Assassination Archives & Research Ctr. v. CIA, No. 18-5280, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 30615 (D.C. Cir. Oct. 11, 2019) (per curiam)

Assassination Archives & Research Ctr. v. CIA, No. 18-5280, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 30615 (D.C. Cir. Oct. 11, 2019) (per curiam)

Re:  Request for records concerning "CIA's study in 1963 of plots to assassinate Adolph Hitler"

Disposition:  Affirming district court's grant of government's motion for summary judgment and denial of requester's motion for summary judgment

• Exemption 5, Deliberative Process Privilege:  The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit "hold[s] that the CIA has permissibly invoked Exemption 5."  The court relates that "the CIA invokes Exemption 5 to shield portions of the five internal FOIA task forms . . . ."  "Specifically, the CIA has redacted from each form the substance of the intra-agency communication '[a]uthored by [the] Agency component employee tasked with the search' for the benefit of the agency official directing the CIA's internal records search."  The court finds that "[t]he withheld communications indisputably precede the CIA's decision to release records to [the requester]."  "In addition, the redacted content "reflects the give-and-take" of a "consultative process" through which the agency sought to identify records within its possession potentially responsive to [the requester's] requests."  "Taken together, the entries in the agency's Vaughn index, the declarations, the forms themselves, and the context in which they are used make it sufficiently apparent that the redacted text describes the efforts of staff 'in extracting pertinent material' and any issues they encountered along the way."  "In context, it is evident that the redacted matter amounted to predecisional communications from staff made for the purpose of informing the agency's ultimate decision as to what the law required of the Agency in response to [the requester's] FOIA request."  The court notes that "[the requester] does not challenge the CIA's segregation efforts."