Opinion ID: 393156
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The FOIA Request and Ensuing Litigation

Text: 11 Three days after the Time story was published, on 3 April 1975, letters signed by Fritzi Cohen on behalf of the Military Audit Project were sent to the Department of Defense and to the Central Intelligence Agency requesting access under the Freedom of Information Act to the contract and all other documents pertaining to the planning, design, construction, leasing, use and disposition of the Glomar Explorer, recently reported as used to recover the Soviet Submarine in the Pacific. 3 Invoking Exemptions 1 and 3 of the Freedom of Information Act (pertaining to classified records and documents exempted from disclosure by statute), 4 each agency was quick to reject the requests. 5 At the outset, neither agency was willing to confirm or to deny even the existence of such records. Both agencies stated that such an admission or denial could itself compromise national security. 6 12 Cohen then pursued administrative appeals, but these also were denied by both agencies. 7 In October 1975 the Military Audit Project and Cohen, now joined by Mortin Halperin, requested reconsideration of these denials. 8 These requests were in turn denied, although by this time the CIA was at least willing to admit both that the Glomar Explorer belonged to the United States though not necessarily to the CIA and that a classified United States government contract provided evidence of that ownership. 9 13 Unsatisfied, the Military Audit Project, joined by Cohen and Halperin individually, in December 1975 brought an action in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to compel the production of 14 the contract, and all other documents pertaining to the financial arrangements between or among the government of the United States, any agency thereof, Hughes Tool Co., Summa Corporation and Global Marine, Inc., or any of them, in particular such documents that reflect sums paid by the government of the United States or any agency thereof to any of the other entities named above, the profits earned by any of such other entities and any provisions for disposition by the government of the United States to any of the other named entities, with respect to the vessel Glomar Explorer. 10 15 Named as defendants were William Colby, who was then Director of Central Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Defense. The complaint alleged that the Military Audit Project was an unincorporated association and a person within the meaning of the Freedom of Information Act. 11 16 The defendants continued to refuse to confirm or deny even the existence of the documents requested. Instead, they moved alternatively for a dismissal or for summary judgment; in support of these motions they submitted a very short affidavit by the Deputy Under Secretary for Management of the Department of State, Lawrence Eagleburger, and requested leave to submit two further affidavits in camera. 12 The district court denied the defendants' request to submit materials in camera on the basis of the Eagleburger affidavit alone, requiring the defendants first publicly to submit (a)n adequate, complete affidavit justifying exemption ... reciting all pertinent facts short of those that reveal any fact which defendants believe is protected by the exemption claimed. 13 17 In response the defendants filed two additional affidavits, one by the CIA's Deputy Director for Science and Technology, Carl E. Duckett, and a second by the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, Brent Scowcroft. The Duckett affidavit stated that: 18 Acknowledgment of the existence or nonexistence of the information requested could reasonably be expected to result in the compromise of important intelligence operations, significant scientific and technological developments relating to national security, and result in a disruption in foreign relations significantly affecting the national security.... If the CIA or DoD were responsible for the HUGHES GLOMAR EXPLORER Program, that fact itself would necessarily be classified because an official confirmation, in my judgment, would result in harm to the national security .... 14 19 The Scowcroft affidavit went into somewhat greater detail about the project: 20 In a document dated October 20, 1969, classified Top Secret, Executive Branch approval was given to the establishment of a classified United States Government program to accomplish certain secret tasks in furtherance of national security objectives of the United States. A committee of the National Security Council (NSC) chaired by the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs was assigned to supervision of the program. The program included the design, construction, operation, and use of a ship which came to be known as the HUGHES GLOMAR EXPLORER. United States Government documents produced in the course of executing the program were classified Top Secret or Secret pursuant to procedures and criteria of Executive Orders 10501 and 11652 based on determinations that disclosure of information concerning the program could cause exceptionally grave or serious damage to the national security .... 21 From the outset of the Program it was recognized that the revelation of the very existence of the Program and, specifically, the fact that the United States was the sponsor of the activity involving the HUGHES GLOMAR EXPLORER could provoke a foreign power to take countermeasures which would render the Program incapable of execution. Accordingly, it was decided that the United States Government should make arrangements with private corporations to provide a commercial base for the HUGHES GLOMAR EXPLORER undertaking. After several alternatives were considered, arrangements were made with the Hughes Tool Company to act as agent of the United States to sponsor the undertaking. This agreement evolved into a formal contractual relationship wherein the Hughes Tool Company and thereafter the Summa Corporation, its successor organization, undertook to carry out certain functions on behalf of the United States including holding bare record title to the HUGHES GLOMAR EXPLORER.... 