When news outlets began reporting that former FBI director James Comey had been drafting post-meeting memos about his meetings and dealings with the president, I had one thought,
“Black Box”
Those memos? That’s what my late boss, a then retired Nixon era Secret Service Agent, referred to as a, “Black Box.”
At the time, I was just a secretarial admin working for a small city for just over minimum wage—and, for whatever reason, he aimed to teach me what it takes to document even the most convoluted or nuanced facts as clear narrative, and how to recognize and preserve the evidence that may be needed to support the truth when it matters the most.
I’ll never forget the first week I worked for him, he gave me a run-down of how things worked in his department.
Before leaving my office area he said, “Send me a black box on that,” as he replaced his glasses to his face moving toward his office.
“Black box?” I asked carefully, raising an eyebrow.
He stopped walking, took a half beat and turned to me in his John Wayne meets Tommy Lee Jones way.
“Open a blank e-mail and recap the conversation we just had—send me a black-box.”
Resuming his walk, I could have sworn I heard him chuckle under his breath.
A “black box” (as in flight recorder) had the potential to clear your name, prove your point, save your job, or who knew, maybe even your life—or the other way around. A “black box” was documentation—a paper trail, one which could help prove, corroborate, or illustrate what what you have heard or witnessed; proving you were present and lucid—and perhaps even invite written response from your recipient (if any), all date and time stamped—to be presented and served, perhaps, at a later date, as competent evidence.
It seems this is how they train those serving our country in the highest stations of law enforcement because when you’re dealing justice, if you can’t prove it, it didn’t happen.
It’s been almost twenty years since my boss died, and twice as long since he had a front row seat in the scandal that former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper says, “ . . . pales really, in my view, compared to what we're confronting now.”
For Special Agent O’Connor, it was an eventual transfer from the no-longer rolling Nixon motorcade to an extended Bess Truman detail. For Mr. Comey, it will undoubtedly be something else, but I gotta say, those little black boxes might just be the chord that brings the curtain down on that which is yet to be revealed.