SPOTTSWOOD W. ROBINSON, III, Circuit Judge:
Appellant, Dr. Melvin D. Reuber, brought this suit under the Privacy Act
against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), alleging that
they had wrongfully maintained in their records, and had also disseminated, copies of a highly critical letter of reprimand sent to Reuber by his employer. The District court granted HHS’s motion for summary judgment on two of Reuber’s Privacy Act claims, but held summary dismissal of his other privacy claims improper; after a twelve-day bench trial, the District Court ruled in favor of the agencies on virtually all remaining issues, but found that the charges in the letter were partly false and ordered the agencies to destroy any copies remaining in their possession.
On these appeals, we order dismissal of the claims Reuber predicates upon alleged inaccuracies in the letter, and affirm, though occasionally on different grounds, the District Court’s remaining dispositions in all major respects.
I. Background
In light of the District Court’s thorough narrative and detailed findings of the facts,
we need recount the history of this gnarled litigation only briefly. Reuber, a pathologist with extensive experience in the field of cancer research, was employed from late 1976 through April, 1981, at the Frederick Cancer Research Center (Frederick), a federal laboratory in Maryland.
Litton Bionetics, Inc., under a contract with the National Cancer Institute (NCI), a division of HHS, operated the laboratory and tested various chemicals to assess their potential carcinogenic effects.
After approved by NCI, the results of these “bioassays” were published in official NCI reports,
and slides of animal tissues used in the Frederick bioassays and other laboratories’ projects were deposited at Tracor Jitco, another Maryland facility, where they could be reviewed by scientists doing personal research.
Reuber, who headed Frederick’s experimental pathology division, obtained permission from Frederick’s director, Dr. Michael G. Hanna, to perform, outside research at Tracor Jitco one day each week. Reuber prepared a number of articles based on his independent work, but never sought Frederick’s approval before publishing them. He used his institutional address on most of his articles, whether the research was done at Frederick or at Tracor Jitco.
In the late 1970’s, Reuber became interested in the pesticide malathion, which had been deemed noncarinogenic in a bioassay conducted by another NCI contract laboratory. He reviewed malathion slides at Tracor Jitco and, in early 1980, completed the draft of a paper disputing NCI’s findings and concluding that malathion was indeed a carcinogen.
Malathion was by that time the center of a swirling debate; California health officials had made tentative plans to use the pesticide to combat the invading swarms of Mediterranean fruit flies hungrily eyeing the state’s agriculture.
When a California environmental group requested from Reuber information concerning malathion, he forwarded a copy of his unpublished paper. He dispatched at least two more copies to interested parties in that state, and by late 1980 his malathion paper was in wide if informal circulation. One environmental group disseminated the paper to the news media, heralding it as a statement of NCI’s new official position on the carcinogenicity of
malathion.
Reuber reiterated his views in telephone conversations with press representatives and, after California reaffirmed its plans to spray malathion, he wrote to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, criticizing the NCI malathion bioassay and stressing the superiority of his own scientific credentials.
After several inquiries and complaints by California officials and others about Reuber’s activities, two NCI executives, Drs. Vernon Hartwell and Richard Adamson, began discussing Reuber’s conduct with Litton. In a meeting with Hanna, Adamson charged Reuber with misrepresenting his views as those of NCI.
Hanna commenced an investigation and consulted with a number of NCI and Litton employees, including Reuber and Hartwell. Reuber agreed to mail errata letters to journals that had published his independent-research papers bearing the potentially misleading Frederick address. Hanna believed, however, as did Litton President James Nance, that some sanction was also required. Hanna decided that the most appropriate response was a stern letter of reprimand.
On March 26, 1981, Dr. Hanna delivered the censorious letter which eventually spawned this litigation.
Hanna accused Reuber of “mishandling of scientific data,” “carelessness and lack of professional expertise,” and “flagrant professional abuse.”
With more specificity, Hanna charged Reuber with improperly assuming the mantle of NCI endorsement for his private research projects; with overstating the thoroughness of his review of the malathion slides at Tracor Jitco; with spending excessive time away from his duties at Frederick; and with ignoring NCI publication clearance procedures.
