LTC Vindman—the NSC staffer who raised concerns about the contents of call— testified there was no "malicious intent" in restricting access to the summary.[1] Morrison also testified that call summary was mistakenly placed on a secure server with restricted access.[2] He explained:
Q. And were you ever provided with an explanation for why [the call summary] was placed in the highly classified system?
A. Yes.
Q. What was the explanation you were given?
A. It was a mistake.
Q. It was a mistake?
A. Yes.[3]
In his public testimony, Morrison reiterated that the placement of the call summary on a secure server was an administrative error.[4] He explained that NSC Legal Advisor John Eisenberg sought to restrict access to the summary, but that his direction was mistakenly interpreted to mean placing the summary on a secure server.[5] He testified:
I spoke with the NSC Executive Secretariat staff, asked them why [the summary had been removed from the normal server]. And they did their research, and they informed me it had been moved to the higher classification system at the direction of John Eisenberg, whom I then asked why. I mean, that's—if that was the judgment he made, that's not necessarily mine to question, but I didn't understand it. And he essentially told me, "I gave no such direction." He did his own inquiry, and he represented back to me that it was – his understanding was that it was a kind of administrative error, that when he also gave direction to restrict access, the Executive Secretariat staff understood that as an apprehension that there was something in the content of the [call summary] that could not exist on the lower classification system.[6]
Morrison also explained that there was no malicious intent in moving the transcript to the secure server.[7]
99
