motorcycleaupairboy wrote:I'm only partially through the book myself, but from what I have read here I already know that the archivist, at least for a former portion, is Major Briggs.
What I find strange is the obviously doctored and false documents, such as Douglas Milford's Roswell pass. The Pass doesn't seem to have a signature on it and is almost confirmed as a forgery as the picture has been stuck onto the card itself, cutting off a portion of the text. Similarly the picture is the exact same one used 7 years previous on his air force records (why would they use a picture that was almost a decade old?), which seem forged themselves, missing crucial information as well. Apologies if this is well worn territory.
What struck me about all this is that in the series Garland would rather not say anything at all than to make up lies, going as far as to stop himself even when he was explicitly giving Cooper and Harry information (''that's classified''). I seem to remember portions of Season 2 where Briggs had to ''invent'' new ways to give them information, behaviour which seemed to stem from a personal conviction and moral code as much as the legal/security parameters of his job. I know people have mentioned at length the inconsistencies with the book, but I don't believe that Briggs would purposefully invent portions of the dossier, it's simply not in his character. If he intended to misinform or to channel the narrative in some way, I believe he would do it through the absence of facts as opposed to the invention of.
(Just to be clear I don't believe this is an issue with Frost's writing which I know some have an issue with, but rather that it suggests to me there are exceptional circumstances at play that have led Garland to act outside of his usual conduct, or that there is even more tampering going on than first thought.)
The first thing that jumped out at me about the Doug Milford stuff was the fact that his government career played out a lot like Wyndom Earle's, or what I imagined Earle's career to be like anyway. That, coupled with the fact that Earle is largely absent from the book, had me suspecting that Earle had been deleted from the documents and replaced with Doug Milford. Of course, the timeline is a bit off in some parts, as Doug seems to be at least 15-20 years older than Earle, and Earle was institutionalized during some of Maj. Briggs final interactions with Doug.
But Briggs and Earle both worked on Blue Book together, so it is strange he would gloss over that. And Doug's Roswell pass photo did bear a slight resemblance to Earle, but maybe that's just me.
Even without this though, why would Briggs not delve into Earle?
Either way, I really appreciated the way Frost fleshed out Doug Milford's character.