Opinion ID: 373899
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Waiver Of Exemption 5 Through Disclosure To GAO

Text: 22 The District Court also held that, by disclosing these memoranda to the GAO, the Air Force waived its rights to claim Exemption 5. We will begin by stating that the mere fact that one federal agency releases intra-agency communications to another federal agency cannot by itself imply the waiver of Exemption 5, which explicitly applies to inter-agency, as well as intra-agency, memoranda. 23 Waiver occurs when an agency makes its information more broadcast than is allowed by its own regulations, Cooper v. Department of Navy, 594 F.2d 484 (5th Cir. 1979), but it does not occur when an agency whose action is being reviewed forwards to the reviewing agency legal memoranda in support of its position: 24 By including Inter-Agency memoranda in Exemption 5, Congress plainly intended to permit one agency possessing decisional authority to obtain written recommendations and advice from a separate agency not possessing such decisional authority without requiring that the advice be any more disclosable than similar advice received from within the agency. 25 Grumman, supra, 421 U.S. at 188, 95 S.Ct. at 1502, 44 L.Ed.2d at 73. In reviewing the Air Force's preliminary decision to award this contract to Tayko, the GAO needed and was entitled to the legal and technical advice of both parties. The Air Force should be allowed to supply this information without running the risk of waiving Exemption 5. The forwarding of these memoranda to the GAO was not a broadcast disclosure by the Air Force. It was no more than the submission of the agency's legal opinion in defense of a bid protest. There was thus no waiver of Exemption 5. 26 In sum, we hold that the Air Force's notice to Shermco was a proposed, and not a final, award of the contract to Tayko. There is a possibility that, if the GAO or its successor under the new law, the SBA, upholds the protest, that bidding will be reopened. All the policy reasons for exempting from disclosure both the Tayko cost proposals and the legal memoranda of the Air Force still operate to make this information immune from disclosure within the language of Exemptions 4 and 5. 12 Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the District Court and remand this cause with orders to enter judgment in favor of the Appellant Air Force. 27 REVERSED and REMANDED.