Opinion ID: 375887
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Control of the Records in this Case

Text: 9 In the present case, although the requested documents were in the possession of the Department of Justice, the district court concluded that the history and purpose of their generation showed them not to be agency records under the FOIA. The court found that the documents did not belong to and were not within the control of either the Attorney General who possessed them, the Senators who participated in their generation, the state nominating commissions about which they reported, or the President for whose ultimate benefit they were created. Rather, the court found, the documents were the collective product and property of all of these entities, none of which were agencies for FOIA purposes. The court concluded that the Attorney General was not an agency in this case because he was acting as counsel and advisor to the President, in furtherance of the President's power to nominate federal judges. 12 10 We find, on the contrary, that the requested documents are in the control of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice which he heads. The Department possesses the documents; and while this factor is not conclusive on the crucial issue of control, it is certainly relevant. Unless there is evidence of control by some other entity, we must conclude that the Attorney General and his Department control these documents. We find no such evidence. Senators generated these materials at the specific request of the Attorney General, and they gave no indication that they wished to limit his use of them. There are no express or reasonably implied senatorial instructions concerning the Attorney General's disposition of these documents. The Senators gave no indication that their responses were to be treated as secret or sensitive, and nothing in the Attorney General's questionnaire or other circumstances indicated that Senators would have the prerogative to maintain secrecy. On this record we cannot find control by the Senators. Nor have the nominating commissions exercised any degree of control over the documents. 11 Although the documents are for the ultimate benefit of the President in a nominating role that is exclusively his, we find that the Attorney General was acting as an independently controlling entity, and not a mere conduit. The questionnaires solicited responses from Senators at the request of the Attorney General, not the President. In his cover letter enclosed with the questionnaires, the Attorney General stated the independent role he was to play in this process: he was to consider certain factors before making his own recommendations to the President as to judicial nominees. This is an independent exercise of judgment that the Attorney General has traditionally taken in the judicial nomination process. The logical deduction from the facts is that the Attorney General was to control the questionnaire responses for the purpose of carrying out his independent duties. We have no evidence before us that the President in any way diminished the Attorney General's control over these documents; there is no indication that they will ever be transmitted to or seen by the President or his staff. By all indicia of ownership, the documents are within the exclusive control of the Attorney General. 12