Case Detail
Case Title | DILLON v. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
District | District of Columbia | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
City | Washington, DC | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Case Number | 1:2017cv01716 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Date Filed | 2017-08-23 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Date Closed | 2020-03-16 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Judge | Judge Rudolph Contreras | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Plaintiff | KENNETH J. DILLON | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Case Description | Kenneth Dillon, a historian, submitted a FOIA request to the FBI for records concerning its investigation of letters containing anthrax. Dillon requested an "Interim Major Case Summary" written in 2006 by Richard Lambert. The agency told Dillon that the report was already available in its online reading room. Dillon filed an administrative appeal with the Office of Information Policy, arguing that the report was not available online. OIP remanded the request back to the FBI for a further search. Dillon narrowed his request to records concerning the FBI's investigation of Bruce Irvins. He also submitted a second request for emails concerning Irvins. After hearing nothing further from the agency, Dillon filed suit. Complaint issues: Failure to respond within statutory time limit, Adequacy - Search, Litigation - Attorney's fees | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Defendant | U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Documents | Docket Complaint Complaint attachment 1 Complaint attachment 2 Opinion/Order [27] FOIA Project Annotation: Judge Rudolph Contreras has ruled that the FBI has not yet shown that it conducted an adequate search for emails that were part of its investigation of the 2001 mailing of anthrax spores to the offices of Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD), as well as news organizations in New York and Florida, which resulted in the deaths of five people, and that to assess the agency's claim that an interim report prepared four years before the agency concluded its investigation is protected by the deliberative process privilege under Exemption 5 (privileges) Contreras will need to conduct an in camera review of 38 pages. After a years-long investigation, the FBI concluded that Dr. Bruce Ivins, a scientist at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, had been responsible for the attacks. But before Ivins could be indicted, he committed suicide. The FBI formally closed its investigation without charging anyone and issued a 96-page Investigative Summary outlining its findings. Historian and researcher Kenneth Dillon, who was skeptical that Ivins had been involved at all, submitted two FOIA requests to the FBI. The first request was for evidence that Dillon believed was in the FBI's possession �" particularly emails Ivins sent or received and certain notebooks belonging to Ivins. The second request asked for 38 pages from the FBI's Interim Major Case Summary, a 2,000-page report produced in 2006, four years before it concluded its investigation. Dillon asked for the 22- page table of contents and the 16 pages that discussed Ivins. In response to Dillon's first request, the agency disclosed seven pages of emails and 98 pages of notebook material. In response to Dillon's second request, the agency claimed the entire 2000-page report was protected by the deliberative process privilege. Dillon challenged the adequacy of the agency's search for his first request, focusing on the fact that there were other emails Dillon believed had been sent to Mara Linscott, Ivins' assistant, identified during the investigation that had not been produced. Contreras mentioned several reasons why the emails might not have been located. He pointed out that "it is thus possible that Dillon is mistaken in believing that Linscott was the recipient �" which would have made the emails non-responsive and explain why they were not produced." Another possibility was that the emails were in the possession of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, which had worked with the FBI during its investigation. Contreras noted that "but for our purposes here, employees of the USPIS and FBI served together on the task force that spent years investigating the anthrax attacks and [the agency's second declaration] stated that it 'is FBI policy to import all records into the investigative case file.' The Court cannot help but wonder, then, whether the FBI possessed certain USPIS-obtained records, or whether the FBI and USPIS had some record-sharing system in place with respect to the anthrax investigation." A third possibility was that the emails had been destroyed or returned. Contreras found this unlikely, observing that "given the importance of the investigation, one would not expect the investigative files to be subject to a routine document retention policy with a short destruction date. And even if they were subject to such a policy, the investigation had only been closed for five years when Dillon submitted his FOIA request." Noting that "the burden is ultimately on DOJ to show that its search was adequate," Contreras ordered the agency to address Dillon's evidence within 30 days. He observed that "the Court does not expect a definitive explanation for why the emails were not located or were not responsive �" though one would certainly be welcomed. What is important is that DOJ actually respond to the evidence Dillon has presented. If DOJ meaningfully engages with that evidence in a way that assures the Court that it has acted in good faith, the Court will enter judgment in its favor." Contreras indicated that he was skeptical that all 2,000 pages of the FBI's interim report qualified under the deliberative process privilege. He explained that "the easiest way for the Court to determine whether the IMCS is the product of such a process is to look at the requested excerpts." He indicated that "if, after reviewing the excerpts, the Court concludes that the deliberative process privilege applies to the pages in their entirety, the Court will enter judgment in favor of DOJ. If, on the other hand, the Court concludes that the excerpts include reasonably segregable non-privileged information, the Court will permit the parties to renew their motions for summary judgment based on the other FOIA exemptions that DOJ has preserved in the alternative."
