Take Good Notes

Many years ago I had occasion to meet the Security Officer of a place where a Defense contractor had sold secrets of his work to the Russians.  The movie, The Falcon and the Snowman was made about it later.  There were two people involved, Christopher Boyce and Andrew Dalton Lee, who were selling things about spy satellites.  Those secrets were held by the company the Security Officer worked for.  You can imagine his day was not going very well when people started showing up to "investigate" what had happened to give these two access to data about spy satellites that they could sell.  It was a long year for him.

His advice was to always, in meetings with senior management, take good notes.  He had told his managers many times that they needed to tighten up security but they thought it was not important enough and too expensive to do what was supposed to be done.  There was nothing he could do about some of that, and he could fall on his sword over it, go somewhere else, or take good notes.  That was somewhat where many government officials are when their political leaders - of both parties - decide to do things that will damage the national security of our country.  They can tell them the consequences, based on their own experience, but they can't make them do what they should do.

I had occasion to remember his best piece of advice day before yesterday when I was watching the Senate Intelligence Committee roast the leaders of our country for no good reason.  That part is political, and I must say they handled it well.

In questions that followed, Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, said he never took notes at any of his meetings.  That surprised me a little until I thought about it.  He can have notes taken or he can write things up when he gets back to the office, but he will never have unprotected notes.  These are, as the President Trump personal lawyer said, "privileged communications " a term some people do not seem to know much about.

Yes, they asked the Security Officer for those notes and did not give them back, but when the firings started he still had a job and many of his senior managers didn't.  What Ex-Director Comey forgot was that his notes would not help him there.  At that level, all the appointments are "exempt" i.e you don't have employment rights and you serve at the pleasure of the President.  The Congress is very understanding of that even though they pretend otherwise sometimes.  Congress has the same rules for all of its employees.  I loved working in that environment because it helped focus on what the leadership wanted.  You could get things done.

It is important to take good notes, protect them, and make them part of an official record at times.  The Memorandum for the Record is just as functional as notes, and serves the same purpose.  I have written many of them over time, and believe me, a person knows when to write one.  But, I never considered my notes to be my personal property, to be give over to someone who would give them to the press - not for any reason, even revenge.  I left my notes with my office when I left, something that surprised them when it shouldn't have.  The Security Officer there handed them back to me and said I could keep them.  I told her my security agreement said I was to return them.  She should have known better.  I wonder if Mr. Comey gave his notes back when he left?