Hanna sent copies of this letter to two other Litton officials and to Drs. Adamson, DeVita, Hartwell and Payne of NCI; a distribution list at the bottom of the original identified these recipients.
On April 13, 1981, Dr. William Hollis of the National Agricultural Chemicals Association (NACA), a private industry group, received from an anonymous source a plain brown envelope containing a copy of the letter together with copies of the errata letters Reuber had mailed to scientific journals.
Hollis gave a copy to Jack Wise of Stauffer Chemical Company,
a chemical manufacturer that dealt frequently with EPA.
Copies also appeared mysteriously on a public bulletin board at EPA.
After the letter was extensively quoted in the April 15th issue of Pesticide and Toxic Chemical
News, a trade publication, Reuber resigned from his position at Frederick.
Eventually, Reuber asserted a host of claims against a wide variety of individuals, corporations, and federal agencies. The District Court dismissed all claims against the individual and corporate defendants, as well as claims against the agencies under the Federal Tort Claims Act; this dismissal generated separate appeals to this court.
The present Privacy Act claims are premised on contentions that NCI and EPA improperly maintained the damaging reprimand letter in their records and that an NCI official wrongfully disseminated it to the public. The District Court denied a motion by HHS for partial summary judgment on certain of Reuber’s claims,
but granted a similar motion with respect to others.
Following trial of Reuber’s residual Privacy Act complaints,
these appeals were taken.
II. Reuber’s Appeal
A.
Maintenance of Unnecessary Record
Reuber’s most basic contention is that HHS violated Section 552a(e)(l) of the Privacy Act by keeping copies of the reprimand letter in its NCI records.
This section provides that each agency subject to the Act “shall maintain in its records only such information about an individual as is relevant and necessary to accomplish” a legitimate agency purpose.
Reuber believes that NCI had no justifiable interest in such a personal letter of reprimand, since “[t]he hiring, discipline and supervision of Litton employees was the responsibility of Litton, not the NCI.”
Reuber further asserts that Litton’s contract with NCI proscribed disclosure of the letter, and thus precluded any rightful interest of NCI.
The District Court granted summary judgment for HHS on this claim,
and we deem its decision perfectly sound. Litton was an important government contractor, and the controversy generated by Reuber, a Litton employee, enmeshed NCI in a scientific debate over the carcinogenicity of malathion and the reliability of NCI bioassays. Given NCI’s unquestionable need to ensure public confidence in its work and to avoid public association with Reuber’s private dissenting views, some assurance from Litton that the problem had been addressed and would not recur was certainly required. The reprimand letter was an excellent means of demonstrating to NCI Litton’s awareness of the delicate circumstances and its commitment to better in-house discipline. We cannot say that retention of this information on file at NCI was irrelevant or unnecessary to a valid agency purpose.
Moreover, the contract between Litton and NCI did not prohibit communication to NCI of personnel decisions directly affecting it. Insofar as this contract bears on the controversy, it contained only a standard prescribed clause providing that “confidential information ... of a personal na
ture about an individual” could not be disclosed without the individual’s consent.
Although the relevant HHS regulations indicate that this prohibition includes “data ... generated by the contractor,”
the intent of these regulations is to foreclose premature public dissemination by contractors of sensitive studies or research.
There is nothing in the administrative record to indicate that this clause was designed to prevent release to the contracting governmental agency of information important to it.
Indeed, the regulations specifically call for prior governmental approval when distribution of certain information is contemplated by the contractor.
The contract provision upon which Reuber relies in this connection simply does not cover Litton’s disclosure to HHS of personnel decisions directly affecting the agency.
B.
Intra-Agency Disclosure
Closely related to Reuber’s position on Section 552a(e)(l) is his assertion that HHS violated one of its own regulations, which imposes a general prohibition on internal distribution of documents. The regulation in question
authorizes intra-agency disclosure of an individual’s records only when he consents in writing
or when the disclosure is made “[t]o those officers and employees of [HHS] who have a need for the record in the performance of their duties.”
