Founding Church of Scientology of Washington, D. C., Inc. v. Bell

• Decision Date: 02 July 1979
• Docket Number: No. 78-1391,78-1391
• Citation: 195 U.S. App. D.C. 363,603 F.2d 945
• Parties: , 5 Media L. Rep. 1316 CADC 79-12 The FOUNDING CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY OF WASHINGTON, D. C., INC., Appellant, v. Griffin B. BELL et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

Page 945

603 F.2d 945

195 U.S.App.D.C. 363, 5 Media L. Rep. 1316

CADC 79-12 The FOUNDING CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY OF WASHINGTON, D. C., INC., Appellant, v. Griffin B. BELL et al.

No. 78-1391.

United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued May 3, 1979.

Decided June 25, 1979.

As Amended July 2, 1979.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (D.C. Civil Action No. 75-1577).

Earl C. Dudley, Jr., Washington, D. C., with whom Kenneth G. Starling, Washington, D. C., was on brief, for appellant.

Joseph B. Scott, Atty., Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., for appellees. Barbara Allen Babcock, Asst. Atty. Gen., Earl J. Silbert, U. S. Atty., and Leonard Schaitman and Emile L. Julian, Attys., Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., were on brief for appellees.

Before WRIGHT, Chief Judge, and McGOWAN and ROBB, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the court Per curiam.

PER CURIAM:

In February 1975 appellant, the Founding Church of Scientology (Church), submitted a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) ¹ for all records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) pertaining to the Church, its related organizations, and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. Dissatisfied with the FBI's response, ² appellant filed this FOIA action in District Court on September 26, 1975 to force disclosure of the Bureau's files. ³ The Church now challenges the District Court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the FBI. ⁴

Appellant argues that the Government did not provide a sufficiently detailed and reasoned explanation of the grounds for withholding the documents sought here, and that the District Court misapplied several provisions of the Act. We agree. Part I of this opinion will consider the adequacy under Vaughn v. Rosen, 157 U.S.App.D.C. 340, 484 F.2d 820 (1973), Cert. denied, 415 U.S. 977, 94 S.Ct. 1564, 39 L.Ed.2d 873 (1974), of the agency's response to appellant's FOIA request, and Part II will examine several features of the District Court's interpretation of the Act.

I

In Vaughn v. Rosen this court held that an agency's response to a FOIA request must include an index of all material withheld in whole or in part. The Vaughn index must explain specifically which of the nine statutory exemptions to FOIA's general rule of disclosure supports the agency's decision to withhold a requested document or to delete information from a released document. ⁵ We have observed repeatedly that the Vaughn index is critical to effective enforcement of FOIA. ⁶ Without such an index neither reviewing courts nor individuals seeking agency records can evaluate an agency's response to a request for government records.

A

The FBI's unsuccessful attempts to provide an adequate Vaughn index began shortly after this suit was filed. In response to interrogatories FBI Agent John E. Howard submitted an affidavit on January 30, 1976 (First Howard Affidavit) with an attached exhibit that purported to describe eachdocument covered by appellant's FOIA request and to give reasons for any nondisclosure. ⁷ The Government filed two more affidavits when it moved for summary judgment on May 5, 1976. One, prepared by Howard (Second Howard Affidavit), included copies of all material released by the FBI, ⁸ while the other supported Howard's claim that the Bureau was withholding information received from security agencies of foreign nations (Bermingham Affidavit). ⁹ The Second Howard Affidavit identified 324 documents in FBI files as relevant to the Church's request, of which 244 were at least partly released. It divided all the documents into seven categories and listed for each category the FOIA exemptions that the FBI claimed for nondisclosure. Deletions in particular documents were not correlated with the exemptions on which they were based, nor were specific explanations offered for each withheld document. On June 10 the District Court ruled that the Government had not met the requirements of Vaughn v. Rosen and ordered that a new index be prepared. ¹⁰

The FBI on November 11, 1976 released some 60 additional documents and filed yet another affidavit from Howard (Fourth Howard Affidavit). ¹¹ For the first time the Bureau provided a description of each document at issue, although in many instances particular deletions were still not linked to the appropriate exemptions. The FBI also submitted an affidavit explaining the need to invoke the national security exemption to FOIA with respect to three documents (Poptanich Affidavit). ¹²

