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according to the Chairman of the ABA Administrative Law Division, was to indicate that "with passage of time, when the investigation is all over and the purpose and point of it has expired, it would no longer be an interference with enforcement proceedings and there ought to be disclosure." Id., at 149. The tenor of this description of the statutory language clearly suggests that the release of information in investigatory files prior to the completion of an actual, contemplated enforcement proceeding was precisely the kind of interference that Congress continued to want to protect against. Indeed, Senator Hart stated specifically that Exemption 7 (A) would apply "whenever the Government's case in courta concrete prospective law enforcement proceeding-would be harmed by the premature release of evidence or information .. 1975 Source Book 333.

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That the 1974 Congress did not mean to undercut the intent of the 1966 Congress with respect to Senator Humphrey's concern about interference with pending NLRB enforcement proceedings is apparent from the emphasis that both Senators Kennedy and Hart, the leaders in the debate on Exemption 7, placed on the fact that the amendment represented no radical departure from prior case law. While the D. C. Circuit decisions discussed above were repeatedly mentioned and condemned in the debates, nowhere do the floor debates or

informer, or (D) disclose investigative techniques and procedures." Id., at 158.

The Hart amendment, proposed on the floor, incorporated most of this language and all of the language found in Exemption 7 (A):

"Investigatory records compiled for law enforcement purposes, but only to the extent that the production of such records would (A) interfere with enforcement proceedings, (B) deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication or constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, (C) disclose the identity of an informer, or (D) disclose investigative techniques and procedures."

After passing the Senate in this form, the amendment was modified to its present form, see supra, at 223, in Conference Committee.

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Committee Reports condemn the decisions holding that Exemption 7 protected witnesses' statements in pending NLRB proceedings from disclosure, see supra, at 226, although Congress was clearly aware of these decisions.13 As Senator Hart concluded in his introductory remarks in support of the amendment:

"This amendment is by no means a radical departure from existing case law under the Freedom of Information Act. Until a year ago the courts looked to the reasons for the seventh exemption before allowing the withholding of documents. That approach is in keeping with the intent of Congress and by this amendment we wish to reinstall it as the basis for access to information." 1975 Source Book 334.14

18 Congress had prepared for its use a detailed case summary of the first 200 decisions under FOIA, see 1974 Source Book 116-183, a summary that included such cases as Barceloneta Shoe Corp. v. Compton, 271 F. Supp. 591 (PR 1967), and NLRB v. Clement Bros. Co., 407 F. 2d 1027 (CA5 1969), discussed supra, at 226. Wellman Industries, Inc. v. NLRB, 490 F. 2d 427 (CA4), cert. denied, 419 U. S. 834 (1974), followed the holdings of these two earlier decisions, but was apparently decided after the case summary was prepared and is not cited therein.

14 Senator Hart's comments are in accord with Senator Kennedy's explanation of why the Committees, after considering similar proposals to amend Exemption 7, see n. 11, supra, failed to report out an amendment. Senator Kennedy stated that the Committees had concluded that the courts were, by and large, giving that Exemption an appropriately narrow construction, and that any amendment of the Exemption would serve only to create confusion. See 1975 Source Book 335; S. Rep. No. 93-854 (1974), reprinted in 1975 Source Book 159. Senator Kennedy then stated that in light of the recent series of cases in the last 9-12 months, the "initial appraisal" of the case law had "turned out to be short lived." Id., at 335.

The Senator may have been mistaken as to the year of the first decision extending Exemption 7 protection automatically even in closed-file cases. In Frankel v. SEC, 460 F. 2d 813 (CA2 1972), over the strong dissent of Judge Oakes (the author of the later Title Guarantee opinion), the court held that material in an investigatory file was exempt from

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Senator Kennedy confirmed that "by accepting [this] amendment we will be reemphasizing and clarifying what the law presently requires." Id., at 336. The emphasis that was placed on the limited scope of the amendment makes it more than reasonable to conclude that Congress intended to preserve existing law relating to NLRB proceedings-case law that had looked to the "reasons" for the Exemption and found them to be present where an unfair labor practice proceeding was pending and the documents sought were potential witnesses' statements.

