United States Court of Appeals
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT
Argued November 6, 2009 Decided February 26, 2010
No. 07-5385
DAMON ELLIOTT,
APPELLANT
v.
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE,
APPELLEE
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Columbia
(No. 06cv00240)
Anand V. Ramana, appointed by the court, argued the
cause and filed the briefs as amicus curiae in support of
appellant.
Damon Elliott, pro se, filed briefs for appellant.
Andrea McBarnette, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the
cause for appellee. With her on the brief was R. Craig
Lawrence, Assistant U.S. Attorney.
Before: TATEL, GARLAND, and KAVANAUGH, Circuit
Judges.
2
Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge TATEL.
TATEL, Circuit Judge: Appellant brought suit under the
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to compel the United
States Department of Agriculture to disclose blueprints to
buildings located on an agricultural research campus.
Concluding that the requested blueprints fall within FOIA
Exemption 2, which exempts from disclosure matters “related
solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of an
agency,” 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(2), the district court granted
summary judgment for the government. For the reasons set
forth in this opinion, we affirm.
I.
Appellant Damon Elliott submitted FOIA requests
seeking architectural blueprints for all buildings on the
campus of the United States Department of Agriculture’s
(USDA’s) Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC).
Elliott apparently seeks the blueprints in order to prove that
Building 22, a residential building on the BARC campus, is
nonfederal property. After conducting a search for responsive
documents, the agency informed Elliott that although it
maintains blueprints for 375 BARC buildings, it has none for
Building 22. The agency refused to disclose any blueprints,
however, asserting that FOIA Exemption 2 “protects sensitive
critical infrastructure information related to security and
safety.” Letter from Stasia A.M. Hutchison, FOIA
Coordinator, USDA, to Damon Elliott (Dec. 29, 2005).
After exhausting his administrative remedies, Elliott
brought suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of
Columbia to compel disclosure of all blueprints responsive to
his FOIA requests. See 5 U.S.C. § 552. Seeking summary
judgment, the government argued that the blueprints fell
within FOIA Exemption 2 because their disclosure would
3
compromise the security of BARC’s critical infrastructure and
research programs.
The district court granted the government’s motion in
part, finding that although the agency had performed an
adequate search for responsive documents, it had failed to
sufficiently justify withholding the blueprints under
Exemption 2. Elliott v. U.S. Dep’t of Agric., No. 06-240,
2007 WL 1302588, at *4 (D.D.C. May 2, 2007). Following a
renewed motion for summary judgment and additional filings
by both parties, the court then concluded that the blueprints
were exempt from disclosure because they are “used for
predominantly internal purposes and their disclosure may risk
circumvention of federal policies, statutes, or regulations.”
Elliott v. U.S. Dep’t of Agric., 518 F. Supp. 2d 217, 221
(D.D.C. 2007). In addition, the district court held that no
reasonably segregable portion of the blueprints could be
disclosed without posing a security risk. Id. Elliott appealed,
and we appointed amicus curiae to present arguments on his
behalf.
II.
“[D]isclosure, not secrecy, is [FOIA’s] dominant
objective.” Dep’t of the Air Force v. Rose, 425 U.S. 352, 361
(1976). Consistent with this purpose, agencies may withhold
only those documents or portions thereof that fall under one
of nine delineated statutory exemptions. See 5 U.S.C. §
552(b). These exemptions are “explicitly exclusive,” U.S.
Dep’t of Justice v. Tax Analysts, 492 U.S. 136, 151 (1989)
(internal quotation marks omitted), and the agency bears the
burden of showing that withheld material falls within the
asserted exemption, 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(B).
This case concerns the scope of Exemption 2, which
covers matters “related solely to the internal personnel rules
4
and practices of an agency.” 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(2). The
courts have devoted thousands of pages of the Federal
Reporter to the explication of these twelve words, cutting out
some and pasting in others. As a result, like the Ship of
Theseus, little of Congress’s original language remains. We
think it useful to briefly review how we got to this point.
For fifteen years after FOIA’s enactment, see Pub. L. No.
89-487, 80 Stat. 250 (1966), considerable confusion
surrounded the scope of Exemption 2. This uncertainty
stemmed from the seemingly contradictory interpretations of
the exemption expressed in the House and Senate Reports.
