Court Opinion

ID: 9468352
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:12:41.859565+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:49.811011
License: Public Domain

WINTER, Chief Judge,
dissenting:
The majority holds that the requested materials are exempt from disclosure under both the first and second clauses of exemption (b)(7)(D) of the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(D). The pertinent portion of that section provides:
(b) This section does not apply to matters that are .. .
(7) investigatory records compiled for law enforcement purposes, but only to the extent that the production of such records would .. . (D) disclose the identity of a confidential source and, in the case of a record compiled by a criminal law enforcement authority in the course of a criminal investigation, . .. confidential information furnished only by the confidential source ....
Keeping in mind that “FOIA exemptions are to be narrowly construed in accordance with the legislative purpose of Congress that disclosure rather than secrecy is the dominant objective of the Act,” Nix v. United States, 572 F.2d 998, 1002 (4 Cir. 1978), citing Department of the Air Force v. Rose, 425 U.S. 352, 360-61, 96 S.Ct. 1592, 1599, 48 L.Ed.2d 11 (1976), I am impelled to the conclusion that the majority misconstrues the Act with respect to both clauses of exemption 7(d). I therefore respectfully dissent.
I.
I set forth my views with respect to each of the two clauses:

Clause 1

The district court held that the first clause of 7(D) — “disclose the identity of a confidential source” — protected only the identity of confidential sources and found the exemption inapplicable because “the identity of Mr. Gudelsky’s attorney is neither confidential nor at issue.” Relying on legislative history and on language from Keeney v. FBI, 630 F.2d 114, 119 n.2 (2 Cir. 1980), and Lesar v. Dept. of Justice, 636 F.2d 472 (D.C.Cir.1980), the majority concludes that confidential means not “secret” but “reposing confidence,” and that the first clause of 7(D) remains applicable despite the fact that the identity of Gudelsky’s attorney and the fact that he talked to the government are not “secret.”
I ágree with the majority that “confidential” in 7(D) does not mean “secret,” but I do not believe that conclusion makes any difference in this case. Notwithstanding that his identity was known, I would agree that Gudelsky’s attorney remains a “confidential source” within the meaning of 7(D), but that conclusion does not alter the fact that the first clause of 7(D) protects only his identity, and not the information he provided.1 This conclusion is compelled by the clear language of the statute and the legislative history. The first clause protects against production of records that would “disclose the identity” of a confidential source. The joint explanatory statement of the House and Senate Conferees on the 1974 amendments to FOIA states that under the first clause:
the agency can withhold the names, addresses, and other information that would reveal the identity of a confidential source....
Conf.Rep.No.1200, 93d Cong., 2d Sess., reprinted in 1974 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin. News 6285, 6291 (emphasis added). I cannot imagine how the statute or legislative history could make it any clearer that the first clause of 7(D) is addressed only to the protection of identities. Because Gudelsky himself disclosed the fact that his attorney *966spoke with federal prosecutors,2 the district court was quite correct in concluding that clause 1 of 7(D) simply is not “at issue.”
As I stated earlier, the fact that Gudelsky’s attorney’s identity is no longer “secret” does not mean that he is no longer a “confidential source” within the meaning of 7(D). The importance of this conclusion is that, while clause 1 can no longer protect what is already disclosed, the attorney remains a “confidential source” whose information remains protected under clause 2 of 7(D). This is all that Keeney, supra, stands for. There the plaintiff sought information provided in confidence to the federal government by local law enforcement agencies. In footnote 2, the court held that the agencies remained “confidential sources” under 7(D) even though their identities were known. The court stated:
[Wjhile there will obviously be circumstances in which [local] agencies will not wish the fact of their own investigations to be made public and hence will not wish their identity disclosed, it is equally conceivable for an agency that is known to be investigating a particular matter to seek confidential treatment for fruits of that investigation.
630 F.2d at 119 n.2 (emphasis added).
Lesar, supra, also relied upon by the majority, is not on point at all. There certain information supplied to federal authorities had already found its way into the public domain. The court held simply that, because some portions of documents given to the government in confidence had been publicized, the documents did not thereby fall without the definition of “confidential information” in 7(D). The protections of clause 1 of 7(D), dealing with identities of sources, were not even at issue in Lesar.
The best argument for extending the protection of clause 1 in the manner the majority seeks, may be made by analogy to Volz v. United States Dept. of Justice, 619 F.2d 49 (10th Cir. 1980), a Privacy Act case. There the court dealt with exemption (k)(5) of the Privacy Act which exempts from disclosure “information ... that ... would reveal the identity of a [confidential] source,” in a case where the identity of the informant was known but the particular information supplied was not. The court concluded:
Subsection (k)(5) protects the confidentiality of any substantive information provided by [a confidential source] insofar as disclosure would reveal that he was the agency’s source for that information.
619 F.2d at 50 (emphasis added). Thus the court extended (k)(5)’s protection of identity to include the information supplied by a confidential source. But the structure of exemption 7(D) of FOIA dooms any attempt to carry over the Volz reasoning from the Privacy Act context. Unlike (k)(5), 7(D) includes a second clause which specifically defines the protections accorded to information supplied by confidential sources. To read a broad protection of information into the first clause of 7(D), as the Volz court could do with (k)(5), would be to render meaningless the second clause of 7(D). As the majority appears to recognize, the two clauses of 7(D) serve distinctly different functions:
[T]he first covers ‘[p]ersonnel, regulatory, and civil enforcement investigations’ as well as criminal investigations if they reveal the identity of a confidential source, whereas the second embraces all information furnished3 by a confidential source but only in the course of a criminal investigation.
At 959 (emphasis in original). What the opinion fails to recognize is that Gudelsky deprived himself of the protection of the first clause when he voluntarily disclosed the fact of his attorney’s talks with prosecutors. He did not thereby forfeit the protection of the information he supplied, but he must meet the requirements of clause 2 in order to receive that protection.

