Killian's Secretary Speaks: Forged Memos Telling the Truth

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1. Marian Carr Knox was Killian's secretary. She would have typed the memos.

2. The CBS memos are fake. The typefaces are wrong for what was in the office. There are stylistic differences in how Knox would type the memos. Terminology like "billets" and "administrative officer" are Army terms, not ANG terms.

3. The CBS memos reflect real documents that once existed. Knox remembers very vividly "when Bush was there and all the yak-yak that was going on about it." They accurately reflect Killian's viewpoint and memos that were in a "cover your back" file that Knox maintained for Killian. There may not have been a memo-for-memo connection, but there were real memos once.

So the story is: The memos are forged, but they're telling the truth.

UPDATE: I left a dangling "but" up there - the italics finished the sentence. Sorry about that.

This is a bluff of epic proportions. The forger wanted people talking about the Bush Guard record, s/he had a lot of information about Bush, and s/he knew about the CYA file. There couldn't be too many people who knew that - Killian's widow and son didn't even know that.

I'm not convinced that the forger gave a damn about being discovered, either. Whether the memos were written on Word, or the forger located a Selectric Executive D to do it right seems to be irrelevant. Being discovered would just be more publicity about the contents. But if enough of the right people thought the gig was up and started talking about what they knew, the bluff would have worked.

And it did. Hodges may be backpedalling for all he's worth, but he's confirmed the details of the memos' content. And Mrs. Knox may discover that she knows the identity of the forger, if as I suspect the forger has interviewed her in the past. Only time will tell...