Opinion ID: 697751
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Clark Kerr

Text: 19 The government also appeals from the district court's conclusion that [t]he Clark Kerr documents as a whole are not entitled to a (b)(7) exemption since it is clear that they do not relate to any investigation performed in connection with a legitimate law enforcement purpose. 761 F.Supp. at 1449. We agree with the district court's conclusion except as to two documents in the Kerr file. 20 The government argued for withholding Kerr files because they were compiled to complete four personnel investigations. The FBI undertook a 1947 investigation on behalf of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), which was considering Kerr for an appointment as a labor advisor. It performed a 1953 investigation on behalf of the AEC again, because Kerr, as Chancellor of the University of California, had access to classified matters from UC nuclear energy laboratories. (Rosenfeld sought access to the report of this investigation, labelled Kerr Doc. 1 in the district court's index.) The FBI completed a 1958 investigation on behalf of the White House, which was considering Kerr for an appointment to the International Development Advisory Board. Last, it performed a 1964 investigation on behalf of the White House, which was considering him for an appointment to the Board of the Communications Satellite Corporation. (Rosenfeld also sought access to this document, labelled Kerr Doc. 21 in the district court's index.) 21 We have held that FBI pardon applicant investigations satisfy the rational nexus test. Binion, 695 F.2d at 1194. We think that FBI government appointment investigations also satisfy the rational nexus test. As a result, the government has satisfied its burden of showing that these four records were compiled with a rational nexus to a law enforcement purpose. However, the government's evidence does not preclude the possibility that the asserted purpose for which these documents were compiled was pretextual. Nor did it compel the district court or compel us now to find that the rest of the documents in the Kerr file were compiled with the same purpose. 22 Rosenfeld introduced evidence showing that the FBI waged a concerted effort in the late 1950s and 1960s to have Kerr fired from the presidency of UC Berkeley. The earliest evidence of this effort is Doc. 2, a memorandum dated two months before the 1958 investigation. The memo notes that Kerr was formally inaugurated as President of UC Berkeley, and offers investigative information about Kerr merely for [the FBI's] information and in the event that the Bureau may receive some inquiry concerning Dr. Kerr, who at best is a highly controversial figure in California education. We will not recite all of the documentation for this campaign to fire Kerr, but we will describe some of the highlights. FBI agents counted the number of Regents on Berkeley's Board of Regents who would support or oppose an attempt to have Kerr removed as President. One agent made a recommendation to the file in 1965 that Kerr be fired for his lack of administration during student protests. Last, then FBI-Director J. Edgar Hoover made a notation on the margin of one report that he knew Kerr is no good. 23 These documents all support a conclusion that these reports were compiled with no rational nexus to a plausible law enforcement purpose--that any asserted purpose for compiling these documents was pretextual. Doc. 2 suggests that the FBI knew no investigation was pending and that the FBI had no reason to investigate him. The later documents all strongly support the suspicion that the FBI was investigating Kerr to have him removed from the UC administration, because FBI officials disagreed with his politics or his handling of administrative matters. Conspicuously absent from these documents is any connection to any possible criminal liability by Kerr. While the statements of dislike for Kerr in the record are egregious, the other documents constitute precisely the sort of generalized monitoring and information-gathering that are not related to the Bureau's law enforcement duties. Lamont v. Department of Justice, 475 F.Supp. 761, 775 (S.D.N.Y.1979). We also agree with the district court that these documents support a presumption that any other documents compiled after the campaign against Kerr began were compiled with no rational nexus to an asserted law enforcement purpose. 24 The only documents in the Kerr file for which such a presumption might be rebutted are the reports of the personnel investigations. Rosenfeld seeks disclosure of two of the four personnel investigations, the 1953 report (Doc. 1) and the 1964 report (Doc. 21). Since the earliest evidence of the campaign to have Kerr fired is in 1958, there is no factual basis to conclude that the campaign extended back to 1953. Thus, no evidence in the record rebuts the government's asserted law enforcement purpose, to conduct a background check requested by another agency. We therefore reverse and remand for a determination whether any of the specific exemption 7 exemptions apply to Kerr Doc. 1. 25 The 1964 report, Doc. 21, was compiled after the campaign against Kerr started. The district court's opinion gives no indication whether the court considered that the document might have been compiled for a legitimate purpose, a personnel report, even if contemporaneous documents were compiled for a different purpose. See id. at 1449, 1457. We remand for a determination whether other evidence renders unbelievable the government's assertion that Doc. 21 was compiled to complete a personnel background check. 26 The government has presented no other evidence rebutting the evidence that documents in the Kerr file compiled after 1958 were compiled with an illegitimate law enforcement purpose, to have Kerr fired from his position in the UC system. We affirm the district court's rulings as to the rest of the Kerr file.