22 For reasons unrelated to this case a committee of the NSC determined on 8 August 1975 that it had become necessary for the United States to acknowledge ownership of the HUGHES GLOMAR EXPLORER and to declassify certain portions of its contract with Summa Corporation and Global Marine, Inc. The NSC Committee directed that no further facts would be declassified and specifically directed that the fact of the involvement in the Program of any given United States Government Agency should not be disclosed. The Committee noted further ... a firm line would be drawn between the fact of Federal ownership and other matters relating to the Project. Those portions of documents which relate to the United States ownership and evidence the United States contractual relationship with Hughes Tool Corporation, Summa Corporation and Global Marine, Inc. have been declassified pursuant to the NSC Committee decision .... Official acknowledgment of the involvement of specific United States Government agencies would disclose the nature and purpose of the Program and could, in my judgment, severely damage the foreign relations and the national defense of the United States.... 15 23 After admitting that there had been a great deal of speculation in the press concerning the nature of the mission the Glomar Explorer was to carry out, the Scowcroft affidavit went on to describe why official confirmation of the involvement of the particular agencies in question was undesirable: 24 While it is known and accepted that nations engage in secret activities, designed to promote their foreign and national defense policy interests, traditionally, and for sound practical reasons in the conduct of foreign affairs, governments do not officially acknowledge that they engage in such activities. In this context all nations are aware that they may be the objects of such operations and may even unofficially acknowledge this fact. No government, however, could tolerate the official acknowledgment by another government that such an operation has been conducted against it. When such official acknowledgment occurs, the nation that has been the object of such an operation must take some action in response. The nature of the retaliatory action taken by the offended nation will vary in proportion to the perceived offense. Depending on the nature and magnitude of the activity acknowledged, the offended nation may take strong measures .... 25 Foreign countries who believe they would benefit by demeaning the United States would be able to use information about this Program to castigate the United States in an international forum. Fabrications or suggestions concerning our activities, which the United States would be unable to disprove, could be expected to develop from the disclosure of relatively limited information. The information sought in this case could be used as circumstantial evidence to substantiate false charges of United States interference in the affairs of other countries. This in turn could raise suspicions about and possibly endanger United States military and diplomatic personnel and businessmen overseas. 16 26 Even after the Duckett and Scowcroft affidavits were submitted, however, the district court denied the defendants' motion for summary judgment, ordering instead an in camera proceeding in which the defendants would be required to produce an index of the documents covered by the request as well as the documents themselves, if any, and a document-by-document explanation of the harm to the national security release of the documents would entail. In addition, the defendants were ordered to produce witnesses capable of substantiating on their personal knowledge under oath on a transcript to be sealed the national security claims made in opposition to release. 17 27 The defendants then requested relief from the order that they produce documents and an index in camera ; to comply, they claimed, would imply that they actually possessed such documents. In support of a renewed motion to dismiss, the defendants submitted yet another affidavit, this time by Director of Central Intelligence George Bush. 18 The Bush affidavit focused on the dangers of releasing information regarding the budget of the CIA: 28 It has been publicly disclosed that the annual CIA appropriation is contained in the annual appropriations to the Department of Defense, and that the funds involved are made available to the CIA under the transfer-of-appropriation provisions of the CIA Act of 1949. The annual CIA budget, however, is not now and never has been a matter of public knowledge. Neither have the details of that budget ever been matters of public knowledge. The non-disclosure of this information has a long record of approval by the Congress. For example, the CIA budget presentations have always been heard by the appropriate congressional committees in executive session. The resulting appropriations are not identified as such in any public document. Both the Senate and the House of Representatives have recently rejected, by substantial margins, legislation that would have required, in one case, the publication of the aggregate budget for the Intelligence Community and, in the other case, publication of the CIA budget.... 29 (A) demand for documents reflecting specific CIA expenditures, which is the nature of the demand stated in the complaint in this case, is even more difficult to accommodate, consistently with the need to protect intelligence activities and operations against disclosure, than a demand for the annual CIA budget figure. The nature and purpose of the intelligence projects or activities being funded could be deduced from knowledge of specific CIA expenditures. Moreover, if the disclosure of specific CIA expenditures could be compelled, a picture of the annual CIA budget would soon emerge. 30 (W)ithout admitting or denying the possession or custody of any documents of the kind described in the complaint in this case, it is obvious that, if CIA holds any such documents, they would reflect specific CIA expenditures, and it is my judgment that disclosure of any such documents would expose intelligence activities of a confidential nature .... 