The Senate Report stated that Exemption 2 “relates only to the
internal personnel rules and practices of an agency. Examples
of these may be rules as to personnel’s use of parking
facilities or regulation of lunch hours, statements of policy as
to sick leave, and the like.” S. Rep. No. 89-813, at 8 (1965).
Taking a different view, the House Report described the
exemption as encompassing “[o]perating rules, guidelines,
and manuals of procedure for Government investigators or
examiners.” H.R. Rep. No. 89-1497, at 10 (1966). Even
given these differences, however, the House and Senate
committees both saw Exemption 2 as narrowing the public
disclosure exemption under former section 3 of the
Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which protected from
disclosure “any matter relating solely to the internal
management of an agency.” Rose, 425 U.S. at 362 (citing
Congress’s dissatisfaction with the broad sweep of the APA’s
exemption, 5 U.S.C. § 1002 (1964 ed.)).
Confronting the dueling House and Senate Reports for
the first time in Department of the Air Force v. Rose, 425 U.S.
352 (1976), the Supreme Court declined to pick sides. On the
one hand, the Court accepted the Senate’s interpretation of
Exemption 2 as covering minor employment-related matters
5
in which the public lacked a significant interest. Id. at 369–
70. On the other hand, the Court acknowledged, but did not
decide, that the exemption might protect the more important
materials contemplated by the House Report “where
necessary to prevent the circumvention of agency regulations
that might result from disclosure to the subjects of regulation
of . . . procedural manuals and guidelines used by the
agency.” Id. at 364.
With the question thus left open by the Supreme Court,
and facing what we believed to be mutually exclusive views
of Exemption 2, we initially adopted the Senate Report as the
authoritative expression of Congress’s intent. In Jordan v.
United States Department of Justice, 591 F.2d 753, 763 (D.C.
Cir. 1978) (en banc), we stated that “personnel” refers only to
“matters relating to pay, pensions, vacations, hours of work,
lunch hours, parking, etc.” Applying this construction, we
ordered the release of prosecutorial guidelines used by U.S.
Attorneys on the ground that, as envisioned by the Senate
Report, the guidelines fell outside Exemption 2’s scope. Id.
Three years later and sitting en banc, we reversed course
and expressly repudiated Jordan’s “limited” interpretation of
Exemption 2 in Crooker v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco &
Firearms, 670 F.2d 1051, 1073 (D.C. Cir. 1981). There, the
FOIA requester sought a copy of a Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco & Firearms (ATF) manual used to train new agents
in surveillance techniques. Picking up where the Supreme
Court left off in Rose, we held that Exemption 2 protects
nontrivial matters “where disclosure might risk circumvention
of the law.” Id. at 1066. Accordingly, “the words ‘personnel
rules and practices’ encompass not merely minor employment
matters,” as we held in Jordan, “but may cover other rules
and practices governing agency personnel, including
6
significant matters like job training for law enforcement
personnel.” Id. at 1056.
Despite Exemption 2’s reference to documents related
“solely” to internal rules and practices, we further explained
in Crooker that the exemption covers documents that are
“predominantly” internal. Id. at 1056–57. This modification
stemmed from our recognition that, if interpreted literally, the
term “‘relating’ is potentially all-encompassing while ‘solely’
is potentially all-excluding.” Id. at 1056 (quoting Vaughn v.
Rosen, 523 F.2d 1136, 1150 (D.C. Cir. 1975) (Leventhal, J.,
concurring)) (internal quotation marks omitted). Thus,
despite the fact that the withheld portions of the ATF manual
had some effect on the public at large, we held that the
manual fell squarely within Exemption 2 because it was used
“for predominantly internal purposes,” it was “designed to
establish rules and practices for agency personnel, i.e., law
enforcement investigatory techniques,” and its “disclosure
would risk circumvention of agency regulations.” Id. at 1073.
Crooker thus resolves the apparent conflict between the
House and Senate Reports by explaining that Exemption 2 is
actually two exemptions wrapped in one. The so-called low
2 exemption, tracking the Senate Report, covers
predominantly internal documents that deal with “trivial
administrative matters of no genuine public interest.” Schiller
v. NLRB, 964 F.2d 1205, 1207 (D.C. Cir. 1992) (internal
quotation marks omitted). The “high 2” exemption, following
the House Report, applies to “[p]redominantly internal
documents the disclosure of which would risk circumvention
of agency statutes and regulations.” Id.
