Michael Driggs v. CIA
Split Score
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Case Summary
Disposition
Affirmed
Plaintiffs sought CIA documents concerning American POW/MIA matters under the Freedom of Information Act. The Fourth Circuit upheld the district court’s refusal to compel a search of the CIA’s exempt operational files and affirmed summary judgment for the CIA, holding that the agency’s affidavit adequately justified the redactions under FOIA Exemptions 1 and 3 and that plaintiffs failed to demonstrate improper withholding or agency bad faith.
Circuit Split Identified
Legal Issue
Whether a court assessing the good-faith sufficiency of agency affidavits in a FOIA case may consider evidence of the agency’s alleged bad faith in unrelated, underlying activities outside the FOIA litigation itself.
Circuit Positions
Courts may consider evidence of an agency’s bad faith in unrelated underlying activities to overcome the presumption of good-faith affidavits in FOIA cases (Rugiero approach).
Courts may not consider past unrelated agency misconduct; only the affidavits themselves and agency conduct in the FOIA action are relevant (Hayden approach).
Question undecided; acknowledges split but declines to adopt either approach.
Conflict Summary
The Sixth Circuit allows courts to look to an agency’s past misconduct outside the FOIA action to decide if the usual presumption of affidavit good faith is overcome, whereas the D.C. Circuit holds that such external misconduct is irrelevant to the affidavits’ sufficiency. The Fourth Circuit in this decision acknowledges the disagreement and expressly declines to adopt either rule, leaving the question open in this circuit.