If President Joe Biden has any private words with Russia’s Vladimir Putin at their meeting next week, U.S. interpreters and diplomats will be standing by to document their high-stakes encounter. It’s a decades-old system meant to ensure that senior officials, and ultimately historians, have a record of what American presidents say to international leaders. Trump's determination to keep his talks with the Russian president confidential sparked concerns about what might have occurred in those private meetings, particularly given Trump’s cozy relationship with Putin.
If President Joe Biden has any private words with Russia’s Vladimir Putin at their meeting next week, U.S. interpreters and diplomats will be standing by to document their high-stakes encounter.
Former U.S. officials acknowledge the unusual and concerning nature of Trump's desire for secrecy, which a former official familiar with the matter says also included Trump routinely waving away the usual immediate debriefings by aides after his one-on-ones with world leaders. But in the run-up to Biden's own first session with Putin as president in Geneva, the U.S.
Trump in one way made it easier for listeners to follow and document his private words with Putin. Appearing dazzled by the pomp and import of the summits, Trump would have to ask interpreters to repeat Putin’s comments “half the time,” the former official said. Michael McFaul, a former White House official and ambassador to Russia in Barack Obama's administration who served as the official record-taker for Obama’s occasional one-on-one “pull-asides” with Russian leaders, described how the routine of capturing and documenting such talks played out for him.
Up until the Reagan administration, the same State Department interpreters who translated during the one-on-ones between U.S. presidents and international leaders were charged with preparing the official memoranda of conversations, or memcons, said Dimitry Zarechnak, a retired State Department employee. Zarechnak translated for Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev and others.
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