Since Crooker, we have articulated the requirements of
the high 2 exemption—the one at issue in this case—in terms
of a two-step inquiry. Morley v. Cent. Intelligence Agency,
7
508 F.3d 1108, 1124 (D.C. Cir. 2007). First, the information
withheld must fall within the exemption’s language.
Schwaner v. Dep’t of the Air Force, 898 F.2d 793, 794 (D.C.
Cir. 1990) (quoting Founding Church of Scientology of Wash,
D.C., Inc. v. Smith, 721 F.2d 828, 830 n.4 (D.C. Cir. 1983)).
That is, the material must be “used for predominantly internal
purposes,” and relate to “rules and practices for agency
personnel.” Crooker, 670 F.2d at 1073. Second, if this
threshold step is satisfied, the agency can defeat disclosure by
demonstrating that release of the material would significantly
risk circumvention of federal regulations or statutes. Schiller,
964 F.2d at 1207; see Crooker at 1074.
“Notably, [t]his exemption does not shield information
on the sole basis that it is designed for internal agency use.”
Morley, 508 F.3d at 1125 (internal quotation marks omitted)
(alteration in original). In Schwaner v. Department of the Air
Force, 898 F.2d 793 (D.C. Cir. 1990), for example, the
plaintiff sought disclosure of a roster containing the names
and duty addresses of military personnel stationed at Bolling
Air Force Base. Recognizing that Exemption 2 was a poor fit
because “data itself is not a practice,” the district court
nonetheless held that the list fell within the exemption
because it was “purely internal.” Schwaner, 898 F.2d at 794
(internal quotation marks omitted). We reversed, holding that
“the list does not bear an adequate relation to any rule or
practice of the Air Force as those terms are used in exemption
2.” Id. Thus, although we have sometimes framed the first
step of the test as one of “predominant internality,” see, e.g.,
Nat’l Treasury Employees Union v. U.S. Customs Serv., 802
F.2d 525, 528 (D.C. Cir. 1986) (“NTEU”), at least where the
dispositive issue concerns whether the requested information
adequately relates to internal matters, Schwaner makes clear
that predominant internality is necessary but insufficient to
get past the threshold inquiry; the government must also show
8
that the predominantly internal material bears a sufficient
relationship to agency rules and practices.
With this background in mind, we turn to the
government’s argument that the requested blueprints are
protected by the high 2 exemption. We review the district
court’s grant of summary judgment de novo, remaining
mindful that “Congress intended that Exemption 2 be
interpreted narrowly and specifically,” Rose, 425 U.S. at 365
(internal quotation marks omitted), and that “the ‘burden is on
the agency’ to show that requested material falls within”
Exemption 2, Nat’l Ass’n of Home Builders v. Norton, 309
F.3d 26, 32 (D.C. Cir. 2002) (internal quotation marks
omitted).
III.
The government argues that the blueprints satisfy
Exemption 2’s threshold test because the “USDA uses
blueprints,” and “few individuals outside the USDA have
seen the blueprints.” Appellee’s Br. 12, 13. Record evidence
supports the first of these claims, which amicus does not
contest: Agency personnel use the blueprints to perform
building repairs, “add room number, room description and
square footage information” to building databases, coordinate
office and laboratory moves, conduct “security assessment
upgrades,” and identify watering responsibilities for BARC
greenhouse staff. Bynum Decl. ¶ 3, July 27, 2007; Taylor
Decl. ¶ 2.
As to the government’s second point, that “few
individuals outside the USDA have seen the blueprints,”
amicus argues that the blueprints are not predominantly
internal because the USDA has released blueprints for various
BARC buildings to the Maryland Historical Trust. But we
agree with the government that disclosure of some blueprints
9
to an outside group does not vitiate the predominantly internal
nature of the blueprints on file at BARC and used in the
course of the abovementioned activities. After all, Elliott is
presumably not seeking those blueprints that are housed at the
Maryland Historical Trust, but rather wants those that remain
exclusively under the agency’s control. We therefore agree
with the district court that the withheld blueprints satisfy
Exemption 2’s predominant internality requirement.
As explained above, however, to fall within Exemption
2’s language documents withheld must also relate to “rules
and practices governing agency personnel.” Crooker, 670
F.2d at 1056. Satisfying this component of the threshold test
presents little difficulty in cases where the withheld material
itself constitutes an agency personnel rule or practice.
