Opinion ID: 413259
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Agency Records Covered by the Act

Text: 38 The Supreme Court has recently clarified the conditions under which a federal court may compel an agency to release documents. In Kissinger v. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 445 U.S. 136, 100 S.Ct. 960, 63 L.Ed.2d 267 (1980), the Court held: 39 The FOIA represents a carefully balanced scheme of public rights and agency obligations designed to foster greater access to agency records than existed prior to its enactment. That statutory scheme authorizes federal courts to ensure private access to requested materials when three requirements have been met. Under 5 U.S.C. Sec. 552(a)(4)(B) federal jurisdiction is dependent upon a showing that an agency has (1) improperly; (2) withheld; (3) agency records. Judicial authority to devise remedies and enjoin agencies can only be invoked, under the jurisdictional grant conferred by Sec. 552, if the agency has contravened all three components of this obligation. Id. at 150, 100 S.Ct. at 968. 44 40 The CIA argues vigorously that the District Court's decision in the instant case was proper under the third branch of this test. Records that are in the possession of the agency to which a FOIA request is submitted but that were originally compiled by another agency, the CIA insists, are not agency records within the meaning of the Act. So stated, the argument seems rather implausible, but this was indeed the theory on which the District Court rested its ruling. 45 41 Evaluation of this argument proves surprisingly difficult because of the absence of statutory or precedential guidance. As has often been remarked, 46 the Freedom of Information Act, for all its attention to the treatment of agency records, never defines that crucial phrase. 47 A reading of the legislative history yields insignificant insight into Congress' conception of the sorts of materials the Act covers. 48 And we gain little by ransacking the case law interpreting the FOIA; no appellate court has expressed an opinion on the question of the legal status of documents prepared by one agency in the possession of another. 49 42 This and other courts have, on occasion, been called upon to decide whether other materials of ambiguous form or origin fall within the category of agency records. It is upon some of those decisions that the District Court and the CIA principally rely in justifying the position they take in the instant case. Unfortunately, none of the cases in question is apposite. It has been held that, under certain circumstances, records in an agency's possession that originated with Congress do not constitute agency records for the purpose of the FOIA. 50 Likewise, materials prepared by or for the judiciary that eventually find their way into the hands of an agency covered by the Act have been held to fall outside the crucial category. 51 The same is true of documents prepared by the President or his personal staff. 52 But two factors distinguish all of these cases from the situation before us. First, each of the departments of government listed above is itself exempt from the coverage of the FOIA. 53 Second, special policy considerations militate against a rule compelling disclosure of records originating in these three bodies merely because such documents happen to come into the possession of an agency. Congress, we have held, should not be forced to abandon either its long-acknowledged right to keep its records secret or its ability to oversee the activities of federal agencies (a supervisory authority it exercises partly through exchanges of documents with those agencies to facilitate their proper functioning in accordance with Congress' originating intent). 54 The courts, similarly, have an important interest in controlling the dissemination of their documents to the public, 55 yet, to facilitate the operation of the penal system, often must make those records available to departments of government covered by the Act. Finally, the importance of the confidentiality of communications between the President and his immediate advisors, 56 combined with the likelihood that records of those exchanges will find their way into portions of the Executive Office of the President covered by the Act, 57 render undesirable a per se rule that such documents are agency records. In the present case, by contrast, the organs of government that first compiled the records--the State Department and FBI--clearly are covered by the Act. 58 And no policy considerations comparable to those requiring special protection for documents emanating from Congress, the courts or the President's personal staff are applicable. 59 43 In sum, the question whether a document in the possession of one agency that originated in another constitutes an agency record for the purposes of the FOIA is not governed by either the terms of the statute, the legislative history or precedent. To resolve the issue, we are thus compelled to look to the general principles that underlie the Act as a whole. 44 It has often been observed that the central purpose of the FOIA is to open[ ] up the workings of government to public scrutiny. 60 One of the premises of that objective is the belief that an informed electorate is vital to the proper operation of a democracy. 61 A more specific goal implicit in the foregoing principles is to give citizens access to the information on the basis of which government agencies make their decisions, thereby equipping the populace to evaluate and criticize those decisions. 62 2] Each of these objectives--and particularly the last--would be best promoted by a rule that all records in an agency's possession, whether created by the agency itself or by other bodies covered by the Act, constitute agency records. 63 45 This conclusion is buttressed by consideration of the probable practical effect of a different rule. If records obtained from other agencies could not be reached by a FOIA request, an agency seeking to shield documents from the public could transfer the documents for safekeeping to another government department. It could thereafter decline to afford requesters access to the materials on the ground that it lacked custody of or control over the records and had no duty to retrieve them. 64 The agency holding the documents could likewise resist disclosure on the theory that, from its perspective, the documents were not agency records. The net effect could be wholly to frustrate the purposes of the Act. 46