posted 12-7-06 at alt.assassination.jfk
When I looked at it I knew instantly that it was a fake. How? It is not written in the proper format using the proper CIA style. One tip off is the marking "CO-2-34,030." That is actually from a Secret Service report. How would I know? Because I had obtained and used on my Web site some of the pages from that SS report, so the notation jumped out as a fabrication. What someone did was take a page from the SS report, maybe even downloaded it from my Web page, removed the original text and wrote their own. Also the wording is not how the CIA would word a document of that type at that time. They would not refer to Hoover by name or agencies by common names. Instead you would see code words like ODACID. You need to look at hundreds of thousands of genuine CIA documents as I have to develop a mental database of what genuine CIA documents look like. I have no doubt that the hoaxer really thought that something like that was said. I don't think the intent was like the other hoaxes to discredit all JFK assassination research. I think someone just assumed that he knew enough to create a realistic fake to incriminate the CIA.
posted by gary @ 3:26 PM
3 Comments:
http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/R%20Disk/Rifle%20Pictures%20of%20Oswald%20With/Item%2007.pdf
The above document has this same number, and it was an FBI document. Ergo, a few government agencies had this way of putting numbers on their documents.
The fact that a CIA memo used this type of numbering system also, does not discreet, or prove, the veracity of this document.
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That's right. It's a bit ludIcrous to say the document must be a forgery because it uses a Secret Service reference number and formatting.
The memo was written on standard USG stationery published by the U.S. Government Printing Office and available through the General Services Administration. This form, "Optional Form No. 10,” was used by many agencies, including CIA, Secret Service, Treasury, State, etc. It wasn’t "Secret Service formatting," it was U.S. Government formatting, and there was every reason why two agencies working (at least ostensibly) for the same government would use it — i.e., such sources are mandated by USG procurement regulations (the Federal Acquisition Regulations) for the purpose of economizing through central purchasing.
USG memoranda were not required to be written on the form. Obviously, some were written on it. Probably most were not.
It's ironic that some who denigrate others as "conspiracy theorists" should be the first to resort to paranoid and conspiratorial explanations for why an incriminatory document must be a forgery.
The form was discontinued in 1999. It's a defunct form designed for the typewriter age. I probably still have a few copies somewhere among my files.
A smugly worded webpage apparently authored by an individual named Garrick Alder makes a similar argument: "The reason I can tell you it is a forgery is the reference number given in the top right-hand corner of the first page: C0-2-34,030. There are boring bureaucratic reasons why that's not a CIA reference format. But more importantly, it is the reference number from an authentic document – which definitely wasn't created by the CIA. It's from a real Secret Service memorandum, concerning an interview with Earlene Roberts, who was Oswald's landlady. This Secret Service memo was typed up in June 1964, while the Warren Commission was still in progress."
Well, Alder was partly right. The number is from a document, which, like the McCone-Rowley memo, does seem authentic, alright. But perhaps if Alder had researched those "boring bureaucratic reasons why [it's] not a CIA reference format," instead of simply comparing this memo to another CIA memo written without the OF-10, he might have realized that the numbers do not denote a particular document; they correspond to a file, probably a Secret Service file, which may have contained several documents, including some from other agencies.
"C0-2-34,030" seems to have been a tracking number for a file from a system used by the Secret Service, separate from, and probably predating, the TAGS/TERMS system now used by many government agencies and laid out in volume 5 FAH-3 H-600, commonly known as Termdex. The initials "K.P." can be found near the number on some "C0-2-34,030" documents, indicating it belonged in the "Key Persons" file, the Key Person probably being "OSWALD, Lee H."
I can adduce another such file record from the Secret Service, also with the file number CO-2-34, 030. It's dated from Dec. 12, 1963, which was before the Warren Commission even convened.
Alder foolishly claimed that CO-2-34, 030 was a "reference number that the Secret Service would not generate until four months later," and yet here the number appears already on a Secret Service document dating from four months before the McCone-Rowley memo.
The number presumably appears on the McCone-Rowley memo because the same file number had been referenced on the original Feb. 24, 1964 request made by the Secret Service for a record of Oswald's assignments and activities on behalf of the CIA and FBI. The reply sent by CIA Director McCone was quite an eyeopener.
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