Court Opinion

ID: 9439078
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 06:20:59.274177+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:26:08.878775
License: Public Domain

SILBERMAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I find myself in a rather strange situation in this case because, unlike the district judge, I have in a sense reviewed Hoover’s official and confidential files “in camera,” but did so almost 25 years ago as the Deputy Attorney General (and Acting Attorney General) of the United States. The Washington Post caused an uproar when it revealed their existence in early 1975, and I was obliged to read them in preparation for testimony before the House Judiciary Committee. Strangely, although the Washington Post knew about the files (and may well have known about them for some time) senior officials in the Justice Department did not. Even Clarence Kelley, then-Director of the FBI, never realized that the file cabinets in his outer office contained the long-rumored secret files of J. Edgar Hoover.1
As is now generally known, the files revealed that Hoover, through bureau agents, had collected over many years scandalous material on public figures to be used for political blackmail. They also contained shocking information as to how the FBI had been used by several Presidents, most notably Lyndon Johnson, as a political investigative unit to gather dirt on political opponents. The Bureau even sought to accommodate President Johnson by frustrating at least one criminal investigation that would prove politically embarrassing—and subsequently informing the White House as to the identity of Treasury officials who aided the investigation.
There can be no doubt that these documents as a group are of the very highest public interest. The public concern over presidential misuses of power has been amply demonstrated by the Act of Congress ensuring that “Watergate” material from the Nixon White House be preserved and disclosed. Indeed, these files may well east some light on Watergate’s genesis. I suspect that Richard Nixon, who was reputed to have threatened darkly during the Watergate investigation to expose the misdeeds of prior Presidents (and probably wished that the Post story had appeared a year earlier), was prompted to gather political intelligence through private actors because he wanted what Johnson had obtained, yet did not trust the FBI to provide it. Athough the Bureau had the unmitigated gall to claim in an affidavit before the district court that the files “are of minimal public interest,” counsel for the government at least conceded at oral argument that the public interest in the documents was high.
Turning to the other side of the equation, targets of the FBI’s dirt-gathering activities may have an overwhelming privacy interest. The FBI, however, has made no reasonable effort to determine whether these targets are *1085now dead or alive. If they are deceased, their privacy interest is almost certainly diminished. And even for those who are alive, the privacy interest may vary. Those who were investigated to determine their political connections to Robert Kennedy—whether President Johnson’s White House staffers or certain newspaper owners—might be rather proud to have been targeted. Those who provided information to Hoover, inside and outside government, which was not for law enforcement purposes, are not, in my view, at all entitled to privacy. The government seems to have taken the position in this ease that anyone, including those in the news media, who gave Hoover or the FBI information about potential political enemies is entitled to protection from exposure. I think that is absurd; that the statute explicitly protects law enforcement confidential sources implies that non-law enforcement sources— here, confidential sources of political information (“Hoover Friendlies”)—are not protected. To be sure, some of the material in the files may have been collected originally for law enforcement purposes and therefore should be treated as such, but having read the files I can confidently state that they were not, repeat not, compiled for enforcement. The government should not be allowed to claim the law enforcement privilege merely by asserting that a file or document contains descriptions- of conduct that would be a crime under some law, somewhere.
We are remanding to the district court and urging it to proceed with alacrity. I know how busy our district judges are and how formidable a pile of material this case presents, but I urge Judge Jackson to read in camera as much of these files as he can so that he will fully understand the enormous public interest in these materials. Given their importance, I would hope senior officials in the Justice Department, rather than just an Assistant United States Attorney, would also review the files. That could expedite proceedings.
STEPHEN F. WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur but wish to add that one of the obstacles to granting the government’s motion for summary judgment may be that its affidavits are obscure about how much effort it makes to find out if the persons whose privacy it invokes are alive or dead. The affidavit of Special Agent Llewellyn says that the Bureau did not invoke either of the privacy exemptions (6 or 7(C)) if “the FBI had knowledge from the responsive files or independently that a person is deceased.” That of Special Agent Superneau similarly says that she did not -withhold information relating exclusively to “individuals that I know to be deceased.” It would seem to be consistent with these affidavits that the agents have been completely passive on the issue, taking death into account only if the fact has happened to swim into their line of vision. If that is true, there would be a question whether the Bureau’s invocation of the privacy interest represented a reasonable response to the FOIA request, at least if the Bureau has, or has ready access to, data bases that could resolve the issue.

. That is not to say that I am confident that all of Hoover’s files were in those cabinets.