RATH: “The people we meet with go directly from our meetings to the Oval Office.”
Clearly, Rath is implying that he’s meeting with people who are direct reports to the President. He might be saying that these individuals are conveying the outcomes of the meeting to the President in near real time. Either way, this should be interpreted to mean that these officials are Trump appointees in high-ranking positions—likely at the secretary or undersecretary level.
RATH: “The last meeting we had was very strange, we actually met in a SCIF off all things.”
A SCIF is a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. It is a secure room in which sensitive or classified state business occurs. SCIFs are designed with advanced soundproofing, reinforced doors and locks, and keypad access controls. To enter a SCIF, one must shed all technology from their person, including cell phones, smart watches, wireless headphones, laptops, tablets, you get the idea. Nothing that can be turned into a listening device or a camera gets inside.
The technical and physical standards for these facilities are incredibly strict. They are constructed with the view towards creating pockets of physical space where sensitive compartmented information can live. Meetings that take place in SCIFs are typically of a classified nature and are usually between government officials with requisite security clearances. It is unusual to have individuals without security clearances in a SCIF.
For US State Department officials to meet with the APP in a SCIF suggests they viewed the content of the meeting as occurring at a classified level, and were attempting to shield the contents of the discussion from any foreign signals intelligence agencies that might have an interest in eavesdropping on the meeting....
