The checklist below was drafted in advance of the event it governs. Nothing in its execution was improvised, and nothing in its execution was unkind. Three people in good coats moved a fact from a place where it could be reached to a place where it could not, and ticked each item as the stores went dark.
Disposition items
| Item | State |
|---|---|
| Full-rate capture — the burst, the answering run, the response | Transferred to secured stores; verified; originals dark |
| Working copies held on the analysis floor | Withdrawn |
| Side-room store (spare drives; two years of backward listening) | Lock cylinder replaced. Old cylinder bagged, labelled, retained |
| Access | Reduced to the attached read-level list |
| Site personnel | Advised of their standing obligations |
| Public position | No finding is announced. No finding exists |
| Review | The disposition is to be reviewed at an appropriate interval |
No date is entered against the final item. None was proposed.
Objection, appended at request
Position noted for the record at the request of M. Eide, liaison, Norwegian Intelligence Service, and logged at the level above:
You have classified the proof that we are not alone in the universe and put it behind a key held by thirty people, perhaps forty, with no date on the holding. The world is to be told nothing, and the people who heard it first are to be told they cannot say they heard it. I am not recording that the decision is wrong. There is a second party at the door and the arithmetic of better us than them does not come out any other way — I have tried, and neither can you. I am recording what the decision does. You are not building a vault. You are building a habit. And the habit does not end.
The objection was received without argument, ticked through, and logged at the level above, as requested.
Addendum, same hand, unofficial: He asked that it be logged that the objection was made. That is what this line is.