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This memorandum opinion by U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, dated March 27, 2007, rules in Leslie Kean's FOIA suit against NASA over records about the object said to have crashed in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania on December 9, 1965. The court found NASA had not shown its searches were adequate and noted likely overlooked Cosmos 96 records. It upheld NASA's withholding of two emails under Exemption 5 and ordered the parties to propose new search procedures.
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17 amended since 2000. See Pl.’s Opp. at 49-50. Plaintiff argues that it is very likely that NASA has some underlying data regarding this satellite and that NASA’s searches should have uncovered this data as the FOIA request encompassed information about the Cosmos 96 satellite. Given the fact that NASA recently amended one of these documents, see Pl.’s Exs. 10D, 28, it appears likely that there are responsive documents regarding the satellite. See Friends of Blackwater v. U.S. Dep’t of Interior, 391 F. Supp. 2d 115, 120-21 (D.D.C. 2005) (holding that absence of drafts of documents was inconceivable, which was proof that agency search was inadequate). Second, the fact that the renewed search of the sixteen Records Center boxes during the fourth search uncovered responsive documents is evidence that the search procedures used during the third search were inadequate. Therefore, because the record as a whole leaves significant doubt about the adequacy of NASA’s searches, and there were well- defined FOIA requests and positive indications of overlooked materials, summary judgment for the defendant is inappropriate. See Valencia-Lucena, 180 F.3d at 326. II. Validity of NASA’s Claimed FOIA Exemptions FOIA requires that federal agencies release all documents requested by members of the public unless the information contained within such documents falls within one of nine exemptions. 5 U.S.C. § 522(a),(b). These statutory exemptions Case 1:03-cv-02509-EGS Document 45 Filed 03/27/07 Page 17 of 21
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 21 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.