OPINION AND ORDER Plaintiff Osen LLC, a law firm, brings this action under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”), 5 U.S.C. §552, seeking the release of records held by Defendant United States Central Command that document attacks against American servicemembers stationed in Iraq. Since this lawsuit was initiated, the parties have significantly narrowed their dispute. What remains for the Court to resolve is whether Defendant may withhold information, in the form of photographs, graphics, and text, depicting or otherwise describing vehicles that were damaged by improvised explosive devices (“IEDs”) that used explosively formed penetrators (“EFPs”), where that specific information has not already been produced to Plaintiff (the “Vehicle Information”). Defendant has withheld production of the Vehicle Information based on its determination that public disclosure could reasonably be expected to expose vulnerabilities and capabilities of U.S. military vehicles when attacked by EFPs, including specific details concerning the effectiveness of EFPs in penetrating the armor of those vehicles, thereby assisting the ability of adversaries of the United States to more effectively target U.S. and allied forces. Each party has new moved for summary judgment. For the reasons that follow, Defendant’s motion is granted, and Plaintiff’s motion is denied. I. Background A. Facts1 Plaintiff allegedly “represents hundreds of U.S. service members killed or injured in terrorist attacks while serving in Iraq…along with members of their families.” Dkt. 1 (“Compl.”) 2. In its capacity as their counsel, Plaintiff files lawsuits against the Islamic Republic of Iran (“Iran”) seeking compensation for injuries those servicemembers suffered in attacks for which, Plaintiff’s clients believe, Iran bore ultimate responsibility. See, e.g., Karcher v. Islamic Republic of Iran, 396 F. Supp. 3d 12 (D.D.C. 2019). In those lawsuits, Plaintiff attempts to demonstrate Iran’s responsibility for the attacks by proving that the assailants employed EFPs, a weapon characteristically supplied by Iran. Id. at 14-15, 25-46. And in order to acquire evidence about the weapons used in the attacks, Plaintiff requests “a variety of investigatory and other records” relating to the attacks from Defendant, pursuant to FOIA. Dkt. 46 (“Frank Decl,”) 6. Between November 2016 and June 2017, Plaintiff submitted 260 FOIA requests to Defendant seeking records documenting attacks on American servicemembers whom Plaintiff represented. Osen I, 375 F. Supp. 3d at 414. Defendant made substantial disclosures of nearly 8,000 pages of records in response to those requests. Id. Defendant did not disclose all the records Plaintiff sought, however. Id. at 414-15. Under FOIA, agencies are not required to release all information requested from them; instead, federal law sets forth nine exemptions defining categories of information to which FOIA’s disclosure requirement does not apply. See 5 U.S.C. §552(b). Thus, Defendant withheld certain additional records responsive to Plaintiff’s requests, which, it claimed, fell within certain of those exemptions. Osen I, 375 F. Supp. 3d at 414-15. In particular, the first such exemption (“Exemption 1″) authorizes the withholding of information that is “specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy” and is “in fact properly classified pursuant to such Executive order.” 5 U.S.C. §552(b)(1). Among other withholdings, Defendant redacted four categories of classified information contained in the records documenting the attacks — information about convoy operations, information about certain equipment designed to counter IEDs, information about how EFPs are designed and function generally, and information specifically about the ability of EFPs to penetrate the armor used to protect American military vehicles. Id. at 415. In Osen I, Plaintiff challenged Defendant’s withholding of a subset of this information: images of EFP strikes and information regarding the size of the EFPs. Id. at 418. The district court agreed with Plaintiff that the records sought were not exempt from disclosure under FOIA because certain materials had already been disclosed and thus were not protected by FOIA under the official disclosure doctrine. Id. at 418-23. On appeal, however, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the district court in part, finding that Defendant had not waived Exemption 1 pursuant to the official disclosure doctrine, and approved certain of Defendant’s withholdings under Exemption 1. Osen II, 969 F.3d at 109-14, 116. Between April 2017 and May 2019, Plaintiff submitted over 180 additional FOIA requests to Defendant. Frank Decl. 6; see Compl., Exh. A (listing requests). Once again, Defendant produced a considerable volume of records responsive to Plaintiff’s requests, Frank Decl. 9, yet redacted certain information in those records that, it believed, fell within at least one FOIA exemption and thus could properly be withheld, id. 11. The information Defendant withheld fell into multiple categories, including identifying information about individual servicemembers and American