Opinion ID: 413259
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: the referral procedure

Text: 37 McGehee's second allegation of error is that the District Court improperly granted the CIA's motion to dismiss from the lawsuit the records it had obtained from the State Department and FBI. As was true with regard to the issue just discussed, the general principles governing McGehee's claim are well known but their application to the specific question presented has never been resolved.
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
47 Our conclusion that the documents the CIA obtained from the State Department and FBI constitute agency records does not settle the fate of those materials. Two branches of the test delineated by the Supreme Court remain to be satisfied. The District Court should have compelled disclosure of the documents only if they were (1) 'improperly'; (2) 'withheld'  by the CIA. Kissinger v. Reporters Committee, 445 U.S. at 150, 100 S.Ct. at 968. Unfortunately, the recent vintage of the Court's three-pronged test means that there is very little case law directly concerned with the meaning of those crucial terms. 65 Nor does the legislative history of the Act provide us much guidance. Once again, therefore, we are cast back upon the premises and objectives of the FOIA as a whole. 66 Those considerations suggest the following definitions:Withholding: Certainly a categorical refusal to release documents that are in the agency's custody or control 67 for any reason other than those set forth in the Act's enumerated exemptions 68 would constitute withholding. Interpretive problems arise only in the context of processing or referral procedures that are likely to result eventually, but not immediately, in the release of documents. The legal status of such procedures seems to us best determined on the basis of their consequences. We conclude, in other words, that a system adopted by an agency for dealing with documents of a particular kind constitutes withholding of those documents if its net effect is significantly to impair the requester's ability to obtain the records or significantly to increase the amount of time he must wait to obtain them. 48 Improper: We are persuaded by Justice Stevens' opinion in Kissinger that sensible explication of the term improper in this context requires incorporation of a standard of reasonableness. 69 Thus, withholding of the sort just described will be deemed improper unless the agency can offer a reasonable explanation for its procedure. The form such an explanation would be most likely to take would be a showing that the procedure significantly improves the quality of the process whereby the government determines whether all or portions of responsive documents are exempt from disclosure. 70 Naturally, the more serious the resultant impediments to obtaining records or the longer the resultant delay in their release, the more substantial must be the offsetting gains offered by the agency to establish the reasonableness of its system. At the extreme, a procedure that, in practice, imposed very large burdens on requesters (e.g., by compelling them to pay huge processing costs or to submit separate requests to a number of independent bodies) or that resulted in very long delays would be highly difficult to justify. 49 A principle implicit in the foregoing definitions is that, when an agency receives a FOIA request for agency records in its possession, it must take responsibility for processing the request. It cannot simply refuse to act on the ground that the documents originated elsewhere. 50 There is insufficient evidence in the record to determine what result should be reached by applying these standards to the instant case. Neither the decision below nor the affidavits on which it was based make clear the nature of the referral procedure or exactly what advantages were gained by referring each of the documents obtained from the State Department and FBI to the originating body. 71 Nor is the extent of the accompanying impairment of McGehee's ability to gain access to those records apparent. 72 We therefore remand the case with instructions to afford the parties opportunity to adduce additional relevant evidence. 51 We recognize that the standards we adopt today are not bright line tests. The District Court may find it difficult, given the absence of other germane precedent, to apply our holdings to the instant case even when all the facts have been ascertained. To mitigate that uncertainty, and to provide some guidance to courts confronted with similar problems in future cases, we set forth below a model for a referral system. We do not suggest that agencies are bound to accept our plan; we describe it merely to indicate one set of practices that would comport with the general principles embodied in the Act: SAMPLE PROCEDURE FOR PROCESSING DOCUMENTS ORIGINATING WITH OTHER AGENCIES 52 An agency in possession of documents, responsive to a FOIA request that it has received from another agency would forward them to the originating body (in lieu of processing them itself) if and only if they satisfied an intent to control test. 73 Specifically, an intention on the part of the originating agency that it retain the authority to decide if and when materials are released to the public would have to be made evident by either (i) explicit indications to that effect on the face of each document or (ii) the circumstances surrounding the creation and transfer of the documents. 74 53 To minimize the resultant delay, the referral would have to be prompt and public. In other words, as soon as the agency retrieved responsive documents, and possibly even before it undertook an examination of their contents to determine whether they were exempt from disclosure, it would identify those records that originated elsewhere and, if they passed the aforementioned intent to control test, would immediately (i) inform the requester of the situation, (ii) notify the originating agency and, (iii) if necessary, forward to the latter copies of the relevant documents. To minimize the burden on the requester, this notification and referral would be accorded the status of a FOIA request; the person seeking information would thereby be relieved of the duty to submit a separate demand to the originating agency. 54 The system we outline, by promoting (i) the processing by the agencies to which requests are submitted of a substantial percentage of the other agency records in their possession and (ii) the rapid referral to the originating bodies of the remainder, would mitigate the two most serious hardships associated with the extant automatic referral systems: the inconvenience to requesters of being compelled to assert their rights in two or more independent administrative fora and the long delays resulting from the superimposition of two or more processing sequences. 75 55 If, in a given case, the intent to control test were satisfied but the agency to which the request was first submitted had not followed the procedures suggested above by the time litigation commenced, the district court would still have some options at its disposal that would enable it to ensure that the petitioner's request was processed expeditiously without sacrificing the benefits accruing from a substantive review by the originating agency. The court might, for example, allow the defendant agency to submit affidavits or present witnesses from the originating agency, explaining which documents are exempt and why. Alternatively, the court could require the originating agency to appear as a party to the suit pursuant to FED.R.CIV.P. 19(a). But these options would be makeshift arrangements; the preferable situation would be adherence to a set of review and referral guidelines of the sort described above. 56