Crooker, the canonical high 2 case, fits this mold, as the ATF
training manual at issue there instructed government agents
how to perform their official job duties. Other materials
falling within this category include instructions to agency
employees implementing the Equal Access to Justice Act,
Schiller, 964 F.2d at 1206, Customs Service plans used to
evaluate the qualifications of job applicants, NTEU, 802 F.2d
at 527, and portions of the Manual for U.S. Marshals
pertaining to the use of weapons and other law enforcement
practices, Cox v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 601 F.2d 1, 3–4 (D.C.
Cir. 1979). These cases clearly reflect the House Report’s
conception of Exemption 2 as covering “[o]perating rules,
guidelines, and manuals of procedure for Government
investigators or examiners.” H.R. Rep. No. 89-1497, at 10
(1966).
True, unlike manuals and guidelines, blueprints give
agency employees little explicit guidance about how to do
their jobs. Information need not take the form of a rule or
practice, however, to fall within the high 2 exemption.
10
Rather, the exemption expressly protects from disclosure
material “related” to agency rules or practices. In Schwaner
we described two categories of material that could satisfy this
relatedness requirement. One such category is exemplified by
Rose, where the plaintiffs sought summaries of cases decided
by the Air Force Academy’s Honor Committee. Although
case summaries are not themselves rules and practices, we
explained that they “manifest and implement the rules and
practices” of the agency relating to the conduct of cadets, who
must conform their conduct not just to the Academy’s Honor
Code itself, but also to the Committee’s decisions
implementing the Code. Schwaner, 898 F.2d at 795; see also
Milner v. U.S. Dep’t of the Navy, 575 F.3d 959, 968 (9th Cir.
2009) (protecting from disclosure Navy maps depicting
explosives’ blast radii on the ground that the maps, created
pursuant to a Navy manual, “constitute one part of the internal
policies and procedures that [Navy] personnel are bound to
follow when handling and storing explosive ordnance”).
Exemption 2 also encompasses “materials that are so
closely related to rules and practices that disclosure could lead
to disclosure of the rule or practice itself.” Schwaner, 898
F.2d at 796. For example, in Founding Church of Scientology
of Washington, D.C., Inc. v. Smith, 721 F.2d 828, 829 (D.C.
Cir. 1983), we allowed the FBI to withhold from disclosure
routing instructions appearing on documents “to protect
sensitive administrative instructions for the handling of the
documents,” and in Lesar v. United States Department of
Justice, 636 F.2d 472, 485 (D.C. Cir. 1980), we concluded
that Exemption 2 protected “symbols used to refer to FBI
informants in FBI documents and records.” As we explained
in Schwaner, the “materials in these cases fall handily within
the statutory requirement of being ‘related’ to agency rules or
practices in that they bear upon, or cast light upon, those
practices.” Schwaner, 898 F.2d at 796. The notations in
11
Founding Church of Scientology revealed the agency’s
internal routing and distribution practices, and the redacted
symbols in Lesar shed light on the FBI’s practice of using
symbols to communicate about secret informants. In contrast,
the Air Force personnel lists requested in Schwaner shed little
light on any agency practice other than the practice of
collecting the data itself. 898 F.2d at 795–96. Although the
agency had argued that the lists reflected Air Force duty
assignment practices, we found any such link too “tenuous
and indirect” to satisfy the “related” requirement. Id. at 798.
In Schwaner, moreover, we distinguished between high 2
and low 2 cases, observing that “[j]udicial willingness to
sanction a weak relation to ‘rules and practices’ may be
greatest when the asserted government interest is relatively
weighty.” Id. at 796. Thus with respect to high 2 materials,
where the asserted government interest is, by definition, to
prevent circumvention of law, the threshold inquiry may be
somewhat less demanding than for low 2 matters, for which
we require a tighter nexus between the withheld information
and personnel rules and practices.
