Court Opinion

ID: 9490920
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:58:36.548849+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:23.834109
License: Public Domain

TATEL, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Contrary to our obligation to construe FOIA exemptions narrowly, John Doe Agency v. John Doe Corp., 493 U.S. 146, 152, 110 S.Ct. 471, 475, 107 L.Ed.2d 462 (1989), as well as the longstanding requirement that congressional intent to exempt matters from FOIA disclosure must appear in the “actual words” of the statute, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 816 F.2d 730, 734 (D.C.Cir.), clarified, 831 F.2d 1124 (D.C.Cir.1987), rev’d on other grounds, 489 U.S. 749, 109 S.Ct. 1468, 103 L.Ed.2d 774 (1989), the court today extends FOIA’s exemption for “matters ... specifically exempted from disclosure by statute,” 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(3) (1994) (emphasis added), to cover a statute that specifically requires disclosure, that has resulted in the widespread availability of the very information the court now exempts from FOIA, and that Congress intended only to prohibit official government propaganda. Under the court’s decision, information the Smith-Mundt Act specifically requires USIA to make available, i.e., disclose, to the press, scholars, students, and members of Congress, see 22 U.S.C. § 1461(a) (1994), cannot be obtained under FOIA. Residents of southern Florida can receive Radio Marti and TV Marti broadcasts, owners of satellite dishes anywhere in the United States can receive Worldnet television, domestic computer users can find materials intended for foreign audiences on the agency’s web pages, and people anywhere in the country can ask friends overseas to obtain USIA program materials for their own domestic use, but under today’s decision, these same people cannot obtain precisely the same information through FOIA
The court arrives at this counter-intuitive result by focusing on the Smith-Mundt Act’s prohibition of domestic “dissemination” and “distribution” of USIA program materials. Maj. Op. at 1168. “Dissemination” and “distribution,” however, differ significantly from “disclosure,” the focus of Exemption 3. The dictionary defines “disseminate” as “to spread or send out freely or widely as though sowing or strewing seed,” and “distribute” as “to deal out,” “apportion,” or “to spread out or scatter so as to cover a surface or a space.” WebsteR’s Third New International Dictionary 656, 660 (1993). “Disclose” means “to open up” or “to expose to view.” Id. at 645. Dissemination requires disclosure; disclosure requires no dissemination. *1171Properly defined, then, the Smith-Mundt Act bars the agency from actively broadcasting or distributing information domestically, not from passively responding to individual FOIA requests to disclose.
The statute itself recognizes the difference between “dissemination” and “disclosure.” For example, while prohibiting domestic “dissemination,” section 1461 mandates domestic “disclosure” by requiring USIA to make available program materials in English to journalists and researchers for examination at the agency, and to members of Congress more generally. 22 U.S.C. § 1461(a). Section 1461-la prohibits USIA from using its funds to “distribute” program materials “within the United States,” while explicitly “not prohibiting] [the agency] from responding to inquiries from members of the public about its operations, policies, or programs.” Id. § 1461-la. If Congress had intended to deny FOIA access to program materials, why would it have required the agency to answer citizens’ questions about program materials? In a similar vein, having specifically authorized USIA to “disseminate” program materials by radio, television, and other means certain to result in some spillover to domestic audiences, see, e.g., id. § 1465bb (mandating television broadcasting to Cuba, “notwithstanding the limitation of section 1461 ... to the extent such [domestic] dissemination is inadvertent”), why at the same time would Congress have prohibited domestic disclosure of those very same materials?
Congress used the words “dissemination” and “distribution,” instead of “disclosure,” quite deliberately. Responding to our now colleague Senator James Buckley’s plan to air a USIA film entitled “Czechoslovakia 1968” over New York public television, as well as to a letter from the Acting Attorney General stating that the broadcast would not violate the Smith-Mundt Act, see S.Rep. No. 92-754, at 88-85 (1972), Congress limited congressional access to examination only and added the agency dissemination ban to prevent the government from “propagandizing the American public,” id. at 85, not to bar USIA from disclosing information to individual requestors pursuant to FOIA. See Pub.L. No. 92-352, § 204, 86 Stat. 489, 494 (1972) (now codified at 22 U.S.C. § 1461(a)). In fact, this 1972 amendment broadened the statute’s public access provision, adding scholars and students to the list of individuals eligible to examine program materials. Id.
Relying on section 1461(b)’s requirement that USIA transfer its program materials twelve years after their initial dissemination abroad to the National Archives “for domestic distribution” to “persons seeking [their] release in the United States,” the court concludes that Congress equated “dissemination” and “distribution” with “disclosure.” Maj. Op. at 1168. But section 1461(b) says only that when USIA transfers its materials to the Archives after twelve years, the Archives must have procedures for releasing them to requesting individuals. Believing that “there is little likelihood that material 12 or more years old will be of significant use for domestic propaganda purposes,” Congress created section 1461(b) to “provide[] for the automatic release of USIA films and materials in the United States after 12 years.” S.Rep. No. 101-46, at 31 (1989). This provision tells us nothing about USIA’s current obligations to persons seeking FOIA disclosure of program materials.
