Julius Epstein v. Stanley Resor, Secretary of the Army Department of the Army Department Ofdefense

This suit was brought pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552 (a) (3) to enjoin appellee, as Secretary of the Army, from continuing to withhold from appellant documents contained in an Army file.

Appellant, a historian, is research associate at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. His special interest concerns war refugees. He is preparing a book on the forced repatriation of anti-Communist Russians following World War II, and for this purpose desires to examine the Army file designated “Forcible Repatriation of Displaced Soviet Citizens — Operation Keelhaul.’’

This file was generated over twenty years ago by the Allied Force Headquarters of World War II. That agency had classified the entire file as top secret. At the close of the war, the British Government received the original and the United States Department of the Army received a photoprint copy. The file contains a number of individual documents, some of which are of British or combined United States-British origin. Upon its receipt the Army maintained the top secret classification under Executive Order 10501 and it has not yet been declassified.

After storage as a…