TRANSCRIPT — Microcassette Recording — Cassette 89-2207 — Section 11 Internal — Handler Telephone Audit (Excerpt)

— and you've got the file in front of you. Yes? The whole file.

Yes ma'am. Eighty-eight dash N-M-X dash fourteen. The whole thing. It's about an inch and a half.

Then you know more about this man than his wife does. Sixth request?

Sixth. Filed on the second of February. He has cleaned up the language since the fourth one. He is asking for the index now, not the documents. He has read someone on how to do it.

Of course he has. [pause, 3 sec] Alright. Listen. The first thing — and write this down — the first thing is, we do not deny him. We do not deny him today and we do not deny him in May when the next one comes. Are you writing.

I am writing.

We respond. We respond inside the statutory window. We send him the cover sheet of a thing that exists and the first paragraph of a thing that exists, and we redact the rest of both, and we charge him eleven dollars and forty cents for the photocopies. He pays it. They always pay it. The eleven forty is the point.

The eleven forty is the point.

The eleven forty makes him a customer. A customer of the United States government. Customers complain to managers. They do not call reporters. Not at first. [off-mic: closing of door] You with me.

With you.

— now the second thing, and this is the one I want you to remember when I am dead. The second thing is that you put nothing in the file you would not read at your own funeral. Nothing. Don't write *anything* you wouldn't want her to read at your funeral. Not a joke. Not a shorthand. Not a margin note. Not a Post-it. You will not believe how many careers I have watched end on a margin note.

[pause, 4 sec] Understood.

The file outlives you. Write it for the people who will read it after.

Can I — may I ask a question that is not in the file.

You may.

Why are we indulging this man at all. He is, with respect, a ham operator in a trailer outside Socorro. He has no audience to speak of. We could deny him in full, cite (b)(1), and he goes away. He has no money for a lawyer. Why [unintelligible — 2 sec] the eleven forty.

[pause, 6 sec] Because he has a son. [pause, 2 sec] You'll understand the cycle when you're at the desk twelve years.

Ma'am.

It is not the man we are managing. It is the shape he leaves. [pause, 3 sec] Move on. Tell me what you propose for the response to the sixth.

— release the index header. Redact the body. Quote the Bennewitz precedent at footnote three. Cite the (b)(1) and the (b)(3) but not the (b)(7). Save the (b)(7) for the seventh request, when he asks for the field reports.

Good. Save the (b)(7). Now. Three more things and then you can have your lunch. Number one, do not telephone him. Number two, do not put your initials anywhere a journalist could read them in 1995. Number three, when he writes the angry letter — and he will write the angry letter, probably in June — you do not answer it personally. You route it to Public Affairs and you let Public Affairs answer it in the voice of the Department. The Department's voice is bored. You are not bored. You are a person. You stay a person. Do you have that.

I have that.

— and one more thing, the most important one, which is that none of this is about him. He is a courtesy. He is owed a courtesy because of the arrangement, which you have not been briefed on yet and which you will be briefed on in [unintelligible — 3 sec]. Until then you treat the courtesy as the work. The courtesy is the work. The man is the surface of the work. Do you understand the difference.

I think I —

No, you don't. Not yet. That is fine. Sit with not understanding. The understanding —