Case Detail
| Case Title | PORTER v. CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| District | District of Columbia | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| City | Washington, DC | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Case Number | 1:2010cv00050 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Filed | 2010-01-08 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Closed | 2011-04-21 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Judge | Judge John D. Bates | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Plaintiff | MARK PORTER | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Defendant | CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Documents | Docket Complaint Complaint attachment 1 Complaint attachment 2 Opinion/Order [16] FOIA Project Annotation: Judge James Boasberg has ruled that the CIA conducted an adequate search for records on Mark Porter and that the agency acted reasonably in considering his two requests subsequent to his original 1997 request to be for records created since the time of the agency's response to his previous requests. Porter's original 1997 request asked for records on himself. The agency told Porter it could find no records and its decision was upheld on appeal. Porter did nothing more until 2006, when his attorney requested information about Porter's 1997 FOIA inquiry. When the agency responded by disclosing its 1998 appeal denial, Porter's attorney appealed. The agency considered this appeal a separate FOIA request for Porter's records and told Porter's attorney it would expand its timeframe for records through September 2006. This search yielded one record that was released with redactions. Porter then filed suit and Judge Gladys Kessler dismissed his suit after finding that the second request could not be the basis for reviving the 1998 request because the statute of limitations had run. As to his 2006 request, she ruled Porter had failed to exhaust administrative remedies. Porter submitted a third request in 2009, which the agency interpreted as yet another request for an updated search. It informed Porter that it would search for records between 2006 and 2009. After the agency claimed it found no records, Porter appealed. After his appeal was denied, he filed suit again. Porter argued before Boasberg that the agency had improperly limited the timeframe of his request. Boasberg pointed out the agency had told Porter that it was limiting the timeframe of his request and he had not objected. Porter claimed that the agency was on notice that he had not limited the timeframe of his request. But Boasberg noted that "plaintiff appears to argue that, because he did not cabin his FOIA request himself, Defendant was on notice that he did not want a limited timeframe for his search. But this argument is unpersuasive in the face of Defendant's record evidence demonstrating that it informed Plaintiff not once, but twice, that it understood his request to be a request for an updated search. Even construing the evidence in the light most favorable to Plaintiff, Defendant's belief that Plaintiff had acquiesced by his silence in the scope of the search was reasonable." Boasberg added that "Plaintiff has submitted neither evidence nor persuasive argument to support his position that the time limitation was unreasonable or that documents not previously located might crop up on this occasion." Boasberg also agreed that Porter had not exhausted his administrative remedies because he had not specifically challenged the limited timeframe in his administrative appeal. He observed that "Plaintiff limited his appeal to the 'adequacy of the search, which Defendant could reasonably infer covered only the methods, not the timeframe, of the search. At no point during the appeal process did Plaintiff ever aver that he was appealing the timeframe of the search." Boasberg then went on to find that the agency had provided sufficient detail to conclude that its search was adequate.
Issues: Adequacy - Search | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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