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Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Indiana Decisions - 7th Circuit posts one today
Bassiouni, Mahmoud C v. CIA (ND Ill.)
Before POSNER, EASTERBROOK, and SYKES, Circuit Judges.
EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. Professor M. Cherif
Bassiouni, a member of DePaul Law School’s faculty since
1964, is the head of DePaul’s International Human Rights
Law Institute and a frequent participant in human-rights
activities sponsored by the United States, the European
Union, and the United Nations. In 1983 Bassiouni asked
the Central Intelligence Agency for copies of all documents
that mention him. The agency replied that it had some but
would not reveal any details. In 1999 Bassiouni tried again,
invoking both the Freedom of Information Act and the
Privacy Act. Again the agency replied that it has documents
bearing his name. Some of these, the CIA stated, had come
from the State Department, to which it dispatched copies.
The State Department’s catalog and partial disclosure of
those copies satisfies Bassiouni. But he is dissatisfied with
the CIA’s refusal to hand over or even describe documents
it generated internally or received from sources other than
the State Department. The district court concluded that the
CIA is entitled to keep mum. 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5290
(N.D. Ill. Mar. 30, 2004). * * *Bassiouni could have asked
the district judge to order the CIA to reveal in camera what
records (if any) it received from the FBI about Bassiouni
between 1970 and 1975 (and has clung to for 30 years), and
either purge them from its files or give a statutory justification
for keeping them. Yet Bassiouni has never made such a
request—not of the CIA, not in the district court, and not in
this court. He wants disclosure rather than erasure, and
disclosure is the one thing that he cannot have.
AFFIRMED
Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 8, 2004 03:06 PM
Posted to Indiana Decisions