Appeals Court Allows CIA to Continue Abusing Glomar Responses to Evade Accountability

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit today ruled in Connell v. Central Intelligence Agency that the CIA is permitted to refuse to confirm or deny whether it has records related to its “operational control” of Camp VII at Guantánamo Bay, despite public evidence that these records exist. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the ACLU of D.C. represent James G. Connell III, an attorney for one of the men subjected to the CIA torture program and sent to Camp VII.

In 2017, to better represent his client, Mr. Connell filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the CIA seeking information about the agency’s “operational control” over the facility. As Mr. Connell and the ACLU demonstrated in court, reams of evidence leave no doubt that the CIA maintained some measure of operational control. But instead of processing his request, the agency produced three records, withheld a fourth in its entirety, and issued a so-called Glomar response, by refusing to confirm or deny whether any other responsive records exist. In 2023, a district court ruled for the CIA. Mr. Connell had asked the appeals court to reject the CIA’s illogical and implausible assertion of a Glomar response and vacate the lower court’s ruling.

“It’s a real disappointment whenever a court endorses absurd government claims of secrecy that defy reality, as it did today,” said Brett Max Kaufman, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Center for Democracy. “Today’s decision won’t change what the Senate Torture Report and piles of other evidence make clear: that the CIA had operational control over the so-called ‘high-value detainees’ it tortured abroad after it brought them to Guantánamo. When presented with a chance to call the agency’s ridiculous Glomar bluff, the court chose to play along instead, even though the FOIA empowers it to do precisely the opposite.”