As a very junior employee at a very secure “customer” site, Steve Blank (The Four Steps to the Epiphany) found himself reading more than he was supposed to:
Before long I realized that down the hall sat all the manuals for all the equipment at the entire site. Twenty times more technical reading than just my equipment. Although all the manuals were in safes, the whole site was so secure that anybody who had access to that site had access to everything — including other compartmentalized systems that had nothing to do with me — and that I wasn’t cleared for. Back home at ESL control of compartmentalized documents were incredibly strict. As a contractor handling the “customer’s” information, ESL went by the book with librarians inside the vaults and had strict document access and control procedures. In contrast, this site belonged to the “customer.” They set their own rules about how documents were handled, and the safes were open to everyone.I was now inside the firewall with access to everything. It never dawned on me that this might not be a good idea.
Starting on the safe on the left side, moving to the safe on the right side, I planned to read my way through every technical manual of every customer system. We’re talking about a row of 20 or so safes each with five drawers, and each drawer full of manuals. Because I kept finding interesting connections and new facts, I kept notes, and since the whole place was classified, I thought, “Oh, I’ll keep the notes in one of these safes.” So I started a notebook, dutifully putting the classification on the top and bottom of each page. As I ran into more systems I added the additional code words that on the classification headers. Soon each page of my notes had a header and footer that read something like this: Top Secret / codeword/ codeword / codeword / codeword / codeword / codeword / codeword.
I was in one of the most isolated places on earth yet here I was wired into everywhere on earth. Coming to work I would walk down the very long, silent, empty corridors, open a non-descript door and enter the operations floor (which looked like a miniature NASA Mission Control), plug a headset into the networked audio that connected all the console operators — and hear the Rolling Stones “Sympathy for the Devil.” (With no apparent irony.) But when the targets lit up, the music and chatter would stop, and the communications would get very professional.
Nine months into my year tour, and seven months into my reading program, I was learning something interesting every day. (We could do what!? From where??) Then one day I got a call from the head of security to say, “Hey, Steve can you stop into my office when you get a chance?”
Now this was a small site, about 100–200 people, and here was the head of security was asking me over for coffee. Why how nice, I thought, he just wants to get to know me better. (Duh.) When I got to his office, we made some small talk and then he opened up a small envelope, tapped it on a white sheet of paper, and low and behold, three or four long black curly hairs fall out. “Are these yours?” he asked me.
This the one of the very few times I’ve been, really, really impressed. I said, “Why yes they are, where did you get them?” He replied, ‘They were found in the ‘name of system I should have absolutely no knowledge or access to’ manuals. Were you reading those?” I said, “Absolutely.” When he asked me, “Were you reading anything else?” I explained, “Well I started on the safe on the left, and have been reading my way through and I’m about three quarters of the way done.”
Now it was his turn to be surprised. He just stared at me for awhile. “Why on earth are you doing that?” he said in a real quiet voice. I blurted out, “Oh, it’s really interesting, I never knew all this stuff and I’ve been making all these notes, and …” I never quite understood the word “startled” before this moment. He did a double-take out of the movies and interrupted me, “You’ve been making notes?” I said, “Yeah, it’s like a puzzle,” I explained. ”I found out all this great stuff and kept notes and stored in the safe on the bottom right under all the…” And he literally ran out of the office to the safes and got my notebook and started reading it in front of me.
And the joke (now) was that even though this was the secret, secret, secret, secret site, the document I had created was more secret than the site.