Newsroom-l Public Journal: Bush Guard memo "forgery" a hard sell

September 09, 2004

Bush Guard memo "forgery" a hard sell

Right wing sources argue that the Killian memos are forgeries. They claim that they use proportional characters that supposedly weren't available in 1973.

Proportional characters were used on IBM typewriters as early as 1941, and became widespread after 1950, when the Executive model was introduced. Below, an ad for the IBM Executive published in 1954.

.

Although the Times New Roman face used by MS Word as the default font is superficially similar to the typeface used in the memos (because both Microsoft and IBM were inspired by Times Roman, one of the most successful commercial typefaces of all time), it is not identical. The numbers are especially different.

They also allege that the memos use "smart" (curly) quotation marks. I see a couple of possibly "smart" apostrophes. As you can see in the ad, this was a feature of the IBM Executive, a surprisingly sophisticated machine, typographically, that I used while working in public relations 1959-60. The most damaging evidence is the superscript "th." If the IBM Executive did not have this capability, the document is subject to considerable doubt until the issue can be resolved.

I'll be interested in comments from other typographers on this.

[Note: In response to a comment on the Newsroom-l mailing list, I have recreated the text in Word, printed it out and scanned it. The original memo is a very bad scan, possibly from a copying machine, but I think the differences in the "g" and the "3" are substantial.

Go to Font Wars for latest updates.

Posted by jules_siegel at September 9, 2004 05:28 PM | TrackBack

Comments

Right. My wife did secretarial work for an ad agency and, later, a real estate developer in the late 1950s and early 1960s. When she saw the ABC News snippet about the criticism she snorted with scorn; the IBM machines she worked with could easily have done all that.
I will not say that the Bushies are liars, but....

Posted by: Al Revzin at September 10, 2004 12:03 AM

Did the IBM Selectric I have the capability to do superscript.

Posted by: John Flood at September 10, 2004 08:30 AM

Some comments so far from the Newsroom-l mailing list.

Walt Cunningham wrote (quoting Jon-Erik Prichard>:

"Another aspect of the type on [the August 18, 1973 memo] suggests, perhaps proves, forgery. The type in the document is kerned. Kerning is the typsetter's art of spacing various letters in such a manner that they are 'grouped' for better readability. Word processors do this automatically. No typewriter can physically do this.

"Two good kerning examples in the alleged memo are the word 'my' in the second line where 'm' and 'y' are neatly kerned and also the word 'not' in the fourth line where the 'o' and 't' overlap empty space."

There is no kerning in the Y and A in CYA. If there were kerning it would be global and apply to all the characters. The effects might also be explained by the way the letters distort as a result of scanning in the course of faxing, copying and scanning. I can see similar effects in the IBM ad.

Thomas Phinney wrote:

It sure does look to be Times New Roman actually. Though the quality of the repro is pretty stinky. However, the character widths match exactly. However, the superscripted "th" in smaller size is indeed a major red flag that suggests it's a forgery, and even that it was done with Word.

A typographer commenting to Fark.com claims that he worked on IBM typewriters that had a "th" key. I don't remember that. If he's wrong, this would be the most significant evidence that the document is forged.

I'm also dubious that a National Guard office would have an IBM Composer at the time. It seems highly unlikely, from what I know of the audience and usage of the composer. Even if they did, it still seems unlikely that they would use it for routine memos and correspondence.

The most likely typewriter is the IBM Executive, not the Selectric (which did not have proportional spacing). It was introduced in 1941, but did not become widely available before 1950, when IBM began promoting a new model. By the 1970s, it had been superseded by the Selectric and the Composer (a Selectric that had a memory and could justify text.) See http://www.wordiq.com/definition/IBM_Executive_series_typewriter

Eli Dickinson wrote:

Also, I would like to point out an error in the anti-forgery evidence posted on the Newsroom-L blog. Microsoft Word displays documents slightly differently on the screen than it does when printed (and, in fact, there may even be slight differences depending on your printer and your version of Word). The image on the blog uses MS Word text taken from a screenshot, not printed on a page and scanned -- you're comparing apples and oranges. The most obvious difference is that the superscripts are displayed slightly lower on the screen than on paper.

I've replaced the image with one scanned from a Word print-out. As Thomas Phinney observed, the original memo is a very bad scan, possibly from a copying machine, but I think the differences in the "g" and the "3" are substantial and not easily explained by the scanning problems.

Roger Helbig wrote:

I used an IBM Executive Selectric typewriter extensively in the early-mid 70s while in the Air Force at three different bases, NY, ME, AZ, so that type typewriter was extensively employed in Government applications.

