United States Court of Appeals FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT Argued September 21, 2018 Decided April 5, 2019 No. 17-5149 STUART A. MCKEEVER, APPELLANT v. WILLIAM P. BARR, ATTORNEY GENERAL, APPELLEE Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (No. 1:13-mc-00054) Graham E. Phillips, appointed by the court, argued the cause for appellant as amicus curiae in support of appellant. With him on the court were Roman Martinez and Nathanael D.S.R. Porembka, appointed by the court. Stuart A. McKeever, pro se, was on the brief for appellant. Amir C. Tayrani was on the brief for amicus curiae Legal Scholars in support of appellant. Brad Hinshelwood, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, argued the cause for appellee. With him on the brief was Jessie K. Liu, U.S. Attorney, and Michael S. Raab and Mark R. 2 Freeman, Attorneys. Elizabeth J. Shapiro, Attorney, entered an appearance. Before: SRINIVASAN and KATSAS, Circuit Judges, and GINSBURG, Senior Circuit Judge. Opinion for the Court filed by Senior Circuit Judge GINSBURG. Dissenting opinion filed by Circuit Judge SRINIVASAN. GINSBURG, Senior Circuit Judge: Historian Stuart A. McKeever appeals an order of the district court denying his petition to release grand jury records from the 1957 indictment of a former agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which McKeever sought in the course of his research for a book he is writing. The district court, lacking positive authority, asserted it has inherent authority to disclose historically significant grand jury matters but denied McKeever’s request as overbroad. On appeal, the Government argues the district court does not have the inherent authority it claims but rather is limited to the exceptions to grand jury secrecy listed in Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e). We agree with the Government. Accordingly, we affirm the order of the district court denying McKeever’s petition for the release of grand jury matters. I. Background In 1956 Columbia University Professor Jesús de Galíndez Suárez disappeared from New York City. News media at the time believed Galíndez, a critic of the regime of Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo, was kidnapped and flown to 3 the Dominican Republic and there murdered by Trujillo’s agents. Witness Tells of Galindez Pilot’s Death, N.Y. TIMES (Apr. 6, 1964); Dwight D. Eisenhower, The President’s News Conference of April 25, 1956, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States 440–41 (1956). To this day, the details of Galíndez’s disappearance remain a mystery. Stuart McKeever has been researching and writing about the disappearance of Professor Galíndez since 1980. In 2013 McKeever petitioned the district court for the “release of grand jury records in the Frank case,” referring to the 1957 investigation and indictment of John Joseph Frank, a former FBI agent and CIA lawyer who later worked for Trujillo, and who McKeever believed was behind Galíndez’s disappearance. The grand jury indicted Frank for charges related to his failure to register as a foreign agent pursuant to the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 but never indicted him for ...
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