter S. Batty, Jr., Asst. U. S. Atty., Chief, Appellate Section, Jeanne K. Damirgian, Asst. U. S. Atty., Philadelphia, Pa., for appellant.
Daniel M. Preminger, Philadelphia, Pa., for appellee.
Before ALDISERT and WEIS, Circuit Judges, and RE, Chief Judge.
Honorable Edward D. Re, Chief Judge, of the United States Court of International Trade, sitting by designation.
OPINION OF THE COURT
ALDISERT, Circuit Judge.
The Fugitive Felon Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1073, makes it a federal crime to flee a state to avoid prosecution for a state felony and provides that violators of § 1073 may be prosecuted only in the federal district in which the original state crime was allegedly committed. Under 18 U.S.C. § 2, one who aids or abets commission of an offense against the United States is punishable as a principal. The question for decision is whether, when the alleged violation is aiding and abetting flight to avoid prosecution, and the acts of aiding and abetting took place in another district, the defendant must be tried where the principal would be tried. The district court held that under the facts of this case venue was limited to the Eastern District of New York and therefore dismissed a count in an indictment brought in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The government has appealed as authorized by 18 U.S.C. § 8731. We affirm.
Two New York City police officers were shot on April 16,1981, in Queens County as they attempted to stop a van occupied by suspected burglars later identified as James Dixon York and Anthony LaBorde. One officer died, the other suffered serious wounds. After York and LaBorde fled New York, appellee Harvin Thurman allegedly obtained several residences for them in Philadelphia, helped them move their personal effects from one residence to another, provided them with “food, books and newspapers,” and transported York from Philadelphia to Virginia. Thurman was charged in a federal indictment filed in the district court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania with six various counts: conspiracy, 18 U.S.C. § 371 (count one); being an accessory after the fact of unlawful flight, 18 U.S.C. § 3 (counts two and three); misprision of felony, 18 U.S.C. § 4 (counts four and five); and aiding and abetting an unlawful flight, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2(a), 1073 (count six). On Thurman’s motion the district court dismissed count six. The government appeals.
Section 1073 specifies that “[violations of this section may be prosecuted only in the Federal judicial district in which the original crime was alleged to have been committed .... ” The government concedes that York and LaBorde could be tried on the federal charge only in New York, but it argues that Thurman may be tried in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, where he is alleged to have aided and abetted York and LaBorde.
The problem before us is solely a question of statutory construction, and our authority is limited: if the statutory language and the legislative intent are plain, the judicial inquiry is at an end. In this case we must read the substantive statute, § 1073, together with the aider and abettor statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2(a).
Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal.
The district judge viewed § 2(a) as controlling:
[TJhat in effect requires that the aider and abettor must also be tried in the district in which the principal must be tried, and the principals here clearly must be tried in New York, and it is my feeling that this count is not properly in this district.
App. at 22a. Because we believe both § 1073 and § 2(a) are unambiguous, we agree with the district court’s analysis.
The legislative history of § 1073 supports our conclusion. The 1934 Senate debate preceding its passage reveals that the purpose of the legislation was to help states fight criminal gangs whose interstate contacts and resources made state prosecution difficult. Senator Robinson spoke of the necessity of having “a witness or other person needed in a criminal prosecution” brought back to the scene of the crime. 78 Cong.Rec. 5736 (1934). Emphasizing that if the person were a member of a gang operation he should be brought back, Senator Copeland provided the following example:
[SJuppose the witness should flee from Detroit to Columbus, Ohio, and he should be dealt with in the court in Columbus, Ohio, for having committed a felony against the United States. The State officials in Detroit would not be benefited at all in the event the witness should be dealt with afterward by the court in Columbus, because he would be outside the State of Michigan, and could not be dealt with anyway by the State of Michigan.
Id. at 5737.
The Senate debate indicates that the bill’s sponsors were interested in not merely a federal prosecution, but a prosecution in a specific federal district. Although we are quick to admit that the legislative history did not specifically discuss aiders and abettors, we find in the legislative history no indication that Congress would require fleeing witness and felon members of a gang to be returned to the district wherein the state crime allegedly occurred, but nevertheless allow aiding and abetting associates to stay outside the reach of state prosecution.