As it turns out, the Selectric apparently did have proportional type, but didn't have variable spacing, so it couldn't do proper justification. The Selectric Composer did. Like the Varityper, it was widely used in letter shops, and might very well have been used at an Air National Guard base to prepare manuals and the like. If so, all of the anomalies can easily be explained, including the superscript "th."

The Washington Post has an example of a "suspect" memo that uses the regular "th" and the superscript "th" in the same document. This wouldn't happen in Word, which automatically changes the "th" to superscript. Note "111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron" in first line.

It would be possible on a typewriter with the "th" key or, especially, a Selectric or a Selectric Composer, which could have the character on a separate "golf ball" or accessible through some other key combination.

You'll also notice their comment about the lack of the base on the "4." It's not significant. If the document were produced on a well-worn impact typewriter, the base of "4" might have worn off. Or, more likely, it was never there in the first place because the typewriter font was modelled on Times Roman.

Posted by: Jules Siegel at September 10, 2004 08:41 AM

I think you guys are reaching here.

1. The leading (i.e., the vertical line spacing) matches the default settings in Microsoft Word. By the way, it looks like 14 point leading (i.e., the distance from baseline to baseline is 14 points) to me. Typewriters were capable of 12 point (single space) leading, 18 point (1 1/2 space) and 24 point leading. No typewriter was capable of 14 points of leading.

2. Before desktop publishing arrived in the mid-1980s, typesetting systems and high end typewriters would *not* have supercripted the "th" and "st". They would have been "superior" not "superscript". The difference is that "superior" characters are lined up with the top of the capital letters, while "superscript" shifts the character *above* the top of the character. When I was doing typesetting in the late 1980s, only Quark XPress did "superior" characters. And I don't think that Word does them today. You can see a *superior* "th" on one of the typewritten documents that are not in dispute. But no "superscript". The only way to do superscript on a typewriter would be to manually shift the roller up 1/2 space, then type the "th". The superscript "th" in the memo is *exactly* like Word's superscript automatic format. By the way, the "th" didn't superscript whenever the author put a space between the number and the "th". This, too, is how Word handles it.

3. The differences in character shape that you identify seem minor to me and could be the result of multiple generations of photocopies and scans. Indeed, similar "clogging" can be seen on the other letters (which do appear to be identical to the modern Times New Roman font).

4. If you start Word and type the paragraphs using the default settings, the line breaks occur *exactly* where they do in these 1970s memos. So do the letter spaces. Seems an amazing cooincidence, doesn't it?

5. The IBM Executive font that you reference is a very different font than Times Roman. So it's clear that the memos weren't typed on what would have been a *very* expensive machine.

6. "Times New Roman" -- the default font in Word and the font apparently used in these memos -- was designed by Monotype for the Times newspaper. I do not think that it was licensed to any typewriter manufacturer.

For the memos to be genuine, they would have had to have been typed on a typewriter that had the Times New Roman font (in 12 point size), been capable of 14 point leading, capable of doing superscript (rather than superior) "th". The writer would also have used the exact same margins as Word's defaults -- .75" top and bottom, 1" right and left.

As someone who has considerable experience with typography both before and after desktop publishing, the memos appear to be particularly inept fakes. I wouldn't hug this one too hard.

Posted by: Ty at September 10, 2004 10:32 AM

Wouldn't it be really cool if you could find the and example of the superscript "th" being used on previously released documents. Like on this one.

Line 2 clearly has the small "th" in question. This can again be seen here on page 3 (pdf) of the same document by increasing the magnification.

Posted by: Robert McClelland at September 10, 2004 10:37 AM

Forget the line breaks. That's where anybody would break the lines. People break em when the dinger dings!

Instead look at where the last letter of each line hits, first on the original then on the ms word document.

They don't line up. Not even close.

On the original, they line up. It's a TYPEWRITER.

On the second one, they DON'T line up. It's a computer.

Posted by: Bruce at September 10, 2004 12:26 PM

Ty wrote:

IBM worked with Monotype on the development of fonts for its output devices. Press Roman, used on the Selectric, is the analog of Times Roman. See Bitstream Font Analogue

Typeface Identification
Table of Font Analogs

Times Roman®

TmsRmn; TR; Varitimes; Claritas; Dutch 801; English; English 49; English Times; Euro Times; London Roman; Pegasus; Press Roman; Sonoran Serif; Tempora; Tiempo; Timeless; Times New Roman

The Selectric Composer was capable of all of that and more. To my eye, the type in the IBM Executive ad looks indistinguishable from the Killian Memo.

