I was an adviser many years ago to a senior U.S. senator during the first Gulf War. Sometimes he didn’t take my advice and, in a few cases, he rejected my counsel with a healthy dose of well-known Anglo-Saxon verbs. It would never have occurred to me to call a journalist and explain how the boss’s vote was completely against my best advice. This, as every Washington staffer knows, violates the First Rule of Staff Club: “You are not the story.” (The Second Rule of Staff Club: “You must never become the story.”) A principal and an aide are not peers, and any staffer, no matter how senior, who thinks so is in the wrong job.

More important, secrecy is crucial. Briefing books are classified documents. Even one page, however anodyne its contents, is sensitive material. Price disagrees on this but, as an analyst of Russian affairs, I can only say that I would consider just one page of Putin’s briefing book to be solid gold. I would frame it (if it were ever declassified) and hang it in my office, like a hunting trophy, if I had it. That’s because a good intelligence analyst can make sense even of very small things. To know what a leader was advised to say, as opposed to what he or she actually said, is deeply revealing of the internal dynamics of any government.