Reading Room Document

Disclosure of Advisory Committee Deliberative Materials

The Federal Advisory Committee Act requires advisory committees to make available for public inspection written advisory committee documents, including predecisional materials such as drafts, working papers and studies. The disclosure exemption available to agencies under exemption 5 of the Freedom of Information Act for predecisional documents and other privileged materials is narrowly limited in the context of the Federal Advisory Committee Act to privileged inter-agency or intra-agency documents prepared by an agency and transmitted to an advisory committee. The OLC does not provide release dates for its opinions, so the release date listed is the date on which the opinion was authored. The original opinion is available at www.justice.gov/file/24061/download.

April 29, 1988