Opinion ID: 375887
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the agency records issue

Text: 5 In several prior FOIA cases courts have been called upon to determine whether requested documents are agency records. This issue commonly arises when the requested documents are in the possession of an agency but were created by an entity not defined as an agency under the FOIA: Congress, federal courts, outside consultants not in corporations controlled by the government, 2 or the President's immediate personal staff and units in the Executive Office whose sole function is to advise and assist the President. 3 For such cases the FOIA does not specify a test for determining what is an agency record. 4
6 The straightforward question of who has physical possession of documents has not sufficed, in cases before this court, to define whether documents are agency records. 5 A simple possession standard would permit agencies to insulate their activities from FOIA disclosure by farming out operations to outside contractors. It would also create a severe problem whenever confidential congressional documents or materials from the President's immediate staff come into the possession of an agency, as may occur when Congress oversees and supervises an agency. A standard that automatically made such records subject to FOIA disclosure as soon as they are transferred to agency hands would seriously impair Congress's oversight role. 6 7 Recognizing these difficulties, this court has adopted a standard more consistent with the intent and general framework of the FOIA disclosure system. Our opinion in Goland v. Central Intelligence Agency 7 examined this issue in the context of a FOIA request for a congressional document that was in the hands of an agency. We adopted a standard of control rather than possession: whether under all the facts of the case the document has passed from the control of Congress and become property subject to the free disposition of the agency with which the document resides. 8 Under the Goland standard, the court looks at the circumstances under which the document was generated whether it was generated by a non-agency, and how, and why and at the non-agency's intent in transferring the document to the agency. In Goland, Congress's actions generating the document during an executive session of a committee, marking the document Secret, and transferring it to the CIA solely for internal reference purposes, showed that Congress intended to refrain effective control while the document was in agency hands. 9 8 Goland follows the structure and intent of the FOIA by determining what entity controls the document and deciding whether that entity is within the category of agency defined by the Act. An earlier decision of this court pursued a similar approach, inquiring whether the generation of a document by consultants of the Office of Science and Technology brought it within control of that Office so as to make it a record, and whether that Office was an agency or rather a part of the President's staff. 10 In a more recent case we have again examined whether an agency controlled the documents of an outside entity, in the sense of being involved in the core planning or execution of a program, such as to make the documents agency records within the FOIA. 11
9 In the present case, although the requested documents were in the possession of the Department of Justice, the district court concluded that the history and purpose of their generation showed them not to be agency records under the FOIA. The court found that the documents did not belong to and were not within the control of either the Attorney General who possessed them, the Senators who participated in their generation, the state nominating commissions about which they reported, or the President for whose ultimate benefit they were created. Rather, the court found, the documents were the collective product and property of all of these entities, none of which were agencies for FOIA purposes. The court concluded that the Attorney General was not an agency in this case because he was acting as counsel and advisor to the President, in furtherance of the President's power to nominate federal judges. 12 10 We find, on the contrary, that the requested documents are in the control of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice which he heads. The Department possesses the documents; and while this factor is not conclusive on the crucial issue of control, it is certainly relevant. Unless there is evidence of control by some other entity, we must conclude that the Attorney General and his Department control these documents. We find no such evidence. Senators generated these materials at the specific request of the Attorney General, and they gave no indication that they wished to limit his use of them. There are no express or reasonably implied senatorial instructions concerning the Attorney General's disposition of these documents. The Senators gave no indication that their responses were to be treated as secret or sensitive, and nothing in the Attorney General's questionnaire or other circumstances indicated that Senators would have the prerogative to maintain secrecy. On this record we cannot find control by the Senators. Nor have the nominating commissions exercised any degree of control over the documents. 11 Although the documents are for the ultimate benefit of the President in a nominating role that is exclusively his, we find that the Attorney General was acting as an independently controlling entity, and not a mere conduit. The questionnaires solicited responses from Senators at the request of the Attorney General, not the President. In his cover letter enclosed with the questionnaires, the Attorney General stated the independent role he was to play in this process: he was to consider certain factors before making his own recommendations to the President as to judicial nominees. This is an independent exercise of judgment that the Attorney General has traditionally taken in the judicial nomination process. The logical deduction from the facts is that the Attorney General was to control the questionnaire responses for the purpose of carrying out his independent duties. We have no evidence before us that the President in any way diminished the Attorney General's control over these documents; there is no indication that they will ever be transmitted to or seen by the President or his staff. By all indicia of ownership, the documents are within the exclusive control of the Attorney General. 12
