Fitzgibbon v. Central Intelligence Agency

578 F. Supp. 704, 1983 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11776
CourtDistrict Court, District of Columbia
DecidedNovember 10, 1983
DocketCiv. A. 79-0956
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 578 F. Supp. 704 (Fitzgibbon v. Central Intelligence Agency) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, District of Columbia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Fitzgibbon v. Central Intelligence Agency, 578 F. Supp. 704, 1983 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11776 (D.D.C. 1983).

Opinion

OPINION

HAROLD H. GREENE, District Judge.

Plaintiff is an historian researching the disappearance and assumed death in 1956 of Jesus de Galindez, a Basque exile who was then living in New York City and teaching at Columbia University. Galindez was also the United States delegate of the Basque Government-in-exile, which was headquartered in Paris; he was an FBI informant, giving information on Spanish exile activities in New York City; and he was a public critic of the regime of Rafael Trujillo, head of state of the Dominican Republic until 1961. 1 The disappearance of Galindez, who was last seen on a March evening after a student dropped him off at a Manhattan subway station, was alleged by colleagues of Galindez and political com-mentors to have been engineered by Trujillo and executed with the unwitting aid of an American pilot, Gerald Murphy, whose body was subsequently found in the Dominican Republic. 2

The Galindez incident and its aftermath received extensive publicity, highlighting as they did the controversial and ambivalent relationship between the United States and the Trujillo regime, which was opposed to the Soviet Union but at the same time had a reputation for repression. A number of investigations were carried out to determine what had happened to Galindez and Murphy. The Dominican Republic hired Morris Ernst, a prominent New York City lawyer, to investigate the case and, it presumably was hoped by his client, to establish that country’s lack of culpability. 3 Meanwhile, the New York City Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, and a *709 federal grand jury in Washington, D.C. investigated the case in one way or another, as late as 1971, sometimes jointly, sometimes independently. Despite all this effort, the disappearance of Galindez and the role of Murphy remain a public mystery.

I

Genera]

Having devoted years to solving that mystery through private interviews and other forms of research, plaintiff 4 brought this lawsuit in 1979 to follow up on requests for government records that he had filed with the CIA and FBI under the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552(b). Plaintiff challenged the substantial deletions made in the documents which the government identified as relevant; he also claimed that the CIA’s search had not been adequate. 5 In February 1981, the Court denied defendants’ motion for partial summary judgment on the issue of the applicability of the exemptions they had invoked, 6 ordering the submission of limited in camera affidavits which would explain in detail the agencies’ various rationales for not releasing all relevant documents in their files. 7 The Court singled out 89 documents that were to be addressed in the affidavits.

Subsequently, finding that it could not fulfill its statutory responsibility to conduct a de novo review 8 on the basis of the limited in camera affidavits, the Court ordered the CIA and FBI in November 1981 to submit in camera affidavits pertaining to all of the records except only the 78 documents no longer contested by plaintiff and the one document in the (b)(1) category on which the Court was able to rule on the basis of the limited affidavits. 9 The defendants were ordered to submit under seal the unabridged versions of every contested document, not because the agencies’ good faith had been controverted, but “in order that the Court may be able to monitor the agencies’ determinations in accordance with the Court’s guidelines.” Memorandum of November 16, slip. op. at 2 n. 2. 10

*710 The CIA complied by submitting 14 volumes of documents and an in camera explanatory affidavit executed by Louis Dube (“Dube affidavit”), all of which the Court has reviewed. The documents were arranged in the following manner:

Category A, Collection 1 -- Liaison w/foreign intell. service
Category B, Collection 2 - CIA station locations
Category D, Collection 3 - Intelligence sources
Collection 4
Collection 5
Collection 6
Category E, Collection 7 -- CIA operations and methods
Collection 8 - CIA cover
Category F, Collection 9 -- Privacy material
Category M, Collection 10 — Miscellaneous
Collection 11
Collection 12 -- Liaison
Collection 13
Collection 14 — Employee identities, internal organization information

Despite the bulk of the submissions, the CIA’s justifications for a number of the withholdings still suffer from a lack of specificity that is common and not always inappropriate in these “national security” FOIA cases. See, e.g., Ray v. Turner, 587 F.2d 1187, 1211 (D.C.Cir.1978) (Wright, J., concurring) (there may be cases where “affidavits sufficient to allow de novo review would reveal the very information that the agency claims is exempt”). Lack of specificity is not inevitable in all respects, however, particularly at this advanced stage in the litigation when all of the governments’ submissions are in camera, as the most recent filings by the FBI demonstrate. The FBI submitted two affidavits, one by Peter Kellen explaining the (b)(1) deletions, and one by John Phillips explaining the (b)(7) withholdings. Both describe with considerable precision the nexus between the material deleted and the alleged harm that might flow from disclosure. To be sure, the FBI’s task was an easier one since it now claims exemptions for only 14 documents while the CIA claims them for 530. Yet there is not one CIA narrative that rivals in specificity all of’those of the FBI. Since CIA withholdings account for the vast majority in the case, this Opinion is primarily devoted to defendant CIA rather than to defendant FBI. Unless otherwise specified, therefore, “the government” and “the agency” refer to the CIA.

Most of the CIA deletions are defended on the basis of the (b)(1) national security exemption. Where adequate explanations are provided or where the possibility of identifiable harm to the national security is self-evident from in camera

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Related

Fitzgibbon v. U.S. Secret Service
747 F. Supp. 51 (District of Columbia, 1990)
Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Inc. v. Department of Navy
659 F. Supp. 674 (E.D. New York, 1987)
Allen v. Department of Defense
658 F. Supp. 15 (District of Columbia, 1986)
Central Intelligence Agency v. Sims
471 U.S. 159 (Supreme Court, 1985)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
578 F. Supp. 704, 1983 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11776, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/fitzgibbon-v-central-intelligence-agency-dcd-1983.