Mr. Cole. Well, sir; in a printing plant there are usually what they call light tables, a table with a transparent surface with a light under it, which are used for making up, for assembling various materials to be included in a single plate. But that wouldn't be essential. A person could take a negative ready for retouching right to the window there, place it against the window and touch out material in that manner.
Senator Cooper. My question really goes to this point: Would it have been necessary for a person who made these changes to have done the work in a shop or printing plant or could it be done outside of a printing shop?
Mr. Cole. It would not have to be done in a printing shop. It could be done easily in this room or any ordinary living accommodations.
Senator Cooper. That is all.
Mr. Eisenberg. Would you need, Mr. Cole, in your belief, the type of equipment you are likely to find in a printing plant, or could this be done with home equipment?
Mr. Cole. I would say it could be done with home equipment, but I think it is unlikely with respect to the actual preparation of the negative that one would get a successful result from home equipment. I believe that for the preparation of the negative, that is, apart from the retouching operation, that one would need a very accurate camera such as are found in photographic laboratories and printing plants.
Mr. Eisenberg. Could the opaquing have been done off the printing premises?
Mr. Cole. Yes; the opaquing could be done almost anywhere, in any ordinary living accommodation, needing only a source of light to pass through the negative, the liquid opaquing material, and a small brush.
Mr. Eisenberg. Mr. Cole, if you were going to prepare a forged Selective Service System notice of classification, and if you did not have access to blanks of the Selective Service System itself, how would you go about preparing such a forgery?
Mr. Cole. I would use a method similar to that already described here with one modification; namely, that in preparing the original negative, I would make an enlargement directly on the negative, then go through the opaquing operation, and in making the final print I would reduce it back to original size. That would produce a somewhat better quality of print, and it gives somewhat more freedom in the opaquing operation, that is, in working with a larger negative there is not as much danger of running the opaque into some material that you want to save, and we see on these negatives there are a few places where the person doing the opaquing has actually permitted this material to run into a part that should be saved on the original.