Opinion ID: 546873
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Fitzgibbon's Appeal

Text: 12 Fitzgibbon argues that the District Court erred in its order of 19 May 1989 because it failed to make an express finding that disclosure of the material withheld would compromise an intelligence source or method. At least with respect to material that does not explicitly identify a source, he claims, disclosure of the material could not result in disclosure of the source because it is not clear from such material how the information was derived: [I]t might have ' come from a periodical, newspaper, FBI file, confidential source, or CIA employee as from a specific foreign intelligence service. '  Brief for Fitzgibbon at 22 (quoting Mem.Op. of 19 May 1989 at 16, JA at 1331). Fitzgibbon also claims that insofar as the material involves what the District Court had earlier described as nonsensitive contacts between CIA and foreign officers, such information would not disclose intelligence sources and methods even under Sims because the requested information deals with the Agency's domestic actions on behalf of the Basque government-in-exile. Fitzgibbon would have us conclude that such information does not fall within the CIA's mandate to conduct foreign intelligence, see Sims, 471 U.S. at 169, 105 S.Ct. at 1888, and therefore should be disclosed. 13 Fitzgibbon also attacks the District Court's decision to exempt from disclosure certain material that it had previously termed so basic and innocent that its release could not harm the national security or betray a CIA method. Fitzgibbon, 578 F.Supp. at 722; compare Mem.Op. of 19 May 1989 at 2, JA at 1338. If material cannot betray a method, he argues, then it must be disclosed. Even if it did betray a method, he claims, disclosure would still be warranted where the information was already in the public domain as the subject of an official disclosure within the meaning of Afshar, 702 F.2d at 1130-31. Thus, where the source's identity is not apparent from the document, Fitzgibbon urges us to conclude that release of the document would not--indeed, as a matter of law, could not--result in an unauthorized disclosure of a source. Where the source has been publicly identified, he claims, Afshar requires release of that information. Brief for Fitzgibbon at 23-25. 14 The District Court also allowed the CIA to withhold or delete material revealing potential sources. Fitzgibbon claims that this ruling went far beyond the bounds of both Sims and section 102(d)(3) of the National Security Act. The rationale of the need of the Agency and its sources for confidentiality simply does not apply where merely a potential source is at issue, Fitzgibbon argues. Finally, Fitzgibbon protests the District Court's refusal of his invitation to consider the effect of the passage of time on the materials withheld, see Mem.Op. of 19 May 1989 at 10, JA at 1324-25, arguing that security concerns become attenuated with the passage of time and that any other rule allows the government an impenetrable cloak of secrecy. Brief for Fitzgibbon at 29. 15 Whatever merits Fitzgibbon's appeal may have had in the past have been vaporized by the unequivocal sweep of the Supreme Court's decision in Sims. Before turning to the specifics of Fitzgibbon's argument, therefore, it is appropriate to examine both Sims and the applicable standard of review.
16 Between 1953 and 1966, certain individuals and educational institutions participated in CIA-funded research. This research focused on the possibility of using chemical, biological and radiological materials in Agency clandestine operations. The project was code-named MKULTRA, and both its nature and its sponsor were kept secret, even from the individual researchers. In response to a FOIA request, the CIA declined to disclose the names of any individuals involved and disclosed only the names of those institutions that did not object. As a basis for withholding this information, the Agency invoked 50 U.S.C. Sec. 403(d)(3) and exemption 3. Sims, 471 U.S. at 161-63, 105 S.Ct. at 1883-85. 17 In Sims, as here, a primary question was the definition of the term intelligence source. We had defined an intelligence source as 18 a person or institution that provides, has provided, or has been engaged to provide the CIA with information of a kind the agency needs to perform its intelligence function effectively, yet could not reasonably expect to obtain without guaranteeing the confidentiality of those who provide it. 19 Sims, 642 F.2d 562, 571 (D.C.Cir.1980), rev'd, 471 U.S. 159, 105 S.Ct. 1881, 85 L.Ed.2d 173 (1985). The Supreme Court found that our crabbed reading of the statute contravenes the express language of Sec. 102(d)(3), the statute's legislative history, and the harsh realities of the present day. Sims, 471 U.S. at 174, 105 S.Ct. at 1890. By passage of the National Security Act of 1947, the Agency was expressly entrusted with protecting the heart of all intelligence operations--'sources and methods,'  id. at 167, 105 S.Ct. at 1887; indeed, Congress entrusted this Agency with sweeping power to protect its 'intelligence sources and methods.'  