Every job has its secret, and the secret to his job was this: there was no penalty for destroying what need not be destroyed. Things left undestroyed, however, were full of the potential to end careers – both his and the careers of those above him. It was rarely the obvious that slipped by. Egregious misdeeds were either exposed by whistleblowers or erased in the field. In the few rare instances that photographic evidence or transcriptions of obvious crimes or criminal errors crossed his desk, he destroyed them immediately. Pictures of blood, reports of bodies, catalogs of burnt vehicles, maps of ruined homes, descriptions of weapons of any sort, recordings of crying bystanders, video of wounded soldiers… these could not be removed quickly enough. But would he notice that one man talking to two others is wearing boots issued only to Iranians? Would half of a seemingly senseless phone call connect to a hand-written note in a manner that exposed a conspiracy? He could not be sure, and so he would destroy them both.