Kean v. NASA, 1:03-cv-02509

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Plaintiff has made numerous arguments about the inadequacy
of NASA’s searches pursuant to her FOIA request. Defendant, in
turn, has submitted and re-submitted numerous declarations of
various NASA employees attempting to further document their
search efforts. Unfortunately, neither party has provided any
up-to-date summary or concise presentation of all these
declarations and allegations that would allow the Court to easily
determine the sufficiency of NASA’s search process. After
sorting through this disorganized collection of documentation,
the Court concludes that defendant has not met its burden of
proving that its search was adequate.
As described above, NASA’s third search entailed multiple
searches distributed across many offices in NASA Headquarters and
the NASA Centers. Roberts and McConnell initiated this overall
search and oversaw the process, but did not participate in or
witness the actual searches of records. See Meeropol v. Meese,
790 F.2d 942, 951 (D.C. Cir. 1986) (approving reliance upon an
affidavit of agency employee responsible for supervising search,
although he necessarily relied upon information provided by staff
members who actually performed search). Rather, they relied on
email responses from the various departments to apprise them of
the search results, and defendant similarly relies on those
emails to document the searches conducted. Plaintiff challenges
the propriety of NASA’s search process on several grounds.
Case 1:03-cv-02509-EGS Document 45 Filed 03/27/07 Page 13 of 21