Opinion ID: 421806
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Records created by the CIA.

Text: 33 The vast majority of the documents now in the CIA's possession were not even congressionally generated. Most are internal agency memoranda about the Paisley investigation and notations of meetings or phone calls between CIA and SSCI personnel or among CIA personnel alone. In fact, many of the documents are actually just brief entries made by CIA employees in a journal kept by the agency's Office of Legislative Counsel to record all communications with the Legislative Branch. 40 The Government argues that these records, although created by the CIA, should nevertheless be considered congressional records because they were generated in direct response to the SSCI's own investigation. On this view, but for Congress' independent inquiry into Paisley's death, these documents would not exist. 34 This contention is untenable. First and foremost, these documents were not created by Congress and were never even in Congress' possession. While initial creation or mere possession of a document is not alone dispositive of the issue of control, see, e.g., Forsham v. Harris, supra, 445 U.S. at 185 n. 16, 100 S.Ct. at 987 n. 16, both are certainly highly relevant to the inquiry. When Congress did not actually create and did not ever physically possess certain documents, it is difficult to imagine how such documents could be deemed within congressional control. 41 35 The only asserted connection of these documents to Congress 42 is that they are [229 U.S.App.D.C. 382] intimately related to a congressional investigation and may well have not been created but for Congress' investigation of the Paisley death. That connection is far too insubstantial and commonplace to establish congressional control within the meaning of Goland. To hold otherwise would be to exempt from FOIA's purview a broad array of materials otherwise clearly categorizable as agency records, 43 thereby undermining the spirit of broad disclosure that animates the Act. See, e.g., Dep't of the Air Force v. Rose, 425 U.S. 352, 360-362, 96 S.Ct. 1592, 1598-1599, 48 L.Ed.2d 11 (1976); EPA v. Mink, 410 U.S. 73, 80, 93 S.Ct. 827, 832, 35 L.Ed.2d 119 (1973). 44 Many agencies, not simply the intelligence community, must work frequently and closely with congressional committees on matters of budget and policy or on individual cases. We decline to hold, in the absence of some stronger indicia of congressional intent, that all documents so generated in this or similar joint congressional and agency investigations constitute records within Congress' exclusive control. We therefore affirm the District Court's ruling that, on the basis of all the facts of this case, the FBI and CIA documents are agency records for the purpose of appellant's FOIA request.