Id. at 169, 105 S.Ct. at 1887. See also id. at 177, 105 S.Ct. at 1892 (quoting Snepp v. United States, 444 U.S. 507, 509 n. 3, 100 S.Ct. 763, 765 n. 3, 62 L.Ed.2d 704 (1980) (per curiam)) (The 'statutory mandate' of Sec. 102(d)(3) is clear: Congress gave the Director [of Central Intelligence] wide-ranging authority to 'protec[t] intelligence sources and methods from unauthorized disclosure.' ). The Supreme Court noted that our original definition of intelligence source ignore[d] the realities of intelligence work, which often involves seemingly innocuous sources as well as unsuspecting individuals who provide valuable intelligence information. Id. 471 U.S. at 176, 105 S.Ct. at 1891. Relying on this broad statutory authority, and mindful of the practical necessities of modern intelligence gathering, id. at 169, 105 S.Ct. at 1887, the Supreme Court held that the proper reading of the statute is that [a]n intelligence source provides, or is engaged to provide, information the Agency needs to fulfill its statutory obligations. Id. at 177, 105 S.Ct. at 1892. See also id. at 169-70, 105 S.Ct. at 1888 (noting that intelligence sources provide, or are engaged to provide, information the Agency needs to perform its statutory duties with respect to foreign intelligence). The MKULTRA researchers provided such information, the Court held, and therefore the Agency was justified in withholding their names. Id. at 177, 105 S.Ct. at 1892. 20 In the course of reaching its conclusion, the Supreme Court decided that we had underestimated the importance of providing intelligence sources with an assurance of confidentiality that is as absolute as possible.... If potentially valuable intelligence sources come to think that the Agency will be unable to maintain the confidentiality of its relationship to them, many could well refuse to supply information to the Agency in the first place. Id. at 175, 105 S.Ct. at 1891 (emphasis supplied). As to the competence of any court to pass on the nature, value, and exposure of any intelligence source, potential or otherwise, the Court noted: 21 We seriously doubt whether a potential intelligence source will rest assured knowing that judges, who have little or no background in the delicate business of intelligence gathering, will order his identity revealed only after examining the facts of the case to determine whether the Agency actually needed to promise confidentiality in order to obtain the information.... [A] court's decision whether an intelligence source will be harmed if his identity is revealed will often require complex political, historical, and psychological judgments. There is no reason for a potential intelligence source, whose welfare and safety may be at stake, to have great confidence in the ability of judges to make those judgments correctly. 22 Id. at 176, 105 S.Ct. at 1891 (citation omitted) (emphasis supplied).
Exemption 3 23 In examining the FOIA request made in Sims, the Supreme Court engaged in a two-prong review. First, is the statute in question a statute of exemption as contemplated by exemption 3? See Sims, 471 U.S. at 167, 105 S.Ct. at 1886. Second, does the withheld material satisfy the criteria of the exemption statute? In Sims, the Court decided that section 403(d)(3) is an exemption statute because it refers to particular types of matters that are to be withheld. Id. at 167, 105 S.Ct. at 1887. See 50 U.S.C. Sec. 403(d)(3); 5 U.S.C. Sec. 552(b)(3)(B). This conclusion is supported by the plain meaning of the statute, by the legislative history of FOIA, and by every federal court of appeals that has considered the matter. See Sims, 471 U.S. at 167-68 & n. 12, 105 S.Ct. at 1887 & n. 12; Miller v. Casey, 730 F.2d 773, 777 (D.C.Cir.1984); Gardels v. CIA, 689 F.2d 1100, 1103 (D.C.Cir.1982); Halperin v. CIA, 629 F.2d 144, 147 & n. 7 (D.C.Cir.1980); National Comm'n on Law Enforcement and Social Justice v. CIA, 576 F.2d 1373, 1376 (9th Cir.1978). There is thus no doubt that section 403(d)(3) is a proper exemption statute under exemption 3. 24 As we proceed to consider Fitzgibbon's appeal under the second Sims prong--does the material meet the statutory criteria?--we must bear in mind, as we have recently noted, that [e]xemption 3 presents considerations distinct and apart from the other eight exemptions. Association of Retired R.R. Workers v. United States R.R. Retirement Bd., 830 F.2d 331, 336 (D.C.Cir.1987). As we said in Retired Railroad Workers: 25 Exemption 3 differs from other FOIA exemptions in that its applicability depends less on the detailed factual contents of specific documents; the sole issue for decision is the existence of a relevant statute and the inclusion of withheld material within the statute's coverage. The required scope of review is further narrowed in the case of statutes falling within B-2 [the second part of exemption 3, that the statute refers to particular types of matters to be withheld] because the congressional intent to withhold is made manifest in the withholding statute itself. 26 Id. at 336 (quoting Goland v. CIA, 607 F.2d 339, 350 (D.C.Cir.1978), cert. denied, 445 U.S. 927, 100 S.Ct. 1312, 63 L.Ed.2d 759 (1980)). Thus, with respect to Fitzgibbon's exemption 3 claim, our task is to determine whether or not the material withheld falls within the exemption claimed--i.e., whether it relates to intelligence sources and methods. See Knight v. CIA, 872 F.2d 660, 664 (5th Cir.1989), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 110 S.Ct. 1296, 108 L.Ed.2d 474 (1990); Miller, 730 F.2d at 776; Hayden v. NSA, 608 F.2d 1381, 1387 (D.C.Cir.1979), cert. denied, 446 U.S. 937, 100 S.Ct. 2156, 64 L.Ed.2d 790 (1980). In the course of discharging this task, naturally, we accord substantial weight and due consideration to the CIA's affidavits. See King v. Department of Justice, 830 F.2d 210, 217 (D.C.Cir.1987); Goldberg v. Department of State, 818 F.2d 71, 77 (D.C.Cir.1987), cert. denied, 485 U.S. 904, 108 S.Ct. 1075, 99 L.Ed.2d 234 (1988); Miller, 730 F.2d at 776.
