Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

May 17, 2017

Memo To File (Maybe Bad OpSec)

Filed under: Government,Security — Patrick Durusau @ 3:02 pm

What an FBI memo like Comey’s on Trump looks like by Josh Gerstein.

From the post:

The existence of memos that former FBI Director James Comey reportedly prepared detailing his conversations with President Donald Trump about the bureau’s Russia investigation is far from shocking to FBI veterans, who say documenting such contacts in highly sensitive investigations is par for the course.

“A conversation with a subject of an investigation is evidentiary, no matter what is discussed,” said former FBI official Tom Fuentes, who stressed that he doesn’t know what the president’s status is with respect to the ongoing probe of Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 election. “Any conversation with Trump is going to be noteworthy….If you drop dead of a heart attack, your successor is going to want to know what was going on, so you would record that whether it’s to aid your future memory or for a successor two or three years down the line.”

Comey documented Trump’s request to curtail the FBI investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election the day after former national security adviser Michael Flynn resigned, according to a New York Times report subsequently confirmed by a source to POLITICO. The White House has denied the president made any such request.

A “memo to file” isn’t complicated and especially if done on a routine basis, has high value as evidence. Gerstein includes a link to an actual “memo to file.” (see his post)

I mention this because a practice of “memo to file,” much like Nixon’s Watergate tapes, can prove to be a two-edged sword.

Like calendars, travel logs, expense records, etc., a series of “memo(s) to file” may not agree with your current memory of events. The “record” will be presumed to be more reliable than your present memory.

Just a warning to make sure the record you preserve is the one you want quoted back to yourself in the future.

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