To pick up the phone is a manner of speaking. I'm wondering why these former employees seemingly weren't asked to come in as consultants, which reading between

To pick up the phone is a manner of speaking. I'm wondering why these former employees seemingly weren't asked to come in as consultants, which reading between the lines of the article wasn't the case, not this was a trivial matter that could be entirely resolved with one phonecall. My reading of the reference to notes is that they were following some written material left behind by the original team, not that these were notes acquired from ex-members of the team in 2000.