Because NCI officials on the original distribution list of the reprimand letter made copies thereof for other concerned NCI employees,
Reuber insists that he is entitled to damages under the regulations.
Reuber’s argument depends upon establishment of one of two propositions. He could have attempted to show that the NCI officials on the original distribution list had no need for the letter, in which event further dissemination to other NCI employees would have constituted a violation.
We have already approved, however, the District Court’s conclusion that these NCI officials did have a work-related
need for the letter,
and subsequent distribution would not be deemed unlawful on that account.
Alternatively, Reuber might have demonstrated that although the initial distribution was proper, the NCI employees who additionally received the letter did not themselves have any legitimate need for it. We have searched in vain for support on this point by Reuber. He makes the general assertion that the “letter was not relevant or necessary to any NCI function, and NCI employees had no need for it,”
but we can find no indication of any individual NCI staff member to whom release was improper. Reuber’s claim must fail on this account as well.
C.
Agency Determination
Reuber next contends that the censorious letter “constituted ... a determination by NCI to reprimand him,”
and that this determination in turn was based upon a number of NCI record documents that were “inaccurate and irrelevant.”
According to Reuber, NCI thereby transgressed Section 552a(e)(5) of the Privacy Act, which provides that each agency shall “maintain all records which are used by the agency in making any determination about any individual with such accuracy, relevance, timeliness, and completeness as is reasonably necessary to assure fairness to the individual in the determination.”
The District Court stated unequivocally that “[t]he ... letter [of reprimand] itself did not represent an NCI determination.”
The decision to reprimand Reuber was made by Hanna, a Litton official, who also gauged its severity.
The District Court thus found no agency action, without which no claim lies under Subsection (e)(5).
Reuber nonetheless divines some ambiguity in the court’s finding and invites us to adopt his reading of the court’s opinion, which is that Hanna simply effectuated an NCI determination. This argument is strained at best; the District Court left no doubt that it fully intended to rule against Reuber on this score. The court’s finding is far from clearly erroneous, and we accordingly affirm it.
D.
Extra-agency Dissemination
Reuber also asserts a claim of disclosure of the reprimand letter to persons outside HHS. Section 552a(e)(6) prohibits such a dissemination unless reasonable efforts are made to ensure the accuracy of the records.
Reuber insists that possession of the letter by outside parties and its appearance on a public EPA bulletin board lead ineluctably to the conclusion that NCI breached its duties under the Privacy Act.
We disagree.
In the District Court proceedings, Reuber relied on circumstantial evidence in an effort to show that Dr. Hartwell of NCI was the likely source of the leak; he theo
rized that Hartwell must have been the anonymous sender of the packet mysteriously received by Dr. Hollis of NACA. After carefully examining the evidence and assessing the credibility of the witnesses, however, the District Court held that Reuber had not carried his burden of showing that NCI, rather than Litton or someone else, was responsible for disseminating the letter.
Reuher’s argument on appeal is simply a restatement of his view of the evidence.
Our standard of review, however, demands detection of a clear error on the part of the District Court, and does not permit us to reexamine and overturn factual findings simply on the basis of a litigant’s alternative version of the truth.
Perhaps anticipating our unwillingness to engage in untrammeled de novo review, Reuber invites us to shift the burden of proof on this issue to the agency.
We are aware of no authority for such a maneuver,
and we therefore must affirm the findings of the District Court.
Reuber also contends that he should have been awarded damages for EPA’s maintenance of the letter on a public bulletin board.
This argument is fraught with deficiencies, perhaps the most serious of which is Reuber’s failure to demonstrate any adverse effect therefrom. Given that Reuber argued in the District Court that the letter did
not
appear on the bulletin board,
this shortcoming is not surprising, but it is nonetheless fatal.
E.
Maintenance of Records Depicting First Amendment Activity
The most troubling claim advanced by Reuber is that HHS, by retaining the repri
mand letter in its NCI files, contravened Section 552a(e)(7).
This section specifies that affected agencies shall “maintain no record describing how any individual exercises rights guaranteed by the First Amendment unless expressly authorized by statute or by the individual about whom the record is maintained or unless pertinent to and within the scope of an authorized law enforcement activity.”
