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Coalition on Political Assassinations v. Department of Defense
Citation: 12 F. App'x 13Docket: No. 00-5162
Court: Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; May 25, 2001; Federal Appellate Court
The case reviewed by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia involved an appellant's request for records concerning surveillance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in March or April 1968, under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The court affirmed the district court's ruling that the Department of Defense (DOD) had fulfilled its FOIA obligations by conducting a thorough search for relevant documents. The DOD's affidavits indicated that it searched its records based on both the initial request and additional specific keywords provided by the appellant. The appellant failed to present evidence challenging the adequacy of the DOD's search. The court noted that the mere possibility that responsive documents once existed does not imply they are still in the DOD's possession today, as the DOD had purged surveillance records in the mid-1970s, with many documents destroyed or sent to the National Archives. The court rejected the appellant's expectation that the search should yield unrelated daily personnel assignment records. The DOD met its summary judgment burden by demonstrating that its search was reasonably calculated to uncover all relevant documents, as established in prior case law. The judgment of the district court was therefore affirmed, and the clerk was instructed to withhold the issuance of the mandate until seven days after any timely petition for rehearing is resolved.