Opinion ID: 546873
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Disclosure of a CIA Station Location

Text: 43 The District Court also ordered disclosure of the location of a particular CIA station because that information was publicly available within the meaning of Afshar v. Department of State, 702 F.2d 1125, 1133 (D.C.Cir.1983). The District Court's rationale was that the station location had been revealed in a 1975 congressional committee report. Fitzgibbon, 578 F.Supp. at 715. We disagree and reverse the District Court's disclosure order on this point. 44 In Afshar, we concluded that when information has been officially acknowledged, its disclosure may be compelled even over an agency's otherwise valid exemption claim. For an item to be officially acknowledged, however, we established three criteria. First, the information requested must be as specific as the information previously released. Second, the information requested must match the information previously disclosed; we noted, for example, that official disclosure did not waive the protection to be accorded information that pertained to a later time period. Third, we held that the information requested must already have been made public through an official and documented disclosure. Afshar, 702 F.2d at 1133. These criteria are important because they acknowledge the fact that in the arena of intelligence and foreign relations there can be a critical difference between official and unofficial disclosures. See Abbotts v. Nuclear Regulatory Comm'n, 766 F.2d 604, 607-08 (D.C.Cir.1985); Military Audit Project v. Casey, 656 F.2d 724, 742-45 (D.C.Cir.1981); Phillippi v. CIA, 655 F.2d 1325, 1332-33 (D.C.Cir.1981). As the Fourth Circuit has noted, [i]t is one thing for a reporter or author to speculate or guess that a thing may be so or even, quoting undisclosed sources, to say that it is so; it is quite another thing for one in a position to know of it officially to say that it is so. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. v. Colby, 509 F.2d 1362, 1370 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 421 U.S. 992, 95 S.Ct. 1999, 44 L.Ed.2d 482 (1975). See also Simmons v. Department of Justice, 796 F.2d 709, 712 (4th Cir.1986). 45 The Agency first argues that a disclosure by a congressional committee does not constitute 'official acknowledgment' by an authorized Executive branch official and cannot bind the Executive Branch, Brief for CIA at 37, relying primarily on Salisbury v. United States, 690 F.2d 966, 971 (D.C.Cir.1982), and Department of the Navy v. Egan, 484 U.S. 518, 528, 108 S.Ct. 818, 829, 98 L.Ed.2d 918 (1988). A contrary rule, the CIA continues, would clearly be unconstitutional--both because it clearly interferes with the Executive's authority to control access to national security information, and because it would authorize a congressional entity to perform an executive function. Brief for CIA at 38-39 (citation omitted). As a policy matter, the Agency urges us to conclude that relying on congressional releases to force the Executive to confirm or deny [the] accuracy and substance of such information may well pose a risk of compromise of intelligence sources and methods. Id. at 39. 46 The Agency is doubtless correct in arguing that the executive branch has substantial statutory and constitutional discretion to control the flow of national security information, and that executive branch confirmation or denial of information contained in congressional reports could under some circumstances pose a danger to intelligence sources and methods. We decline to reach the constitutional grounds offered by the Agency, however, because we conclude that the District Court misread Afshar when it concluded that a disclosure could operate as a waiver of protection for information relating to a time period prior to the events disclosed. As the District Court correctly noted, this Court stated in Afshar that the prior disclosure waiver would not operate on information pertaining to a time period later than the date of the publicly documented information. Fitzgibbon, 578 F.Supp. at 715 n. 30 (emphasis in original) (citing Afshar, 702 F.2d at 1133). The District Court went on to find, however, that [t]here is no reason grounded in either the past or the present for distinguishing between the documents that the Senate used to confirm a CIA presence in the Dominican Republic in 1960 and 1961 and those in this case that would confirm a presence dated to 1956 ... [because] no greater embarrassment either to the United States or to the Dominican Republic would follow from confirming that the presence encompassed several prior years as well. Id. 47 In ordering disclosure of information predating the congressional disclosure, the District Court essentially performed its own calculus as to whether or not harm to the national security or to intelligence sources and methods would result from disclosure, hence its no embarrassment conclusion. As an initial matter, the central issue here is not embarrassment but a determination of possible harm. The assessment of harm to intelligence sources, methods and operations is entrusted to the Director of Central Intelligence, not to the courts. See Sims, 471 U.S. at 174-75, 179, 180, 105 S.Ct. at 1890, 1893; see also supra at 762-64. Because courts must accord substantial weight and deference to the affidavits of the CIA, see supra at 762, we decline to adopt the abuse-of-discretion review that Fitzgibbon urges upon us. 48 Moreover, the District Court's rationale rests upon an erroneous correlation between the continuity of a regime in a foreign country and the Agency's intelligence requirements, sources, methods and operations. Contrary to the District Court's assumption, a foreign government's internal situation and external relations can change over time, thereby necessitating a change in the CIA's presence and activities within the country, an alteration of the CIA's relationship with the regime or the opposition, or a reassessment of Agency goals. Similarly, we have unequivocally recognized that the fact that information resides in the public domain does not eliminate the possibility that further disclosures can cause harm to intelligence sources, methods and operations. See Abbotts, 766 F.2d at 608; Salisbury, 690 F.2d at 971; Military Audit Project, 656 F.2d at 753; Hayden v. NSA, 608 F.2d 1381, 1388 (D.C.Cir.1979), cert. denied, 446 U.S. 937, 100 S.Ct. 2156, 64 L.Ed.2d 790 (1980). We conclude, therefore, that the rationale of Afshar's prohibition against extending any waiver of protection to items concerning events later than the requested materials is equally applicable to items concerning events earlier than the requested materials. The mere fact that the CIA voluntarily transmitted an official document to a congressional committee does not mean that the Agency can thereby automatically be forced to release any number of other documents. The District Court erred in ordering disclosure of the withheld station location.