*967
Clause 2

Clause 2 exempts from disclosure “confidential information furnished only by the confidential source.” The government expressly disavowed any reliance on clause 2 because it failed to show below that the information was supplied only by confidential sources. Br. of Govt, at 20 n.10.4 Nevertheless, the majority resurrects clause 2 and finds that it justifies nondisclosure simply by disregarding the word “only” in the statute. It does so on the basis of portions of the legislative history which really do not consider the issue it decides. More significantly, it does so in the face of Fourth Circuit precedent directly to the contrary.
The majority quotes various statements out of the legislative history which suggest that all information provided by confidential sources is exempt from disclosure. I find none of the passages at all convincing because none even purports to deal with an instance where one source provides information in confidence while others are willing to provide the same information with no assurances of confidence. None of the statements make any attempt to explain the limitation intended by the word “only” in the language of the statute. The word is hard to dismiss as an oversight, however, since it is included as well in the joint explanatory statement of the conferees:
However, where the records are compiled by a criminal law enforcement authority, all of the information furnished only by a confidential source may be withheld. ...
Conf.Rep.No.1200, 93d Cong., 2d Sess., reprinted in 1974 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin. News 6285, 6291 (emphasis in original).
We have previously addressed the meaning of the word “only” in clause 2, and have explicitly rejected the reading the majority gives it:
The (7)(D) exemption is plainly designed to remove impediments to investigation by assuring confidential sources that not only will their identities be retained in confidence save for the proper exercise of the power of subpoena but so, too, will the information itself when obtained only from confidential sources. We find that the exemption is intended to protect all such confidential information when furnished only by a confidential source, whether one or more.
This suggests in turn that such information is not protected under the second phase of subsection (7)(D) unless it is furnished “only” by confidential sources. It is apparent from a review of the record in this case that the information released by the FBI, especially the FBI’s interviews with Nix and inmate Isenock, contains some of the same revelations as are to be found in the inmate letters and FBI interviews with other inmates, guards and the prison supervisory official. To that extent, the information which the FBI declines to disclose stems from non-confidential sources, namely, Nix and Isenock.
Nix v. United States, 572 F.2d at 1004. In Nix, we went on to find that, even though clause 2 of 7(D) was inapplicable, the requested information was exempted because its release might divulge the identities and threaten the security of certain unnamed informants. Nevertheless, our interpretation of clause 2 of 7(D) is clear.
I am not at all uncomfortable that release of the information in this case poses any threat to the government’s ability to coax informants to speak in the future. All that we need say in denying a 7(D) exemption in this case is that information will be released where an informant has already made known the fact of his communication with the government and where the information he supplies is something that the government has gotten from nonconfidential sources.
II.
Because I would conclude that the requested materials are not exempt from dis*968closure under either the first or second clauses of exemption (b)(7)(D), I am brought to the government’s claim of work product exemption. It is based upon exemption 5, 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(5), which exempts from production “inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency.”
The district court found that those portions containing the attorney’s “mental impressions, opinions and legal theories” were exempt from production. However, it found certain factual materials to be “reasonably segregable” from privileged material and ordered production of the segregable portions of the documents. The government raises two objections to this conclusion. First, it argues that even factual matter in an attorney’s notes of a witness’s oral statements inevitably discloses the attorney’s mental impression regarding the significance or relevance of particular facts. Second, it contends that these materials should be exempt from disclosure because their release would have a significant ad-, verse impact on future investigations.
While NLRB v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 421 U.S. 132, 95 S.Ct. 1504, 44 L.Ed.2d 29 (1975), and Upjohn Co. v. United States, 449 U.S. 383, 101 S.Ct. 677, 66 L.Ed.2d 584 (1981), on which the government relies, arguably buttress its first argument, we rejected that argument in Deering Milliken, Inc. v. Irving, 548 F.2d 1131 (4 Cir. 1977). There we directed the district court to order disclosure of “factual” materials in attorneys’ notes after deleting portions containing “deliberative” materials, and we explicitly rejected the Board’s argument that the FOIA work product privilege “embraces all factual material assembled for trial by a litigant’s attorney or other representative.” Id. at 1138. Deering Milliken controls here, and I would reject the government’s first argument.
The government’s second argument does not persuade me. It seems to me that, with regard to law enforcement agencies, exemption 7, 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7), provides an exclusive list of circumstances where considerations of confidentiality justify nondisclosure. I cannot accept that exemption 5 provides a more expansive bar to disclosure whenever the government asserts that a breach of confidentiality threatens its fact-gathering ability. Since, as I have shown, disclosure is not protected by exemption 7,1 do not think that it is protected by exemption 5.
I would affirm the judgment of the district court.

. Of course, I would agree also that the information he provided is protected to the extent its disclosure would divulge his identity. While Judge Russell writes that the “United States Attorney .. . was perfectly right in denying disclosure of information that might disclose the identity of his ‘confidential’ sources” (At 960), he fails to demonstrate how any disclosure could possibly have “disclosed” an identity that was already known.

. In oral argument we were told that Gudelsky divulged the information in a deposition taken in connection with a pending civil action.

. I register dissent to the rather glaring omission of the word “only” in this description of the second clause.

. The government conceded the same point in Church of Scientology v. Dept. of Justice, 612 F.2d 417, 428 n.16 (9 Cir. 1979). If the government is so uniformly willing to recognize the clear import of the statutory language, I am at a loss to see why the majority contests the point.