19 31 On 30 June 1976 the district court once again denied the defendants' motion and set a date for an in camera proceeding. The district court refused to certify the question for an interlocutory appeal, and the defendants then brought to this court a petition for a writ of mandamus or prohibition, as well as an attempted appeal from the district court's ruling requiring an in camera proceeding. On 1 October 1976 in two per curiam orders this court denied the petition and dismissed the appeal. 20 32 Upon remand to the district court, the defendants submitted in camera eight classified affidavits and presented the classified testimony of several unidentified witnesses. After hearing the in camera testimony and examining the classified affidavits, the district court on 20 October 1976 entered an order which states only that: the complaint is dismissed for reasons stated in camera. 21 33 The case then came before this court for the second time, on an appeal by the plaintiffs from the decision of the district court. The plaintiff-appellants began by moving for copies of affidavits filed ex parte by defendants-appellees and of a copy of a memorandum filed in camera by the district court. We denied this motion in a per curiam order with an accompanying memorandum issued on 14 January 1977. 22 The reason for this denial was our judgment that to compel service of the affidavits filed ex parte would be tantamount to granting the final relief sought by the appellants. 34 This court did find, however, that the appellants deserved a more specific explanation for the action of the district court upon which to base their appeal, because the asserted exemptions for information concerning the identity of the agencies and the asserted exemptions for the contents of the requested documents total eight separate justifications, any one of which the District Court could have relied upon when dismissing the complaint. 23 As a result the appellants could not know the basis for the decision of the district court, leaving them in a position from which it would be difficult intelligently to argue an appeal. Concluding that the District Court in this case should have endeavored to prepare a more informative opinion to be released to appellants and to the public; it should not have simply referred to 'reasons stated in camera,'  24 we disclosed that the holding of the district court: in effect states (1) that the identity of the specific agencies involved is exempt under 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(1) and (2) that, whichever agencies were involved, the contents of the requested documents are exempt under the same section. 25 35 The appellants, now armed with an understanding of the reasons for the district court's ruling, were given forty days from the entry of our order in which to submit their briefs on appeal. 36 Then, on 8 June 1977, the defendants suddenly changed their position and moved to remand the action to the district court on the grounds that: 37 It has now been determined that the fact that the Central Intelligence Agency, one of the defendants in this case, was involved in the Hughes Glomar Explorer Program may be made public. The District Court should have an opportunity to consider in the first instance what impact, if any, this fact has on the litigation. 26 38 This change in the government's position apparently resulted from a shift in the perception of national security interests that occurred when the Carter administration took office. 27 Accordingly, this court ordered that the district court's dismissal of the complaint be vacated and remanded the case for further proceedings pursuant to Vaughn v. Rosen, 523 F.2d 1136 (1975). 28 On remand when it became clear that the defendants intended to continue to resist disclosure of some of the requested documents, the district court judge disqualified himself from further proceedings in the case in view of his previous rulings in favor of the defendants' now-abandoned position. 39 The defendants then released about two thousand pages of materials within the scope of the plaintiffs' requests, although continuing to refuse to release certain information they considered still to be covered by Exemptions 1 and 3 of the Freedom of Information Act. At the same time the defendants filed an affidavit of a Contracting Officer in the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Science and Technology, William S. Regan, in which the documents both those released and those withheld were described. 29 40 In March 1978 the defendants filed with the district court four affidavits justifying the continued exemption and deletion of the remaining material withheld. These were affidavits by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, 30 Director of Central Intelligence Stansfield Turner, 31 the Director of Finance of the Central Intelligence Agency, Thomas B. Yale, 32 and the Associate Deputy Director of the Directorate of Science and Technology of the Central Intelligence Agency, Ernest J. Zellmer. 33 A month later, the Zellmer Affidavit was supplemented with a second affidavit in which the deleted information was divided into thirteen categories. 34 41 After these affidavits were filed, however, the President promulgated an executive order 35 establishing new standards for the classification of government information. The defendants then reviewed the documents withheld to determine whether the withheld information was properly classified under the criteria of the new executive order. The defendants concluded that it was, and Zellmer submitted a third affidavit describing the reasons for the defendants' conclusions. 36 42 It is the sufficiency of these eight affidavits, the Regan Affidavit, the Cooke Affidavit, the Vance Affidavit, the Turner Affidavit, the Yale Affidavit, and the three Zellmer Affidavits, which is the principal subject of this appeal. For on the basis of these affidavits the defendants moved for summary judgment under FOIA Exemptions 1 and 3. In response, the plaintiffs noticed the depositions of Vance, Turner, Yale and Zellmer, but the district court granted a motion by the defendants for a protective order barring any further discovery by the plaintiffs. 37 After briefing and argument, the district court then granted summary judgment for the defendants. 38 After unsuccessfully moving for reconsideration, the plaintiffs brought this appeal.