Actually, it's not a red herring if the claim is that there was a written agreement. Where is the agreement?
For the woman who just said that "x" happened, it's just a he said-she said situation. Is it right to try to destroy someone if the only thing they had was her word? They need to have some sort of corroboration. If you may remember, the public didn't take the charges against Clinton seriously until the blue dress showed up... now that's corroboration! I feel the same way about this stuff with Cain. Until these women can produce SOMETHING that is evidentiary, they are just blowing smoke. Before you try to destroy someone, you should have stuff that you can make a court case out of.
I know that agreements exist. When I look at that objectively, the existence of agreements does not mean that the source of the original story, or that some other sources have those documents to provide to Politico. Remember, Cain's talking about these encounters, and Cain doesn't have agreements to give to anyone, so Cain can't provide 'documentation' himself.
But, I can think of several scenarios in which the source would not produce an agreement to Politico:
(1) If Anti-Cain Source had been an executive National Restaurant Associations but was no longer there and no longer had access to agreements, there would be no 'documentation' for Cain Source to provide.
(2) If Anti-Cain Source had been at the National Restaurant Associations and had knowledge of, but no access to, the agreements (and there are many legitimate scenarios; for example, I know partners of mine negotiated settlement agreements and I know who the parties were, but I don't have access to the agreements), there would be no 'documentation' for Cain Source to provide.
(3) If Anti-Cain Source is still at the National Restaurant Associations and hasd knowledge of, but no access to, the agreements (twelve year-old documents are often in off-site storage), there would be no 'documentation' for Cain Source to provide.
(4) If Anti-Cain source is, in fact, the one person who was actually identified by name, by Herman Cain, as the person who leaked the information - that person found out from Herman Cain in discussing possible issues that would be raised in Cain's Senate campaign, and because Cain didn't have documents to give that man, there would be no 'documentation' for Anti-Cain Source to provide.
(I could continue with more possibilities, but I'll stop with that one, because Herman Cain told us the name of the now-Perry supporter who leaked the story to Politico, the strategist on Cain's Senate campaign whom Cain told about one charge. That person had no documentation to provide to Politico because Cain had no documentation.
Do you understand that the women should have a written agreement, but that not everyone who knows about these settlements (or settlement agreements called termination or severance agreements) has access to them?
I know that there were contracts between NASA and vendors to build the Saturn V rocket. You can print that. I stand by that statement. But I don't have copies of those documents. I know that my dogs had parvo shots at a vet whose office was on Westheimer in Houston. You can print that today, because it's true. But I don't have documentation of that because the place burned down.
The deal is that there are actually dozens of legitimate reasons why the Anti-Cain source that first spoke with Politico didn't have 'documentation" (there are not, however, remotely that many legitimate reasons, if any exist, for Politico running the story when they did, with how little information they had).
So unless someone will explain more about the twenty-minute video, the "no documentation of allegations" still appears to be a red herring headline built on parsing words. Look over here! No documentation! in the NRA knew there were written agreements but didn't have access to them, then there wouldn't be 'documetnation.