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Administrative Law Keyed to Popper
Kissinger v. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
Citation:
445 U.S. 136 (1980)Facts
Henry Kissinger served as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs from January 1969 to November 1975, and as Secretary of State from September 1973 to January 1977. Throughout this period, his secretaries monitored his telephone conversations and prepared detailed summaries or transcripts. In October 1976, while still Secretary of State, Kissinger transferred these telephone notes from his State Department office to Nelson Rockefeller’s estate, having obtained an opinion from the State Department’s Legal Adviser that the notes were his personal papers. He later donated the notes to the Library of Congress with restricted access. Three separate FOIA requests were filed seeking access to these transcripts: one by William Safire before the notes were removed from the State Department, and two others by the Military Audit Project and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press after the notes had been transferred. The State Department denied all three requests. The Government Archivist twice requested to inspect the notes to determine if they were agency records, but Kissinger declined. The requesters then filed suit seeking a judgment declaring that the summaries were agency records that had been unlawfully removed and were being improperly withheld.
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