Tapping and Taping By JOHN KEPPEL FI FAE is how you
can, if you wish, fake evi- dence on a recorded tape. I will write down the instructions very simply, and you will find it very easy to do, after a little practice. I am no technician, and you don't have to be one either, First tap your telephone call and record it on magnetic tape or wire, or even on a plastic belt or disc. You need a tape or wire recorder—or you can borrow the office dictating machine—and the usual telephone recording accessory. If you can't borrow the office dictating machine you can hire a tape recorder. To buy your own equipment will cost you, in all, anything from less than £30 to something over £200, depending on how grand your ideas are; secondhand equipment is of course cheaper.
Stick the suction pad of the telephone attach- ment unobtrusively on the back of the telephone base, where your victim won't notice it. The very thin flex—as many yards of it as you need—is plugged in to the appropriate socket on the tape recorder.
Now you have a straight recording of the tele- phone conversation. Naturally, you want to mess It about a bit, so that when your victim says 'I don't agree' he is recorded as saying 'I agree'— or something of the sort. You can cut out the word 'don't,' leaving no trace of the operation, by following one of these simple directions: I. Let's describe first, and then forget about, the old-fashioned way of just cutting the tape after 'I' and before 'agree,' and then joining it up again. Remember that if you use ordinary steel scissors on magnetic tape you will record a tell- tale click where it's been cut. Brass scissors are cheap and can be bought at—or ordered from— any shop specialising in tape recorders, hi-fi equipment and that sort of thing. The expensive thing is the cement for joining the tape: it costs 7s. 6d. a bottle. It's usually difficult to mark the exact places at which to cut, and• if you make a bad shot you accidentally clip a bit off one or both of the adjacent words. I don't really recom- mend this method.
2. The better—if somewhat more expensive— way is to transcribe the recorded tape on to an- other tape. In so doing you can omit anything
'The others refuse to work with thi., one'
you like, quite accurately, quite easily, and quite without trace. You will of course need a second tape recorder—one to play back the original tape and one to.record the adjusted version. (Remem- ber, too, that the original recording must be played back on the same type of machine as the one on which it was recorded.) Set up your two machines, and have a lead run- ning from the first machine to the 'Gram' socket of the other; or, if you're doing the job sloppily, just hold the microphone of the second machine near the loudspeaker of the other. This will re- sult in some loss of quality, but that will be a good thing if you want to add bits to what was said: it-will help to cover up the traces.
So, now you've got both tapes running, you come to the bit where he says 'I don't agree.' As soon as he's said T• you quickly press the 'Pause' button on the second machine—and it immediately stops recording (the tape stops, too). As soon as he's said 'don't' you release the Pause button, and that starts the second tape recording again. There you are : on your second tape you have the voice of your victim saying '1 agree.' If he's been speaking very fast and it's difficult to get in between his words, play both tapes at half speed. During this operation the playback will sound very funny, but when the second tape is completed and played back at its normal speed it will sound pretty near normal.
Changing a word—or more—to something else, or adding something, is tricky, because it means impersonating his voice, so make sure you have a recording of poor quality where the difference doesn't stick out like a sore thumb. For the rest, follow the routine above, but in the second recorder you have a mike pluggeli in as well as the lead from the first recorder. At the appropriate part, you stop both recorders, switch the second from 'Gram' to 'Mike' and say your bit. If this is just to be added in, carry on as normal from there; but if it is in substitution for what he actually said, don't forget to use the Pause button to omit what he said from the 'adjusted' tape.
One last thing. The first tape is still an accurate transcript of what was actually said. Don't leave it lying about. Better still, erase it completely, either by passing an erasing magnet over it or— if you haven't got one—running it through the machine again, set to record but with the record- ing level set at minimum.
As I said at the outset, I'm no technician, arid by no means an expert. All I've done is edit a recording of a school concert, cutting out all the dull bits and adding a bit before each item, explaining what it was and who was in it. And, of course, if I was interrupted in dictating letters and so forgot the beginning of a sentence and later on said 'is' instead of 'are'—or something like that—I could always go back on the tape and correct it by `overspeaking' the right word exactly where needed. This ability to alter what has been recorded on the tape by merely overspeaking at the appropriate place is widely advertised by the manufacturers as one of the advantages of their machines.
So, since people are very fussy about a type- script copy of a document being attested by a Justice of the Peace or a Commissioner for Oaths, I wonder why they accept a tape recording as evidence of what someone actually said?
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