Opinion ID: 546873
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Disclosure of FBI Documents

Text: 49 The District Court ordered the disclosure of two FBI documents. In the first document, the FBI withheld the name of an individual whose name appeared in a report that contained no other information about that individual. The second document concerned a New York publisher named Stanley Ross and events that transpired years before the Galindez affair. The Bureau withheld both of these items under exemption 7(C). See supra n. 2. We conclude that the Bureau was justified in its invocation of exemption 7(C) and therefore reverse the District Court's order. 50 As to the first document, the District Court reasoned that [t]he bare fact that an individual's name appears in an FBI report in a case as wide-ranging as the Galindez investigation is not sufficiently injurious of his privacy to overcome FOIA's presumption in favor of disclosure. Fitzgibbon, 578 F.Supp. at 724. We cannot agree. If anything, the fact that a person's name appears in a Bureau report with no other information could weigh against disclosure in that it would be very difficult for a court to determine with any degree of precision the actual invasion of privacy that would occur from release of the name. It is surely beyond dispute that the mention of an individual's name in a law enforcement file will engender comment and speculation and carries a stigmatizing connotation. Branch v. FBI, 658 F.Supp. 204, 209 (D.D.C.1987). As we have noted before, persons involved in FBI investigations--even if they are not the subject of the investigation-- 'have a substantial interest in seeing that their participation remains secret.'  King v. Department of Justice, 830 F.2d 210, 233 (D.C.Cir.1987) (quoting Senate of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico v. Department of Justice, 823 F.2d 574, 588 (D.C.Cir.1987)). We have said quite recently that [e]xemption 7(C) takes particular note of the 'strong interest' of individuals, whether they be suspects, witnesses, or investigators, 'in not being associated unwarrantedly with alleged criminal activity.'  Dunkelberger v. Department of Justice, 906 F.2d 779, 781 (D.C.Cir.1990) (quoting Stern v. FBI, 737 F.2d 84, 91-92 (D.C.Cir.1984)). Exemption 7(C) requires us to balance the citizen's privacy interest against the public interest in disclosure. See Department of Justice v. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 489 U.S. 749, 109 S.Ct. 1468, 1483, 103 L.Ed.2d 774 (1989). The individual's privacy interest is quite clear. In determining whether the public interest in the document overcomes that privacy interest, we must be guided by Reporters Committee. 51 In Reporters Committee, the Supreme Court held that the Bureau could withhold rap sheets (dossiers of information concerning criminal suspects) from third party inquiries. The Court noted that exemption 7(C) is broader than exemption 6 (the general privacy exemption), Reporters Committee, 109 S.Ct. at 1472-73 & n. 9, and it rejected as a cramped notion of personal privacy, id. at 1476, the requesters' argument that because some of the information in the rap sheets had been publicly available at an earlier date, the individual's privacy interest in preventing disclosure had diminished. The Court also noted that portions of the FOIA itself bolster the conclusion that disclosure of records regarding private citizens, identifiable by name, is not what the framers of the FOIA had in mind. Id. at 1477. 52 In considering the public interest at stake here, we bear in mind  'the basic purpose of the Freedom of Information Act to open agency action to the light of public scrutiny. '  Id. at 1481 (quoting Department of the Air Force v. Rose, 425 U.S. 352, 372, 96 S.Ct. 1592, 1604, 48 L.Ed.2d 11 (1976)). In Reporters Committee, the Supreme Court proceeded to elaborate its definition of FOIA's goal: 53 Official information that sheds light on an agency's performance of its statutory duties falls squarely within that statutory purpose. That purpose, however, is not fostered by disclosure of information about private citizens that is accumulated in various government files but that reveals little or nothing about an agency's own conduct. 54 Id. In order to fulfill this statutory purpose, the Court heldas a categorical matter that a third party's request for law-enforcement records or information about a private citizen can reasonably be expected to invade that citizen's privacy, and that when the request seeks no official information about a Government agency, but merely records that the Government happens to be storing, the invasion of privacy is unwarranted. 55 Id. 109 S.Ct. at 1485. 56 In the case before us the privacy interest is substantial. Contrary to Fitzgibbon's assertion, however, there is no reasonably conceivable way in which the release of the one individual's name in the first FBI document, or the release of supplementary data about Ross in the second document--information concerning Ross years before the Galindez affair--would allow citizens to know what their government is up to. Id. at 1481. With the exception of the one name, the first document was disclosed in its entirety, and the additional disclosure of the name would not further enlighten the public concerning the course, scope or purposes of the FBI's investigation. 57 Similarly, the second document, containing information concerning Ross years before the Galindez affair, would invade Ross's privacy without any substantial countervailing benefit. Fitzgibbon argues that Ross was a prominent figure in the Galindez investigation, Reply Brief for Fitzgibbon at 19-20, but neither that observation nor the fact that CIA or FBI may have released information about Ross elsewhere causes Ross's substantial privacy interests under exemption 7(C) to be diminished, even after the passage of time. We conclude, therefore, that [t]he simple fact is that those records say nothing of significance about 'what the[ ] Government is up to.' ... We need not linger over the balance; something ... outweighs nothing every time. NARFE v. Horner, 879 F.2d 873, 879 (D.C.Cir.1989), cert. denied sub nom. NARFE v. Newman, --- U.S. ----, 110 S.Ct. 1805, 108 L.Ed.2d 936 (1990).