http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/091504dnpolnatguard.1185eb4ae.html
(Registration required)
Former secretary says she didn't type memos

06:24 PM CDT on Tuesday, September 14, 2004

By PETE SLOVER / The Dallas Morning News

HOUSTON – The former secretary for the Texas Air National Guard colonel
who supposedly authored memos critical of President Bush’s Guard service
said Tuesday that the documents are fake, but that they reflect real
documents that once existed.

Marian Carr Knox, who worked from 1956 to 1979 at Ellington Air Force
Base in Houston, said she prided herself on meticulous typing, and the
memos first disclosed by CBS News last week were not her work.

“These are not real,” she told The Dallas Morning News after examining
copies of the disputed memos for the first time. “They’re not what I
typed, and I would have typed them for him.”

Mrs. Knox, 86, who spoke with precise recollection about dates, people
and events, said she is not a supporter of Mr. Bush, who she deemed
“unfit for office” and “selected, not elected.”

“I remember very vividly when Bush was there and all the yak-yak that
was going on about it,” she said.

But, she said, telltale signs of forgery abounded in the four memos,
which contained the supposed writings of her ex-boss, Lt. Col. Jerry
Killian, who died in 1984.

She said the typeface on the documents did not match either of the two
typewriters that she used during her time at the Guard. She identified
those machines as a mechanical Olympia, which was replaced by an IBM
Selectric in the early 1970s.

[more at
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/091504dnpolnatguard.1185eb4ae.html]

  She also said the memos may have been constructed from memory by
someone who had seen Lt. Col. Killian’s private file but were not
transcriptions because the language and terminology did not match what
he would have used.

For instance, she said, the use of the words “billets” and a reference
to the “administrative officer” of Mr. Bush’s squadron reflect Army
terminology rather than the Air National Guard. Some news reports
attribute the CBS reports to a former Army National Guard officer who
has a longstanding dispute with the Guard and has previously maintained
that the president’s record was sanitized.

Mrs. Knox also cited stylistic differences in the form of the notes,
such as the signature on the right side of the document, rather than the
left, where she would have put it.

***************************************

Newseek says that "A principal source for CBS's story was Bill Burkett,
a disgruntled former Guard officer who lives in Baird, Texas, who says
he was present at Guard headquarters in Austin in 1997, when a top aide
to the then Governor Bush ordered records sanitized to protect the Boss."

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5974040/site/newsweek/

* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *