Court Opinion

ID: 9473202
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:22:53.891416+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:23.314211
License: Public Domain

SCALIA, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
It is conceivable (though barely) that a court might have to conclude that a particularly ill-drafted statute created federal causes of action over which no federal court had venue, and directed the courts to apply the law of a place that has no law. What makes the majority opinion in this case unique is that it does not reach these strange conclusions by sheer compulsion, but adopts them as the preferred interpretation of a statute that could readily be construed otherwise. One is at a loss to explain the result except as a manifestation of the territorial imperative that impels this court to extend its writ to foreign lands when the United States or its officers are sued. Cf. Ramirez v. Weinberger, 745 F.2d 1500 (D.C.Cir.1984) (en banc). I dissent because in my view it is clear beyond doubt that the Federal Tort Claims Act does not apply to a claim arising in Antarctica; and because I think that this case presents only a single claim, which arose there.
I. Background
Although, as subsequent discussion will show, I do not share the majority’s assessment of the importance of the legal and operational details of the United States’ presence in Antarctica (other than the undisputed fact that the United States asserts no legislative jurisdiction there), it is nonetheless of some value to be clear on what we are talking about. It is not accurate to characterize Antarctica as a “large continent which has never been and is not now subject to the sovereignty of any nation.” Maj. op. at 93. It is more properly described, in the words of one leading book on the area, as “an entire continent of disputed territory.” F. Auburn, Antarctic Law and Politics 1 (1982) (emphasis added) [hereinafter cited as F. Auburn, Antarctica], Seven countries — Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway and the United Kingdom — have made formal claims (some of which are conflicting) to portions of the continent that total about 85 percent of its expanse. Boczek, The Soviet Union and the Antarctic Regime, 78 Am. J. Int’l L. 834, 840 (1984). Other nations, including the United States and the Soviet Union, have substantial bases for claims which they háve not yet chosen to assert. See id. at 841; F. Auburn, Antarctica, at 48-83.
It is also wrong to conclude that “[u]nder the Antarctica Treaty of 1959 the signatory nations agreed not to exercise sovereignty in Antarctica,” Maj. op. at 93. Article IV(1) of that treaty merely provides that the treaty does not prejudice any nation’s claim or basis for a claim to Antarctica; and Article IV(2) merely provides that while the treaty is in force no activities shall constitute a basis for asserting a claim in Antarctica and no new claim shall be asserted.1 Claims asserted prior to the *107effective date of the treaty, or not yet asserted but based upon pre-treaty activities, are unaffected, as is the right of all nations to implement past-asserted claims by the exercise of sovereignty. See The Antarctic Treaty: Hearings Before the Senate Comm, on Foreign Relations, 86th Cong., 2d Sess. 39, 61-62 (1960) (testimony of Herman Phleger of the Department of State, Head of the United States Delegation to the Antarctic Conference) [hereinafter cited as Treaty Hearings]. Thus, Article VIII of the treaty, which provides for exclusive jurisdiction of each contracting party over its nationals who are designated observers and scientific personnel, specifically states that this provision is “without prejudice to the respective positions of the Contracting Parties relating to jurisdiction over all other persons in Antarctica,” and further provides that “the Contracting Parties concerned in any case of dispute with regard to the exercise of jurisdiction in Antarctica shall immediately consult together with a view to reaching a mutually acceptable solution.” 12 U.S.T. at 797-98. All seven countries claiming territory in Antarctica have “either specifically enacted legislation governing criminal conduct in Antarctica or appear to consider their domestic criminal legislation applicable to areas they claim.” Bilder, Control of Criminal Conduct in Antarctica, 52 Va.L.Rev. 231, 260 (1966).
McMurdo Station is located on Ross Island, as is Mount Erebus, into which Flight 901 crashed. The island forms part of an area known as “the Ross Dependency,” encompassing land from 160° East longitude to 150° West longitude, over which New Zealand has a longstanding claim based upon a 1923 Order in Council by the United Kingdom to the Governor of New Zealand. Joyner, Antarctica and the Law of the Sea: Rethinking the Current Legal Dilemmas, 18 San Diego L.Rev. 415, 417 n. 8 (1981); F. Auburn, The Ross Dependency 5 (1972) [hereinafter cited as F. Auburn, Ross Dependency]. See generally Richardson, New Zealand’s Claims in the Antarctic, ,33 New Zealand L.J. 38 (1957). New Zealand’s claim is recognized by Australia and the United Kingdom, F. Auburn, Antarctica, at 29,2 and according to one commentator by Argentina, Chile, France and Norway as well, P. Quigg, A. Pole Apart: The Emerging Issue of Antarctica 113 (1983). Also, if “sector” claims3 are recognized in Antarctica, New Zealand might be able to assert such a claim over the area at issue here as the country which, longitudinally, is immediately above it. New Zea-land has explicitly extended its domestic criminal law to the Ross Dependency, New Zealand Antarctic Act of 1960, reprinted in 11 Polar Record 303 (1962), and by exchange of notes has granted the United States air and naval facilities located there exemption from taxation, customs duties, radio station licensing, and criminal jurisdiction in minor cases, see Agreement on Operations in Antarctica, Dec. 24, 1958, United States-New Zealand, 9 U.S.T. 1502, T.I.A.S. No. 4151, renewed indefinitely, Oct. 18, 1960, 11 U.S.T. 2205, T.I.A.S. No. 4591.
The United States refuses to recognize territorial sovereignty in Antarctica; at the same time, however, it maintains a basis for asserting claims of its own. Law of the Sea Negotiations: Hearings Before the Subcomm. on Arms Control, Oceans, International Operations and Environment of the Senate Comm, on Foreign Relations, 97th Cong., 1st Sess. 24-25 (1981) (statement of Assistant Secretary of State James L. Malone). It is not clear *108how much basis for a claim it has to the area in which McMurdo Station is located. See generally F. Auburn, Antarctica, at 66-74.4 Of course the determination by the Executive Branch not to recognize claims of territorial sovereignty in Antarctica is binding on this Court, see United States v. Pink, 315 U.S. 203, 229-30, 62 S.Ct. 552, 565-66, 86 L.Ed. 796 (1942), but we need not blind ourselves to the internationally disputed character of the land in question.
With regard to operational as opposed to legal considerations, the majority opinion again exaggerates the position of the United States in Antarctica. It quotes the District Court’s statement that “ ‘[t]he- United States conducts all search and rescue operations in Antarctica and, significantly, it controls all air transportation.’ ” Maj. op. at 99 (quoting Beattie v. United States, 592 F.Supp. 780, 783 (D.D.C.1984) (footnotes omitted)). One must be dubious about an assertion that the United States could so dominate an area containing roughly one-tenth of the world’s land mass, at the bottom of the opposite hemisphere, in which numerous other countries conduct extensive operations. The majority offers as authority for this remarkable assertion only the District Court, which in turn offered only the following footnote:
For example, when in 1969 a group of New Zealand Alpine Club members desired to explore a range in Victoria Land, an area in Antarctica near the Ross Sea, it was refused permission because American authorities had limited allocation of space on its aircraft for New Zealanders. F.M. Auden [sic, should be Auburn], The Ross Dependency 74-75 (1972).
592 F.Supp. at 783 n. 21. Professor Auburn was clearly not advancing the proposition that the United States “controls all air transportation” in Antarctica. Indeed, he was not even implying such control in the small portion of Antarctica known as the Ross Dependency. Rather, he was exemplifying the point that New Zealand relies upon the United States for logistical support of its operations in the Ross Dependency. That does not even suggest that the United States is the only nation with flight capacity in that limited region. In fact, both New Zealand and Australia have flown regular support operations for the United States to McMurdo Base. See F. Auburn, Antarctica, at 68; U.S. Antarctic Program: Hearings Before the Subcomm. on Science, Research, and Technology of the House Comm, on Science and Technology, 96th Cong., 1st Sess. 80 (1979). Moreover, it is clear that the United States does not “control all air transportation” in the sense of granting and denying permission for, and directing the path of, flights by other states. “Tourist flights over Antarctica depend on McMurdo Station for weather reports, but whether or not planes fly, on what route, and at what altitude are entirely at the discretion of their captains.” P. Quigg, supra, at 101; see also Brief for Appellees at 3 (emphasis added) (asserting only that McMurdo Station was “advised of schedules and the flight plans of the anticipated sightseeing tours”).
The majority again relies upon the District Court for an even more inspiring, but also even more inaccurate, statement: “ ‘to the extent that there is any assertion of governmental authority in Antarctica, it appears to be predominantly that of the United Statés.’ ” Maj. op. at 99 (quoting 592 F.Supp. at 783). In support of this conclusion, the District Court offered the statement on rescue operations and air transportation quoted above, and the following:
[W]hen Admiral Byrd first occupied Antarctica, he established a United States Post Office in the Ross Dependency. That Post Office has since been abandoned but McMurdo base now operates under a United States zip code. United States dollars are the currency of exchange at that base, and all persons on *109flights that land there must fill in immigration cards.
592 F.Supp. at 783 (footnotes omitted). Such formidable exercises of American power at McMurdo Station hardly carry the point. There are more than thirty stations in Antarctica, of which only four are American. See F. Auburn, Antarctica, at xvi-xvii, xx (maps). Moreover, numerous countries conduct Antarctic operations, and while the United States may have the largest program, those of other countries are significant. The Soviet Union alone has “developed an Antarctic program rivaling that of the United States.” Note, Thaw in International Law1 Rights in Antarctica under the Law of Common Spaces, 87 Yale L.J. 804, 814 (1978) (footnote omitted).
The majority notes — presumably to suggest that agencies of our government do not consider Antarctica “foreign” — that “[t]he International Flight Information Manual, published by the Federal Aviation Administration [FAA], does not list Antarctica in its designations of ■ ‘foreign countries’ in international aviation.” Maj. op. at 99 (footnote omitted). The omission is utterly without significance, however, since the manual lists only airfields which are open to the public and which “business and private aviators” can fly to directly. See generally FAA, International Flight Information Manual, vol. 31 at 1 (Apr. 1983). Virtually all American military airfields overseas (e.g., McMurdo Naval Air Station, Antarctica) are not listed since special permission is required to use them. See id. at 8. The airfields of other nations in Antarctica apparently operate under similar restrictions. See F. Auburn, Antarctica, at 279; P. Quigg, supra, at 103.
Again presumably as evidence that that distant land is not really “foreign,” the majority thinks the assignment of a postal zip code to McMurdo Station (96692) important enough to bear mention twice in its opinion. See Maj. op. at 93, 99. The zip code listing for “McMurdo Station, Antarctica” is part of a list of military post offices outside the continental United States that includes, inter alia, Berlin, Germany (09742); Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (34030); and Zama, Japan (96343). McMur-do will be found immediately after the listing for Christchurch, New Zealand and just before the listing for Singapore. U.S. Postal Service, National Five Digit Zip Code and Post Office Directory cxxv (1983). The instructions at the top of this list read: “A higher rate of postage will be charged if the foreign country is used in conjunction with the MPO’s [military post office’s] address.” Id. at exxiv. Thus, a letter sent to McMurdo Station, Antarctica 96692 (as opposed to simply McMurdo Station 96692), pays the higher “foreign country” mailing rate. In any case, I personally feel that as a display of sovereign epistolary power, the assignment of a zip code is topped by New Zealand’s seizure of the philatelic monopoly; it has issued Ross Dependency postage stamps, in more than one denomination, see F. Auburn, Ross Dependency, at 61.
With this clarification of background, I proceed to discussion of the substantive issues in this case.
II. Antarctica Is a Foreign Country
The Statutory Text
The statutory language upon which this case turns is 28 U.S.C. § 2680(k) (1982), which provides that the Federal Tort Claims Act’s (FTCA’s) waiver of sovereign immunity does not apply to “[a]ny claim arising in a foreign country.” The essence of appellees’ position, accepted by the majority, is that the word “country” in this text means “sovereign state” — so that if a land such as Antarctica, subject (in the view of this government) to no national jurisdiction, is involved, the exception does not apply.
The first dictionary meaning of “country” is not “sovereign state” but simply “region,” Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary 298 (1983), see also id. at 483 (first definition of “foreign” is “situated outside a place or country; esp. situated outside one’s own country”) — and it so hap*110pens that the term was used precisely in that customary sense in the congressional discussions of the Antarctica Treaty. See, e.g., Treaty Hearings, at 61 (statement of Sen. Aiken) (“If this agreement is approved, Antarctica becomes a country without a government”). It must be acknowledged, however, that the term can be used in the sense appellees would derive — when one speaks, for example, of the “democratic countries of the world.”5 It is appropriate, then, to look for clarification elsewhere in the statute — which readily discloses that the former meaning must be intended, since otherwise two crucial portions of the legislative scheme make no sense and a third conflicts with the Antarctica Treaty.

The Venue Provision

Section 1402(b) of 28 U.S.C. (1982) provides:
Any civil action on a tort claim against the United States under subsection (b) of section 1346 of this title may be prosecuted only in the judicial district where the plaintiff resides or wherein the act or omission complained of occurred.
Our recent decision in Reuber v. United States, 750 F.2d 1039 (D.C.Cir.1984), notes the importance of this provision:
[W]hen the United States waives sovereign immunity, it may choose the conditions under which a suit against it is to proceed. Lehman v. Nakshian, 453 U.S. 156, 161 [101 S.Ct. 2698, 2701, 69 L.Ed.2d 548] (1981) (“limitations and conditions upon which the government consents to be sued must be strictly observed and exceptions thereto are not to be implied”). Here Congress has specified the district in which the act occurred as the “only” district, other than that where the plaintiff resides, where a claim may be brought____ “The United States, as sovereign, is immune from suit save as it consents to be sued, ... and the terms of its consent to be sued in any court define that court’s jurisdiction to entertain the suit.” United States v. Sherwood, 312 U.S. 584, 586 [61 S.Ct. 767, 769, 85 L.Ed. 1058] (1941) (citations omitted). Thus, it is unclear whether a district court even has jurisdiction to hear a[] FTCA claim anywhere but in the district specified by 28 U.S.C. § 1402(b).
Id. at 1048 & n. 11.
If, as the appellees assert, “foreign country” means only “foreign state,” and sovereign immunity has therefore been waived with respect to torts occurring in stateless regions such as Antarctica, then the venue provision for those regions makes no sense, since the “only ... judicial district” in which suit has been allowed will usually not exist — i.e., will exist only if the plaintiff happens to reside in the United States.
The majority quotes Brunette Machine Works, Ltd. v. Kockum Industries, Inc., 406 U.S. 706, 710 n. 8, 92 S.Ct. 1936, 1939 n. 8, 32 L.Ed.2d 428 (1972), to the effect that “ ‘Congress does not in general intend to create venue gaps which take away with one hand what Congress has given by way of jurisdictional grant with the other.’ ” Maj. op. at 104. Quite so. In Brunette the jurisdiction of the federal courts was clear, and the consequence of applying the enunciated principle was to give broad interpretation to an ambiguous venue provision — to avoid taking away what one hand clearly had given. Here, by contrast, the limited character of the venue provision is entirely clear, and the consequence of the principle is to give narrow interpretation to the ambiguous jurisdictional provision — to avoid giving what one hand has clearly taken away.
Nor can this gap in the venue provision plausibly be explained as a product of legislative oversight — a detail beyond the normal capacity or inclination of Congress to address. For in other legislation, including *111specifically legislation dealing with Antarctica, Congress has anticipated and prevented venue gaps by including catch-all provisions. In the Antarctic Conservation Act of 1978, 16 U.S.C. § 2404(e) (1982), it provided for review of decisions involving permits to take Antarctic plants or animals “in the United States district court wherein the applicant for a permit resides, or has his principal place of business, or in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.” In the Public Vessels Act, 46 U.S.C. § 782 (1982), it provided that “in case none of such parties reside or have an office for the transaction of business in the United States, and such vessel or cargo be outside the territorial waters of the United States, then [venue is proper] in any district court of the United States.” In the Tucker Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2502 (1982), it provided that “[c]itizens or subjects of any foreign government which accords to citizens of the United States the right to prosecute claims against their government in its courts may sue the United States in the Claims Court if the subject matter of the suit is otherwise within such court’s jurisdiction.”
In short, the venue provision of the FTCA, which assumes the availability of a court only for those torts that occur within a federal judicial district, makes it clear beyond doubt that “foreign country” in the exclusion provision has its ordinary meaning of any region outside the United States.

The Choice-of-Law Provision

The choice-of-law provision of the FTCA reads in relevant part as follows:
[T]he district courts ... shall have exclusive jurisdiction of civil actions on claims against the United States ... under circumstances where the United States, if a private person, would be liable to the claimant in accordance with the law of the place where the act or omission occurred.
28 U.S.C. § 1346(b) (1982) (emphasis added). The Supreme Court has made clear that this language means precisely what it says:
In the Tort Claims Act Congress has expressly stated that the Government’s liability is to be determined by the application of a particular law, the law of the place where the act or omission occurred, and we must, of course, start with the assumption that the legislative purpose is expressed by the ordinary meaning of the words used. We believe that it would be difficult to conceive of any more precise language Congress could have used to command application of the law of the place where the negligence occurred than the words it did employ in the Tort Claims Act.
Richards v. United States, 369 U.S. 1, 9, 82 S.Ct. 585, 591, 7 L.Ed.2d 492 (1962) (footnote omitted); see also Sami v. United States, 617 F.2d 755, 761 (D.C.Cir.1979) (“The entire scheme of the FTCA focuses on the place where the negligent or wrongful act or omission of the government employee occurred”). The majority finds that “§ 1346(b) leads the court to a place where there is no civil tort law to apply.” Maj. op. at 104-105 (footnote omitted). I think, to the contrary, that it leads the court to the same place the venue provision does — to the conclusion that the FTCA no more envisions suits for torts occurring in stateless foreign regions than it does suits for torts occurring in foreign sovereignties. If “foreign country” is given its usual meaning, there will always be “civil tort law to apply” just as there will always be a district court with venue.

The Antarctica Treaty

The interpretation of “foreign country” the majority has adopted not only sets various sections of the FTCA itself at war with one another, but also creates a clear conflict between that legislation and the Antarctica Treaty. In the treaty, the United States agreed not to assert for the time being United States territorial jurisdiction over Antarctica. (The exercise of such jurisdiction presupposes a claim; the United States has asserted no claim; and the treaty provides that during its effectiveness no new claims shall be asserted. See discussion at pages 106-107, supra', Bilder, *112supra, 52 Va.L.Rev. at 270.) I agree with the majority that the United States may permit itself to be sued for its acts anywhere in the world, pursuant to the law of the place where those acts occurred, through the exercise of a basis of jurisdiction other than territorial sovereignty, analogous to “the recognized principle of international law that a nation may exercise jurisdiction over its nationals,” Maj. op. at 105. The FTCA, however, does more than merely permit suit against the United States. Section 2679 of 28 U.S.C. (1982), entitled “Exclusiveness of remedy,” and enacted subsequent to the treaty, provides as follows:
(b) The remedy against the United States provided by sections 1346(b) and 2672 of this title for injury or loss of property or personal injury or death, resulting from the operation by any employee of the Government of any motor vehicle while acting within the scope of his office or employment, shall hereafter be exclusive of any other civil action or proceeding by reason of the same subject matter against the employee or his estate whose act or omission gave rise to the claim.
If the Act is interpreted as the majority suggests, this provision would bar a New Zealander from suing an employee of the United States (even if that employee happened to be a New Zealand national) for a tort committed by that employee in Antarctica; plaintiffs substantive rights would be limited to his suit against the United States in United States courts. There is no conceivable basis for this assertion of legislative jurisdiction except the principle of territorial sovereignty, which assertion conflicts with our treaty obligations. It does not matter, of course, that this exclusivity provision is limited to a type of tort not immediately at issue in this case (injury or damage caused by motor vehicles). The point is that the rationale of the majority’s decision — holding Antarctica not to be a “foreign country” for purposes of the FTCA — renders this provision in violation of the treaty.
Since the treaty predates this provision, which was added to the FTCA in 1961, Pub.L. No. 87-258, § 1, 75 Stat. 539 (Sept. 21, 1961), the result of the conflict would be that our assertion of territorial jurisdiction in Antarctica would stand, despite its violation of treaty commitments. It is contrary to sound principles of statutory construction, however, to interpret an ambiguous provision (in this case the “foreign country” exception) in a fashion that produces such consequences.
By the Constitution a treaty is placed on the same footing, and made of like obligation, with an act of legislation. Both are declared by that instrument to be the supreme law of the land, and no superior efficacy is given to either over the other. When the two relate to the same subject, the courts will always endeavor to construe them so as to give effect to both, if that can be done without violating the language of either____
Whitney v. Robertson, 124 U.S. 190, 194, 8 S.Ct. 456, 458, 31 L.Ed. 386 (1888). It should not be thought, incidentally, that the treaty provisions assure that our exercise of territorial jurisdiction will not be a matter of concern to other nations. See generally Comment, Quick, Before It Melts: Toward a Resolution of the Jurisdictional Morass in Antarctica, 10 Cornell Int’l L.J. 173, 185-86 n. 57 (1976) (noting that jurisdictional assertions even during the pendency of the Treaty could be used to strengthen territorial claims). Of course it would be possible to say that this conflicting exclusive-remedy provision of the FTCA was simply not meant to have the same scope as the other provisions of the Act, and does not apply outside the territorial United States — just as the majority has found it possible to create venue and choice-of-law solutions out of whole cloth. But when these imaginative exercises can be avoided by giving the phrase “foreign country” its ordinary meaning, to perform them is to rewrite the statute rather than interpret it.
Accepted Principles of Construction
One would therefore logically conclude, even without the benefit of any special *113principles of statutory construction, that “foreign country” in the present text means any location outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States. In fact, however, several such principles of construction are applicable, all of which reinforce the same conclusion and render it in my view inevitable.
First, there is “the ‘canon of construction which teaches that legislation of Congress, unless a contrary intent appears, is meant to apply only within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States____’” United States v. Spelar, 338 U.S. 217, 222, 70 S.Ct. 10, 13, 94 L.Ed. 3 (1949) (quoting Foley Brothers, Inc. v. Filardo, 336 U.S. 281, 285, 69 S.Ct. 575, 577, 93 L.Ed. 680 (1949)). See also Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. v. NRC, 647 F.2d 1345, 1357 n. 54 (D.C.Cir.1981); Restatement (Second) of Foreign Relations Law of the United States § 38 (1965). In other words, even without the “foreign country” exclusion it would be improper to interpret the FTCA as applying to acts or events in Antarctica. It is perverse to give the explicit exclusion of foreign claims the consequence of expanding the Act. Rather, as the Supreme Court observed in Spelar, the presumption against extra-territorial application “is doubly fortified by the language of [the FTCA] and the legislative purpose underlying it.” 338 U.S. at 222, 70 S.Ct. at 13.
Second, the Supreme Court has set forth a guide to the interpretation of the FTCA in particular. “[T]he effect of the Act,” it has said, “was ‘to waive immunity from recognized causes of action and ... not to visit the Government with novel and unprecedented liabilities.’ ” Stencel Aero Engineering Corp. v. United States, 431 U.S. 666, 671, 97 S.Ct. 2054, 2058, 52 L.Ed.2d 665 (1977) (quoting Feres v. United States, 340 U.S. 135, 142, 71 S.Ct. 153, 157, 95 L.Ed. 152 (1950)).6 To my knowledge, not only has no state ever permitted itself to be sued for alleged torts committed in a stateless land such as Antarctica, but no modern state has ever entertained in its courts a tort suit between private parties who were not both its citizens relating to activities in such a land.7
Finally, even if applying the FTCA to Antarctica in the present case represents no more than an exercise of non-territorial jurisdiction, it violates a broad principle of statutory construction — of which the canon of presumed territorial application discussed earlier is merely one manifestation — which avoids giving an ambiguous provision content that is likely to cause what the Supreme Court has described in another context as “embarrassment to the Executive Branch in handling foreign relations,” Banco Nacional de Cuba v. Sabbatino, 376 U.S. 398, 412, 84 S.Ct. 923, 932, 11 L.Ed.2d 804 (1964). Appellees’ statement that “[t]he [Antarctic] Treaty itself acknowledges each treaty country’s jurisdiction over its own nationals,” Brief for Appellees at 27, is incorrect. The treaty does not speak to jurisdiction over anyone except certain designated scientists and observers. See Bilder, supra, 52 Va.L.Rev. at 237-38. The failure to provide nationality jurisdiction resulted not from oversight but from the fears of several nations that it would undermine their claims. Id. at 238 n. 21; F. Auburn, Antarctica, at 184. The *114United States is undoubtedly free to apply that principle (or an analogous principle) in Antarctica, but I would leave that decision to the political branches rather than make it judicially, by interpreting an ambiguous statute to produce that result. Such a course is simply insensitive to the delicate diplomatic modus vivendi that our Executive has worked out among nations, with claims or potential claims to this important part of the world.
Legislative History
The evidence of the statute itself is so overwhelmingly clear as to require no resort to the questionable assistance of legislative history. But even there the conclusion is only strengthened rather than called into doubt. The weakness of the majority’s case on this score is demonstrated by what it chooses to discuss first: an amendment proposed in 1940 that would have specifically limited the scope of the FTCA to “damage or injury occurring within the geographical limits of the United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico [and] the Canal Zone.” Tort Claims Against the United States: Hearings on S. 2690 Before a Subcomm. of the Sen. Comm, on the Judiciary, 76th Cong., 3d Sess. 65 (1940) [hereinafter cited as 1940 Senate Hearings ]. The majority notes that “no such language was accepted, and the previous ‘foreign country’ version was retained.” Maj. op. at 95. What it neglects to note is that there is no reason to believe the “proposed amendment” was ever considered. It was in fact not even “proposed” in the ordinary sense of having been offered by a Member of Congress as a bill or an amendment to a bill. Rather it was nothing more than part of an alternative version of the bill offered to a Senate subcommittee for inclusion in the record by one J.J. Keegan, a member of the United States Employees’ Compensation Commission. It was never even put to a vote of the subcommittee — and indeed subsequent hearings are devoid of any discussion of Keegan’s proposals in general . and of this proposed change in particular. Understandably so, since Keegan began his testimony in support of six pages of proposed stylistic and substantive changes with the following statement:
I could not sit here without listening to and relishing the discussion between such very able lawyers as [Sen. Danaher] and Mr. Holtzoff. I must say that I am not an attorney, and you will not have any legal discussion from me____ I am not accustomed to use [sic ] legal phraseology, but I believe when a fellow gets into court he sometimes uses an alibi by saying he is a friend of the court. Possibly I might take that position here.
1940 Senate Hearings at 53. One does not have to be overly impressed with the virtues of a law degree to conclude that the subcommittee decided to leave what was quintessentially a legal matter (how to waive the long-standing sovereign immunity of the government) to “very able lawyers” and simply ignored the suggestions of Mr. Keegan. In addition, even if a subcommittee of Congress did consider this snippet of Mr. Keegan’s presentation, its rejection would prove nothing. Congress may have thought it preferable to express the Act’s limitation to United States territory by simply excluding torts in “foreign countries,” instead of reciting a list of “nonforeign countries.” See Western Coal Traffic League v. United States, 677 F.2d 915, 924 (D.C.Cir.), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 1086, 103 S.Ct. 568, 74 L.Ed.2d 931 (1982) (“amendments to a bill’s language are frequently latent with ambiguity: they may either evidence a substantive change in legislative design or simply a better means for expressing a provision in the original bill”). In fact, we do not even know whether Mr. Keegan himself thought there was any difference in substance between the two formulations. And finally, to cap it all, Mr. Keegan’s proposal not only explicitly spelled out the geographical limits but also made the criterion whether the “damage or injury occurr[ed]” within those limits, 1940 Senate Hearings at 65, — which is of course not the same as whether the “claim arfóse]” there, see Richards v. United States, 369 U.S. 1, 9-10, 82 S.Ct. 585, 590-591, 7 L.Ed.2d 492 (1962). If Congress was aware of this proposal, and if it made a *115conscious rejection, it seems to me a better guess that this significant feature was the reason.
One must admire the thoroughness of appellees’ research that could have unearthed Mr. Keegan and this portion of his extensive suggestions. But that this is the closest thing to a friend they have been able to find at the ever-congenial banquet of legislative history (in the case of the FTCA, a banquet with separate sittings in a number of years before it was finally adopted in 1946) is perhaps the strongest indication of how bereft of support their position must be. I may add that the willingness of the majority to rely upon such an irrelevancy is perhaps the strongest indication of the wisdom of the English courts in refusing to attend these feasts.
If it were necessary to consult legislative history in order to determine whether that interpretation of the statute should be adopted which leads to completeness and consistency or that which leads to inadequacy and confusion; then the relevant portion is the testimony by Assistant Attorney General Francis M. Shea, explaining to the House Committee on the Judiciary the revised version of the bill proposed by the Attorney General and (in the aspect at issue here) actually adopted by the Congress:
Claims arising in a foreign country have been exempted ... whether or not the claimant is an alien. Since liability is to be determined by the law of the situs of the wrongful act or omission it is wise to restrict the bill to claims arising in this country. This seems desirable because the law of the particular state is being applied. Otherwise, it will lead I think to a good deal of difficulty.
Tort Claims: Hearings on H.R. 5373 and H.R. 6Jf63 Before the House Comm, on the Judiciary, 77th Cong., 2d Sess. 35 (1942) (emphasis added). Besides the fact that it is common practice to give deference to the contemporaneous interpretation of the department responsible for drafting a statutory provision, see Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. v. NRC, 435 U.S. 519, 546, 98 S.Ct. 1197, 1213, 55 L.Ed.2d 460 (1978), Assistant Attorney General Shea’s testimony happens to be the only portion of the legislative history relied upon by the Supreme Court in the one case it has decided dealing with this aspect of the FTCA. See Spelar, 338 U.S. at 220-21, 70 S.Ct. at 11-12. It can hardly be thought, of course, that the “good deal of difficulty” which Mr. Shea envisioned from deciding a case under a law other than that of this country would be at all reduced when that other law is nonexistent. It may be that, for reasons I discuss in the immediately following paragraph of this opinion dealing with similar statements in judicial opinions, Mr. Shea’s testimony is ultimately inconclusive. But to the extent that this sole authoritative portion of the legislative history proves anything, both its language (“restrict the bill to claims arising in this country”) and its rationale (“otherwise, ... a good deal of difficulty”) are only compatible with the interpretation the majority has rejected.
Prior Case-Law
Most of the decided cases involving § 2680(k) are not really helpful to the question before us, since none of them involved a situation such as this, in which not only does United States law not apply, but also the law of no foreign jurisdiction applies as well. To be sure, dicta uttered without contemplating this issue can be quoted on both sides. The majority, for example, quotes the statement in Spelar that the purpose of § 2680(k) is to prevent the United States from being subject to “liabilities depending upon the laws of a foreign power,” 338 U.S. at 221, 70 S.Ct. at 12. And I could quote language from the same case to the effect that “[b]y the exclusion of claims ‘arising in a foreign country,’ the coverage of the Federal Tort Claims Act was geared to the sovereignty of the United States,” and that “[t]he amended version [i.e., the version amended pursuant to the Justice Department’s proposals] identified the coverage of the Act with the scope of United States sovereignty.” 338 U.S. at *116219, 220-21, 70 S.Ct. at 11, 12.» But to be honest about it, none of these dicta proves anything. In the context of that case (as in the context of almost all the other cases) the phrase “liabilities depending upon the laws of a foreign power” could have been elliptical, leaving out the implied conclusion “and therefore not depending upon the laws of the United States”; just as the phrase “geared to the sovereignty of the United States” could have been elliptical, leaving out the implied conclusion “and therefore depending upon the laws of a foreign power.” There is in fact no way of telling whether the nonapplicability of United States law or the applicability of foreign law was crucial to the Court’s thinking — and indeed it seems highly unlikely that either the Spelar court or most of the other courts cited by the majority had any intent whatever on the point.8
9
A few cases, however, contain holdings which, on the assumptions adopted by the rendering courts, are inconsistent with the majority’s thesis that a country is “foreign” only if foreign law applies. Meredith v. United States, 330 F.2d 9 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 379 U.S. 867, 85 S.Ct. 137, 13 L.Ed.2d 70 (1964), involved an FTCA claim based upon a negligent act allegedly occurring in the United States embassy in Bangkok, Thailand. The court held the claim to be barred by § 2680(k) without definitively concluding that foreign law was applicable. Pertinent portions of Judge Browning’s opinion are as follows:
[OJbviously our embassy at Bangkok has no tort law of its own. Presumably the law applicable on these premises would be that of Thailand____ If this is so, the words “in a foreign country” in section 2680(k) must be read to include the embassy buildings and grounds or liability of the United States for acts of its employees will be determined by the law of a foreign power, contrary to the purpose of Congress.
In any event, other possible reasons for the exclusion by Congress from the Federal Tort Claims Act of claims “arising in a foreign country” argue forcefully against the construction of section 2680(k) suggested by appellant. Judge Sobeloff has stated these reasons as follows: “the absence of United States courts in such countries, with resulting problems of venue, and the difficulty of bringing defense witnesses from the scene of the alleged tort to places far *117removed; and * * * a reluctance to extend the Act’s benefits to foreign populations.” Burna v. United States, 240 F.2d 720, 722 (4th Cir.1957). Obviously, each of these considerations is equally applicable whether a tort occurs in Bangkok within the American Embassy or outside the Embassy grounds.
Finally, without attempting an exhaustive catalogue or detailed analysis, we note that provisions of a number of other statutes (see, e.g. 10 U.S.C.A. §§ 2734 and 2734(a); 5 U.S.C.A. § 170g(b) and (f); 42 U.S.C.A. § 2478(b)(13); 22 U.S.C.A. § 2509(b)) point to a Congressional intention that claims for property damage, personal injury, or death arising out of activities of our military and civilian personnel abroad are to be dealt with by administrative or diplomatic means, or by special legislation, as may be appropriate, rather than by litigation under the Federal Tort Claims Act.
330 F.2d at 10-11 (emphasis added). This holding, arrived at without a conclusive determination that United States substantive law was not applicable, is incompatible with the majority’s analysis.
So also is the holding of the Fourth Circuit in Burna v. United States, 240 F.2d 720 (1957), which involved an FTCA claim arising from an alleged negligent act on Okinawa while the United States had, by treaty, “the right to exercise any and all powers of administration, legislation and jurisdiction” over that island. Id. at 721. Here again the court did not determine whether Japanese or United States law was applicable to the tort. It said:
Though the absence of any United States sovereignty was a sufficient answer in Spelar, the transfer temporarily of a measure of sovereignty here is not sufficient to dissolve Okinawa’s status as a foreign country. The reasons assigned by the Supreme Court were pertinent and sufficient to dispose of the case then before it; they do not necessarily exhaust the concept that underlies the statute. The Court’s reasons should be read as the bases, within the statute, for the decision in that case, and we do not think that they were meant to be treated as comprehensive and exclusive, or to establish a rigid formula for all cases.
We find persuasion in the language of Judge Yankwich, in Hichino Uyeno v. Acheson, [96 F.Supp. 510, 515 (W.D. Wash., N.D.1951)]. In interpreting a similar phrase, he said: “ * * * it is obvious that the words ‘foreign state’ are not words of art. In using them, the Congress did not have in mind the fine distinctions as to sovereignty of occupied and unoccupied countries which authorities on international law may have formulated. They used the word in the sense of ‘otherness.’ When the Congress speaks of ‘foreign state,’ it means a country which is not the United States or its possessions or colony, — an alien country, — other than our own, bearing in mind that the average American, when he speaks of a ‘foreigner’ means an alien, non-American. * * * So here, the interpretation called for is that of common speech and not that derived from abstract speculation on sovereignty as affected by foreign military occupation.”
240 F.2d at 721-23.
Neither the analysis of these cases, nor their holdings (since they did not find foreign law applicable), can be squared with the majority’s decision here. To my knowledge, the interpretation I propose neither creates a circuit conflict nor requires the positing of nonexistent findings of law to avoid one.
III. The “Headquarters” Allegations Do Not Eliminate Application op § 2680(k)
I believe the foregoing discussion establishes that any claim arising in Antarctica arises in a “foreign country” for purposes of § 2680(k), and is therefore not maintainable against the United States. The question I turn to in this section is whether the appellants’ allegation of negligence in the training, selection and supervision of the air traffic controllers sent to Antarctica— *118which negligence allegedly occurred in the United States — either (1) suffices to establish that the entire claim arises in the United States, or (2) constitutes a separate claim that arises in the United States.10 I turn to the second part of this question first.
Only a Single Claim is at Issue
The majority acknowledges that all elements of the present complaint present “a single cause of action,” but contends that the cause of action contains “two claims.” Maj. op. at 104; see also Wald op. at 181.11 This strange usage accords neither with common understanding nor with what internal and external evidence establishes as the meaning of “claim” in the FTCA. The term “claim” in § 2680(k) is at least as broad as, if not broader than, the concept “cause of action.”
Shortly before the adoption of the FTCA, Congress had revised the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, substituting the word “claim” for the phrase “cause of action” wherever it appeared. The intent was to embrace the broadest meaning of the earlier phrase. As Judge Swan observed three years before the FTCA was enacted:
For the traditional and hydra-headed phrase “cause of action” the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure have substituted the word "claim.” It is used to denote the aggregate of operative facts which give rise to a right enforceable in the courts.
Original Ballet Russe, Ltd. v. Ballet The-atre, Inc., 133 F.2d 187, 189 (2d Cir.1943) (footnote omitted). Or as the Supreme Court later described the development:
With the adoption of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the unified form of action, Fed.Rule Civ.Proc. 2, much of the controversy over “cause of action” abated____ Under the Rules, the impulse is toward entertaining the broadest possible scope of action consistent with fairness to the parties----
United Mine Workers of America v. Gibbs, 383 U.S. 715, 724, 86 S.Ct. 1130, 1138, 16 L.Ed.2d 218 (1966). In a case cited by United Mine Workers as exemplifying the (if anything more limited) meaning of the earlier phrase, the Supreme Court had specifically said: “The mere multiplication of grounds of negligence alleged as causing the same injury does not result in multiplying the causes of action.” Baltimore S.S. Co. v. Phillips, 274 U.S. 316, 321, 47 S.Ct. 600, 602, 71 L.Ed. 1069 (1927). See also Rhodes v. Jones, 351 F.2d 884, 886-87 (8th Cir.1965), cert. denied, 383 U.S. 919, 86 S.Ct. 914, 15 L.Ed.2d 673 (1966) (citation omitted) (“Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the word ‘claim’ denotes the same thing [as ‘cause of action’], i.e., ‘the aggregate of operative facts which give rise to a right enforceable in the courts’ ”).
The lawyers who drafted § 2680(k) were unquestionably aware of this general meaning of the newly prominent word “claim,” and unquestionably used it in that sense not only in § 2680(k), but elsewhere in the FTCA. Section 2672, for example, provides that acceptance of an administrative award “shall constitute a complete release of any claim against the United States ...by reason of the same subject matter” (emphasis added). And § 2675(a) provides that suit cannot be instituted “upon a claim” unless the plaintiff “shall have first presented the claim to the appropriate Federal agency and his claim shall have been finally denied.” If the word is interpreted as the majority would have it *119(“a single cause of action with two grounds for relief (two claims),” Maj. op. at 104), then it is highly questionable whether the headquarters “claim” is properly before us, since the notice provision is jurisdictional, see Bialowas v. United States, 443 F.2d 1047, 1049 (3d Cir.1971), and since the headquarters allegations were not even made in court until the amended complaint. Compare Complaint, Ü 28(a)-(d), with Amended Complaint, H 28(a)-(e).
Practical considerations relating to § 2680(k) in particular reinforce this meaning of the statutory language. Since suits against the government on the basis of actions of its employees are ex hypothesi based upon actions in the course of those employees’ official duties, see 28 U.S.C. § 1346(b), it will virtually always be possible to assert that the negligent activity that injured the plaintiff was the consequence of faulty training, selection or supervision — or even less than that, lack of careful training, selection or supervision — in the United States. And regard for malpractice liability, if nothing else, will induce plaintiffs’ lawyers regularly to include such an assertion in their complaints — for who can tell, at least until full discovery, where it is that proper training or supervision did not occur? Thus, the so-called “headquarters claim” will become a standard part of FTCA litigation involving the activities of federal employees abroad,12 and few such suits will be able to be dismissed at the jurisdictional threshold. I think it unlikely that the exclusion of “claims arising in a foreign country” was meant to operate in this fashion. To the contrary, it seems to me that the intent of Congress was to insulate the government from claims for injuries caused by its employees abroad, whether or not those employees’ actions can in turn be attributed to actions or inac-tions by other employees stateside.
No one would contend that a single injury caused by a private employer, through various “separate acts or omissions” by various “separate sets of actors” in his employ, would produce a multiplicity of “claims.” See, e.g., Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 24 (1982). There is no reason for treating the government’s liability differently, or for attributing a novel meaning to the word “claim” in the FTCA. The authorities the majority and concurrence rely upon for the notion that there are really two § 2680(k) “claims” involved here represent narrow exceptions to the ordinary meaning of the term, unrelated to the policies at issue here. Thus, comment c to the Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 26 (1982) states:
The general rule [against splitting of a claim] is largely predicated on the assumption that the jurisdiction in which the first judgment was rendered was one which put no formal barriers in the way of the litigant’s presenting to a court in one action the entire claim including any theories of recovery or demands for relief that might have been available to him under applicable law. When such formal barriers in fact existed and were operative against a plaintiff in the first action, it is unfair to preclude him from a second action in which he can present those phases of the claim which he was disabled from presenting in the first.
(Emphasis added.) Comment c gives as an example the ability to sue in federal court under a federal statute on a claim that has already been rejected under state law theories in the state courts. In my view (and evidently in the Restatement’s) it is more precise to describe this situation as involv*120ing two separate “phases of a claim” rather than two separate “claims.” But even if the latter terminology is used, there is no basis for making such an exception from the general rule in the circumstances of this case.13
The Claim Arose in Antarctica
Since, then, only a single “claim” is involved, one would think that the next question would be in what place that single “claim” arose. It is at this point that Judge Wald’s expressed willingness to assume “arguendo ” that only a single claim is involved, Wald op. at 132, turns out to be a promise kept to the ear but broken to the heart. It is easy to assume a single claim, so long as one attaches no legal consequences to the concept — which is perhaps why the concurrence regards the matter of one versus more claims to be “no more than a semantic quibble,” id. at 132. Specifically, Judge Wald would find it possible to hold that a unitary claim both arises in a foreign country and does not arise in a foreign country; and that the choice of law governing liability under the unitary claim is determined by the rules of Antarctica yet also determined by the rules of the District of Columbia.
There is a semantic quibble afoot here— but it does not pertain to whether a unitary claim is a unitary claim. Rather, it pertains to whether it makes any difference for Judge Wald to achieve the result she desires by frankly admitting (no arguendo about it) that she is fragmenting a unitary claim; or rather by calling it a unitary claim but depriving that concept of all reasonable consequences. It seems to me that when a statute refers to a place at which a unitary claim arose, it refers to a unitary place. It will not do to reject this approach as “inappropriate” because "it results in completely denying plaintiffs a forum for pursuing their claim,” Wald op. at 133. Since the whole object of the provision we are construing is to deprive plaintiffs of a forum, it is hardly a useful or even a rational approach to reject ordinary meanings because they produce such a result.
The claim fragmentation or deprivation of the legal consequences of claim unity that the concurrence engages in (whichever of the two characterizations one chooses) has important consequences not merely with regard to determining whether a “claim arose” in a foreign country for purposes of § 2680(k); and not only, as we shall see, for purposes of the choice-of-law applicable to the claim under § 1346(b); but also for purposes of virtually all of the exemptions in § 2680. In one line of cases, for example, which is now the subject of a petition for certiorari that has been granted by the Supreme Court, plaintiffs have • attempted to apply Judge Wald’s technique to the exemption contained in § 2680(h), which excludes “any claim arising out of” various specified intentional torts. There also, one would assume that the unitary claim either arises out of the intentional tort or does not. Plaintiffs have sought to avoid the bar against intentional tort suits, however, just as the concurrence here would avoid the bar against foreign claims, by splitting the claim or denying the consequence of its unitary nature. Specifically, they have alleged the equivalent of “headquarters negligence” in the government’s training, selection, or supervision of the employee who committed the intentional tort. I will discuss these cases in more *121detail below, see pages 124-125, infra, but mention them here merely to note the broad consequences of the approach the concurring opinion adopts.
I proceed, then, to discussion of the question whether the locus of the present unitary claim is the United States or Antarctica. The issue can be precised somewhat further, in accordance with this court’s analysis in Sami v. United States, 617 F.2d at 762 n. 7:
Each of the exemptions contained in § 2680 begins with the words “any claim.” In all except § 2680(k) these words are followed by a description of acts or omissions exempted. Thus § 2680(a): “Any claim based upon an act or omission of an employee of the Government, exercising due care, [etc.]”; § 2680(e): “Any claim arising out of an act or omission of any employee of the Government in administering the provisions of sections 1-31 of Title 50, Appendix.”
We do not think the omission of a specific reference to acts or omissions in § 2680(k) was meaningful or that the focus of that exemption shifted from acts or omissions to resultant injuries. What must be in a foreign country under the exemption is, we think, not a “claim arising” but “an act or omission of an employee of the government.”
Pursuant to this analysis, and assuming, as discussed above, that the single claim cannot be fragmented, we are faced with the necessity of selecting an “act or omission” to determine the issue of FTCA jurisdiction.
Since this is a suit for negligence, the first selection that comes to mind is that “act or omission” (in the chain of events producing the injury) which was blameworthy. But it is readily apparent that this solution cannot work. While it might fortuitously provide an answer in some circumstances, in the ordinary case there may be several points along the chain of causality at which genuine “fault” on the part of a government employee occurred; or perhaps no point at which the unquestioned fault can be located — as where negligence is established through the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur. In the present case, for example, the controllers may have been erroneously trained, but they may also have been inattentive to their duties at the time of the crash. In such circumstances the assignment of fault provides no basis for determining where the unitary claim arose. Moreover, establishing the particular location or locations of fault is often realistically impossible when the fault consists of an “omission” rather than an “act.” For instance, if the real fault in the present case was that the controllers received no training whatever, where is it that a blameworthy federal employee failed to provide them training? In addition, determining where the claim arose on the basis of where government employee “fault” occurred would have the same harmful practical effect as permitting fragmentation of the single claim: “Headquarters fault” would always be pleaded, and the jurisdictional issue would rarely be resoluble at the outset. Finally and most importantly, resolving the issue on the basis of employee fault would produce results incompatible with plausible congressional intent. If an air crash in this country were caused by a military air traffic controller’s failure to comply with an applicable objective standard of behavior, it is impossible to imagine that the United States could plead as a complete defense that the controller was simply acting in accordance with negligent training received at the Rhein-Main military base in the Federal Republic of Germany.
I think, therefore, that one must look to some test other than the allocation of individual employee fault. It is, after all, not liability of individual employees we are assessing in these cases, but liability of the United States. The relevant “act or omission” is the act or omission of the United States that caused the harm. In a case where it is claimed that one or more elements of negligence by federal employees affected the plaintiff through the failure of a particular federal action, or of a particular condition that should have been reme*122died by federal action, to comply with requisite standards, the place of the relevant “act or omission” is the place where that operative noncompliance occurs — regardless of whether any specific “blame” can be attributed to any particular federal employee at that point. Thus, if it is claimed that an accident was caused by a government car making a left-hand turn without signalling, it would not matter whether the government-employee driver was negligent in failing to activate the turn signal, or whether he had been negligently trained to turn without signalling at some other location, or whether he in fact activated the signal which did not work because of negligent servicing by government employees at yet a third location; the “act or omission” occurred where the alleged breach of standard that injured the plaintiff took place.14
The rule that a claim “arises” for purposes of § 2680(k) where there occurs the alleged violation of standard (attributable to government action or inaction) nearest to the injury serves to further one of the primary purposes of the provision — to avoid the application of foreign law against the United States. For whatever law may be applied to other elements of the claim, the crucial question of standard-violation in the government action immediately producing the injury is almost certain to be governed by the law of the place where that alleged violation occurred. Suppose a traffic accident is caused in a foreign country by a federal employee, acting within the scope of his duties, who makes a right turn at a red light. Suppose further that such action complies with the traffic rules of the District of Columbia, where such employee was selected and trained, but does not comply with the law of the foreign country. Even if negligence in the selection and training is asserted, surely under anyone’s choice-of-law theory the crucial question, central to recovery, of whether the employee failed to comply with an objective standard of conduct would be governed by the law of the place where that alleged failure occurred. By making the same criterion the test of whether the claim arises in a foreign country, we most effectively achieve § 2680(k)’s purpose of avoiding the application of foreign law.
Persuasively analogous authority rejecting a “place of fault” criterion and adopting essentially the test I have set forth above is to be found in a Supreme Court decision determining whether a particular tort suit came within the constitutional grant of federal power over “Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction,” U.S. Const. art. III, § 2. In The Admiral Peoples, 295 U.S. 649, 55 S.Ct. 885, 79 L.Ed. 1633 (1935), the libelant had been injured while disembarking from a vessel, by falling from a gangplank leading from the vessel to the dock. The shipowner asserted that admiralty jurisdiction did not exist because, among other reasons, the alleged acts of negligence consisted of improper construction of the gangplank, and improper placing of the gangplank against the ship — acts which occurred on shore. After acknowledging that “[wjhere the cause of action arises upon the land, the state law is applicable,” 295 U.S. at 651, 55 S.Ct. at 886, the Court disposed of the issue as follows:
We perceive no basis for a sound distinction because her fall was due to negligence in the construction or placing of the gangplank. By reason of that neglect, as the libel alleges, she fell from the plank and was violently thrown forward upon the dock. Neither the short distance that she fell nor the fact that she fell on the dock and not in the water, alters the nature of the cause of action which arose from the breach of duty owing to her while she was still on the ship and using its facility for disembarking.
*123Id. at 652, 55 S.Ct. at 886 (emphasis added). Thus, the place of standard-violation, rather than the place where the negligence occurred, governed.
Analogous support can also be found in Richards v. United States, supra, which involved the issue of where the “act or omission occurred” not for foreign-tort immunity purposes, but rather for purposes of determining which state’s law was applicable under the choice-of-law provision of the FTCA, 28 U.S.C. § 1346(b). There the plaintiffs sought damages for deaths in an airline crash allegedly attributable to the FAA’s failure to assure adequate overhaul practices at American Airlines’ depot in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Supreme Court’s opinion simply assumed (as apparently did the parties) that the place where the “act or omission occurred” was Tulsa. It nowhere appears in the opinion, however, that any individual federal employee was actually “negligent” or even was actually present at that particular location; and I think it most unlikely that the governing law would have changed if the reason for noninspection at Tulsa was a decision in Washington not to send FAA employees to Oklahoma. Rather, it seems to me that the “omission” within the meaning of the statute occurred there because it was there that the unlawful and injury-producing condition that a federal employee should have acted to remedy existed — even though the genuinely operative decision not to remedy it may have occurred all the way up the chain of command and causality, in Washington.
In a recent case involving FTCA liability of the United States for an “omission,” the Ninth Circuit adopted (again for choice-of-law rather than “foreign claim” purposes) an analysis substantially similar to that which I have suggested (and, incidentally, incompatible with the majority’s choice-of-law approach):
Since an omission, by its very definition, is an act which failed to occur, an allegedly negligent omission cannot have actually “occurred” anywhere. Hence, Congress must have intended the applicable law under § 1346(b) in regard to a negligent omission to be that of the place where the act necessary to avoid negligence should have occurred____
Here, plaintiffs have alleged numerous wrongful or negligent omissions, including a failure to close down the facility and a failure to post' signs. While these omissions may have stemmed in part from decisions made in San Francisco, California, the omissions could have been prevented only by the doing of such physical acts as the posting of signs, the erection of barbed wire, and the tearing up of boat slips and trailer spaces in Nevada. Contrary to plaintiffs’ contention that California law applies to this case, the omissions “occurred” in Nevada, and Nevada whole law (including Nevada choice of law principles) governs the determination of liability of the United States.
Ducey v. United States, 713 F.2d 504, 508 n. 2 (9th Cir.1983).15
*124Finally, closely analogous support can be found in those cases, alluded to above, which have rebuffed the attempt to convert an intentional tort (excluded from suit under the FTCA by § 2680(h)) into a negligent tort by reliance upon a claim of “headquarters negligence.” Some of these opinions apply reasoning quite similar to that I have set forth above, as the following examples indicate:
It is true that the claim here is predicated on negligence. However, that negligence would have been without legal significance absent the alleged [subsequent intentional tort]. Without that, there would have been no actionable negligence. It was the attack which served to attach legal consequences to the defendant’s alleged negligence.
Collins v. United States, 259 F.Supp. 363, 364 (E.D.Pa.1966).
The alleged negligence of the government employee in retaining [the perpetrator] Sullivan was not the proximate cause of the assault. The proximate cause of the assault is the willful and intentional act of Sullivan____ True, the third count does allege that ... the negligent keeping of [Sullivan] in his employment and the failure to transfer was the proximate cause of the assault. But there would have been no assault except for the separate and independent acts of Sullivan. Without his independent assault, there would be no cause of action. It is to this action the statute does not waive immunity.
Hughes v. Sullivan, 514 F.Supp. 667, 670 (E.D.Va.1980), aff'd “for reasons adequately stated by the District Court” sub nom. Hughes v. United States, 662 F.2d 219, 220 (4th Cir.1981). See also Wine v. United States, 705 F.2d 366, 367 (10th Cir.1983); Naisbitt v. United States, 611 F.2d 1350, 1353-56 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 885, 101 S.Ct. 240, 66 L.Ed.2d 111 (1980); Gale v. United States, 525 F.Supp. 260 (D.S.C.1981); Taylor v. United States, 513 F.Supp. 647, 649-53 (D.S.C.1981); Pennington v. United States, 406 F.Supp. 850, 851-53 (E.D.N.Y.1976); Davidson v. Kane, 337 F.Supp. 922, 923 (E.D.Va.1972). The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has taken a contrary view in two cases, Shearer v. United States, 723 F.2d 1102 (3d Cir.1983), cert. granted, — U.S.-, 105 S.Ct. 321, 83 L.Ed.2d 259 (1984), and Gibson v. United States, 457 F.2d 1391 (3d Cir.1972).16 In the former of these, as noted earlier, the Supreme Court has accepted certiorari. If the approach adopted by Shearer is rejected by the Supreme Court for purposes of § 2680(h), I think it clear that it must also be rejected for purposes of § 2680(k) — and if adopted for the one, then also adopted for the other. While relying for the present upon the weight of authority regarding the § 2680(h) issue in support of my position here, I am hopeful that the Supreme Court’s disposition of Shearer will address the “headquarters claim” point, and thereby conclusively resolve the issue between the concurrence and me.
Judge Wald believes that cannot be, since “[i]n contrast [to § 2680(k) cases] the rationale for not holding the government liable on the basis of headquarters negligence in § 2680(h) cases is that the intentional, criminal act of the employee is the sole proximate cause of the harm and supersedes the headquarters negligence.” Wald op. at 138, citing Restatement (Second) of Torts § 442(B) (1965). Even in theory, that cannot possibly be so. Any general tort rationale of “superseding cause” would surely be sought in the applicable state law, and not in the text of the FTCA. Moreover, if that were the principle explaining the § 2680(h) “headquarters” cases, it would apply as well to the intentional, criminal acts of nongovernment employees; but as correctly stated in one of the cases:
It is by now well settled that where negligent performance of duties owed by the government to certain individuals *125makes possible assaults on those individuals by non-employees of the government, § 2680(h) will not bar a negligence claim against the government (although an absence of proximate cause might of course still be found).
Pennington v. United States, 406 F.Supp. at 851, citing Panella v. United States, 216 F.2d 622 (2d Cir.1954) (Harlan, J.). Of course in order to recover a plaintiff must establish legally “proximate” cause even if the bar of sovereign immunity does not apply, and opinions in some suits against the government involving intentional torts choose to go off on this nonjurisdictional ground, see, e.g., United States v. Shively, 345 F.2d 294 (5th Cir.1965), cert. denied, 382 U.S. 883, 86 S.Ct. 177, 15 L.Ed.2d 124 (1965) — a phenomenon which some of the § 2680(h) cases fully acknowledge, e.g., Naisbitt, supra, 611 F.2d at 1355. But none of the § 2680(h) cases I have cited above nonsuiting the plaintiffs are “proximate cause” cases in this ordinary tort-law sense, and there is simply no basis for the concurrence’s appeal to this doctrine as a means of deflecting in advance the Supreme Court’s action in Shearer.17
The concurrence brings ordinary tort principals of “proximate cause” into the debate even more generally, asserting that my insistence upon selecting a single jurisdiction in which the claim arose is incompatible with those principles. Wald op. at 135-136. That is not so. I have no quarrel with such cases as Ingham v. Eastern Air Lines, Inc., 373 F.2d 227, 237 (2d Cir.1967); the Kestatement (Second) of Torts; and Dean Prosser; all cited by Judge Wald for the proposition that “where there are multiple, proximate concurrent or contributing causes, the courts do not arbitrarily choose the most proximate as the sole cause for purposes of liability with respect to FTCA claims.” Wald op. at 135. I would not do so either, but that says nothing about the question whether, in the case of entirely sequential and dependent negligence such as we have here, the “most proximate” governmentally connected cause — or what perhaps should be called, in order to avoid confusion with the general tort doctrine, the “nearest cause” — should be chosen for purposes of determining where the unitary claim arose. For example, in the Ingham case that Judge Wald discusses, see Wald op. at 135, involving negligence by both pilots and air traffic controllers, I would permit either or both acts of negligence to be the basis of recovery. They are both “proximate causes” in the sense that they are not so remote as to be beyond the legally recognized chain of causality. The only issue is whether suit would be barred — not by reason of the “supervening cause” theory dismissed in Ingham but by reason of § 2680(k) — if the government negligence nearest to the injury occurred abroad. In other words, for purposes of determining where the unitary claim arises in the case of a chain of dependent causes, *126I would genuinely refer to the proximate governmental cause — using the word “proximate” in its proper superlative sense of “nearest,” as opposed to its usage for purposes of determining which acts in the chain can be a legal basis for liability, which latter usage admits of multiple “proximate” causes.
Judge Wald asserts that my analysis is contrary to the holding of the Ninth Circuit in Leaf v. United States, 588 F.2d 733 (9th Cir.1978). Wald op. at 133-135 & n. 3. Not so. In that case, the plaintiff brought an action against Bean, allegedly an informant for the Drug Enforcement Agency, and against the United States, for the loss in Mexico of a plane that had been leased from the plaintiff for the purpose (undisclosed to him) of conducting an undercover drug-trafficking operation. Bean thought the flight back from Mexico was to be a “practice run,” but armed Mexicans overloaded the plane with marijuana, as a result of which it crashed on takeoff. The plaintiff asserted that this was the result of alleged acts of negligence by Bean in both Mexico and the United States, and by other alleged government agents in the United States. The district court had granted summary judgment for the government, based on its finding “that Bean was not an agent of the United States,” that “the acts of nongovernment actors in Mexico were the sole proximate cause of the injury,” and that the claim therefore arose in a foreign country. 588 F.2d at 735. The nub of the Ninth Circuit’s reasoning in reversing is shown by the following excerpts from its opinion:
The district court erred in deciding the proximate-cause question on a motion for summary judgment.
The allegations of negligent acts in this country, and of the government’s knowledge about Church and Bean, were sufficient to raise reasonable questions about agency and proximate cause.
Facts were alleged from which a trier might reasonably find proximate cause running from acts in this country to the damages suffered in Mexico. Such a finding would preclude dismissal on jurisdictional grounds. We express no opinion on the merits of these and other questions of fact, or on the defenses that might be asserted. The claim did not necessarily “arise in a foreign country” ....
Id. at 736. On my analysis, if Bean was a government agent and his violation of a standard of care in Mexico was the “nearest governmental cause” in the sense I have defined, dismissal was proper. But if Bean was not a government agent and there was proximate causality (in the tort sense) traceable to the violation of a standard of care by a government agent only in the United States; or if Bean was a government agent, but it was in the United States that his last operative violation of a standard of care occurred; then dismissal was improper. Since on the disputed facts the plaintiff had to be given the benefit of the latter suppositions, the reversal was correct.18 I think, in other words, that the Leaf court meant by “proximate cause” precisely what I mean by the last operative act of negligence. But the case is in any event in no way contrary to the analysis I have set forth.
Judge Wald also relies on Pelphrey v. United States, 674 F.2d 243 (4th Cir.1982). There a district court had rendered summary judgment against the plaintiffs on the grounds that the foreign country allegations were barred by § 2680(k) and that the headquarters allegations had no factual support. The court of appeals affirmed on the same grounds. If courts were fastidious about the impropriety of reaching mer*127its issues without first establishing jurisdiction, it could be argued that this opinion implicitly holds that the occurrence of the “most proximate” negligence abroad did not dispose of the whole case. But courts are not so fastidious. See, e.g., Doe v. United States Dep’t of Justice, 753 F.2d 1092, 1101 (D.C.Cir.1985). It is obvious that the Fourth Circuit in Pel-phrey did precisely what this court would probably have done — decided the case the simple way without even considering the complex issue here under discussion. Neither in what it says nor in what it does can the opinion provide any support for the concurrence.
Finally, I cannot allow to pass unchallenged the concurrence’s assertion that my approach is “calculated ... to insure a result of non-suit in complex cases where non-suit may very well not be the result most attuned to congressional intent.” Wald op. at 143. My approach happens to result in a non-suit in this case, but in other cases would avoid a non-suit which the concurrence’s approach would produce. For example, to modify Judge Wald’s hypothetical, see Wald op. at 142, if a defective backup system was installed in a government plane in Mexico and was negligently activated in the United States, my approach would allow an FTCA suit on the basis of both the backup system and its negligent activation while the majority’s approach seems “calculated ... to insure a ... non-suit” with respect to the backup system.19 Thus, if Judge Wald can write “Congress [did not] intend by the foreign country exception to sanction the government’s exportation to foreign countries of poorly trained, unsupervised, or inept personnel with free license to injure unsuspecting residents of those countries,” Wald op. at 143; I suppose I could reply that Congress did not intend to sanction the government’s importation from foreign countries of poorly trained, unsupervised, or inept personnel with, under the majority’s approach, free license to injure unsuspecting residents of this country so long as they follow instructions received overseas. But of course all such rhetoric is misdirected when one is dealing with a statutory provision which, in one manner or another, is unquestionably intended to “sanction” (if one chooses to put it that way) governmental negligence.
IV. Even Assuming That Antarctica Is Not a Foreign Country, the Case Should Have Been Dismissed
What I have said above shows that this suit presents a single claim arising in Antarctica, which, since Antarctica is a foreign country, must be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction under § 2680(k). •
Even if I thought that Antarctica is not a foreign country, however, I would disagree with the majority’s disposition of this case, and with large portions of the majority’s and the concurrence’s analysis. I must set forth that disagreement at least briefly, since what the majority has said with regard to an FTCA claim straddling two (in its view) nonforeign jurisdictions is of great practical significance.
First, as my analogous use of Richards v. United States and Ducey v. United States in the immediately preceding discussion suggests, I think it no more valid to split a unitary claim such as this for purposes of the choice-of-law provision of the FTCA, 28 U.S.C. § 1346(b), than for purposes of the foreign claim exclusion. Neither of those choice-of-law cases (nor any other I am aware of in the 39-year history of the FTCA) even considered such a course — and in Ducey in particular the plaintiffs had specifically raised a “headquarters claim.” Thus, it seems to me that what really confronts the majority (on its erroneous assumption that Antarctica is not foreign) is not the clear applicability of D.C. law to the so-called “headquarters claim” and a supposed choice-of-law problem for the “other” claim, but rather a *128problem similar to that which I discussed in the immediately preceding section: which law applies to the entire suit?
To fragment a unitary claim for choice-of-law purposes as the majority would do creates needless and insoluble conflicts regarding applicable rules. Assume, for example, an FTCA suit by a resident of Virginia, alleging that a federal employee, also a resident of Virginia, while driving in the course of his duties a vehicle registered and garaged in that state, was involved in an automobile accident in West Virginia, in which the plaintiff was injured. The cause of the accident is alleged to be excessive speed of the federally driven vehicle, attributable to (1) the negligence of the driver, (2) negligent training of the driver at a federal training center in Maryland, and (3) negligent selection of the driver by federal supervisors in the District of Columbia. The problem which the majority’s fragmentation of this unitary claim poses is that the three separate issues of standard of care will be governed by the whole law (including the conflicts law) of three different jurisdictions; so that issues common to liability under all three “claims” of negligence may be resolved differently depending upon which “claim” is at issue. Thus, for example, the court might have to find that since, on the “negligent driving claim,” the law of West Virginia, where that negligence occurred, would apply an “interest analysis” choice-of-law approach, the law of Virginia would govern the issues of whether contributory negligence precludes recovery and whether the doctrine of “last clear chance” applies; while at the same time finding that on the “negligent training claim” the law of Maryland (where that negligence occurred) would use- a “place of the accident” approach, and apply West Virginia’s law to those same issues; and finding that on the “negligent selection claim” the law of the District of Columbia (where that negligence occurred), would adopt a “best law” (so-called) principle and apply its own contributory negligence and “last clear chance” rules. See generally E. Scoles & P. Hay, Conflict of Laws 550-602 (1984). Assuming that Virginia resolves both of these common issues to the plaintiff’s advantage, West Virginia both of them to the defendant’s advantage, and the District of Columbia one to the advantage of each, the process of deciding the case is not only absurdly complex but produces a disreputable result. Indeed, it will produce no result at all when all three alleged elements of governmental negligence are found to have caused the accident — unless the jury is given the impossible task of assigning a percentage of causation to each of three acts of negligence that are interdependent and concurrently operative. This is not, as Judge Wald suggests, merely a routine instance of the “veritable jungle” which modern choice-of-law rules have produced, Wald op. at 139. It is vegetation of an entirely new strain. None of the respectable or even disrespectable (if there can any longer be such a thing) theories of choice of law, and no case I am aware of, would apply the whole law of different jurisdictions to the various elements of a single cause of action. It is inconceivable that Congress positively intended such contortion.20
Judge Wald suggests a more “flexible” approach to choice-of-law. I have no difficulty with the flexibility involved in permitting a court to consider first whether the choice-of-law rules of each connected state refer to the same law. If that is so, it is obviously unnecessary to decide which jurisdiction § 1346(b) points to. See the four cases discussed in the paragraph at page 140 of the concurrence. Judge Wald believes, however, that “where a true conflict of law problem is encountered after looking *129to the whole law of each place where an act or omission occurred, courts may either apply the law of each place to the acts occurring in that place or by some formula choose one place such as the place where the most significant act or omission occurred,” Wald op. at 141 (emphasis added). That degree of flexibility is the issue here. In my view the court must “choose one place.” It is interesting that the only court of appeals decision cited by the concurrence in support of its choice-of-law analysis in fact supports mine. Bowen v. United States, 570 F.2d 1311 (7th Cir.1978), discussed by the concurrence at pages 140-141, did feel the necessity of selecting a single jurisdiction. To be sure, it did not, as the concurrence notes, adopt the test for selection of jurisdiction I have proposed. But there is no reason why it should have done so, since the case did not involve acts of sequential and dependent causality — i.e., the negligence of one actor that ultimately has its effect only through the negligence of another — but rather three independently operative negligent acts.21 I need not decide what act I would select in such a situation; indeed, it could even be argued that the necessity of selecting a single jurisdiction is not as great when independent causality is at issue. The latter consideration would distinguish Kohn v. United States, 591 F.Supp. 568 (E.D.N.Y.1984), which also involved independently operative acts. In any case, to the extent that Bowen has any relevance to the present case, it supports my single-jurisdiction approach rather than the approach of the concurrence.
My other disagreements with the majority’s analysis (accepting its assumption that Antarctica is not foreign) are of lesser consequence, since they relate to the relatively rare situation — created only by the majority’s resolution of the Antarctica issue — in which the choice-of-law provision of the FTCA refers to a jurisdiction that has no law. Were I to create for myself the necessity of dealing with such a situation, I would not conclude, as does the majority, that I was confronted with a “question” of what law to apply — “a question not answered by the statute,” Maj. op. at 105, and therefore requiring the court to devise an alternate choice-of-law rule. To the contrary, it seems to me no question is posed at all. According to the statute, we have jurisdiction only “under circumstances where the United States, if a private person, would be liable to the claimant in accordance with the law of the place where the act or omission occurred.” 28 U.S.C. § 1346(b).22 It is clear that under the cir*130cumstances of this case, a private person would not be liable to the claimant in accordance with the law of Antarctica. It is therefore clear that we have no jurisdiction. Converting this plain answer into a “question” is not only incompatible with the rule that a waiver of sovereign immunity must be “unequivocally expressed,” United States v. Mitchell, 445 U.S. 535, 538, 100 S.Ct. 1349, 1351, 63 L.Ed.2d 607 (1980), but distorts the intent of the statute by making the United States liable where a private person would not be.
I suppose it must be regarded as fortunate that the majority’s decision to replace the choice-of-law rule of the statute with those of the Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws, Maj. op. at 105, led to the District of Columbia in the present case. But one must fear that the circumstances of the next Antarctica case (or perhaps a revision of the Restatement) will lead next time to the substantive law of the Soviet Union. If that happens, one wonders whether the consequence will be to convert Antarctica (for purposes of that case) into a “foreign country” (since foreign law would then be applicable) with the result that the suit will be dismissed; or rather to set the court off in search of another nonjurisdiction to replace Restatement (Second), which will perhaps once again lead to the United States substantive law. I am tempted to confess that a decision which produces such endlessly interesting ramifications cannot be all bad.
*****
Even insofar as the majority’s holding regarding the nonforeign status of Antarctica is concerned, this is not necessarily the “one-of-a-kind” case Judge Wald believes and I would like to hope. Antarctica is a dangerous land. “[A]n uncomfortably large number of the buildings and facilities at McMurdo are named for those who died here, and crosses stand silhouetted on the black hills.” M. Parfit, The Last Continent, Smithsonian, Oct. 1984, at 48, 56. Fifty-one aircraft of this nation alone have been lost in Antarctica since 1946. Id. at 57. Tourism in Antarctica is particularly hazardous, and “[sjome scientists believe that [it] should be banned,” P. Quigg, supra, at 103; see also id. at 101 (noting accidents of Antarctic tourist ship). The fact that what few activities take place in Antarctica are governmental activities or are heavily dependent upon governmental activities for their support, suggests that this may not be the last multi-million dollar tort suit against the world’s deepest of pockets, arising from events in that desolate region, to which we will be asked to apply the local law of the District of Columbia.
But not even the hope of “one-of-a-kind” can be held forth for those portions of the decision permitting dismemberment of a unitary and assertedly wowforeign FTCA claim. That analysis will unquestionably cause confusion in determining the choice of law for domestic FTCA tort claims in the future. On all counts, I dissent.

. Article IV of the Antarctic Treaty, Dec. 1, 1959, 12 U.S.T. 794, 796, T.I.A.S. No. 4780, 402 U.N. T.S. 71, provides as follows:
1. Nothing contained in the present Treaty shall be interpreted as:
(a) a renunciation by any Contracting Party of previously asserted rights of or claims to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica;
(b) a renunciation or diminution by any Contracting Party of any basis of claim to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica which it may have whether as a result of its activities or those of its nationals in Antarctica, or otherwise;
(c) prejudicing the position of any Contracting Party as regards its recognition or nonrecognition of any other State’s right of or claim or basis of claim to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica.
2. No acts or activities taking place while the present Treaty is in force shall constitute a basis for asserting, supporting or denying a claim to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica. No new claim, or enlargement of an existing claim, to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica *107shall be asserted while the present Treaty is in force.

. There is some ambiguity as to whether New Zealand is merely "administering1’ British claims or whether it has its own independent claim. F. Auburn, Ross Dependency, at 70-73.

. Sector claims are wedge-shaped claims derived by tracing lines from southernmost base points outside Antarctica over which a country has control down to the South Pole. The theory was first developed in the Arctic, but several countries have suggested that it should be used in Antarctica as well. It has been harshly criticized. See generally F. Auburn, Antarctica, at 17-31.

. One of the strongest bases rests upon the fact that "[b]y direction of the President of the United States, Lieutenant J.H. Roscoe claimed ‘Ross Island and the areas about McMurdo Sound’ on 29 January 1948, declaring that he had surveyed and investigated the territory.” F. Auburn, Antarctica, at 66. However, when Admiral Byrd claimed other territory for the United States, he appeared to recognize New Zealand’s claims in the area. F. Auburn, Ross Dependency, at 58.

. Since I readily make this acknowledgment, I deem irrelevant the “analogous statutes” discussed by the majority, Maj. op. at 98-99 (a category thought to include such enactments as the Interstate Transportation of Wagering Paraphernalia Act), which define the term "foreign country” in such fashion as apparently to exclude Antarctica. Obviously, the meaning of “[t]he term ‘foreign country’ ... is to be ascertained with reference to the particular act in which it is used.” Straneri v. United States, 77 F.Supp. 240, 241 (E.D.Pa.1948).

. The Court seemed to retreat from this principle of Feres in Rayonier, Inc. v. United States, 352 U.S. 315, 319-20, 77 S.Ct. 374, 376-77, 1 L.Ed.2d 354 (1957), and United States v. Muniz, 374 U.S. 150, 159-60, 83 S.Ct. 1850, 1856-57, 10 L.Ed.2d 805 (1963), but the principle was reinstated in Stencel, as the quotation in text indicates. See Hunt v. United States, 636 F.2d 580, 584-89 (D.C.Cir.1980); Maw v. United States, 733 F.2d 174, 176 (1st Cir.1984); Johnson v. United States, 631 F.2d 34, 36 (5th Cir.1980), cert. denied, 451 U.S. 1018, 101 S.Ct. 3007, 69 L.Ed.2d 389 (1981).

. In Chaplin v. Boys, [1971] A.C. 356, 396, 401, Lord Pearson suggested that if one Englishman wrongfully injures another in a primitive or unsettled territory where there is no law of torts, English law could be applied. Justice Holmes suggested a similar retention of the ancient law of "personal sovereignty” in American Banana Co. v. United Fruit Co., 213 U.S. 347, 355-56, 29 S.Ct. 511, 512, 53 L.Ed. 826 (1909). Both of these formulations assume that both parties are citizens of the adjudicating sovereign. Here, of course, the appellees are foreigners.

. For other cases containing equivalent dicta, see, e.g., Burna v. United States, 240 F.2d 720, 722-23 (4th Cir.1957) (approving the formulation that "[w]hen the Congress speaks of 'foreign state,’ it means a country which is not the United States or its possessions or colony, — an alien country, — other than our own’’); Bell v. United States, 31 F.R.D. 32, 35 (D.Kan.1962) ("the term ‘foreign country' ... as used in the exception to the Federal Tort Claims Act means all lands other than those within the boundaries of the United States and those territories and possessions referred to in Title 48 of the United States Code Annotated”); Straneri v. United States, 77 F.Supp. at 241 (footnote omitted) ("when Congress used the term ‘foreign country,’ it meant all lands other than those for which it is the supreme legislative body. That is, as one of the conditions precedent to recovery from the United States, the tort must have been committed on lands within the boundaries of the United States or its territories and possessions. All other lands are to be considered as foreign country irrespective of the degree of control the executive branch of the United States government might otherwise exert over them”); Brunell v. United States, 77 F.Supp. 68, 72 (S.D.N.Y.1948) ("Congress by the term ‘foreign country’ in the Federal Tort Claims Act, limited the operation of the Act to areas which were actually a component part or political subdivision of the United States”).

. The district court decision in In re "Agent Orange”Product Liability Litigation, 580 F.Supp. 1242, 1254 (E.D.N.Y.1984), contains a perplexing statement, quoted by the majority at pages 97-98, seeming to suggest that the substantive law of the country where a tort occurred cannot be applied, and that the country therefore cannot be considered a "foreign country,” if that country has since ceased to exist as a functionally independent sovereign. It is, as the majority acknowledges, unclear how much of a role this reasoning played in the court’s decision — but the reasoning produces such unacceptable results that one must charitably presume it played no role at all. It is inconceivable that whenever a nation in which the United States has caused personal injury is conquered, the United States not only becomes liable under the FTCA where it was immune before, but becomes liable under a retroactively different substantive law!

. The District Court ruled that the “headquarters" allegations did not relate to “discretionary functions" excluded from the FTCA by 28 U.S.C. § 2680(a). Beattie, 592 F.Supp. at 784 n. 25. This issue was not raised and has not been considered on appeal. See United States v. S.A Empresa de Viacao Aerea Rio Grandense, — U.S.-, 104 S.Ct. 2755, 81 L.Ed.2d 660 (1984).

. The majority and concurrence reach this is sue in the context not of § 2680(k) but of 28 U.S.C. § 1346(b), dealing with jurisdiction and choice of law. The latter section provides “jurisdiction of civil actions on claims against the United States ... under circumstances where the United States, if a private person, would be liable to the claimant in accordance with the law of the place where the act or omission occurred.” I discuss the § 1346(b) issue specifically at pages 127-129, infra.

. Of the relatively few recent FTCA cases involving injuries abroad, at least five have included allegations of "headquarters" negligence producing tortious action by a government agent abroad. See, in addition to the present suit, Pelphrey v. United States, 674 F.2d 243 (4th Cir.1982); Leaf v. United States, 588 F.2d 733 (9th Cir.1978); In re “Agent Orange" Product Liability Litigation, 580 F.Supp. 1242 (E.D.N.Y. 1984); Bryson v. United States, 463 F.Supp. 908 (E.D.Pa.1978). Of course there is also an incentive to use the "headquarters claim” in purely domestic FTCA litigation, to obtain the benefit of different substantive law, see, e.g., Ducey v. United States, 713 F.2d 504 (9th Cir.1983), or to avoid the application of other exceptions to the FTCA, see, e.g., Shearer v. United States, 723 F.2d 1102 (3rd Cir.1983), cert. granted, — U.S. -, 105 S.Ct. 321, 83 L.Ed.2d 259 (1984).

, Perhaps an exception is appropriate in the rare situation in which independently operative acts of negligence, one in the United States and another abroad, are asserted to have caused the same injury — for example, negligent repair of an airplane part in the United States and negligent repair of a different part in France, both of which independently contribute to an accident. In such a case, it may be that for purposes of the “domestic-versus-foreign-claim" jurisdictional issue under § 2680(k), as for purposes of the "federal-versus-state-claim” jurisdictional issue in the example from the Restatement of Judgments discussed in text, an exception to the rule against claim splitting may be required. But that necessity need not be reached — and it would indeed frustrate the purpose of § 2680(k) to reach it — in a case such as this, which involves not independently operative acts of negligence, but rather a dependent series of acts which take effect only through the ultimate failure of the controllers in Antarctica to conform to requisite standards.

. I emphasize that this test does not focus on the place where the injury occurs, but on the place where the proximate breach of duty producing that injury takes place. It is thus in no way inconsistent with the “operative effect” cases discussed in the majority opinion at 96-97 and in the concurrence at 132. A claim against the government for negligence that causes injuries overseas is not barred so long as, with regard to those elements of negligence that operate in a single, dependent chain of causality, the last link is in this country.

. Judge Wald seeks to distinguish Ducey on the ground that it “only states where to locate the place a particular omission occurred for choice of law purposes; it says nothing about cases involving multiple acts or omissions.” Wald op. at 139 n. 7. But in fact Ducey clearly involved “multiple omissions.” See 713 F.2d at 508 n. 2 ("Here, plaintiffs have alleged numerous wrongful or negligent omissions"). Perhaps, then, Judge Wald is suggesting that Ducey is somehow inapposite since it does not speak to the location of negligent acts. That would seem a strange distinction, suggesting that the "decisions made in San Francisco, California,” which the Ducey court rejected as a basis of choice of law, 713 F.2d at 508 n. 2, were somehow non-acts. But even if such a distinction were accepted it would not distinguish the present case, which at least equivalently involves not acts but omissions. Appellees claim that personnel of the United States were negligent in "failing to warn Flight 901 that it had deviated from the customary flight plan,” Amended Complaint jf 28(b), and "in the failure ... to use due care in the selection, training and supervision of the Naval personnel at McMurdo Base,” id. at jf 28(e). As for the Ninth Circuit’s later opinion in Grunnet v. United States, 730 F.2d 573 (1984), that is in no way inconsistent with Ducey since it involved not a chain of dependent causality such as was involved in Ducey and is involved here, but independent alleged omissions which did not combine to take effect through the ultimate act or omission of a single government agent. See note 13, supra.

. The district court opinion in Bryson v. United States, 463 F.Supp. 908, 912 (E.D.Pa.1978), relied upon by the concurrence, see Wald op. at 135, was an unreasoned holding relying upon Gibson. Its authoritativeness will suffer the same fate as that of Shearer on certiorari.

. I may add that the concurrence is not accurate in its description of the ordinary tort-law rule regarding proximate cause. It cites the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 442B (1965) for the proposition that "[a]s a general matter in tort law, the intervening intentional or criminal acts of third parties will break the chain of causation," Wald op. at 138. That is quite true as a general matter, but not true with respect to what we have described here as headquarters claims. Specifically, § 442B states that intervening action of a third person does not break the chain of causation "except where the harm is intentionally caused by a third person and is not within the scope of the risk created by the actor’s conduct" (emphasis added). The comments to this section note that "tortious or criminal acts may in themselves be foreseeable, and so within the scope of the created risk, in which case the actor may still be liable for the harm____” Restatement (Second) of Torts § 442B comment c, at 471. See also id. at § 449; W. Prosser, Handbook of the Law of Torts § 44 at 275 (4th ed. 1971). Such an allegation of intervening acts "within the scope of the risk” is of course precisely what a headquarters claim consists of — whether the subsequent foreseeable action is merely negligent, or intentional so as to trigger § 2680(h). Unquestionably, most jurisdictions draw the scope of legally accountable foreseeability more narrowly for intentional (and especially for criminal) intervening acts, cf. Romero v. National Rifle Association, 749 F.2d 77 (D.C.Cir.1984), but that is a matter of application of the “scope of the risk” principle rather than a fundamental difference distinguishing the two categories of case.

. Knudsen v. United States, 500 F.Supp. 90, 93 (S.D.N.Y.1980), cited by Judge Wald as supporting her interpretation of Ledf, in fact stands only for this limited point of giving the plaintiff the benefit of suppositions on a summary judgment motion. See 500 F.Supp. at 93 (dicta). In any case, the citation of Knudsen displays a failure, repeatedly evident in the concurrence, to appreciate the difference between the sequential and dependent chain of causality that we have here, and independently operative acts. See note 13, supra; note 21, infra.

. Judge Wald’s assertion that this is "plainly wrong,” Wald op. at 142 n. 9, is contradicted not only by analysis but also by her ensuing acknowledgement that ”[t]he former [i.e., acts or omissions occurring in Mexico] may be barred by the foreign country exception,” id.

. Though the FTCA venue provision, 28 U.S.C. § 1402(b), contains language similar to that of § 1346(b) (referring to the place "where[ ] the act or omission complained of occurred”), I express no opinion whether it likewise should be given a "unitary" interpretation. As the Supreme Court noted in Richards, addressing precisely the argument that these two sections must be given parallel construction, "considerations underlying the problem of venue are substantially different from those determining applicable law,” 369 U.S. at 10 n. 20, 82 S.Ct. at 591 n. 20.

. The concurrence’s response to this analysis, see Wald op. at 140 n. 8, displays a belief that acts of negligence are dependent in the sense I have described whenever the absence of one of them would have prevented the other from causing the injuries complained of. That is not my meaning. Acts of negligence can be independently operative even though they are not independently effective. Thus, in Bowen, the negligence of the air traffic controllers at the earlier airports independently contributed to the crash by causing the wings to ice — though that condition would not alone have been enough to produce the crash if not combined with the erroneous weather and landing information independently provided by the controllers at the last airport. We are here concerned, however, with dependently operative acts, in which an earlier act of negligence has no effect except that of producing the subsequent breach of standard which alone causes the injury. Indeed, in the typical headquarters claim the negligence of the earlier act precisely consists of nothing more than its predictable creation of the conditions for the later act. That is not Bowen.

. Professor Davis has suggested in another context that the limitations of § 1346(b) can be evaded by reliance upon a provision of the FTCA, 28 U.S.C. § 2674, which states that "[t]he United States shall be liable, respecting the provisions of this title relating to tort claims, in the same manner and to the same extent as a private individual under like circumstances____’’ 5 K. Davis, Administrative Law Treatise § 27:8, at p. 46 (2d ed. 1984). However, the Supreme Court in Dalehite v. United States, 346 U.S. 15, 73 S.Ct. 956, 97 L.Ed. 1427 (1953), held to the contrary. Professor Davis attributes Dalehite, and a subsequent decision explicitly upholding the reasoning of Dalehite, Laird v. Nelms, 406 U.S. 797, 92 S.Ct. 1899, 32 L.Ed.2d 499 (1972), to the fact that the Court "did not cite § 2674. It was apparently unaware that § 2674 made the United States liable ‘in the same manner and to the same extent as a private individual under like circumstances.’ ” 5 K. Davis, supra, § 27:8, at p. 48. In fact, however, Dalehite did cite § 2674 — not in the paragraph dealing with the controverted application of § 1346(b), but earlier on the same page. See 346 U.S. at 44, 73 S.Ct. *130at 972. It does not seem to me reasonable to assume that the Supreme Court was “unaware” of the text of a provision that it explicitly cited. Nor does it seem to me reasonable (as evidently it does not to the Supreme Court) to give the language of § 2674 an interpretation contradicting § 1346(b), when a perfectly natural interpretation consistent with it is available.