Mr. FOLEY: May I take you back to the events of November 25
and I don't want to keep going over old ground but you testified
that as an experienced employee of a national security agency you
understood the rules of security relating to documents, and the procedures that must always be followed with relation to classified
documents in particular.
Ms. HALL: That is correct, sir.
Mr. FOLEY: Without any reference to possible obstruction of justice, which is not the purpose of this committee to determine, did
you not know that alteration of existing documents in a major, fundamental way was a violation of the responsibility of those who
possess those documents?
Ms. HALL: I agree with you, sir, and at the time, as I stated
before, I felt uneasy but sometimes, like I said before, I believed in
Colonel North and there was a very solid and very valid reason he
must have been doing this and sometimes you have to go above the
written law, I believe.
I don't know, I felt—I believed in Colonel North. Maybe that is
not correct. It is not a fair thing to say. I felt uneasy to begin with
and I agree with your assessment basically.
Mr. FOLEY: That unauthorized destruction of documents is a
gross violation of security.
Ms. HALL: I don't know that destruction—OK, you are talking
about the altered documents.
Mr. FOLEY: The shredding.
Ms. HALL: The shredding. I don't know that it was unauthorized.
Mr. FOLEY: You are not sure whether Colonel North had
Ms. HALL: I don't believe
Mr. FOLEY: You are not sure whether Colonel North did not have
superiors' approval to destroy those documents?
Ms. HALL: I have no idea, sir.
Mr. FOLEY: But normally speaking, you would not be engaged in
that kind of shredding as a routine daily or routine weekly or
monthly activity of your office?
Ms. HALL: Sir, we never shredded to the volume we did. In my
eyes, those documents could have been shredded, the PROFs in my
office could have been shredded every single day. If I completed a
phone log, I could have shredded it that minute. There is no reason
why it couldn't have been shredded earlier.
Mr. FOLEY: Do you have any doubt that it was an unusual shredding?
Ms. HALL: It was unusual. I have said that.
Mr. FOLEY: Finally, under any circumstances, the removal of
classified documents from the offices to which they were assigned,
removal from those offices and from the building was a gross violation of the security of those documents which for any other purpose, any purpose at all, would justify the severest discipline, isn't
that true?
Ms. HALL: I agree that it was a gross violation and I honestly, sir,
did not know the severity of what I was doing at the time. I wish I
could redo it.