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

Heading: Disclosure of Domestic Intelligence Sources

Text: 41 As we discussed earlier, the District Court ordered the release of all information concerning domestic sources and contacts on the ground that use of domestic sources falls outside the CIA's congressional mandate to conduct foreign intelligence. We conclude that the District Court erred on this point and that the CIA may withhold domestic sources as it would foreign sources. 42 The District Court is certainly correct in asserting that the CIA has no internal security or law enforcement functions, but the District Court erred in concluding from this observation that CIA contacts with domestic officers and agencies are beyond the CIA's mandate to conduct foreign intelligence. See Mem.Op. of 19 May 1989 at 15, JA at 1330. The fact that the Agency has no domestic intelligence role is entirely harmonious with the rather pedestrian observation that the Agency must, at times, pursue domestically its foreign intelligence mandate. As the Supreme Court noted in Sims, a vast amount of intelligence material is derived from domestic sources, Sims, 471 U.S. at 171, 105 S.Ct. at 1888, and Sims itself actually involved domestic educational institutions and researchers. In its memorandum of 10 November 1983, the District Court stated that the CIA's contacts with the NYPD concerning the papers of the Basque government-in-exile displayed the Agency's purely domestic role and had nothing to do with the trading of information or the planning and conducting of joint operations between U.S. and foreign intelligence services.... Certainly no New York official or police officer is a foreign intelligence service. Fitzgibbon, 578 F.Supp. at 713 & n. 24. Trading information and planning or conducting operations are certainly part of CIA's mandate, but the District Court's arbitrary focus on the foreign intelligence service rather than the foreign intelligence function cannot stand after Sims. Indeed, the District Court's approach could hinder the Agency from discharging its congressionally-mandated function each time that it has to deal with domestic entities such as the FBI or local and state law enforcement agencies. Because the protection of section 403(d)(3) and exemption 3 extends to all intelligence sources, domestic and as well as foreign, the District Court's order requiring disclosure of CIA contacts with domestic sources, agencies and officials is reversed.