Opinion ID: 413259
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Reasonableness of the Agency's Procedure in This Instance

Text: 27 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. McGehee directs our attention to circumstances that, on their face, cast 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. 28 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 precis[ion] (the value of having a single cut-off date that all agency divisions know in advance), 34 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), 35 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 cut-off date, 36 and the disruption of the agency's fee schedules that would accompany the use of anything other than its present procedure. 37 29 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: 30 SAMPLE PROCEDURE APPLYING A REASONABLE CUT-OFF DATE TO A FOIA SEARCH 31 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 38 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.