Licorice: "We think it went from Soros to Kerry's brother
to the Boston Globe and finally to Rather's daughter's in Texas."
Why would someone type a memo to himself and then add his own signature to it? Did he want to assure himself that he actually typed it? Do people in organizations commonly do this?
That's what I was wondering too. It's like putting my signature on my grocery shopping list.
"Why would someone type a memo to himself and then add his own signature to it?"
Memo to myself: Next time I type a memo to myself, I won't sign my own memo to myself. It might raise suspicions that I didn't really type a memo to myself.
Licorice: "We think it went from Soros to Kerry's brother
to the Boston Globe and finally to Rather's daughter's in Texas."
I don't know what corporate business custom is now in the era of PDAs and email--but in the late eighties and early nineties there were rashes of discussion about the CYA Memo and the Self-Promoting Memo in re clawing one's way up the ladder. Articles about it in "How to Succeed in Business" writing.
I also wondered why someone would type the letterhead, address, etc., on a memo just for his "personal file." Or was the letterhead part not typed? I thought it was. Very peculiar. Not as peculiar, though, as the word breaks and formatting on this alleged 1970s document lining up exactly with the default line breaks and formatting on Word. Now what are the chances of that?
Great point!
Not commonly, but during my service years I ran across a thing called a Memorandum For the Record on several occasions.
These were normally used to affirm a verbal agreement and to remind the person(s) making the agreement that they were bound by said agreement. Normally, one copy was retained by the person who generated the memorandum and a copy was provided to others involved in the agreement. A little intimidation, you see.