Reporting Entity. Federal Register / Vol. 54. No. 243 / Wednesday. December 20. 1989 / Notices DISCLOSURE OF LOBBYING ACTIVITIES CONTINUATION SHEET Page of Approved by OME 0343-0046 Authorized for Local Reproduction 52325 Some weeks after the Attorney General's second appearance before your committee on the Department's budget authorization, you forwarded a letter from Senator Leahy posing questions on sealed settlements. As to the Senator's general requests, it would be exceedingly difficult and cumbersome for the Department to provide comprehensive responses. Confidential agreements may arise in a wide variety of contexts, including the broad range of civil and criminal litigation handled by the Department, as well as matters that are not in litigation. The Department does not keep any central file or data base of settlement agreements or confidential promises, or otherwise index or mark files that may contain such agreements or promises. As a result, we would be unable to respond to the Senator's general inquiries without a massive file-by-file search of Department records. To be complete, such a search would have to include the various litigating divisions and branches of the Department, as well as the offices of the United States Attorneys around the country. Those components contain over 5,000 attorneys litigating thousands of cases. In addition, the search would also have to include not only the records presently kept in those offices, but also the records maintained at the Department's storage facilities. In short, the Department would have to commit considerable resources to search an enormous number of individual files. Senator Leahy also requested additional information on settlements in the FBI discrimination cases. Only two of the settlement agreements discussed at the hearing contain confidential provisions. The agreement which resolved the class EEO complaint of James E. Short, signed by the parties in September 1989, contains no such provision and was made available to all members of that class and posted in the Identification Division at FBI Headquarters. Each of the remaining two agreements involved the resolution of claims raised by individual employees who have remained on duty in the FBI. One of those cases was resolved while still in the EEO administrative process; the other was resolved in the course of litigation in Federal Court. In both cases, the confidential provisions of the settlement agreements occurred during the negotiation process and were viewed by both parties to each agreement as beneficial. The FBI and Department of Justice attorneys involved in the settlement negotiations are unable to state with certainty which side proposed the confidential provisions. They were not, however, intended to prevent the Congress or the American public from understanding how the Government is settling cases. Rather, they were intended to protect the privacy of these employees and to permit them to return to productive careers in the FBI. As you are aware, the FBI recently reached a settlement with Donald Rochon, a plaintiff in three separate civil actions in Chicago and Washington, D.C. against the FBI and a number of its employees. There is no confidential provision in that settlement agreement and copies of the agreement were furnished to the FBI's Oversight Committees on the day they were signed. We believe this type of candor to be essential in keeping the Congress and the American people apprised of the manner in which we resolve allegations of racial discrimination and harassment. However, we believe we also have an obligation to protect the privacy of those employees who resolve their complaints with their employer. Privacy has also been a crucial element with protective orders in other areas of department interest and is best demonstrated through two examples. The first is Sanchez & United States v. King, Civ. No. 82-0067-M (D.N.M. 1984). As part of the settlement in that case, which challenged the denial of voting rights to Native Americans, the United States provided federal observers for elections in New Mexico. All parties and the court agreed that those monitoring reports should be kept under seal because they contained information that could reveal for whom identified individuals voted and single out individuals who had assisted Native Americans in casting their votes. Another protective order was entered in Mississippi v. United States, Civ. No. 87-3464 (D.D.C. 1987). In this action for a declaratory judgment pursuant to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, we sought discovery of state records that had been sealed for privacy reasons by state law until the year 2025. As part of discovery, we agreed to keep them confidential and, by court order, anybody reviewing them must agree to maintain their confidentiality. |