Judge Orders Release of Visitor Records

A district court judge has ruled that the Washington Post’s request for access to “visitor logs of physical access to the White House Complex…and the Vice President’s residence, `reflecting or concerning the entires and/or exits of any persons who sought or were scheduled to visit the following people in the Office of the Vice President: Vice President Cheney; David Addington, I. Lewis `Scooter’ Libby, C. Dean McGrath, Steven Schmidt, John Hannah, Eric Edelman, Ron Christie, Victoria Nuland, Aaron Friedberg, Stephen Yates, Samantha Ravich, and David Wurmser’…” should be granted. The Department of Homeland Security had overruled the Deputy Director of the Secret Service, who had granted the Post’s FOIA request, and the Post began this lawsuit, requesting a preliminary injunction.

The judge rejected the DHS contention that the logs were not public records. “Taking the defendant’s assertions on this point to be true, the records, at a minimum, are “obtained” by the Secret Service in the performance of official duties. In noting the `[t]he legislative history of the FOIA abounds with references to records acquired by an agency, the Supreme Court instructed that records obtained by an agency for FOIA purposes include “studies, trade journal reports, and other materials produced outside the agencies both by private and governmental organizations.’…Because the defendant bears the burden of demonstrating that the records are not `agency records’…however, the court resolves the ambiguity created by the defendat’s language in the plaintiff’s favor….” The court also determined that the records were under the agency’s control