Reuber maintains that the letter of reprimand, because it in part discussed publication of his malathion research, constitutes just such a proscribed record.
The District Court dismissed this contention holding that Reuber “had no first amendment right to dispute NCI bioassays without either getting NCI clearance or insuring that his views would not be taken for those of NCI. Plainly he had a right to speak out on malathion, but not in the manner described in the ... letter.”
The court thus found the letter to be “outside the scope” of Subsection (e)(7).
We think the District Court focused prematurely on whether Reuber’s communications commanded constitutional protection. The relevant question is not whether rights secured by the First Amendment have been invaded but whether the agencies kept a record on how such rights were exercised. The threshold inquiry under Subsection (e)(7) is whether the agency “maintains a record describing” activity of the subject potentially implicating the First Amendment;
only if so will courts proceed to determine whether the activity depicted therein merits constitutional protection.
When that approach is utilized, Reuber’s claim stumbles at the starting gate, for the letter of reprimand does not amount to a proscribed record of expressional speech activity.
The term “record” is defined in the Privacy Act as encompassing “any item, collection, or grouping of information about an individual that is maintained by an agency ... and contains his name[,] ... identifying number, symbol, or other identifying particular____”
Since the letter clearly identifies Reuber by name and address,
it unmistakably constitutes a record for Privacy Act purposes.
The next step under Subsection (e)(7) is to determine whether the record “describe[s] how” Reuber engaged in First Amendment activity.
Since Congress has not elaborated upon this critical phase of the injury, we look to judicial precedents for guidance. In
Albright I,
we considered Subsection (e)(7)’s applicability to a videotape made during a meeting attended by Social Security Administration analysts. The videotape, which depicted the employ
ees strenuously objecting to agency policies, ostensibly was to be used to explain to analysts not in attendance what had transpired at the meeting.
We held that the videotape was “a record of the exercise of First Amendment rights, and its creation violates subsection (e)(7).”
We emphasized that the videotape “showed employees complaining to their employer about work-related grievances,”
an activity clearly within the First Amendment’s scope.
Beyond peradventure, it was the portrayal of the employees airing their grievances that was the gravamen of the violation of Subsection (e)(7).
In
Clarkson v. IRS,
there was a challenge to a practice of the Internal Revenue Service of maintaining surveillance reports, newsletters, and press accounts documenting Clarkson’s disenchantment with federal taxation.
The Eleventh Circuit declared that “it cannot be disputed that memoranda
reflecting the contents
of Clarkson’s political speech would be subject to First Amendment protection,”
and held that “to the extent that the IRS has engaged in the practice of collecting protected information” unrelated to law enforcement, “subsection (e)(7) of the Act has been violated.”
Perhaps more to the point is the Eleventh Circuit’s decision in
Boyd v. Secretary of the Navy.
Boyd, a civilian employee of the Navy, sent letters to his supervisors complaining about training programs,
and on one occasion sent a letter directly to his department head. His supervisors drafted a memorandum remonstrating him for bypassing the normal chain of command and placed a copy of the reprimand in his personnel file.
The court, addressing Boyd’s claim that the memorandum was an infringement of Subsection (e)(7), held that the memorandum “did not implicate Boyd’s First Amendment right,” in part because “[t]he memorandum did not discuss
the contents
of his prior memos____”
It is in this important regard that Reuber’s claim must fail. There is no question that Reuber engaged in communicative activity when he formulated and disseminated his views on the carcinogenicity of malathion, nor is there doubt that it was this activity that precipitated the rebuke by his employer.
But the sole record maintained by agencies functioning under the strictures of the Privacy Act — the letter of reprimand itself — makes but scant reference to the specifics of these underlying events. To be sure the letter reveals that Hanna was bitterly disappointed with Reuber’s putative indiscretions, and believed that substantial injury would flow therefrom.
But the letter makes not a single reference to the content of Reuber’s position on malathion, and only vague allusions to the manner in which he expressed his views. Since the letter does not “describe how” Reuber engaged in arguably protected activity, its retention by the agencies did not run afoul of the proscription of Subsection (e)(7).
