through the act the Congress has adopted a philosophy that "any person" should have clear access to agency records without having to state a reason for wanting the information and that the burden of proving withholding to be necessary is placed on the Government agency. Withholding must be justified on the basis of one of the specific 9 exemptions provided in the act. These relate to matters that are:

(1) specifically required by Executive order to be kept secret in the interest of the national defense or foreign policy;

(2) related solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of an agency;

(3) specifically exempted from disclosure by statute;

(4) trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential;

(5) interagency or intraagency memorandums or letters which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency;

(6) personnel and medical files and similar files the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy;

(7) investigatory files compiled for law enforcement purposes except to the extent available by law to a party other than an agency;

(8) contained in or related to examination, operating, or condition reports prepared by, on behalf of, or for the use of an agency responsible for the regulation or supervision of financial institutions; or

(9) geological and geophysical information and data, including maps, concerning wells.

As Attorney General Ramsey Clark noted in his memorandum of June 1967, written to guide agencies in implementing the law:

"The Congress was aware that the decision to withhold or disclose particular records cannot be controlled by any detailed classification of all official records, but has to be effected through countless ad hoc judgments of agency officials, each intimately familiar with the particular segments of official records committed to his responsibility. Those executive judgments must still be made, for Congress did not attempt to provide in the revised section a complete, self-executing verbal formula which might automatically determine all public information questions. Indeed, the staggering variety of Government records makes such a formula unattainable."

The act required that all agencies subject to the Administrative Procedure Act publish regulations in the Federal Register by July 4, 1967, spelling out their organizational structures and procedures, including the specific procedures by which persons could gain access to information.

This committee print is concerned primarily with the public access provisions of those regulations. It includes a brief preliminary analysis. of the regulations and the degree to which they implement the law in accordance with the intent of the Congress. The committee print also examines the practical application of the law as seen in routine requests

for information, in some of the 31 court cases filed against the Government for alleged withholding in violation of the Freedom of Information Act, and in the continuing role of the Foreign Operations and Government Information Subcommittee. Much of the research work for the committee print was done by Mr. Ben Shore under a grant from the American Political Science Association.

The appendixes of this report are designed to inform the public as to effective use of the rights of access provided by the act. The appendixes contain regulations from selected agencies dealing with public access, the Attorney General's June 1967 memorandum which includes the text of the Freedom of Information Act, and a master index of the citations in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) of all the published public information regulations. The master index also includes the Federal Register citation for the initially published regulation and for any notices which have not been incorporated in the Code of Federal Regulations. The regulations appearing in the appendixes contain such amendments as may have been made through July 22, 1968.

Part II.-The Regulations: A General Analysis

Nearly all Government agencies met the requirement to publish implementing regulations by July 4, 1967. These included all departments and in several instances some of their separate operating units. Most of the regulations were codified for inclusion in the CFR; those not codified were published simply as "notices," but they have the same legal weight as a regulation appearing in the CFR.

One of the agencies most tardy to publish was the Department of the Navy, whose regulations did not appear in the Federal Register until December 8, 1967, over 5 months late. A few agencies have failed to publish regulations altogether. Most notable in this group is the National Security Agency. However, the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Secret Service, both highly guarded organizations whose structure, procedures, and records, for the most part, might be exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, did publish regulations, although they are brief and uninformative.

AMENDMENTS

Since the initial flurry of publishing regulations, there have been a number of amendments to replace questionable sections and clarify confusing language or, in at least one instance, to reflect a major change in agency operating procedure. This procedural change was in the Selective Service System which, by custom and not by statutory authority, had allowed local draft boards to decide whether they wanted to make public the names of their board members. After a registrant sued a Philadelphia draft board under the judicial review provision of the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the identity of his draft board members, Selective Service Director Lewis B. Hershey, in March 1968, issued an amendment to the regulations clearly stating that the names of board members are to be posted publicly.

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS

WILLIAM L. DAWSON, Illinois, Chairman

CHRISTINE RAY DAVIS, Staff Director
JAMES A. LANIGAN, General Counsel

MILES Q. ROMNEY, Associate General Counsel
J. P. CARLSON, Minority Counsel

WILLIAM H. COPENHAVER, Minority Professional Staff

FOREIGN OPERATIONS AND GOVERNMENT INFORMATION SUBCOMMITTEE
JOHN E. MOSS, California, Chairman

PORTER HARDY, JR., Virginia
JOHN S. MONAGAN, Connecticut
TORBERT H. MACDONALD, Massachusetts

OGDEN R. REID, New York
DONALD RUMSFELD, Illinois
FRANK HORTON, New York

VINCENT J. AUGLIERE, Staff Administrator
NORMAN G. CORNISH, Professional Staff Member
JACK MATTESON, Professional Staff Member
JAMES L. NELLIGAN, Professional Staff Member
JAYNE BODECKER, Secretary

PREFACE

The Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. 552) required affected Government agencies to publish in the Federal Register implementing regulations. For the convenience and guidance of those concerned with the availability of Government records under the law, there has been assembled in this single volume the public access provisions of regulations published by selected agencies, a master index of the citations in the Code of Federal Regulations of all the published public information regulations and other reference material pertinent to the law.

Comments and observations set forth in the first three sections of the committee print are based on a preliminary staff study and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of individual members of the subcommittee. The staff will continue an analysis and study of the effectiveness of implementing regulations as a prelude to formal subcommittee examination at a future date.

JOHN E. Moss,

Chairman, Foreign Operations and
Government Information Subcommittee.

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