Acknowledging this more forgiving standard applicable
to high 2 materials, amicus nonetheless complains that the
“record is completely devoid of any explanation as to how the
BARC blueprints relate to the rules that govern USDA
employees, or the practices of those employees.” Amicus
Curiae’s Br. 38 (emphasis added). Although this somewhat
overstates the case, it is true that the government’s briefs in
both the district court and on appeal focus primarily on the
predominant internality component of Exemption 2’s
threshold test, rather than on the requirement that withheld
material relate to rules and practices governing agency
personnel. But that is because in the district court Elliott
never challenged the relatedness of the blueprints to the
12
practices of USDA employees. In his opposition to the
government’s summary judgment motion, Elliott cited Jordan
for the proposition that Exemption 2’s reference to
“personnel” rules and practices refers only to matters relating
to “pay, pensions, vacations, hours of work, lunch hours,” and
parking. Mem. in Opp’n to Summ. J. 4 (quoting Jordan, 591
F.2d at 763). Elliott also suggested that the USDA did not use
the blueprints for “internal” purposes. Id. at 2. The district
court rejected Elliott’s first argument, explaining that we have
since abandoned Jordan’s interpretation of “personnel” as
encompassing only minor employment matters. Elliott, 2007
WL 1302588, at *4. The district court nonetheless denied in
part the government’s summary judgment motion on the
grounds that the government had failed to establish the
predominant internality of the blueprints or articulate clearly
the connection between release of the blueprints and the
particular statutes at risk of circumvention. Id. at *5.
Focusing, then, on these two deficiencies, the
government filed a renewed summary judgment motion. In
his opposition to that renewed motion, however, Elliott never
addressed whether the blueprints fall within the scope of
Exemption 2. Rather, he complained only that the
government’s affidavits were “made in bad faith,” citing in
support 7 U.S.C. § 2243, which authorizes the USDA
Secretary to sell “photographic prints (including bromide
enlargements), lantern slides, transparencies, blueprints, and
forest maps.” Mem. in Opp’n to Renewed Mot. for Summ. J.
1. Because Elliott failed to raise the issue in the district court,
amicus may not challenge the blueprints’ relationship to
agency practices for the first time on appeal. See Adams v.
Rice, 531 F.3d 936, 945 (D.C. Cir. 2008) (refusing to consider
argument never made in district court).
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IV.
Determining whether the blueprints qualify as
predominantly internal documents that relate to agency
personnel rules and practices does not end our analysis. As
noted above, to withhold material under Exemption 2 the
government must also demonstrate that “disclosure
significantly risks circumvention of agency regulations or
statutes.” Crooker, 670 F.2d at 1074. Claiming this to be the
case, the government asserted in the district court that
disclosure of the blueprints “would render BARC vulnerable
to potential threats and unnecessary risk in maintaining
physical security over the research programs and critical
infrastructure assets at BARC.” Thessen Decl. ¶ 3, Aug. 13,
2007. According to the government, BARC buildings house
various biological agents and toxins, illicit narcotics, and
radioactive materials, and the campus contains critical
infrastructure such as wastewater treatment plants, water
distribution stations, and power transfer stations—all of which
could be threatened by release of the blueprints. The
government cited a variety of federal laws and policies that
obligate the agency to protect these assets, including the
Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and
Response Act of 2002, 107 Pub. L. No. 107-188, 116 Stat.
594 (2002), which provides for USDA regulation of certain
biological agents and toxins, and presidential directives that
set forth policies regarding the protection of critical
infrastructure and food and agricultural systems against
deliberate attacks, see Homeland Security Presidential
Directive 7 (Dec. 17, 2003); Homeland Security Presidential
Directive 9 (Jan. 30, 2004). Agreeing with the government,
the district court found that disclosure of the blueprints “may
risk circumvention of federal policies, statutes, or
regulations.” Elliott, 518 F. Supp. 2d at 221.
14
On appeal, amicus contends that the government failed to
demonstrate that release of the blueprints would pose a
“significant risk” to national security, Amicus Curiae’s Br.
40, and that the “USDA failed to identify any specific USDA
regulation or statute that could be circumvented by the release
of the BARC blueprints,” id. at 42. Amicus further argues
that the district court “erred when it summarily concluded that
none of the information contained in the blueprints can be
segregated and disclosed.” Id. at 43; see 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)
(“Any reasonably segregable portion of a record shall be
provided to any person requesting such a record after deletion
of the portions which are exempt.”); Mead Data Cent. v. U.S.
Dep’t of Air Force, 566 F.2d 242, 260 (D.C. Cir. 1977);
(noting that “non-exempt portions of a document must be
disclosed unless they are inextricably intertwined with exempt
portions”).
