I guess what we CAN do if there are no minutes of meetings, is just look at both what Clarke wrote in his book, and the public comments he made, and recorded BEFORE he wrote his book.
Definitely, we can do that. That's our job. It's not the job of the press to demand proof before they print. The press gives us all this stuff and we sort it out the best we can. That's the way it works.
You are going to have to remember things better..<g> Ijust looked to be sure I did not have a comment (yet) about the possibility of John Kerry at the Nov 1971 meeting re possible assassination of government members...
I may have mixed the assassination up with the asses of evil button. That's what happens when there are multiple parties to discussions and multiple discussions. You would remember better what you said than I would remember what you said, for example, because you're the one who said it so it's more meaningful to you. Also, since I'm not particularly interested in dirty rumors, it would be easy for me to be vague on which ones you may have weighed in on. Recollections vary for perfectly legitimate reasons. Recognizing that, I never frame my recollections as accusations and always leave some wiggle room in how I specify them plus I make allowances for the differing recollections of others.
On the subject of Clarke, my experience in these matters is that, barring an intentional contrivance, there is always some element of validity in all the varying perspectives. If you try to look at things from the perspective of each of the parties, you can almost always see how they could read things the way they did. |