27 Sims invalidates all of Fitzgibbon's claims. First, as noted above, Fitzgibbon asserts that publication of much of the withheld material would not disclose a source because it is unclear from the information whence it was derived; it may as well have come from a magazine or newspaper, or a CIA or FBI employee, as from a foreign intelligence service. Brief for Fitzgibbon at 22. The Supreme Court has unequivocally held that the Director of Central Intelligence may protect all intelligence sources, regardless of their provenance. Sims, 471 U.S. at 171, 105 S.Ct. at 1888. Similarly, the fact that the District Court at one point concluded that certain contacts between CIA and foreign officials were nonsensitive does not help Fitzgibbon because apparently innocuous information can be protected and withheld, id. at 176, 105 S.Ct. at 1891, and because the Supreme Court has indicated that information from ordinary private citizens--information derived from contacts that are as nonsensitive as any imaginable--is a vital part of the Agency's congressionally-mandated function and indeed composes  'one of the greatest repositories of intelligence that we have.'  Id. at 171, 105 S.Ct. at 1889. See also id. at 171-72, 105 S.Ct. at 1888-89 (General Vandenberg spoke of 'the great open sources of information upon which roughly 80 percent of intelligence should be based,' and identified such sources as 'books, magazines, technical and scientific surveys, photographs, commercial analyses, newspapers, and radio broadcasts, and general information from people with knowledge of affairs abroad.' ). 28 Second, the District Court committed no error when, in light of Sims, it reversed its prior disclosure orders concerning information, related to intelligence methods, that the District Court had earlier considered so basic and innocent that its release could not harm the national security or betray a CIA method. Fitzgibbon, 578 F.Supp. at 722. The Sims Court stated that, along with sources, methods constitute the heart of all intelligence operations. Sims, 471 U.S. at 167, 105 S.Ct. at 1887. It is not the province of the judiciary, the Supreme Court emphasized, to determine whether a source or method should be (or should not be) disclosed: 29 [I]t is the responsibility of the Director of Central Intelligence, not that of the judiciary, to weigh the variety of complex and subtle factors in determining whether disclosure of information may lead to an unacceptable risk of compromising the Agency's intelligence-gathering process. 30 Sims, 471 U.S. at 180, 105 S.Ct. at 1893-94. In this case, the Director of Central Intelligence attested that 31 [s]ix foreign intelligence services are directly involved, including services of both allied and non-allied countries.... [Disclosure] would significantly reduce the quantity of substantive intelligence information provided to this Agency inasmuch as other nations will not entrust their most sensitive secrets to an organization unable to protect them. The loss of the information and assistance that these services provide to the United States would substantially damage United States security interests. 32 JA at 1299. 33 Third, Fitzgibbon's argument that methods that might be generally known--such as physical surveillance, or interviewing, or examination of airline manifests--must be disclosed, see Brief for Fitzgibbon at 24-26 & n. 22, fails for the same reason. As the Supreme Court said in Sims, [a] foreign government can learn a great deal about the Agency's activities by knowing the public sources of information that interest the Agency. Sims, 471 U.S. at 176-77, 105 S.Ct. at 1891-92. This Court has established that in considering the potential harm arising from disclosure of a source or method,  '[w]e must take into account ... that each individual piece of intelligence information, much like a piece of jigsaw puzzle, may aid in piecing together other bits of information even when the individual piece is not of obvious importance itself.'  Gardels v. CIA, 689 F.2d 1100, 1106 (D.C.Cir.1982) (quoting Halperin v. CIA, 629 F.2d 144, 150 (D.C.Cir.1980)). As the Director of Central Intelligence attested to the District Court: 34 [D]isclosure [of intelligence methods] would directly permit hostile governments to either neutralize [the disclosed methods] or utilize them as a vehicle for disinformation. Hostile intelligence services and governments are not omnipotent; they cannot watch all potential sources and guard against all possible methods of collection. For example, the procedure of monitoring international telecommunications is one of the most simple intelligence collection methods, but its superb utility stems from the sole fact that hostile powers do not know which communications are seized and which channels are open to compromise. Therefore, protection of the fact of CIA use of even the simplest methods in certain situations keeps this Nation's adversaries guessing as to the goals of United States intelligence activities and the means of carrying them out. 35 JA at 1300-01. 