There is, too, another ground demanding denial of Reuber’s claim under Subsection (e)(7). The Privacy Act authorizes an award for damages under that subsection only for an “intentional or willful” agency violation.
The degree of culpability required is somewhat greater than gross negligence;
damages will be assessed against an agency for “committing [an] act without grounds for believing it to be lawful, or ... flagrantly disregarding others’ rights under the Act.”
Reuber points out that the District Court made no findings respecting intentional or willful conduct, and suggests that we either remand for such findings or declare the agencies’ putative transgressions intentional or willful as a matter of law.
We hold, instead, that the record falls short of establishing unlawful intent or willfulness. There is no evidence tending to show that the agencies’ maintenance of the letter was anything other than a good-faith effort to preserve an unsolicited and possibly useful piece of information. This absence of proof leads us to conclude that the actions of the Government in this case, however disjointed or confused, were neither willful nor deliberate in the sense demanded by the Privacy Act,
thus Rebuer’s (e)(7) claim must fail.
III. The Agencies’ Appeal
The agencies cross-appeal from the District Court’s denial of their motion for partial summary judgment.
Before trial, HHS offered to destroy all copies of the reprimand letter in its possession,
but Reuber rejected this overture, insisting that the agency also declare that the letter was being eliminated from its records because it was false and defamatory. HHS then moved for summary judgment on Reuber’s claims under Subsections (d)(2) and (d)(3).
HHS reasoned that since elimination of the letter from the records was the only sought-after relief to which the Privacy Act entitled Reuber, the proposal to destroy the letter mooted any claim based upon its alleged inaccuracy.
The District Court, however, ruled that this “reading of the remedies available under the Privacy Act [was] too narrow,”
and permitted Reuber’s claims to go forward to trial.
A.
The Act
The Privacy Act specifies in pertinent part that
[e]ach agency that maintains a system of records shall—
(2) permit the individual to request amendment of a record pertaining to him and—
(B) promptly, either—
(i) make any correction of any portion thereof which the individual believes is not accurate, relevant, timely, or complete; or
(ii) inform the individual of its refusal to amend the record in accordance with
his request, the reason for the refusal, the procedures established by the agency for the individual to request a review of that refusal by the head of the agency or an officer designated by the head of the agency, and the name and business address of that official;
(3) permit the individual who disagrees with the refusal of the agency to amend his record to request a review of such refusal ... and if, after his review, the reviewing official also refuses to amend the record in accordance with the request, permit the individual to file with the agency a concise statement setting forth the reasons for his disagreement with the refusal of the agency, and notify the individual of the provisions for judicial review of the reviewing official’s determination under subsection (g)(1)(A) of this section____
Subsection (g) confers the privilege of judicial review, as follows:
(1) Civil remedies.
Whenever any agency
(A) makes a determination under subsection (d)(3) of this section not to amend an individual’s record in accordance with his request, or fails to make such review in conformity with that subsection; the individual may bring a civil action against the agency, and ... (2) (A) ... the court may order the agency to amend the individual’s record in accordance with his request or in such other way as the court may direct. In such a case the court shall determine the matter de novo.
The conclusion Reuber draws from these provisions is that “[t]he Act itself gives individuals a statutory right to have false records about them destroyed on the ground that they are false.”
Reuber relies upon the words “any correction” and “in accordance with his request” in the statutory language, and terms the proposal to destroy all copies of the letter in its possession a mere “tactical offer.”
The District Court adopted this interpretation of the Act, holding that because Reuber had demanded a concession regarding the accuracy of the letter, simply destroying it would not accord with Reuber’s request.
Referring to Subsection (g)(2)(A), the court said:
The plain meaning of the phrase “to amend” in no way suggests that the court’s power is limited to ordering deletion of records. On the contrary, the expression “in such other ways as the court may direct” implies a broader power in the court to order affirmative correction of records where appropriate, and not just their deletion, to effectuate the purposes of the Act.
