Judith Katherine Exner v. Federal Bureau of Investigation

This action in the district court was brought to compel disclosure to plaintiff within certain specified time limits of information sought from the files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (herein FBI) under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. § 552 , and the Privacy Act of 1974, 5 U.S.C. § 552a.

It has no relation to any flat refusal by the FBI to act, but to the FBI’s refusal (a) to act until it has treated all previous requests, seriatim; and (b) to .act until it has satisfied both itself and, in certain matters, the Department of Justice (of which the FBI is a part), that the requested material can properly be made available. It thus deals with what time compliance the courts should order; not on a flat or blanket refusal of the FBI to comply with plaintiff’s demands.

The primary problem is that precise time limits were placed by the Congress on the furnishing of such information by the FBI, which bear no relation in actual practice to the multiple demands placed upon it, or to the capacity of the FBI work force to do the careful and thorough examination required on each such demand.

To put it in another way, the procedures adopted by the FBI in servicing…