By Donald Scarinci • 09/21/16 10:06am
A New Jersey appeals court recently held that public entities may decline to confirm or deny the existence of records responsive to a request under the Open Public Records Act (OPRA). While such responses have long been sanctioned under the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the decision in North Jersey Media Group, Inc. v. Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office is the first to hold that the “confirm nor deny” response is also proper under OPRA.
The History of “Glomar Responses”
The term “Glomar response” originates from Phillippi v. CIA, 546 F.2d 1009 (D.C. Cir. 1976). The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) responded to a FOIA request for records pertaining to the Hughes Glomar Explorer, an oceanic vessel publicly listed as a research ship privately owned by billionaire Howard Hughes. Media reports at the time maintained that the federal government was using the ship to salvage a sunken Russian submarine that was carrying nuclear missiles.
In response to a request by journalist Harriet Ann Phillippi regarding the government’s attempts to conceal the existence of the project, the CIA asserted, “in the interest of national security, involvement by the U.S. Government in the activities which are the subject matter of [the plaintiff’s] request can neither be confirmed nor denied.” The CIA further claimed that the “existence or nonexistence of the requested records was itself a classified fact exempt from disclosure under . . . FOIA.”
https://observer.com/2016/09/new-jersey-appeals-court-condones-glomar-responses-under-opra/?utm_content=New%20Campaign&utm_campaign=Observer_NJ_Politics&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=New%20Jersey%20Politics