By protecting from FOIA disclosure non-confidential information widely available outside the United States and, to an increasing extent, domestically, the court breaks with longstanding precedent. Until this ease, we have limited Exemption 3 to statutes that protect confidential, private, or proprietary information, such as patent applications, Irons and Sears v. Dann, 606 F.2d 1215, 1221 (D.C.Cir.1979); CIA intelligence sources and methods, Gardels v. CIA, 689 F.2d 1100, 1103 (D.C.Cir.1982); grand jury proceedings, Fund for Const’l Gov’t v. National Archives and Records Serv., 656 F.2d 856, 868 (D.C.Cir.1981); tax returns and return information, Moody v. IRS, 654 F.2d 795, 797 (D.C.Cir.1981); and meetings of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board discussing highly sensitive matters regarding nuclear facilities, Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. v. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Bd., 969 F.2d 1248, 1251 (D.C.Cir.1992) (under the analogous Exemption 3 to the Gov*1172ernment in the Sunshine Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552b(c)(3)).
“The basic purpose of FOIA is to ensure an informed citizenry, vital to the functioning of a democratic society, needed to check against corruption and to hold the governors accountable to the governed.” NLRB v. Robbins Tire & Rubber Co., 437 U.S. 214, 242, 98 S.Ct. 2311, 2327, 57 L.Ed.2d 159 (1978). Congress has expressed no intent to keep USIA program materials confidential or exempt them from FOIA disclosure. Its only concern, stated originally in 1972 and reiterated in a 1985 amendment prohibiting USIA funds from being “used to influence public opinion in the United States,” Pub.L. No. 99-93, § 208, 99 Stat. 405, 431 (1985) (codified at 22 U.S.C. § 1461-la), is to protect the American people from official government propaganda. Fulfilling individual FOIA requests for specific program materials would not frustrate this purpose. Extending Exemption 3 to widely available, nonconfidential USIA materials will frustrate FOIA’s mandate for open government. I respectfully dissent.
■Y- * *
In her concurring opinion, Judge Henderson suggests that our decision in Ricchio v. Kline, 773 F.2d 1389 (D.C.Cir.1985), provides an alternative basis for exempting USIA program materials from FOIA disclosure. See Cone. Op. Unlike the statutory scheme involved in Ricchio, however, the Smith-Mundt Act creates no ‘“comprehensive scheme’ ... duplicating [the rules and procedures] of FOIA,” Church of Scientology v. IRS, 792 F.2d 146, 149 (D.C.Cir.1986), aff'd, 484 U.S. 9, 108 S.Ct. 271, 98 L.Ed.2d 228 (1987), for public access to USIA program materials. Although under Ricchio, a statute need not exactly mirror FOIA’s disclosure scheme, the Smith-Mundt Act’s public access provision does not come remotely close. That provision applies only to certain classes of requestors (press, scholars, students, and members of Congress), prohibits requestors from obtaining verbatim copies, Gartner v. USIA, 726 F.Supp. 1183, 1187 n. 5 (S.D.Iowa 1989), gives USIA no means to assert privilege or exemption claims, and provides for no judicial review equivalent to FOIA procedures. 22 U.S.C. § 1461. FOIA access, moreover, would neither “frustrate the achievement of the legislative goals” of the Smith-Mundt Act’s public access provision, Ricchio, 773 F.2d at 1395, nor make that provision superfluous. FOIA requires that requests for information “reasonably de-scribef ]” such information, 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(3); by comparison, a researcher utilizing the Smith-Mundt Act’s public access provision can examine the entire body of USIA program materials without specifically identifying the information sought, 22 U.S.C. § 1461(a). The Smith-Mundt Act also requires USIA to make program materials available in English, id; FOIA contains no similar translation requirement.
In the thirteen years since Ricchio, we have not applied it to any other statute. We rejected reasoning similar to Ricchio’s in Church of Scientology, finding it “impossible to conclude that [FOIA] was sub silentio repealed by § 6103” of the Internal Revenue Code. 792 F.2d at 149. The Ninth Circuit refused to apply Ricchio to Rule 32 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and 18 U.S.C. § 4208 in Julian v. U.S. Department of Justice, 806 F.2d 1411, 1420 (9th Cir.1986), aff'd, 486 U.S. 1, 108 S.Ct. 1606, 100 L.Ed.2d 1 (1988). Ricchio has no applicability here either.