On May 5, 1977, while the case was pending before the District Court, the Attorney General announced new guidelines for handling FOIA litigation. The court then ordered the Government to reprocess appellant's request in accordance with the new guidelines, ¹³ an undertaking that produced four more affidavits from the FBI. Agent Donald Hoeting stated in an affidavit of July 20, 1977 (First Hoeting Affidavit) that 605 pages of documents had been at least partly released by the FBI, ¹⁴ and that 126 more would now become available. ¹⁵ The newly released documents were listed in a submission to the court on July 27, 1977 (Second Hoeting Affidavit). ¹⁶ Attached to another affidavit prepared by Hoeting on September 13, 1977 (Third Hoeting Affidavit) were copies of the 731 pages of documents that by then had been provided in whole or in part. ¹⁷ After oral argument on the Government's motion for summary judgment, the FBI submitted on October 17 a final affidavit from Agent Martin Lindblom dealing with an additional 45 documents (Lindblom Affidavit). ¹⁸ The District Court, noting that the FBI had released at least portions of approximately three-quarters of the 1,100 pages of FBI records relating to appellant's FOIA request, granted the Government summary judgment motion on January 24, 1978. ¹⁹

B

According to the Government, if one simultaneously consults the Fourth Howard Affidavit, the First and Third Hoeting Affidavits, and the Lindblom and Poptanich Affidavits, one can divine the asserted justification for withholding or deleting all material at issue here. Thus, the Government continues, the FBI discharged its obligation to provide a Vaughn index. The Government is mistaken.

A central purpose of the index requirement is to facilitate court review of agency FOIA rulings by making clear the basis for the agency's refusal to release certain information. The FBI's "index" in this case falls far short of this goal of enhancing judicial economy. We have attempted to trace only some of the 354 documents involved in this case, and have found the five affidavits cited by the Government not merely unwieldly, but frequently confusing. For many documents different exemptions are claimed in different affidavits. ²⁰ A plausible rule of interpretation would be to consider only the exemption claimed in the last affidavit. Because of the numerous cross-references among the affidavits, however, we cannot be certain that such a course is correct. In addition, only the Fourth Howard Affidavit provides a brief description of each document, but the exemptions claimed in that statement were in many instances altered in later FBI affidavits. Thus the only descriptions of the documents are tied to statutory exemptions that the agency may no longer assert. Finally, for some documents the FBI offered insufficient justification for withholding information under Any of the exemptions claimed.

The "index" presented here also fails to correlate material deleted from released documents with the exemption claimed as justification for nondisclosure. As we recently stated when confronted with a similar Vaughn index, "The reviewing court should not be required to speculate on the precise relationship between each exemption claim and the contents of the specific document." ²¹ Yet the First Hoeting Affidavit, for example, asserts that the six deletions in Document B-15 are based on three distinct exemptions, ²² and that the eight deletions in Document A-76 are also based on three exemptions. ²³ A court cannot gauge the correctness of the agency's actions without at least knowing the rationale for each deletion.

On remand the agency should concentrate on three indispensable elements of a Vaughn index:

(1) The index should be contained in one document, complete in itself.

(2) The index must adequately describe each withheld document or deletion from a released document.

(3) The index must state the exemption claimed for each deletion or withheld document, and explain why the exemption is relevant. Of course the explanation of the exemption claim and the descriptions of withheld material need not be so detailed as to reveal that which the agency wishes to conceal, but they must be sufficiently specific to permit a reasoned judgment as to whether the material is actually exempt under FOIA.

These requirements do place an administrative burden on the agencies, but less exacting standards would not satisfy the FOIA's unambiguous policy in favor of the fullest possible disclosure of government records.

II

We also believe the District Court misinterpreted several substantive provisions of the Act. Our remand must therefore include our view of the questions of law involved here.

The basic principles of the Act are well established. Government files must be provided to the public on request unless there are compelling reasons for nondisclosure. ²⁴ Congress specified nine exemptions to this rule of disclosure ²⁵ and placed the burden on the Government to establish the correctness of a claimed exemption in a trial De novo in District Court. ²⁶ The legislative history of the Act and the 1974 amendments to it support a narrow construction of the exemptions. ²⁷ Moreover, if only part of a document need be withheld under an exemption, Congress has directed that the Government must segregate the exempt passages and disclose the remainder. ²⁸ Finally, District Court decisions in FOIA cases must provide statements of law that...