Opinion ID: 437450
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Special Agent in Charge

Text: 39 We reach a different conclusion, however, as to the SAC who was involved with the GAO audit of the FBI's domestic intelligence operations. He was a higher-level official than the other two employees, and he participated knowingly in the cover-up. His censure letter stated: 40 Although you were following instructions from a superior, you are culpable to the extent that you took part in an effort to withhold information from GAO. Your participation in acts that resulted in the FBI's not making a full and timely disclosure of surreptitious entries was a serious matter, and you should have been aware that the result of your action would be a misrepresentation to GAO. 41 The letter added that this type of action is intolerable for a senior bureau official. This censure reflects the FBI's conclusion that, although the SAC did not initiate the plan to withhold relevant information available in the New York office, he was aware of the plan, acquiesced in it, and helped carry it out. 42 The balancing we are required to make under Exemption 7 tips toward disclosure in the SAC's case. We conclude that it would not be an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy to reveal his name, despite the potential association with notorious and serious allegations of criminal wrongdoing. He was a high-level employee who was found to have participated deliberately and knowingly in the withholding of damaging information in an important inquiry--an act that he should have known would lead to a misrepresentation by the FBI. The public has a great interest in being enlightened about that type of malfeasance by this senior FBI official--an action called intolerable by the FBI--an interest that is not outweighed by his own interest in personal privacy. There is a decided difference between knowing participation by a high-level officer in such deception and the negligent performance of particular duties by the two other lower-level employees. The excuse that the SAC was merely following orders should not prevent the public from being informed that a specific senior bureau official followed a deliberately-chosen course when placed, perhaps, between a hard rock and his conscience. One basic general assumption of the FOIA is that, in many important public matters, it is for the public to know and then to judge.