Opinion/Order [51]Issues: Search - Detailed description of search, Exemption 5 - Privileges - Deliberative process privilege - Deliberative, Litigation - In camera review FOIA Project Annotation: In a ruling that resolves the remaining issues in historian and author Kenneth Dillon's two FOIA requests to the FBI for records about its investigation of the 2001 anonymous mailing of anthrax spores to two U.S. Senators, as well as news media organizations in New York City and Florida, ultimately resulting in the deaths of five individuals and the infection of 17 others, Judge Rudolph Contreras discussed the contours of a perfected request, what constitutes an adequate search and when factual data might be considered deliberative for purposes of Exemption 5 (privileges). After a multi-year criminal investigation, the FBI announced in 2008 that Dr. Bruce Ivins, a scientist at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, was responsible for the attacks. Before charges were filed, however, Ivins committed suicide in July 2008. Within two years, the FBI formally closed its investigation, concluding that Ivins acted alone, declining to charge any other parties, and issuing a 96-page Investigative Summary outlining its findings. Dillon questioned whether Ivins was involved at all. To support his theory, he submitted two FOIA requests to the FBI. One request asked for email correspondence that included Ivins and some lab notebooks Ivins possessed. The other request sought 38 pages of the FBI's Interim Major Case Summary, a 2000-page report produced in 2006. Dillon specifically requested a 22-pages table of contents and 16 pages discussing Ivins. In his prior decision, Contreras told the FBI to explain why the Ivins emails had not been produced and ordered the agency to provide the 38 pages withheld under Exemption 5 for in camera review. In response to Contreras's prior order, the FBI disclosed redacted versions of three emails. Dillon claimed that the FBI had improperly narrowed the scope of his first request. Contreras started by discussing what constituted a perfected request. He pointed out that "as a practical matter, then, the question is whether the phrasing of the request would permit 'a professional employee of the agency who was familiar with the subject area of the request' to 'locate the record with a reasonable amount of effort.'" He observed that "plaintiff argues that his initially broader request cannot be improperly narrowed, and, moreover, that his more specific request for two enumerated records in his letter, does not amount to a narrowing the FOIA request itself." But Contreras explained that "Mr. Dillon's contention, however, misconstrues what FOIA requires. The FBI's duty to 'interpret FOIA requests liberally and reasonably' does not require it to 'extend the meaning of a request to include things' that the requester did not seek. The letter that Mr. Dillon submitted in the context of his administrative appeal outright states that Plaintiff sought 'two specific kinds of evidence.' Any 'professional employee of the agency who was familiar with the subject area of the request,' would naturally construe the request as â€" based on the plain text of Plaintiff's appeal â€" seeking only those two items." Contreras rejected Dillon's contention that he could recast his request during litigation. Instead, Contreras pointed out that "plaintiff's contention that a FOIA requester can explicitly narrow, test, and then broaden his request in this way after filing litigation sits without any firm basis in the statutory text or associated case law. Plaintiff cannot, after filing his lawsuit here, adjust his FOIA request by re-characterizing the text that he made therein through his argument before this Court." Rejecting Dillon's claims of bad faith, Contreras indicated that "if Mr. Dillon seeks to renew his broader request given his full awareness of the FBI's representation, he is entitled to submit a new FOIA request. But it is not 'inequitable' to hold Plaintiff to the plain text of is request." In response to the evidence Dillon had produced of the existence of specific emails, the FBI's Washington Field Office searched its anthrax investigation file again, locating several binders of emails containing more than 8,000 emails, that had been overlooked during the first search. In reviewing the emails, the WFO discovered that there were three copies of the same set of emails and told Contreras that "where an email had 'additional handwritten notes,' the FBI processed these pages for release." Dillon complained that the agency should have searched the computers seized from Ivins for emails. Contreras rejected Dillon's challenge to the adequacy of the agency's second search because it found no new emails beyond the three identified by Dillon previously, noting that "what matters are the methods that the FBI used to carry out the search. Nor is the operative legal standard whether 'all the potentially responsive emails in the FBI's possession' would be located in the 1A binder that the FBI searched. Rather, the key question facing the Court is whether the FBI's choice to search only the 1A attachments associated with the identified binder was 'reasonably calculated to uncover all relevant documents' that Mr. Dillon sought in his narrowed request." Dillon argued that the agency had failed to show that it had processed all responsive emails from Ivins' computers. But Contreras observed that "because the FBI does not need to conduct a 'perfect' search of 'every record system' for the requested documents, the agency is not required to state that it ingested the universe of relevant emails into the database it searched. Rather, it needs to establish that it conducted a 'reasonable search' of the locations 'likely to possess the requested records.'" He added that "because Mr. Dillon has not provided any non-speculative evidence that would permit the Court to doubt Defendant's claims that it conducted a reasonable search of the locations most likely to contain responsive records, his arguments fall flat." The FBI withheld 38 pages from its final 2,000-page report explaining the findings of the investigation under the deliberative process privilege. In his prior opinion, Contreras had ruled that the FBI had not shown that factual portions of the report were privileged and further, whether non-exempt portions could be separated and disclosed. However, after reviewing the 38 pages in camera, Contreras was convinced that all 38 pages were properly claimed as privileged. Dillon argued that the factual portions were not deliberative. But Contreras pointed out that "what the Court must determine is a subtly distinct question: 'whether any factual material in the records at issue reveals the agency's deliberative process.' This inquiry is 'dependent upon the individual document and the role it plays' in the agency's process and requires attention to 'the context in which the materials are used' and the relationship between the requested information and 'the policies and goals that underlie the deliberative process privilege.'" Addressing the 16 pages of the report that discussed Ivins, Contreras noted that "in this particular context, a seemingly factual statement such as the time of a meeting with a potential informant or the number of samples of a particular kind of evidence collected becomes inextricably bound up in the broader discussion of investigative conclusions drawn and how the available evidence informs next steps." He found the 22-page table of contents privileged as well. He pointed out that "it is a mistake to conclude that the organizational function of the TOC makes the material fundamentally factual. Even if it contains facts, its compilation required multiple decisions about how to structure the TOC, including what to focus on, what to exclude, and how one particular item in the investigation relates to another investigative pathway."
Issues: Request - Perfected request, Adequacy - Search, Exemption 5 - Privileges - Deliberative process privilege - Deliberative | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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