Plaintiffs had specifically complained in an affidavit accompanying their contempt motion that the FBI had searched only its headquarters, and not any field offices, and asked that the field offices be ordered searched as well. "This case involves an extensive request, and it appears that the defendants have made reasonable efforts to comply with the Court's orders." Id. "For similar reasons"-i.e., the breadth and complexity of the search requested-the court denied the motion to hold the FBI in contempt. ![]() Therefore, material issues of fact remained. The court denied the motions for summary judgment, finding that "legitimate questions" had been raised about the completeness of the inventories, and that "given the complexity of this case," the affidavits alone did not establish that every deletion was proper. The court responded to the accumulated motions in an order issued on January 20, 1976. They also requested permission to conduct depositions of the FBI agents who had supervised the search as a means of examining the thoroughness of the inventories and the validity of the justifications for withholdings. Asserting that the inventories were incomplete and inadequate, they asked that the FBI be held in contempt. ERDA moved as well for a partial summary judgment that the ERDA documents the agency claimed to be exempt from disclosure had been properly withheld. Defendants then moved for partial summary judgment, asking the court to rule that their inventories were complete and that they were in compliance with the August 27 order. 2Īffidavits were filed in response to the August 27 order. at 59, and on August 27, 1975, she issued a second order requiring each of the defendants, over the course of the next three months, to file inventories of all relevant documents in their possession along with itemized, detailed and cross-referenced refusal justifications for each relevant document claimed to be exempt from disclosure. On August 1, 1975, Judge Green issued an order enjoining the defendants from destroying or in any way altering the relevant documents, J.A. The complaint also sought an interim order enjoining the defendants from destroying or in any way altering the documents requested. ![]() The complaint asked that the defendants be ordered to produce an inventory of the documents in their possession encompassed by the request, with a view to the ultimate release of the documents not specifically exempt from disclosure under FOIA. The original complaint, filed in July of 1975, charged that the defendants were deliberately withholding records that were relevant under the terms of the request and subject to disclosure. In an interoffice government memorandum, George Calhoun, the Deputy Chief of the Internal Security Section of DOJ, described it as "one of the most definitive requests I have ever seen." Calhoun noted, "I have no doubt in my mind what they want-they want everything having to do with the Rosenberg case." Calhoun Memorandum, J.A. It was perhaps the most extensive FOIA request ever made. The scope of the request was therefore enormous. The FOIA request expressly included, but was not limited to, all records relating to any of eleven named persons 1 and the 100 persons on the prosecution's witness list at the Rosenberg trial. The Meeropols' parents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, had been convicted in 1951 of conspiring to transmit information to the Soviet Union relating to the development of the atomic bomb, and were executed in 1953. The request to these agencies sought "all of the records relating directly or indirectly to investigation and prosecution of our parents," Letter from Michael and Robert Meeropol to the Office of the Deputy Attorney General (Feb. 552 (1982), to the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice ("DOJ"), the Offices of the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, the Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI"), the Central Intelligence Agency ("CIA"), the Energy Research and Development Administration ("ERDA"), and the Offices of the United States Attorneys in the District of New Mexico and in the Southern District of New York. On February 20, 1975, Michael and Robert Meeropol made a formal request under the Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA"), 5 U.S.C. Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge BORK. of Justice, Washington, D.C., were on brief, for appellees.īefore BORK and SCALIA, Circuit Judges, and MacKINNON, Senior Circuit Judge. Marshall Perlin, New York City, for appellants.įreddi Lipstein, Atty., Dept. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (Civil Action No.
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