Opinion ID: 393935
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the distinction between documents and information

Text: 40 Although the Government acknowledged that the name check summaries were not compiled for law enforcement purposes, the claim is made that nondisclosure was justified because 41 (a)ll of the information withheld was originally obtained and compiled by the FBI in connection with either a background investigation of an individual being considered for an official appointment or else an investigation into a suspected violation of law. 42 Appellee's brief at 9 (emphasis added). In other words, the Government asserts, and Petitioner does not directly dispute, that the information used to compile the name check summaries came from FBI documents that were compiled for legitimate law enforcement purposes. 43 Even if we accept the truth of the Government's assertion, we are still left with undisputed facts indicating that: (1) the name check summaries were originally developed pursuant to a request from the White House for information about certain public personalities; (2) the name check summaries were not duplicates of any FBI investigatory documents that were compiled for legitimate law enforcement purposes; and (3) the documents constituting the name check summaries were not compiled for any legitimate law enforcement purposes. 44 Without passing on whether the original FBI files were compiled for legitimate law enforcement purposes, the District Court properly distinguished between the name check summaries and the original FBI files. It is the nondisclosure of only the name check summaries that is in issue in this case. It is with respect to these documents that the District Court found that the Government had failed to show a legitimate law enforcement purpose. The Government on appeal attempts to gloss over the distinction between the two sets of documents by characterizing the recompiled summaries as simply extensions of the original documents from which they derive, all bearing the same information. 45 However, the statutory scheme of the FOIA very clearly indicates that exemptions from disclosure apply only to documents, and not to the use of the information contained in such documents. 16 Thus, when information has been recompiled in a new document for a new purpose, the new document must qualify independently for any exemptions from disclosure under the FOIA. 46 While the Government does indeed concede that the White House name check requests resulted in the production of documents which were distinct from the underlying documents already contained in the FBI files, it did not introduce any evidence to demonstrate that the responses to the White House requests were compiled for law enforcement purposes. App. at 28. Rather, the Government simply relies on its assertion that the underlying documents were compiled for law enforcement purposes to meet the threshold requirements of the (b)(7)(C) exemption for the name check summaries. 47 A similar argument was recently considered and rejected by this court in Lesar v. United States Department of Justice, 636 F.2d 472 (D.C.Cir.1980). In Lesar, petitioner sought the disclosure of deletions from reports released to him that had been prepared by the Civil Rights Division and a special Task Force in the Department of Justice with respect to various FBI surveillances of Dr. Martin Luther King. The Justice Department excised certain materials, pursuant to section (b)(7)(C), which consisted of the names and other identifying information of persons involved in the King investigation, including informants and lower-level FBI personnel, as well as information of a personal nature, the disclosure of which allegedly could embarrass Dr. King's family and associates or damage their reputations. 17 48 Lesar challenged the applicability of the exemption to the withheld material on the ground that the material was not compiled for law enforcement purposes. Lesar argued that because the FBI's surveillance had degenerated into a campaign to discredit and to neutralize Dr. King, 18 and was unrelated to any legitimate law enforcement purpose, it did not meet the threshold requirements set forth in section 7. In rejecting Lesar's argument, this court distinguished the underlying original surveillance records, about which it entertained serious doubts whether (they) could be construed in their entirety as 'investigatory records compiled for law enforcement purposes,'  19 from the Justice Department's Task Force summaries, which were at issue in the Lesar case. The court then noted that there was no dispute as to whether the Task Force materials were compiled during the course of a legitimate law enforcement investigation that, in fact, one of the purposes for which the Task Force had been created was to investigate alleged improprieties in the FBI surveillances of Dr. King. The court concluded that (w)e thus resist appellant's suggestion that we somehow should 'pass through' the Task Force notes to the underlying FBI surveillance records and inquire further into the point at which the FBI's investigation of Dr. King strayed beyond its lawful scope. We hold that the documents at issue meet the threshold requirement of subsection 7. 20 49 In Lesar the petitioner attempted to impute the illegitimate purposes associated with the compilation of the underlying documents to the Task Force summaries that were derived from the underlying documents; in this case the Government seeks to impute the legitimate purposes associated with the compilation of the underlying FBI files to the name check summaries that were prepared for the White House. Although this case is the reverse of Lesar, we are constrained here, as we were in Lesar, to reject the pass through theory. Each document for which a section (b)(7)(C) exemption is claimed under the FOIA must first be shown to be an investigatory record compiled for law enforcement purposes. 50 We agree with the District Court that the Government has failed to demonstrate that the name check summaries were compiled for law enforcement purposes, and accordingly find that the recompiled summary documents have been improperly withheld. 51