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

Heading: Treatment of Documents Obtained From Other Agencies

Text: 47 Our conclusion that the documents the CIA obtained from the State Department and FBI constitute agency records does not settle the fate of those materials. Two branches of the test delineated by the Supreme Court remain to be satisfied. The District Court should have compelled disclosure of the documents only if they were (1) 'improperly'; (2) 'withheld'  by the CIA. Kissinger v. Reporters Committee, 445 U.S. at 150, 100 S.Ct. at 968. Unfortunately, the recent vintage of the Court's three-pronged test means that there is very little case law directly concerned with the meaning of those crucial terms. 65 Nor does the legislative history of the Act provide us much guidance. Once again, therefore, we are cast back upon the premises and objectives of the FOIA as a whole. 66 Those considerations suggest the following definitions:Withholding: Certainly a categorical refusal to release documents that are in the agency's custody or control 67 for any reason other than those set forth in the Act's enumerated exemptions 68 would constitute withholding. Interpretive problems arise only in the context of processing or referral procedures that are likely to result eventually, but not immediately, in the release of documents. The legal status of such procedures seems to us best determined on the basis of their consequences. We conclude, in other words, that a system adopted by an agency for dealing with documents of a particular kind constitutes withholding of those documents if its net effect is significantly to impair the requester's ability to obtain the records or significantly to increase the amount of time he must wait to obtain them. 48 Improper: We are persuaded by Justice Stevens' opinion in Kissinger that sensible explication of the term improper in this context requires incorporation of a standard of reasonableness. 69 Thus, withholding of the sort just described will be deemed improper unless the agency can offer a reasonable explanation for its procedure. The form such an explanation would be most likely to take would be a showing that the procedure significantly improves the quality of the process whereby the government determines whether all or portions of responsive documents are exempt from disclosure. 70 Naturally, the more serious the resultant impediments to obtaining records or the longer the resultant delay in their release, the more substantial must be the offsetting gains offered by the agency to establish the reasonableness of its system. At the extreme, a procedure that, in practice, imposed very large burdens on requesters (e.g., by compelling them to pay huge processing costs or to submit separate requests to a number of independent bodies) or that resulted in very long delays would be highly difficult to justify. 49 A principle implicit in the foregoing definitions is that, when an agency receives a FOIA request for agency records in its possession, it must take responsibility for processing the request. It cannot simply refuse to act on the ground that the documents originated elsewhere. 50 There is insufficient evidence in the record to determine what result should be reached by applying these standards to the instant case. Neither the decision below nor the affidavits on which it was based make clear the nature of the referral procedure or exactly what advantages were gained by referring each of the documents obtained from the State Department and FBI to the originating body. 71 Nor is the extent of the accompanying impairment of McGehee's ability to gain access to those records apparent. 72 We therefore remand the case with instructions to afford the parties opportunity to adduce additional relevant evidence. 51 We recognize that the standards we adopt today are not bright line tests. The District Court may find it difficult, given the absence of other germane precedent, to apply our holdings to the instant case even when all the facts have been ascertained. To mitigate that uncertainty, and to provide some guidance to courts confronted with similar problems in future cases, we set forth below a model for a referral system. We do not suggest that agencies are bound to accept our plan; we describe it merely to indicate one set of practices that would comport with the general principles embodied in the Act: SAMPLE PROCEDURE FOR PROCESSING DOCUMENTS ORIGINATING WITH OTHER AGENCIES 52 An agency in possession of documents, responsive to a FOIA request that it has received from another agency would forward them to the originating body (in lieu of processing them itself) if and only if they satisfied an intent to control test. 73 Specifically, an intention on the part of the originating agency that it retain the authority to decide if and when materials are released to the public would have to be made evident by either (i) explicit indications to that effect on the face of each document or (ii) the circumstances surrounding the creation and transfer of the documents. 74 53 To minimize the resultant delay, the referral would have to be prompt and public. In other words, as soon as the agency retrieved responsive documents, and possibly even before it undertook an examination of their contents to determine whether they were exempt from disclosure, it would identify those records that originated elsewhere and, if they passed the aforementioned intent to control test, would immediately (i) inform the requester of the situation, (ii) notify the originating agency and, (iii) if necessary, forward to the latter copies of the relevant documents. To minimize the burden on the requester, this notification and referral would be accorded the status of a FOIA request; the person seeking information would thereby be relieved of the duty to submit a separate demand to the originating agency. 54 The system we outline, by promoting (i) the processing by the agencies to which requests are submitted of a substantial percentage of the other agency records in their possession and (ii) the rapid referral to the originating bodies of the remainder, would mitigate the two most serious hardships associated with the extant automatic referral systems: the inconvenience to requesters of being compelled to assert their rights in two or more independent administrative fora and the long delays resulting from the superimposition of two or more processing sequences. 75 55 If, in a given case, the intent to control test were satisfied but the agency to which the request was first submitted had not followed the procedures suggested above by the time litigation commenced, the district court would still have some options at its disposal that would enable it to ensure that the petitioner's request was processed expeditiously without sacrificing the benefits accruing from a substantive review by the originating agency. The court might, for example, allow the defendant agency to submit affidavits or present witnesses from the originating agency, explaining which documents are exempt and why. Alternatively, the court could require the originating agency to appear as a party to the suit pursuant to FED.R.CIV.P. 19(a). But these options would be makeshift arrangements; the preferable situation would be adherence to a set of review and referral guidelines of the sort described above. 56