Opinion ID: 677363
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Documents Exempt Under Sec. 552(b)(5)

Text: 15 The IRS is not required to release inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency. 5 U.S.C. Sec. 552(b)(5). 16 We must examine three documents (actually six, but three are duplicates) with respect to exemption (b)(5). 14 Two of the documents were prepared by an IRS Assistant District Counsel; the Beckers do not challenge Judge Rovner's conclusion that communications between IRS personnel and an agency attorney may be withheld pursuant to (b)(5). 15 This leaves one document, which the IRS released in part (with redactions) to the Beckers after this appeal was commenced. 16 17 The IRS claims that the document is exempt under the deliberative process privilege. The parties agree that for this privilege to apply, the document must be pre-decisional and deliberative. 18 The purpose of the (b)(5) exemption is to prevent injury to the quality of agency decisions. NLRB v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 421 U.S. 132, 151, 95 S.Ct. 1504, 1516, 44 L.Ed.2d 29 (1975). Section (b)(5) is narrowly construed, protecting those documents that are predecisional (to avoid chilling discussion), but not exempting documents explaining an agency's final decision. Matter of Wade, 969 F.2d at 247. The IRS bears the burden of proving what deliberative process was involved and what role the document played in that process. King v. Internal Revenue Service, 684 F.2d 517, 519 (7th Cir.1982). 19 As noted above, the IRS has released the document in part to the Beckers, with redactions, since the appeal to this court was taken. We therefore consider only whether the IRS may appropriately withhold the redacted material under the exemptions it claims. The document is a memorandum from Special Agent Grisolano, 17 to Revenue Agent Edward Turek, who had been assigned to the Jeffrey and Steven Becker cases. The majority of the redacted material (as well as the disclosed portion of the memorandum) is contained in Special Agent Grisolano's January 1991 affidavit, of which the Beckers have a copy. The IRS has not attempted to explain how the document itself, or the redacted material, is predecisional and deliberative. We note that perhaps the entire document would have been exempt from disclosure under another provision of FOIA (e.g. Sec. 552(b)(7)(E), discussed in section 3), but the IRS does not claim this exemption; we do not see how the two other exemptions claimed by the IRS are applicable. 18 We conclude that up to this stage the IRS has not met its burden of showing that the material redacted in this document is exempt.