The government has provided us with a string of citations, apparently to support its proposition that at common law aiders and abettors were tried in the district in which their culpable acts occurred, and therefore that venue in this case may be laid in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. See United States v. Buttorff, 572 F.2d 619, 627 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 437 U.S. 906, 98 S.Ct. 3095, 57 L.Ed.2d 1136 (1978); United States v. Kilpatrick, 458 F.2d 864, 868 (7th Cir. 1972); United States v. Bozza, 365 F.2d 206, 221 (2d Cir. 1966); United States v. Gillette, 189 F.2d 449, 451-52 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 342 U.S. 827, 72 S.Ct. 49, 96 L.Ed. 625 (1951); Eley v. United States, 117 F.2d 526, 528 (6th Cir. 1941). These decisions do not aid the government in this case, however, for although they may be read to hold that venue over aiding and abetting offenses generally is proper either where the substantive offense took place or where the aiding and abetting took place, none of these cases involves § 1073 and its clear legislative intention that venue would properly lie only in one district.
We therefore reject the interpretation urged upon us by the government. Indeed, we are somewhat surprised that the Department of Justice is resisting the prosecution of this defendant in the federal court in New York, in the state where not only the murder occurred but where state authorities potentially have a more than academic interest in this defendant. Moreover, the federal interest in prosecution for offenses committed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania is vindicated: from the same nucleus of operative facts the government may go forward in prosecuting one count of conspiracy implicating eight overt acts, two counts of accessory after the fact of unlawful flight, and two counts of misprision of felony relating to the unlawful flight.
We conclude that the interpretation urged upon us by the government conflicts with the primary purposes of the venue section of § 1073: to return the felon to the state where the original flight occurred in order to assist state officials in combatting organized crime there, and to vindicate the federal interest in punishing acts committed in the judicial district where the original flight took place. As the court observed in Lupino v. United States, 268 F.2d 799, 801 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 361 U.S. 834, 80 S.Ct. 86, 4 L.Ed.2d 75 (1959):
Such flights by perpetrators of crimes against the states are a common means of hindering state justice as is well known and, as it is the federal government which accords the freedom of movement throughout the country that makes the flights possible, it is plainly within the province of that government to regulate this abuse of it. The abuse is against the peace and dignity of the United States and also that of the States.
The government’s view of the venue provision of § 1073 conflicts with the clear language of the statutes, the Congressional intent revealed in the legislative history, and desirable public policy favoring state and federal cooperation in the apprehension and prosecution of members of organized crime.
The judgment of the district court will be affirmed.
. Section 1073 provides:
Whoever moves or travels in interstate or foreign commerce with intent either (1) to avoid prosecution, or custody or confinement after conviction, under the laws of the place from which he flees, for a crime, or an attempt to commit a crime, punishable by death or which is a felony under the laws of the place from which the fugitive flees, or which, in the case of New Jersey, is a high misdemeanor under the laws of said State, or (2) to avoid giving testimony in any criminal proceedings in such place in which the commission of an offense punishable by death or which is a felony under the laws of such place, or which in the case of New Jersey, is a high misdemeanor under the laws of said State, is charged, or (3) to avoid service of, or contempt proceedings for alleged disobedience of, lawful process requiring attendance and the giving of testimony or the production of documentary evidence before an agency of a State empowered by the law of such State to conduct investigations of alleged criminal activities, shall be fined not more than $5,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
Violations of this section may be prosecuted only in the Federal judicial district in which the original crime was alleged to have been committed, or in which the person was held in custody or confinement, or in which an avoidance of service of process or a contempt referred to in clause (3) of the first paragraph of this section is alleged to have been committed, and only upon formal approval in writing by the Attorney General or an Assistant Attorney General of the United States, which function of approving prosecutions may not be delegated.
. We assume that Thurman, will be tried in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on the remain-tag five counts, as they were unaffected by the district court’s order.
. Nor is Hett v. United States, 353 F.2d 761 (9th Cir. 1966), helpful to the government, for in that case both the principal’s state offense and the acts of aiding and abetting took place in the same district.

Question: What is the total number of appellants in the case that fall into the category "the federal government, its agencies, and officialss"? Answer with a number.

Choices:

Answer: 1