We have no quarrel with this statement of the law,
but we deny its relevance to this case. Reuber has not sought amendment or correction of his records, which a court would clearly have authority to order;
rather, he has insisted that the letter of reprimand be destroyed, but “on the ground that it is false.”
Moreover, because the record in question is a letter from one nongovernmental party to another, amendments, even if undertaken, would
be awkward to accomplish. The agencies could hardly be expected to scratch out Hanna’s offending lines and pencil in Reuber’s proffered substitutes. A reasonable measure might be inclusion with the letter in the files of a statement of Reuber’s views of the matters Hanna addressed,
but after destruction of the letter the accompanying commentary would seem to work a distortion rather than a correction. Though we do not doubt our authority to grant relief in the nature of an appropriate amendment, we emphasize that Reuber has not requested it.
Reuber’s actual demand — that the letter be destroyed on the ground that it is false — appears to envision some sort of determination and announcement by the agencies that the letter was inaccurate. Aside from the impracticality of making and preserving this determination, a matter upon which we have commented, we are left with the question whether Reuber is entitled to that remedy — that is, whether Reuber can thrust upon the agencies, which did not author the letter of reprimand, the responsibility for investigating and assessing charges in the letter even after the agencies have disclaimed any interest in keeping it on file. We do not believe the Privacy Act requires of federal agencies such an extraordinary effort.
Certainly nothing in the Act itself compels that result. Both Reuber and the District Court have attached particular significance to the statutory language “in accordance with his request.”
The request itself must be statutorily authorized before an agency becomes bound to honor it. Put another way, if an agency erroneously refuses upon request by an interested party to delete a record, or to alter a record by inserting or redacting material, a reviewing court may order the agency to comply with the terms of the request exactly. But a party requesting procedures not mandated by the act is not entitled to complete satisfaction; instead he too is guaranteed only those remedies which the law prescribes. Thus, the agencies' failure to oblige Reuber is of no consequence if his demand falls outside the scope of the Act.
The agencies have consulted the legislative history and provided a detailed account of the genesis of the “in accordance with his request” provision,
concluding that Congress “did not intend to impose a requirement on the government to determine the accuracy of records it did not intend to use or keep.”
We agree with the agencies, though we confess that the legislative history of this particular phrase adds little to our understanding of it.
The modest evolution of the phrase
simply confirms
our judgment that the wide-ranging fact-finding mission advocated by Reuber was not the congressional model of agency action under the Privacy Act.
B.
Caselaw
Precedent on this important question is scarce, but the case most closely analogous supports the agencies’ contentions. In
Metadure Corp. v. United States,
the plaintiffs alleged that the Department of Defense and other agencies were maintaining in their files copies of an anonymous memorandum denigrating the plaintiffs’ status as government contractors. They brought suit under the Privacy Act in an effort to obtain both damages and an injunction ordering the agencies to “cure” the violations. The plaintiffs also sought discovery of the identity of the author of the memorandum, but the court ruled that the Privacy Act conferred no such right.
After the agencies either destroyed or offered to destroy their copies of the memorandum, the court granted summary judgment in their favor on the ground that destruction constituted “precisely the relief to which [the] plaintiff was entitled under the Privacy Act.”
Metadure
holds squarely that document destruction, if feasible, is the ultimate relief available in a Privacy Act suit challenging the accuracy of agency records.
None of the other cases around which this portion of the litigation has revolved is instructive. The District Court cited
Clarkson v. IRS,
but that decision stands for no more than the unremarkable proposition that a reviewing court has authority to order “the amendment or ex-pungement of all records which are maintained in violation of subsection (e)(7),”
whether or not they are contained within a system of records. Reuber relies heavily on
R.R. v. Department of the Army,
but that case is also inapposite. There, the plaintiff brought a Privacy Act suit to correct alleged errors in his Army medical records. The' Army had refused to make amendments requested, asserting that its original findings of preexisting schizophrenia were “more persuasive.”
The pivotal question was whether the provisions of the Act compelling correction of inaccurate records applied solely to “factual misrepresentations” or extended to comprehended medical judgments as well. The court found the Army to be in error; “[a]n agency,” it said, “may not refuse a request to revise or expunge prior professional judgments once all the facts underlying such judgments have been thoroughly discredited.”
