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As senior director of the WH Situation Room, I managed POTUS head-of-state calls. So, what light can I shed on the Trump-promised phone transcript?
First off: unless this administration has changed procedures in place for many years, there are no WH tapes of this phone call. As I used to say, the WH became averse to taping Presidential phone calls in about 1974.
Could there be recordings made by the foreign head-of-state's government or a foreign intelligence service? Sure, particularly when the call is made over a non-secure phone.
Could there be recordings made by the US Intelligence Community? No. Law, regulation, and practice forbids such collection of USG officials. Besides, there's no foreign intelligence value in doing so, as the US official is aware of the call's contents.
Yes, there should be transcripts of the call. It is a long-standing practice, intended to not only memorialize the call but to protect the President against the foreign leader/gov't making egregious claims about the call.
The White House Situation Room and the responsible NSC directorate develop the transcript. WHSR, which monitors the call, develops a verbatim working transcript which is reviewed and finalized by the NSC directorate and captured in a memorandum of conversation (MEMCON).
This MEMCON can vary greatly from a lightly edited full transcript to a vaguely worded summary of the call. Sharing of the MEMCON outside of the WH and across gov't has varied from Admin to Admin and the sensitivity of the call, but has always been very limited.
Who in the USG listens to the call as it happens? This varies from call to call. I managed the very rare call in which only myself and WHSR heard the actual call. In most cases, the call was listened to live by several people.
Call participants often included the Nat'l Sec Advisor or his/her deputies, the WH Chief of Staff, an appropriate NSC Sr Director and members of his/her staff. Extremely rare for a non-WH person to be present for the call and we never looped in anyone outside the 18 acres.
As to the foreign side of the call, we assumed similar participation.
Could the President make calls on his own directly to a foreign head of state? Sure, but these are very busy people who aren't always available for impromptu calls. The procedures were developed over time for both the convenience and the protection of the President.
Posted on Twitter by Larry Pfeiffer Former Director WH Situation Room
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device
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