meeting with president clinton and congressional leaders in the cabinet room at the white house. and so his very first question to me was everyone in the cabinet room meeting says that you were taking notes, can i have your notes? if those days there were plenty of reporters who were trying tot get me to tell them what happened in the meetings in thee white house, in the senate et majority leader s office, in the speaker s office. but no one ever asked if he or she could have my notes. bob woodward always goes for the best possible sources and notes are always better than human memory. many years later, when i was no longer working in government, i visited bob woodward s home a few times, where much of the vi space is devoted to his office, where his assistants are constantly transcribing audio recordings.e he gave me a tour of the workshop, a place where you can see decades and decades of archived audio recordings, recordings that are the building blocks of the investigative journalis