13 We must next consider whether there is any basis in the FOIA for distinguishing between the Attorney General and the Department of Justice, in such a way that the former is not an agency where he functions in a purely advisory capacity to the President. Our analysis must start from the FOIA's definition of agency, which includes any executive department. 13 There is no basis in this definition or its legislative history to view the Attorney General as distinct from his department for FOIA purposes. On the contrary, it is only reasonable to consider him as much a part of the Department of Justice as any other official or employee in that Department. 14 Since the creation of the Department of Justice in 1870 the Attorney General has always had two roles: advisor to the President and administrator of the Department of Justice. The same dual role would be true, to a greater or lesser extent, of all other Cabinet officers. Whether these documents are agency records raises the question: can any meaningful distinction be made between documents generated and kept in the Department on the basis of the two different roles? And, if so, would the same distinction not apply in all Executive Departments? 15 The Government argues that the questionnaire responses are not agency records because they do not fall out of the sphere of the appointment process into Department of Justice business. 14 The problem with this argument is that the appointment of federal judges has always been a regular business of the Attorney General and his Department. This responsibility was shifted in 1978 to the office of the Associate Attorney General. 15 Shortly before we heard this case on appeal, it was shifted once again, so that responsibility now falls directly on the Attorney General. 16 Whatever the formal channels of responsibility, the task of receiving, processing, and clearing names of judicial nominees has long been a routine function of the Department of Justice. 17 Whether the official responsibility falls directly on the Attorney General, or rather on one of his subordinates, makes no difference to the fact that this function is regular business of the agency. 16 Judicial nominations are by no means unique as an instance where normal agency functions involve some element of giving advice to the President. The entire Office of Legal Counsel, under an Assistant Attorney General, exists to assist the Attorney General in advising the President and Cabinet officers on major legal questions. Thus a substantial number of people, integral parts of the Department of Justice, are there to assist the Attorney General in performing his duty as advisor to the President on a variety of matters. If we broke out all documents connected with these functions as not being agency records under the FOIA, we would have a substantial percentage of Department of Justice records that were somehow transformed into the Attorney General's personal records as advisor to the President. This does not appear as either a realistic or intended distinction under the Freedom of Information Act. 17 This conclusion is underscored if we examine the likely results if the Government's theory, adopted by the trial court, were applied to other Executive Departments. For example, in the Department of State a huge portion of the Secretary's functions could be described as advising the President on the conduct of foreign relations, his selection of ambassadors, and utilization of those ambassadors abroad. We could hardly say all the documents in the Department of State relating to the Secretary advising the President were not agency records, although a substantial percentage of these agency records might well be protected from disclosure by one of the FOIA exemptions. 18 Turning to another argument of the Government to classify the Attorney General as a non-agency in this case, the appellee points to the rule that agency does not include the President's immediate personal staff or Executive Office units whose sole function is to advise the President. This rule was set forth in our opinion in Soucie v. David, 18 and endorsed by the Conference Committee Report on the 1974 FOIA Amendments. 19 As expounded in these two sources, however, the rule applies only to the initial decision of whether a unit falls within the category of agency for FOIA purposes. Neither Soucie v. David, nor the Committee Report implies that once a unit has been found to be an agency, one of its component parts can nevertheless be treated as a non-agency when engaged in presidential advisory functions. 19 Soucie found that the Office of Science and Technology was an agency, because the Office had functions in addition to advising the President. 20 But the opinion did not intimate that the Office might be an agency only when performing its non-advisory functions, and still be a presidential staff component, or non-agency, when performing its other function of advising the President. In fact, the reports under consideration in Soucie were requested by the President precisely for advisory purposes, but we did not deem the Office to be a non-agency in that specific context. 21 20 The logical conclusion from the FOIA language and from Soucie is that, depending on its general nature and functions, a particular unit is either an agency or it is not. Once a unit is found to be an agency, this determination will not vary according to its specific function in each individual case. There is an obvious exception where private entities and their documents are controlled by agencies in limited circumstances; there the private entity certainly does not become a government agency irrevocably for all its activities. 22 But we can see no basis for excepting the Attorney General and the Department of Justice; we find they are an agency without respect to their particular functions in individual cases. 21 The Government argues that nomination of judges is a purely presidential function; that had the President himself solicited this information from Senators, their responses to him would be exempt from the FOIA; and that the President's choice to draw the Attorney General into this presidential activity should not make the responses disclosable. Such an approach, defining agency records by the purpose for which they exist, would cut back severely on the FOIA's reach as interpreted by courts since its inception. Documents of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency are compiled precisely for the function of advising the President in the solely presidential role of Commander-in-Chief. Yet in many FOIA encounters with NSA and CIA, we have never held or seriously considered that they might not be agencies when acting in this capacity. 22 As we indicated above, other departments State, Defense come quickly to mind as examples where the Government's argument proves far too much. Many cabinet officers, like the Attorney General, or the Office of Legal Counsel under him, act as advisors to the President for many of their important functions; yet they are not members of the presidential staff or exclusively presidential advisors, and are thus not exempt from FOIA requirements. The Government cites a district court case which held the Pardon Attorney of the Justice Department not to be an agency for FOIA purposes, because his sole function is to advise and assist the President. 23 Whatever the merits of this reasoning yet to be determined in this court we face an easier question in this case because the Attorney General has functions in addition to advising the President. Any unit or official that is part of an agency and has non-advisory functions cannot be considered a non-agency in selected contexts on a case-by-case basis. 23 It is certainly true, as the Government contends, that had the President's staff itself solicited these responses from Senators, the documents would not be agency records. In many different areas the President has a choice between using his staff to perform a function and using an agency to perform it. While not always substantively significant, these choices are often unavoidably significant for FOIA purposes, because the Act defines agencies as subject to disclosure and presidential staff as exempt. To redraw this statutory line in a different manner, based on complex functional considerations, would strain the language of the Act and present much greater complexity in litigation.