Opinion ID: 697751
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Free Speech Movement

Text: 27 The government sought to withhold many documents in the FSM file under the various exemption 7 exemptions. The district court ruled that the government showed a law enforcement purpose covering FSM documents dated before January 19, 1965. 761 F.Supp. at 1444-45. However, it concluded that the investigation's rational nexus to a law enforcement purpose expired as of that date, and thus declined to allow withholding of documents after that date on exemption 7 grounds. Id. at 1448. The government appeals from the portion of the district court's opinion ordering it to disclose all post-cutoff FSM documents not ordered withheld under an exemption other than exemption 7. 28 The government asserted two purposes that could have supported the conclusion that all the records in the FSM file, pre- and post-cutoff, were compiled with a law enforcement purpose. The district court found that the FBI investigated whether and to what extent the FSM was influenced by subversive organizations or would be likely to lead to civil disorder. Id. at 1445. The FBI corroborated these two purposes by identifying two individuals in the FSM leadership with communist leanings and indicating the potential for disorder in the demonstrations and civil disobedience occurring at UC Berkeley in 1964. Id. 29 The district court concluded that the records put in the FSM file from October 1964 to January 1965 were compiled with a law enforcement purpose. However, the court also concluded that this purpose disintegrated, that the FBI invoked it merely as a pretext to pursue routine monitoring, with respect to documents put in the file after January 19, 1965. See id. at 1445, 1448. Neither party contests the court's finding of a valid law enforcement purpose from October 1964 to January 1965. 30 We affirm the district court's ruling because the court did not clearly err in determining that any post-cutoff law enforcement purpose was invoked only as a pretext to monitor the subjects of the FSM investigation. The record contains a January 28, 1965, memorandum showing that the FBI gave information about some of the investigation subjects to a member of the UC Board of Regents at the request of then-CIA Director John McCone. A later memo indicated that the Regent would use the information to curtail, harass and at times eliminate Communists and ultra liberal members on the faculty. These documents strongly suggest that the January 28 memo was compiled to harass political opponents of the FBI's allies among the Regents, not to investigate subversion and civil disorder. They also suggest that by that date the FBI may no longer have had a legitimate purpose to continue its investigation of the FSM subjects. The FSM file also contains many reports compiled after the cutoff date about the activities of Mario Savio, an FSM leader. Read together, the documents admit that the FBI found he had negligible contacts with communists, and suggest the FBI was interested in investigating him for his contemptuous attitude instead of his possible subversiveness. 31 The district court found that a January 19, 1965, memorandum, which reported that the FSM and the UC demonstrations were not controlled by communists, was the last document in the FSM file to be compiled with a law enforcement purpose. Based on our review of the documents that followed this memorandum, we cannot say that the district court clearly erred in determining that this was the last document compiled with a rational nexus to a legitimate law enforcement purpose. We affirm the district court's exemption 7 ruling as to documents compiled directly into the FSM file.