We agree that if the agencies here desired to
retain
the letter reprimanding Ruber, they could not ignore any possibly persuasive evidence of falsity simply by contending that it resulted from the subjective professional opinions of Dr. Hanna. Beyond that,
R.R.
has no application to the instant case.
Finally, Reuber claims that our decision in
Chastain v.
Kelley
establishes, independently of the Privacy Act, a right to
relief. Again, we strongly disagree. Chastain, an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was suspended and threatened with dismissal for alleged misconduct, whereupon he brought suit to enjoin the agency from disciplining him. Later, however, the suspension was terminated and Chastain was restored to his former status. The District Court dismissed the case as moot and granted Chastain’s unopposed motion for an order requiring the FBI to expunge all records relating to the incident and to inform other agencies cognizant of the matter that the charges had been dropped. After the FBI tardily sought to oppose the motion for the expungement order, this court vacated that order to enable the District Court to consider the FBI’s objections. This court’s opinion contains the following statement:
The part of the challenged order to which we see least objection is that requiring the Bureau to inform other agencies to which it has hitherto disseminated information about this matter that [Chastain] was not in fact disciplined for it. Certainly it is the Bureau’s obligation to correct any erroneous information. Since the action the Board
\_sic
] is required to take with respect to other agencies will otherwise depend on what it itself is required to do, however, it seems best to vacate the entire order and to allow the District Court to reexamine— and perhaps to refashion — it in light of what may be revealed by further proceedings.
Taken in context, this statement clearly means simply that an agency has an obligation, not to correct inaccuracies in an expunged record, but to remove misimpressions generated by its own disclosures.
Courts have generally held that the Privacy Act’s provisions for injunctive relief are to be narrowly construed.
Restraint is particularly important where injudicious expansion of our supervisory power would impose onerous burdens on federal agencies by making them unwilling arbiters of the truth, even when the dispute is between other parties and the offending document has been purged from governmental offices. We therefore must reject Reuber’s interpretation of the Act and reverse the District Court’s denial of the agencies’ motion for partial summary judgment.
The District Court made four detailed findings of fact concerning the accuracy of the letter of reprimand. First, regarding Hanna’s charge that Reuber had improperly bypassed publication clearance procedures, the court concluded that “the ... letter is incorrect on a serious allegation: Dr. Reuber did not breach his contract, Frederick policy, NCI policy, or professional standards by failing to submit his non-Frederick papers to internal review.”
Turning to the accusation that Reuber’s slide examinations at Tracor Jitco were either far fewer than he had claimed or too cursory to support his scientific conclusions, the court found that the evidence bore out the charge.
The court also approved the letter’s contention that Reuber had spent “excessive” time at Tracor Jitco.
Lastly, the court decided that, although Reuber had not misled the scientific community by using his Frederick address on his private papers, the evidence tended to support the allegation that Reuber was guilty of unprofessional conduct and misrepresentation for circulating his paper on malathion to laymen, who might fail to appreciate the distinction between individual and institutional work-product.
These findings were based on the District Court’s careful analysis of the evidence presented at trial. Regrettably, this labor was wasted, since the agencies’ motion for partial summary judgment should have been granted. The determination of
the truthfulness of the letter was necessary only to the court’s disposition of Reuber’s (d)(2) and (d)(3) claims; if these claims had been dismissed as moot before trial, as properly they should have been, there would have been no occasion to rule on the accuracy of the letter at all. We therefore vacate this portion of the District Court’s judgment and remand with instructions to dismiss as moot Reuber’s claims based on alleged inaccuracy of the letter.
IV. Conclusion
We are not insensitive to Reuber’s complaints; indeed, we are satisfied that he believes his traumas have been due in no small part to governmental malfeasance. The Privacy Act, however, simply was not designed to create a remedy for every instance in which an individual’s grievance tangentially concerns a federal agency. The judgment of the District Court is affirmed in part and reversed in part, as hereinbefore set forth, and the case is remanded to that court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.