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From: Jim Banning
Date: 11 Jul 1999
Time: 18:16:27
Remote Name: 205.188.199.152
For those guys who used to work the terminals and remember getting the daily Associated Press and UPI news bulletins, I tried to play a practical joke on my day shift counterpart. I knew he always read these blurbs, so I concocted a fake AP news message. I altered a lot of the regular news stories to make it obvious that the AP bulletin was a fake. Then I put a story in there that there was 10,000 VietCong massing about three miles outside of Cantho. I left this fake news bulletin on a desk in the commcenter, knowing that Sgt. Albert (my counterpart) would read it. That evening when I came into work, the Chief Warrant Officer called all of us together and said "Some horse's ass made up this story and the base commander had us on red alert for an hour today before we figured out that this was a prank." Before he could go any further, I asked him if I could talk to him privately in his office. I admitted that I had created this story, never thinking that it would go any further than the commcenter. The CWO let me slide. He was a pretty decent guy. I had two CWOs while I was there and one Lieutenant. The CWOs were CWO Moon and CWO O'Banion. The Lt. was a Lt. Richard Siemons. Anybody remember these guys?