Nested (hierarchical) list needs solution for multi-select functionality

Our app requires us to allow users to created their own hierarchical groups, then associate documents with those groups.

In my opinion the biggest usability concern is that users also need to be able to select a parent node without necessarily selecting the child nodes.

Here's an example. You've created a group, "United States" added a bunch of US employees. You've now created a subgroup for "Vampires." You want to upload a sunlight policy for your US employees, but do NOT want it associated with the "vampires."

Below is the best solution we have so far, but it seems inelegant. I'm not sure that if a user was uploading something they wanted to go to ALL US employees (vampires included) they'd know they had to select all United States options.

We tried making a duplicate option for parent nodes (so if there are children there is suddenly a US GROUP node and a US FOLDER node), but it was even more confusing - why were there TWO US's

Thanks so much for your UX guru wisdom.