Version Variability

[Dark Cloud]

This is from Slate, today. Regarding primary source quotations in Custerland, this might be worth keeping in mind. www.slate.com/id/2254490/

The Johnson comment has also been reported as "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost the country," "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost the American people," and "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost the war." As Campbell smartly writes, "Version variability of that magnitude signals implausibility. It is a marker of a media-driven myth."

[Diane Merkel]

Great point. I read of another last night: Stanton upon Lincoln's death "Now he belongs to the angels" being changed to "Now he belongs to the ages." So much more dramatic.

While watching John Dean during the Watergate hearings, I marveled at his apparent word-for-word memory of conversations. He was probably just making it up like the rest of the liars and thieves.

[Dark Cloud]

Except that both he and Haldeman and Erlichman kept excellent notes that did not conflict with the taped recordings or, actually, with each other very much. A few certain expected points of conflict were denoted by missing or erased tapes and notes 'lost.'

Lawyers have to be very good at recollection of that sort, thinking on their feet in court, and when they want to mislead they use weasel words like "indicated" when the they cannot prove or claim so-and-so actually "said" something. Indicate can mean anything from a glance to Vulcan mind meld to throat throttling. Had they discovered the joys of that word yet, the RCOI would be full of it, in a difference sense than some claim it already is.