Opinion ID: 172367
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The District Court's Initial Ruling

Text: On May 5, 2005, the district court denied the FBI's summary-judgment motion, and granted Mr. Trentadue's partial-summary-judgment motion. Given the specific nature of [Mr. Trentadue's] requests . . . and [his] specific evidence that at least some of the requested documents do exist and reasonably should have been found by the FBI, the district court found that the FBI's search was not reasonably calculated to discover[ ] the requested documents. J.A. Vol. 1 at 159. It concluded that [w]hen the FBI's computer search did not identify any responsive documents, it was incumbent upon the FBI to review the actual files for such documents. Id. at 160. In a footnote the district court provided further reason why it doubted the adequacy of the FBI's search. It cited documents provided by Mr. Trentadue regarding his FOIA request for records relating to the FBI investigation of his brother's death. One document was a teletype from FBI headquarters to its field offices instructing that documents prepared for the investigation must not be uploaded into the Automated Case Support [(ACS)] system without prior approval. Id. at 159 n. 2 (emphasis omitted). Two other documents were FBI teletypes that the court characterized as indicating that the FBI lobbied former Senator Don Nickels of Oklahoma to obtain his assurances that no Senate Judiciary Committee oversight would take place with respect to the FBI's handling of the Trentadue investigation. Id. at 159-60 n. 2. The district court also ruled that privacy concerns did not justify withholding or redacting documents because the public interest in the information outweighed any privacy interests of the individuals involved. Accordingly, the court ordered that by June 15 the FBI must (1) produce unredacted versions of the Freeh Memorandum and the BOMBROB-Funding Memorandum, and (2) manually search the OKBOMB files numbered 100A-PH-79375, 174A-OC-56120, and 91A-OM-41859the file numbers listed on the redacted copies of the teletypes that Mr. Trentadue had provided the courtfor documents responsive to Mr. Trentadue's FOIA request. The court denied as moot Mr. Trentadue's motion for a continuance pending further discovery, but added that [u]pon motion, the court will permit Plaintiff to conduct discovery should the FBI fail to produce documents and/or records responsive to his FOIA request. Id. at 160.