D

In the face of this history, respondent relies on Senator Hart's floor statement that "it is only relevant" to determine whether an interference would result "in the context of the particular enforcement proceeding." Id., at 333. Respondent argues that this statement means that in each case the court must determine whether the material of which disclosure is sought would actually reveal the Government's case prematurely, result in witness intimidation, or otherwise create a demonstrable interference with the particular case.

We believe that respondent's reliance on this statement is misplaced. Although Congress could easily have required in so many words that the Government in each case show a particularized risk to its individual "enforcement proceedin[g]," it did not do so; 15 the statute, if anything, seems to draw a distinction in this respect between subdivision (A) and subdivisions (B), (C), and (D), see supra, at 223–224. Senator Hart's words are ambiguous, moreover, and must be

disclosure even though the investigation was complete and no enforcement proceedings were pending. Given the long history of cases construing NLRB witness statements as nondisclosable, see supra, at 226, we may assume that these decisions were not the object of the Senator's amendment.

15 Indeed, Congress failed to enact proposals that might have had this effect. See n. 11, supra.

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read in light of his primary concern: that by extending blanket protection to anything labeled an investigatory file, the D. C. Circuit had ignored Congress' original intent. His remarks plainly do not preclude a court from considering whether "particular" types of enforcement proceedings, such as NLRB unfair labor practice proceedings, will be interfered with by particular types of disclosure.

Respondent also relies on President Ford's message accompanying his veto of this legislation, and on the debate which led to Congress' override of the veto. The President's primary concern was with the congressional response to this Court's decision in EPA v. Mink, 410 U. S. 73 (1973), concerning in camera judicial review of classified documents under Exemption 1. In addition, however, the President cited what in his view were the onerous new requirements of Exemption 7 that would require the Government to "prove -separately for each paragraph of each document that disclosure 'would' cause" a specific harm. 1975 Source Book 484. The leading supporters of the 1974 amendments, however, did not accept the President's characterization; instead they indicated, with regard to the amended Exemption 7, that the President's suggestions were "ludicrous," id., at 406 (remarks of Rep. Moorhead), and that the "burden is substantially less than we would be led to believe by the President's message," id., at 450 (remarks of Sen. Hart).

What Congress clearly did have in mind was that Exemption 7 permit nondisclosure only where the Government "specif [ies]" that one of the six enumerated harms is present, id., at 413 (remarks of Rep. Reid), and the court, reviewing the question de novo, agrees that one of those six "reasons" for nondisclosure applies. See supra, at 232. Thus, where an agency fails to "demonstrat [e] that the... documents [sought] relate to any ongoing investigation or . . . would jeopardize any future law enforcement proceedings," Exemption 7 (A) would not provide protection to the agency's decision. 1975

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Source Book 440 (remarks of Sen. Kennedy). While the Court of Appeals was correct that the amendment of Exemption 7 was designed to eliminate "blanket exemptions" for Government records simply because they were found in investigatory files compiled for law enforcement purposes, we think it erred in concluding that no generic determinations of likely interference can ever be made. We conclude that Congress did not intend to prevent the federal courts from determining that, with respect to particular kinds of enforcement proceedings, disclosure of particular kinds of investigatory records while a case is pending would generally "interfere with enforcement proceedings."

III

The remaining question is whether the Board has met its burden of demonstrating that disclosure of the potential witnesses' statements at this time "would interfere with enforcement proceedings." A proper resolution of this question requires us to weigh the strong presumption in favor of disclosure under FOIA against the likelihood that disclosure at this time would disturb the existing balance of relations in unfair labor practice proceedings, a delicate balance that Congress has deliberately sought to preserve and that the Board maintains is essential to the effective enforcement of the NLRA. Although reasonable arguments can be made on both sides of this issue, for the reasons that follow we conclude that witness statements in pending unfair labor practice proceedings are exempt from FOIA disclosure at least until completion of the Board's hearing.

Historically, the NLRB has provided little prehearing discovery in unfair labor practice proceedings and has relied principally on statements such as those sought here to prove its case. While the NLRB's discovery policy has been criticized, the Board's position that § 6 of the NLRA, 29 U. S. C. § 156, commits the formulation of discovery practice to its

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