The lack of a paper trail documenting the decision-making process is also troubling, the intelligence official said. For example, under previous administrations, after a principals or deputies meeting of the National Security Council, the discussion, the final agreement, and the recommendations would be written up in whats called a summary of conclusions or SOC in government-speak.
Under [President George W. Bush], the National Security Council was quite strict about recording SOCs, said Matthew Waxman, a law professor at Columbia University who served on Bushs National Security Council. There was often a high level of generality, and there may have been some exceptions, but they were carefully crafted.
These summaries also provided a record to refer back to, especially important if a debate over an issue came up again, including among agencies that needed to implement the conclusions reached.
If someone thought the discussion was mischaracterized, he or she would call for a correction to be issued to set the record straight, said Loren DeJonge Schulman, who previously served in former President Barack Obamas administration as a senior advisor to National Security Advisor Susan Rice. Schulman is now a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
People took the document seriously, she said.
During the first week of the Trump administration, there were no SOCs, the intelligence official said. In fact, according to him, there is surprisingly very little paper being generated, and whatever paper there is, the NSC staff is not privy to it. He sees this as a deterioration of transparency and accountability.
It would worry me if written records of these meeting were eliminated, because they contribute to good governance, Waxman said.
It is equally important that NSC staff be the ones drafting the issue papers going into meetings, too, said Schulman. The idea is to share with everyone a fair and balanced take on the issue, with the range of viewpoints captured in that document, she said.
If those papers are now being generated by political staff, she added, it corrupts the whole process.