Opinion ID: 722513
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Past Conduct and Statements

Text: 60 Armstrong also suggests that, quite apart from the Meyer test, the NSC's own past statements and conduct demonstrate that the NSC has functions in addition to those of advising and assisting the President. See Soucie, 448 F.2d at 1075 (prior conduct weighed in assessing whether entity is an agency). Armstrong cites these recent examples: (1) the Executive Secretary's 1993 staff memorandum on recordkeeping stating that the NSC both advises and assists the President and is an agency; (2) the Joint Statement of Facts submitted to the district court in this case, in which the parties state that the NSC's responsibilities include ... performing independent functions set forth in the governing statute, as well as in regulations and Executive Orders; and (3) the NSC's memorandum in support of its motion to dismiss a previous case brought by Armstrong, in which the NSC reports having responsibilities in the management of the interagency process for national security affairs. Armstrong notes also that each Administration has left behind so-called institutional records of the NSC, which the NSC has managed under the FRA rather than the PRA; he claims that the NSC thereby implicitly conceded that it is an agency. 61 According to the Government, these examples of the NSC's past statements and conduct do not have the significance that Armstrong claims for them. First, the Executive Secretary's recordkeeping memorandum was intended to guide NSC staff members in creating, maintaining, and preserving records in conformity with the OLC's legal opinion, then prevailing within the Executive Branch, that the NSC was an agency. That opinion [319 U.S.App.D.C. 343] was reversed some months later. Second, the NSC's submissions in earlier rounds of this litigation can hardly be read to concede the central point in contention here. In the Joint Statement of Facts, the NSC was just acknowledging that it does a variety of things pursuant to the delegations listed therein; in the memorandum of law supporting the Government's motion to dismiss the prior case, it acknowledged only a coordinating role (management of the interagency process) typical of an entity within the Executive Office of the President acting on behalf of the President in relation to the agencies with operating responsibilities. As to Armstrong's third point, about institutional records, the NSC responds that every president has treated most of the NSC's records as presidential records and removed them at the end of his administration. That the NSC, in the interests of permitting public access to some NSC records and ensuring a smooth transition on national security matters, voluntarily subjected certain of its records to the FOIA and the FRA does not reflect any intention to concede, and should not be taken to establish as a matter of law, that the NSC is subject to those statutes. 62 We agree with the Government on this point as well. The NSC's prior references to itself as an agency are not probative on the question before the court--whether the NSC is indeed an agency within the meaning of the FOIA; quite simply, the Government's position on that question has changed over the years. Moreover, as Armstrong conceded at oral argument, even as the NSC was treating some of its institutional records as though they were subject to the FOIA and the FRA, it was declining to treat other records in that way. In sum, the NSC's past behavior has been inconsistent--both logically and factually--and therefore does not illuminate the legal question here in dispute. 63 Finally, the district court held in the alternative that the NSC did not set forth, in the March 25, 1994 memorandum from William H. Itoh to William H. Leary, a reasoned explanation for its change of position on the question whether it is an agency, and that this is a sufficient ground in itself, pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A), to set aside the Government's newly adopted position as arbitrary and capricious. 877 F.Supp. at 706 (citing Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Ass'n v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29, 57, 103 S.Ct. 2856, 2874, 77 L.Ed.2d 443 (1983)). Armstrong made no such argument in district court, nor does he defend the judgment of the district court upon this alternate ground. In any event, invocation of the APA begs the question whether the NSC is an agency within the meaning of that term as it is used in the APA. See 5 U.S.C. § 551(1) (agency defined as each authority of the Government of the United States). Because we have concluded that the NSC is not, after all, an agency subject to the FOIA, the district court's alternative rationale, regardless of its provenance, is now moot.