Opinion ID: 149114
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Six Letters

Text: The district court held Thompson's letters do not support a claim under the Privacy Act because the information contained in them had not been retrieved from a system of records. We first consider the district court's factual finding concerning Thompson's sources and then its legal conclusion that no such source was a record retrieved from a system of records.
The district court found Thompson composed the letters based upon information obtained from her own complaint, from her own observations and speculation and those of others, from the rumor-mill ... and from other non-covered sources. 610 F.Supp.2d at 71. The following table pairs the disclosures in three of Thompson's letters and the sources she identified for each; the other three letters contain substantially the same information and need not be analyzed separately. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Disclosure Source(s) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ (1) The USDA hired Observation and speculation: Armstrong to work in That Armstrong the Office of was going to the USDA Investigations. was disclosed in an email message about a going-away luncheon. As for the specific office, I presumed that Mr. Armstrong, who was a law enforcement agent with TIGTA, ... would have applied for a position in the Office of Investigations because that is where law enforcement agents are employed at the USDA. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ (2) Armstrong was escorted Observation and speculation: out of the building I was there the and forced to turn in his day that he was removed. gun, badge, equipment, ... I heard him leave. cell phone, computer and I surmised that it was government car keys. reasonable to presume that Mr. Armstrong was escorted out of the building, because when individuals are placed under investigation and removed from their position, they are escorted out and driven home. In response to a question about his gun, badge, and cell phone, I was present that day in the office, and the office manager, who sits ... outside of Mr. Armstrong's office, ... told me that she saw Mr. Armstrong retrieve his equipment and turn it over. Also, Armstrong parked in the same garage as did Thompson and she observed his government car never left the parking space. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ (3) He was removed from Observation and speculation: all managerial and law Armstrong was enforcement duties and Thompson's supervisor sent to another office. one day and he was not the next day. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ (4) He was under internal Her own complaint and investigation for accessing speculation: I made the sensitive law enforcement initial anonymous complaint information to TIGTA regarding through various Mr. Armstrong, and databases. shortly thereafter Mr. Armstrong was my supervisor on one day and on the very next day he was no longer my supervisor. I was able to conclude that Mr. Armstrong was likely under investigation for the allegations that I had made. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ (5) He admitted to looking Speculation: In my up information on his experience as a federal subordinates, co-workers, agent, most people admit etc. to wrongdoing when they are caught. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ (6) At the time the USDA Speculation: a sufficient offered [Armstrong] a amount of time had job, the investigation on passed for me to reasonably him had been completed conclude that the and the allegations ... investigation had been were proven to be true. completed. I believe from my experience working there at TIGTA that had the allegations been disproven, he would have been returned as my supervisor. But he never came back. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ (7) At the time, the Speculation: Based on Treasury Inspector the seriousness of the General for Tax allegations contained in Administration was deciding the initial anonymous what disciplinary complaint that I made to action (I believe termination TIGTA, it was my presumption was being considered) that an agency to take against would consider termination. him. Termination is always a consideration as a disciplinary action. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The district court credited Thompson's testimony regarding her sources and, because Thompson identified a reasonable source for each bit of information, we see no clear error in the district court's findings. Although the district court characterized her as an evasive and unreliable witness, it found no evidence that Thompson accessed relevant protected records... or that anyone who did have access disclosed information to her from those records. 610 F.Supp.2d at 71. Thompson expressly denied having see[n] any portion of the investigation or discussed the matter with various supervisors involved in the investigation. In keeping with his variation of the res ipsa theme, Armstrong argues Thompson must have had another source of information, either the agency's Investigation Records or [ ] one of the five senior [TIGTA] officials tasked with conducting and safeguarding the report of investigation. We disagree; Armstrong does no more than speculate about another source, whereas each piece of information disclosed in the six letters can be traced back to one of the sources Thompson identified, including plausible inferences she drew from her experience, to the satisfaction of the district court.
We now turn to whether any of the sources Thompson named qualifies as a record which is contained in a system of records. 5 U.S.C. § 552a(b). The first source, Thompson's own complaint, presents the closest question because it became part of the agency's record of the investigation. The district court, however, found she did not retrieve her complaint from the agency's system of records when composing her letters to the USDA. Relying upon our opinion in Bartel v. FAA, 725 F.2d 1403 (1984), Armstrong argues once Thompson's complaint became an agency record the Privacy Act prohibited her from repeating its contents. But for the cited decision, this argument might seem far-fetched. In that case one Bartel, an employee of the Federal Aviation Administration, had apparently accessed agency records improperly, prompting Vincent, another employee, to investigate Bartel's conduct. Vincent collected documents and created a Report of Investigation. Several months later, after learning Bartel was seeking reemployment within the agency, Vincent sent letters to the persons whose files Bartel had accessed, advising them of the investigation and of its findings. 725 F.2d at 1405-06. Bartel sued the FAA under the Privacy Act, arguing the letters disclosed a record, viz., the Report of Investigation, contained in a system of records. 5 U.S.C. § 552a(b). The evidence in the case was entirely silent as to whether Vincent ever examinedand therefore, actually retrievedthe Report of Investigation before he composed the letters. 725 F.2d at 1408. We proposed an exception to the general rule requiring the plaintiff to prove a record was actually retrieved, suggesting Vincent may have violated the Privacy Act even if he recalled from memory the contents of the report he had created for inclusion in the agency's record. We narrowly tethered the exception, however, to the facts of that case, in which the disclosing agency employee had ordered the investigation which resulted in the [report], made a putative determination of wrongdoing based on the investigation, and disclosed that putative determination in letters purporting to report an official agency determination. 725 F.2d at 1411. We also explained that, in contrast to disclosures of general office knowledge, it would hardly seem an intolerable burden to restrict an agency official's discretion to disclose information in a record that he may not have read but that he had a primary role in creating and using, where it was because of that record-related role that he acquired the information in the first place. Id. Cf. Doe v. Dep't of Veterans Affairs, 519 F.3d 456, 460-63 (8th Cir.2008) (distinguishing Bartel because doctor who disclosed information in plaintiff's medical record had learned the information directly from plaintiff and not from government system for collecting information). The exception we suggested in Bartel does not extend to this case, in which Thompson neither acquired the information contained in her initial complaint in any way related to a record, as an investigator might have done, nor used the record in her work for the agency. Because Armstrong has not shown that Thompson retrieved the record containing her complaint before composing the letters to the USDA, Thompson's disclosure in the letters of information she had also included in her complaint did not violate the Privacy Act. Nor does a disclosure from any of the other identified sources constitute a violation. There is no evidence Thompson's observations and speculation or those of others, or information from the rumor-mill, 610 F.Supp.2d at 71, are part of and were retrieved from any record which is contained in a system of records.