military units, and information pertaining to EFPs and to the countermeasures taken against them. See Dkt. 46-1 (Vaughn index of withheld information). As relevant to this Opinion and Order, Defendant withheld information about American military vehicles that had been attacked by EFPs. See Dkt. 69 (“Unclassified Doyle Declaration”) 7. Certain, more limited information about those vehicles had also been withheld from the disclosures challenged in Osen I,375 F. Supp. 3d at 416, and upheld in Osen II, 969 F.3d at 107-08, 114-16. During the years between that litigation and the present case, however, Defendant changed its view as to what specific parts of records concerning vehicle attacks are classified, are exempt from disclosure under FOIA, and therefore may be redacted in the records produced to Plaintiff. Unclassified Doyle Declaration
12-13. In particular, the productions that Plaintiff challenges in this case contain more extensive redactions, in multiple respects, than the redactions Defendant applied to the disclosures challenged in Osen I. In the disclosures challenged in Osen I, Defendant redacted “images that show damage caused by EFPs in these terrorist attacks — specifically, the ‘strike points’ where an EFP penetrated an armored vehicle.” Osen II, 969 F.3d at 107; accord Unclassified Doyle Declaration 12. In those disclosures, however, Defendant left unredacted images of “undamaged portions of vehicles” and at least “some textual information about the types of vehicles damaged in attacks and descriptions of the damage.” Unclassified Doyle Declaration 12. By early 2020, however, Defendant “determined that the redactions previously applied to photographs and graphics of the type sought by Plaintiff were not sufficient to avoid revealing information about the vulnerabilities and capabilities of military equipment and infrastructure.” Id. 13. Defendant reasoned that photographs in which only the strike point was redacted nonetheless revealed “information about the location(s) of the battle damage on the targeted/damaged vehicle, as well as the types of vehicles and locations most vulnerable to EFPs.” Id. 15. According to Defendant, similar information would be revealed by textual descriptions of the vehicles damaged in such attacks or of the nature of the damage they suffered. Id. 11. Defendant consequently decided to redact entire images of vehicles damaged in EFP attacks, not just the portions of those images depicting the strike points, id. 10, and to redact text in the records that communicated that same information, id. 11. B. Procedural History Plaintiff filed the Complaint that initiated this action on July 23, 2019. See Compl. Following submissions by the parties, see Dkts. 14-15, 18, on February 4, 2020, the Honorable Katherine Polk Failla, to whom this case was then assigned, set a schedule requiring Defendant to produce 500 pages every two months until it had fully responded to Plaintiff’s requests.2 Dkt. 19. On June 14, 2021, the parties reported that Defendant had completed its initial production, that Plaintiff had begun producing its objections to that production, and that Defendant had begun reviewing those objections. Dkt. 28. On December 17, 2021, the parties reported that they had engaged in negotiations regarding the withheld records, and while they had successfully reduced the scope of their dispute, disagreements over the permissibility of certain withholdings remained for the Court to resolve on summary judgment. Dkt. 36. Defendant filed its motion for summary judgment on May 26, 2022, Dkts. 44-46, and Plaintiff filed its cross-motion for summary judgment on July 6, 2022, Dkts. 49-51. Rather than proceeding with the remainder of summary judgment briefing as scheduled, however, on July 22, 2022, the parties requested that summary judgment briefing be stayed sine die so that Defendant could reprocess Plaintiff’s requests and potentially narrow the issues in dispute. Dkt. 53. Following that reprocessing, the parties explained, only a single issue remained for the Court to decide, which involves what is referred to herein as the Vehicle Information: whether the following types of information may be proper[l]y withheld pursuant to FOIA exemption 1, 5 U.S.C. §552(b)(1): The specific types of military vehicles identified in produced records; Redactions of images of vehicles beyond those necessary to withhold images of “strike points”…; Text descriptions of battle damage to military vehicles; and Information falling within these categories that appears in materials previously marked “unclassified.”3 Dkt. 61 at 1. On February 17, 2023, each party filed a renewed motion for summary judgment addressing only that question. Dkts. 62-64, 66, 67 (“Pl. Br.”), 68. Accompanying Defendant’s motion was an unclassified declaration from Major General David S. Doyle, Defendant’s Chief of Staff, who is “responsible for, among other things, protecting sensitive military planning, operations, and intelligence information against unauthorized disclosure” and has been designated an Original Classification Authority by the Secretary of Defense. Unclassified Doyle Declaration