But here again, Elliott failed to press these arguments in
the district court. Even so, the government did address
segregability in both of its summary judgment motions,
arguing that release of redacted—i.e., partially blacked out—
blueprints would necessarily reveal the location of sensitive
areas depicted on those blueprints. Similarly, the government
argued, if the agency released some blueprints but not others,
it would effectively tip off intruders that potential targets such
as biological agents are located in buildings whose blueprints
were withheld.
Although Elliott challenged these assertions in neither of
his motions opposing summary judgment, the district court,
consistent with its “affirmative duty to consider the
segregability issue sua sponte,” passed on the issue, ultimately
concluding that no reasonably segregable portion of the
blueprints could be released without presenting a risk of
circumvention. Morley, 508 F.3d at 1123 (quoting Trans-
15
Pac. Policing Agreement v. U.S. Customs Serv., 177 F.3d
1022, 1028 (D.C. Cir. 1999)). This is therefore not a case
where “both the [agency] and the district court appear to have
overlooked the segregability requirement.” Schiller, 964 F.2d
at 1209. And, contrary to amicus’s contention, “because the
district court . . . was satisfied that [the agency’s] affidavits
properly placed the withheld documents within the scope of
Exemption [2], it did not need to reach the question of in
camera review,” Juarez v. Dep’t of Justice, 518 F.3d 54, 60
(D.C. Cir. 2008), particularly given that Elliott never disputed
the content of the requested documents, cf. Allen v. CIA, 636
F.2d 1287, 1299 (D.C. Cir. 1980), overruled on other grounds
by Crooker, 670 F.2d 1051, as recognized in Founding
Church of Scientology, 721 F.2d at 829.
Elliott has benefited from the assistance of skilled
appellate amicus, and we too are grateful for its diligent
efforts, which have helped us understand the issues before us.
Amicus’s arguments, however, stray beyond those Elliott
raised in the district court, and although we recognize that
Elliott was pro se, and therefore held to less stringent pleading
and forfeiture standards, we will not consider for the first time
on appeal arguments that a plaintiff entirely failed to raise in
the trial court. See Greenhill v. Spellings, 482 F.3d 569, 572
(D.C. Cir. 2007). That is particularly true where, as here,
those arguments entail fact-intensive inquiries such as
whether requested documents relate sufficiently to agency
rules and practices or whether such documents—or portions
thereof—could be released without compromising security
and circumventing federal law.
V.
One final issue remains. To prevail on summary
judgment, the “agency must show beyond material doubt . . .
that it has conducted a search reasonably calculated to
16
uncover all relevant documents.” Weisberg v. U.S. Dep’t of
Justice, 705 F.2d 1344, 1351 (D.C. Cir. 1983). “[E]ven if the
protected records could be withheld under one of the FOIA
exemptions, that does not absolve the [agency] of its duty to
identify responsive documents, claim the relevant exemptions
. . . , and explain its reasoning for withholding the documents
in its affidavit.” Morley, 508 F.3d at 1120. In response to
Elliott’s FOIA requests, USDA employees searched the
records of the Real Property Section and the Engineering and
Construction Branch, the only locations where BARC
blueprints are stored.
Amicus argues that given the amount of time devoted to
these searches—about two hours apiece—the agency’s search
was inherently inadequate. Although this argument is not
forfeited—Elliott challenged in the district court the adequacy
of the agency’s search—we disagree. The government’s
affidavits describe these searches in detail, and amicus has
presented no evidence calling into question the efficacy of the
search beyond speculating as to the employees’ ability to
thoroughly search a filing cabinet or electronic database
within the indicated time period. See id. at 1116 (noting that
courts can rely on agency affidavits that are reasonably
detailed and nonconclusory).
Amicus next complains that although the employee
tasked with searching the Real Property Section looked for all
BARC blueprints on file, the employee who searched the
Engineering and Construction Branch looked only for
blueprints for Building 22. Thus, amicus argues, the agency
failed to conduct a search reasonably calculated to uncover
the blueprints to all BARC buildings, as Elliott requested.
Again, we disagree. In her declaration, the agency’s FOIA
coordinator stated that the agency had in fact compiled a list
of “architectural drawings on file at the Engineering and
17
Construction Branch.” Hutchison Decl. ¶ 6. Absent
countervailing evidence, we have no basis to question the
agency’s assertion.
VI.
We affirm the grant of summary judgment to the
government.
So ordered.