Opinion ID: 421806
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Agency Records Issue

Text: 14 Next, we must consider appellees' contention that, despite the lower court's ruling to the contrary, all documents in this case are congressional--not agency--records and are therefore not subject to FOIA. The Government argues that these documents should be considered as congressional records because they disclose the deliberative process of the SSCI and would not exist in this form but for the congressional investigation that sparked their creation. 23 We do not agree. 15
16 The only documents still in dispute are three held by the FBI 24 and 55 in the possession of the CIA. 25 Under 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(B), this court's power to order their release is dependent upon a showing that the agencies have (1) improperly (2) withheld (3) agency records. See Kissinger v. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 445 U.S. 136, 150, 100 S.Ct. 960, 968, 63 L.Ed.2d 267 (1980); McGehee v. CIA, supra, 697 F.2d at 1105. The only threshold question posed here is whether the disputed documents can be considered agency records. Neither the Act nor its legislative history provides any adequate definition of this key phrase. See, e.g., Forsham v. Harris, 445 U.S. 169, 183-184, 100 S.Ct. 978, 985-986, 63 L.Ed.2d 293 (1980). 26 Accordingly, we turn to existing case law--as informed by the general policies of the Act--for guidance on this issue. 17 In recent years this court has followed the standards set forth in Goland v. CIA, 607 F.2d 339 (D.C.Cir.1978), vacated in part on other grounds, 607 F.2d 367 (D.C.Cir.1979), cert. denied, 445 U.S. 927, 100 S.Ct. 1312, 63 L.Ed.2d 759 (1980), for determining under what conditions documents in the possession of an agency may nonetheless be congressional documents, as opposed to agency records, and so be exempt from disclosure under FOIA: 18 Whether a congressionally generated document has become an agency record    depends on whether under all the facts of the case the document has passed from the control of Congress and become property subject to the free disposition of the agency with which the document resides. 19 607 F.2d at 347. Two factors are considered dispositive of Congress' continuing intent to control a document: (1) the circumstances attending the document's creation, and (2) the conditions under which it was transferred to the agency. See Holy Spirit Ass'n for Unification of World Christianity v. CIA, 636 F.2d 838, 841 (D.C.Cir.1980), other portions of decision vacated and remanded as moot, 455 U.S. 997, 102 S.Ct. 1626, 71 L.Ed.2d 858 (1982). See also Ryan v. Dep't of Justice, 617 F.2d 781, 785 (D.C.Cir.1980); Goland v. CIA, supra, 607 F.2d at 347-348. In the absence of any [229 U.S.App.D.C. 379] manifest indications that Congress intended to exert control over documents in an agency's possession, the court will conclude that such documents are not congressional records. 20 While the Supreme Court has never directly commented on the Goland approach, a recent decision has shed some new light--and confusion--on what may constitute agency records for the purposes of FOIA. In Kissinger v. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, supra, the Court held, inter alia, that transcripts of telephone conversations made during Henry Kissinger's tenure as National Security Adviser to the President were not agency records even though they had been removed from White House files and transferred to Kissinger's new office at the Department of State. 27 Rejecting the argument that physical location alone should control the question, 28 the Court instead looked beyond mere possession of the documents to the control exercised by the State Department: 21 The papers were not in the control of the State Department at any time. They were not generated in the State Department. They never entered the State Department's files, and they were not used by the Department for any purpose.    22 445 U.S. at 157, 100 S.Ct. at 972. 23 Kissinger 's focus on the control exercised by the possessor agency is not incompatible with Goland 's focus on Congress' intent to control. 29 Certainly, the two approaches differ somewhat in that one emphasizes factors relating to the absence of control by the possessor, while the other stresses the manifestations by the creator of an intent to control. See McGehee v. CIA, supra, 697 F.2d at 1107 n. 52. Yet, the cases fit together in standing for the general proposition that the agency to whom the FOIA request is directed must have exclusive control of the disputed documents. If, under the Goland standard, Congress 30 has manifested its own intent to retain control, then the agency--by definition--cannot lawfully control the documents within the meaning of Kissinger, and hence they are not agency records. 31 Thus we hold that our Goland approach has survived and is consistent with the Kissinger decision. We [229 U.S.App.D.C. 380] turn now to apply the Goland standard to the case at bar. 24
25 The documents in dispute in this case can be divided into two categories--those that Congress created and those that the CIA created. All documents are now in the possession of either the FBI or the CIA. 26
27 From the record it appears that the SSCI itself generated only five of the disputed documents--all three of the FBI records and two of the CIA documents. 32 Applying the two-pronged Goland test, we find that neither the circumstances surrounding the creation of the documents nor the conditions under which they were transferred to the agencies manifests a clear congressional intent to maintain control. 28 When Congress created the five documents in this case, it affixed no external indicia of control or confidentiality on the faces of the documents. 33 That the SSCI knew quite well how to classify its documents as secret is most clear from the fact that the Committee so stamped at least seven other of its documents related to the Paisley investigation--documents which were later requested by appellant, but which were properly held by the District Court to be exempt congressional documents in light of their classification markings. 34 Furthermore, the Government has not shown that the hearings which resulted in the three transcripts of testimony were conducted under any special conditions of secrecy. 35 29 Similarly, the documents at issue were not subsequently sent to the FBI and the CIA in such a way as to manifest any intent by Congress to retain control. The Government points to no contemporaneous and specific instructions from the SSCI to the agencies limiting either the use or disclosure of the documents. 36 Instead, the Government seeks to rely on an exchange of correspondence between the SSCI and the CIA as proof of the existence of a pre-existing agreement that any and all documents exchanged between the CIA and the SSCI would require review and approval by the Committee prior to public disclosure. 37 We do not consider these six letters to constitute sufficient evidence of Congress' intent to retain control over these particular documents. 30 The only two letters that specifically refer to the Paisley investigation were written [229 U.S.App.D.C. 381] in 1981 by the FBI and the CIA to the SSCI and simply indicate the agencies' belief that the documents now at issue are congressional in nature. There is no response from the Committee. Such one-sided correspondence initiated long after the original creation and transfer of the documents simply constitutes post hoc rationalization by the agencies. Cf. Holy Spirit Ass'n for Unification of World Christianity v. CIA, supra, 636 F.2d at 842 (letter from Clerk of House of Representatives written after transfer of records does not establish congressional control). 31 The remaining letters, written during 1978-82, do indicate the Committee's desire to prevent release without its approval of any documents generated by the Committee or by an intelligence agency in response to a Committee inquiry. 38 However, there is no discussion of any particular documents or of any particular criteria by which to evaluate and limit the breadth of this interdiction. We thus find these letters too general and sweeping to provide sufficient proof, when standing alone, of a specific intent to transfer these five Paisley documents to the FBI and the CIA for a limited purpose and on condition of secrecy. Goland v. CIA, supra, 607 F.2d at 348 n. 48. 39 In sum, nothing in either the circumstances of the documents' creation or the conditions attending their transfer provides the requisite express indication of a congressional intent to maintain exclusive control over these particular records. 32
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.