36 Fourth, Fitzgibbon's contention that unwitting or potential sources must be disclosed. Brief for Fitzgibbon at 26-28, cannot stand after Sims. Because the existence of the MKULTRA program was a closely kept secret, the researchers in Sims were obviously unwitting sources. In a literal sense, Fitzgibbon is correct in noting that all persons are potential sources, yet his argument proves too much, as the Supreme Court noted in Sims: If potentially valuable intelligence sources come to think that the Agency will be unable to maintain the confidentiality of its relationship to them, many could well refuse to supply information to the Agency in the first place. Sims, 471 U.S. at 175, 105 S.Ct. at 1891 (emphasis supplied). See also id. at 176, 105 S.Ct. at 1891 (We seriously doubt that a potential intelligence source will rest assured.... There is no reason for a potential intelligence source to have great confidence in the ability of judges....). Moreover, refining distinctions between and making comparative evaluations of veteran sources, new sources, unlikely sources, and potential sources is a task to which judges and courts are unsuited, and section 403(d)(3) gives us no reason to think otherwise. 37 Fifth, we reject Fitzgibbon's contention that the District Court was under an obligation to consider the effect of the passage of time on the documents in question. As our discussion above establishes, the Supreme Court in Sims made it clear that Congress intended intelligence sources and methods to be protected, and that the Director of Central Intelligence is charged with that function. Our discussion above also establishes that maintaining the confidentiality of intelligence sources' identities has two purposes: protection of persons or entities that are or have been sources, and insurance (or inducement) both for current sources to remain so and future, potential sources to become sources. Thus,  '[t]he Government has a compelling interest in protecting both the secrecy of information important to our national security and the appearance of confidentiality so essential to the effective operation of our foreign intelligence service.'  Sims, 471 U.S. at 175, 105 S.Ct. at 1891 (emphasis supplied) (quoting Snepp v. United States, 444 U.S. 507, 509 n. 3, 100 S.Ct. 763, 765 n. 3, 62 L.Ed.2d 704 (1980) (per curiam)). The appearance of confidentiality would hardly be enhanced if sources and future sources were to learn that their safety--and often their lives--were to depend upon judicial oversight. 38 In its earlier rulings requiring disclosure, the District Court apparently imported the exemption 1 standards for national security protection into exemption 3. Exemption 1 allows, under certain circumstances, the disclosure of old national security information. See Fitzgibbon, 578 F.Supp. at 716-21; id. at 721 (In this effort [to determine whether an individual, if he or she is still alive, might be embarrassed or harmed by revelation], the Court has in the main followed the rationale of [a recent executive order], in that it has presumed that an individual who imparted information to the CIA over 20 years ago is not a source whose revelation would damage national security today.). Our prior decisions have not been entirely consistent as to whether the scope of exemption 3 in the context of section 403(d)(3) and section 403(g) 4 is equal to or broader than the scope of exemption 1. Compare Ray v. Turner, 587 F.2d 1187, 1196 (D.C.Cir.1978) (equal to exemption 1), with Baker v. CIA, 580 F.2d 664, 668-69 (D.C.Cir.1978) (under section 403(g), exemption 3 broader than exemption 1), and Hayden v. NSA, 608 F.2d 1381, 1390 (D.C.Cir.1979) (under National Security Agency's exemption 3 statute, 50 U.S.C. Sec. 402, exemption 3 to be construed more broadly than exemption 1). Given the Supreme Court's sweeping language in Sims and the fact that these exemption statutes were congressionally designed to shield processes at the very core of the intelligence agencies--intelligence-collection and intelligence-source evaluation--we must conclude that the importation of standards into the exemption 3 analysis from the exemption 1 analysis is improper, at least insofar as the latter analysis could be read to require the court to consider the effect of the passage of time on materials withheld under exemption 3. 39 For these reasons, we conclude that the District Court correctly applied Sims and correctly construed section 403(d)(3) and exemption 3 in its consideration of Fitzgibbon's claims. This conclusion disposes of Fitzgibbon's claims on appeal. 40