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

Heading: Marguerite Higgins

Text: 18 The government appeals from the district court's ruling that [t]here is nothing in the [Marguerite] Higgins documents that indicates any legitimate law enforcement purpose within the purview of the statutes and the case law. 761 F.Supp. at 1449. The government presented declarations below that the FBI investigated Higgins as a security precaution before she married a chief of intelligence for a major theater of military command. While this evidence would demonstrate a plausible law enforcement purpose, there was also evidence that the FBI did not investigate her until four years after her marriage, contemporaneously with a tour of Russia by her. This evidence suggested that the government's purpose was a pretext to investigate her for her activities in the Soviet Union, and the district court did not clearly err in finding that the asserted purpose was in fact pretextual.