Court Opinion

ID: 9489647
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:20:31.197732+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:38.325625
License: Public Domain

WALD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting in regard to Document B-2:
I believe that the government has failed to adequately explain why Document B-2 cannot be segregated further, and therefore would remand for the district court either to order the government to offer a more detailed explanation for why no additional portions can be segregated and released or to conduct an in camera review of this document. As the majority indicates, Document B-2 is a six page note. Only the first page, which simply lists the sender, recipients and subject line of the document, has been released. The description of Document B-2 in both the Vaughn index and the Third Van Tassel Declaration suggests that it could be divided into two relatively discrete parts, one containing a “lengthy analysis of the situation. in Libya” and the other “an assessment of the future plans of the Libyan government, and possible United States responses.” Joint Appendix (“J.A.”) 186, 229. The Third *583Van Tassel Declaration states that there are no portions that could be segregated and released because the document “consists of an extensive review of numerous intelligence cables, revealing one piece of specific intelligence after another.” J.A. 229. Similarly, the Vaughn index claims that the document is exempt from release because disclosure “would reveal intelligence sources and methods.” J.A. 186; see also Exec. Order 12,356 § 1.3(a)(4), 47 Fed.Reg. 14,874 (1982) (information is considered classified and exempt from release under 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(1) (1994) if it concerns “intelligence activities ... or intelligence sources or methods”). The government does not explain, however, what a “specific piece of intelligence” is or why releasing these pieces of information would reveal intelligence sources and methods. For example, the government does not contend, as it did in regard to Document B-3, that the information by itself will reveal an intelligence source. J.A. 229. In addition, I am troubled by the fact that the government made no effort to correlate its claimed exemptions to particular paragraphs or sections of the document or to estimate what percentage of the withheld material is in fact exempt. See, e.g., Schiller v. NLRB, 964 F.2d 1205, 1210 (D.C.Cir.1992) (government must supply a “ ‘relatively detailed justification, specifically identifying the reasons why a particular exemption is relevant and correlating those claims with the particular part of a withheld document to which they apply’”) (quoting King v. United States Dep’t of Justice, 830 F.2d 210, 224 (D.C.Cir.1987)) (emphasis added in Schiller); Mead Data Central, Inc. v. United States Dep’t of the Air Farce, 566 F.2d 242, 261 (D.C.Cir.1977) (government should describe “what proportion of the information in a document is non-exempt and how that material is dispersed throughout the document”). Such an attempt to correlate exemptions with particular passages is not “extraneous,” Majority opinion at 579, when the withheld portion is of some length — here five pages — and no detailed description of the document is offered.