[Robert A Cook PE]

The carbon would carry the original impression, then also the re-typing, since the correction fluid/paper only affects the top page.

A CYA memo, written to "nobody," with no secretary/clerk initials, wrong/missing letterhead with a different address for the ANG unit (PO vice AFO and Base address), typed (somehow) in proportional-spced font ....

But typed "perfectly" and without errors or backspaces ...

Why?

Why write such a "perfect" type-written memo, and go to all that effort SPECIFICALLY to record a minor administrative problem AGAINST a very junior, soon-to-quit, non-flying, surplus and excess AF reserve officer? When the Vietnam War still rages, and the ANG units are stuffed full of combat-exerienced, more senior pilots fully qualified in newer aircraft?

Why write the memo at all?

[Fedora]

Why write such a "perfect" type-written memo, and go to all that effort SPECIFICALLY to record a minor administrative problem AGAINST a very junior, soon-to-quit, non-flying, surplus and excess AF reserve officer? When the Vietnam War still rages, and the ANG units are stuffed full of combat-exerienced, more senior pilots fully qualified in newer aircraft?

Why write the memo at all?

Thanks--you put into words a line of thought I was trying to verbalize. Or as I would put it: Independently of any problems with the mechanics of the typewriter, the documents strike me as forgeries because they commit to paper something which someone at the time would have had little motive to record in such detail for official filing purposes. The documents have little meaning in a 1972 context; their meaning appears geared towards the context of the 2004 election campaign. The documents' Sitz-im-Leben (the term literary critics use to refer to the situation constituting the historical context of a written work) seems to be 2004, not 1972. The documents strike me as reminsicent of somone who knows someone else is eavesdropping on them and deliberately speaks louder to make sure the eavesdropper hears. It reminds me of that old Saturday Night Live skit on the Watergate tapes where Nixon and his aide are trying not to laugh as they talk knowingly into the bug recording them while they hold up a sign that says, "Let's speak in incomplete sentences!"