This Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) case sought documents regarding the CIA’s use of drones in the war on terrorism. The CIA asserted that it would compromise national security even to disclose whether it had any relevant documents (“Drones? What drones?”). In September 2011 the district court accepted that response and dismissed the case.
We appealed, and demonstrated to the court of appeals, as we had to the district court, that senior government officials had repeatedly acknowledged our use of drones. In March 2013 the court of appeals reversed. Chief Judge Garland wrote, “In this case, the CIA asked the courts … to give their imprimatur to a fiction of deniability that no reasonable person would regard as plausible.” “The defendant is, after all, the Central Intelligence Agency. And it strains credulity to suggest that an agency charged with gathering intelligence affecting the national security does not have an ‘intelligence interest’ in drone strikes.”
On remand, the district court granted summary judgment for the CIA on June 18, finding that all of its responsive documents (except the one redacted legal memorandum it had already released) were properly classified, contained no segregable non-classified material, and had not been officially disclosed in the past. We appealed, but the court of appeals affirmed in an unpublished memorandum.
