Leopold v. DOJ, No. 16-5237, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 9486 (D.C. Cir. May 30, 2017) (per curiam)

Leopold v. DOJ, No. 16-5237, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 9486 (D.C. Cir. May 30, 2017) (per curiam)

Re:  Request for records concerning Anwar al-Aulaqi

Disposition:  Affirming district court's grant of defendant's motion for summary judgment

• Exemption 1:  "[The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit] agree[s] with the district court that the government has sufficiently supported its invocation of . . . Exemptions 1 and 3[.]"  The court explains that, "[i]n its classified declarations, the government 'describes, in considerable detail . . . the agency's reasons for withholding' the redacted portions of the Department of Justice White Paper."  "Furthermore, the government has shown that the redacted portions of the White Paper contain information that has not previously been publicly disclosed, and the government has therefore not waived its right to assert the FOIA Exemptions."  "Although some individual sentences within the redacted passages contain facts that have previously been disclosed or pure legal analysis devoid of factual discussion, these sentences are still properly redacted, because selectively revealing those portions would tend to reveal the nature of adjacent classified information."