Where's Zinke? The interior secretary's special flag offers clues (WP)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/wheres-zinke-the-interior-secretarys-special-flag-offers-clues/2017/10/12/68672476-aeb2-11e7-9e58-e6288544af98_story.html
Where’s Zinke? The interior secretary’s special flag offers clues
By Lisa Rein | October 12 at 6:04 PM

At the Interior Department’s headquarters in downtown Washington, Secretary Ryan Zinke has revived an arcane military ritual that no one can remember ever happening in the federal government.

A security staffer takes the elevator to the seventh floor, climbs the stairs to the roof and hoists a special secretarial flag whenever Zinke enters the building. When the secretary goes home for the day or travels, the flag — a blue banner emblazoned with the agency’s bison seal flanked by seven white stars representing the Interior bureaus — comes down. ?

In Zinke’s absence, the ritual is repeated to raise an equally obscure flag for Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt.

Responding this week to questions from The Washington Post, a spokeswoman for Zinke, a former Navy SEAL commander, defended the Navy flag-flying tradition as “a major sign of transparency.”

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Just like a British monarch - the Royal Standard goes up when the sovereign is present.