Opinion ID: 389930
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Discovery Request

Text: 40 McGoff and his wholly owned companies, Global and Sacramento, assert the possibility that the SEC's investigation is politically motivated against a vocal critic of the (Carter) Administration. Brief for Appellants at 3, 42. To test the bona fides  13 of the investigation, McGoff and his companies served on the SEC a comprehensive set of interrogatories and a related request for documentary production. Judge Gesell disallowed any discovery. We conclude that Judge Gesell appropriately applied the general rule excluding discovery in summary subpoena enforcement proceedings absent extraordinary circumstances. See United States v. Exxon Corp., 628 F.2d 70, 77 n.7 (D.C.Cir.), cert. denied, 446 U.S. 964, 100 S.Ct. 2940, 64 L.Ed.2d 823 (1980). 41 McGoff asserts that extraordinary circumstances exist in this case, as they did in United States v. Fensterwald, 553 F.2d 231 (D.C.Cir.1977). We find scant resemblance between the two cases. Bernard W. Fensterwald, Jr., the subject of a special Internal Revenue Service audit, was permitted by this court to engage in limited discovery to determine how the IRS selected his name for the audit. Fensterwald had represented Watergate defendant James McCord at the time McCord made the revelations to District Judge Sirica which contributed so greatly to public knowledge of the Watergate conspiracy. 553 F.2d at 232. In addition, Fensterwald had served as chief counsel of a Senate committee that undertook investigation of alleged illegal activities of the Internal Revenue Service. That investigation resulted in revelations damaging to the reputation of the IRS. Ibid. Moreover, the IRS maintained that names for the special audit had been selected entirely by chance as a result of computer selection. Establishing that fact, the court said, should be easy for the IRS. 553 F.2d at 233. 42 McGoff, however stern his criticism of Carter administration policies, can point to nothing concrete paralleling the McCord Watergate revelations, disclosures which occasioned great embarrassment to persons highly placed in the Executive Branch. Nor has he alleged, as Fensterwald did, that his prior involvement with the agency conducting the investigation might have stimulated that agency to retaliate against him. Finally, the SEC here does not defend its investigation, as the IRS did in Fensterwald, as a chance selection. Rather, the SEC moored the probe in significant part to information revealed in an official, published report of the Republic of South Africa. 43 Most Americans criticize their government at one time or another and many in a position to be heard do so regularly and harshly. If strong criticism of administration policy on the part of the target of an agency investigation were sufficient to authorize inquiry into the agency's motives, little would remain of the general rule that (e)xcept in extraordinary circumstances discovery is improper in a summary subpoena enforcement proceeding. United States v. Exxon Corp., supra, 628 F.2d at 77 n.7. We hold that McGoff's diffuse speculations concerning possible misuse of administrative authority do not establish the exceptional circumstances necessary to take this case out of the general rule.