As someone who has considerable experience with typography both before and after desktop publishing, the memos appear to be particularly inept fakes. I wouldn't hug this one too hard.

Could be. We'll see how it works out. It is possible that the documents were forged. If so, maybe some Democrats learned a lot from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. I don't approve, but it does make me smile.

Posted by: Jules Siegel at September 10, 2004 03:07 PM

I'm sorry, but the lines *do* line up. Every single line in the 8-18-72 memo lines up exactly the same as its 2004 equivalent. Try it if you don't believe me.

For this to happen on every line of a document, you'd have to be using the same font. Font "metrics" -- the width of individual characters, their height, etc., -- are unique to each font.

The IBM Executive typewriter that is referenced on this site uses a completely different font than Times New Roman. Indeed, a real simple test would be to type any two lines from the memos in Word with Times New Roman. Note the relative positions of several letters on the lines. Then see if they line up the same way on the memos.

For instance, the first 2 lines of the text in the 8-18-73 memo is:

1. Strandt has obviously pressured Hodges more about Bush. I’m having trouble running

interference and doing my job. Harris gave me a message today from Grp regarding

On the memo, the H in "Hodges" vertically lines up with the stem of the first "r" in "Harris" on the second line.

And whaddaya know, they line up *identically* when typed in Word as well. Every single letter in the Word document lines up identically to its memo counterpart.

In other words, the memo's font *has* to be Times New Roman.

And Times New Roman did not exist on any typewriters in the 1970s. Indeed, Times New Roman has only existed as a font since the early 1990s when Monotype created it. There was an earlier font called simply "Times", but it has different metrics than Times New Roman, and, I believe some differences.

So it seems clear to me that these documents were not typed on a typewriter in the 1970s. However...let's see if CBS has the guts to submit the *originals* to any experts to be sure. Anyone care to place a bet on that?

Anyone with typesetting experience knows that these documents were typed on a modern computer and not a 1970s typewriter. In my humble opinion, the anti-Bush folks are making a bad mistake by defending such an inept forgery.

Posted by: Ty at September 10, 2004 03:08 PM

We're probably past the point where it matters much what any individual thinks about these documents. The media is all over this, and I predict that the general consensus will quickly be that these were forged. The match between MS Word and the memos is so close that any disinterested party who holds one up to the other is going to believe the memo was forged.

It may be that this is a PHENOMENAL coincidence, or it may be that Karl Rove is an evil genius... but I think the man in the street is going to start asking, "What did Kerry know, and when did he know it"?

Given his sagging poll numbers, he doesn't need this blowing up in his face for the next week or two. Any momentum he had is gone. Splat!

Posted by: Scott W. Somerville at September 10, 2004 03:46 PM

I have typesetting experience as well. I used to use old Linotype machines, as well as photomechanical machines.

Look at the ends of the lines in the original.

The letter g at the end of regarding, and the letter g at the end of rating both line up. Those both line up right under the letter n in running, and right OVER the letter n in Austin.

Now look at those same lines in the ms word version:

The two letter g's don't line up. They fall between the two n's in running. They fall between the n and the space in Austin.

It's as plain as day.

The spacing is far more variable in the MS word copy.

Times New Roman was invented in 1931 by Stanley Morison. The name was later changed to Times Roman by Linotype.

And it was available on IBM typewriters.

"Anyone with typesetting experience..." Really Ty, I hope your typesetting experience predates Quark. I used lynotype hot lead machines. I know a little bit, too.

Posted by: Bruce at September 10, 2004 03:55 PM

These documents were done on a typewriter. Just look at the vertical character drift. As anyone who has ever used a typewriter can tell you, inaccuracies always occur where some characters do not line up vertically with the rest. Note in this case how the 8 in the date is slightly above the 1 and the A. Also note how the first e in "Memo to file" is again shifted slightly upward. Only a typewriter makes these kinds of inaccuracies. In the computer generated document, the characters are all perfectly aligned on the vertical plane. You can draw a straight line underneath them and not a single one would be out of place. Not so with the original document. The same can be seen on every one of the other documents.

Posted by: Robert McClelland at September 10, 2004 05:00 PM

I would like Bruce to be correct about the position of "regarding," "rating" and "Austin." They are the result of missing spaces after periods. I fixed "regarding" in the scan but didn't do a good enough job. I'll print the corrected memo out again and rescan it.

Sorry for the error. My position remains the same. The main issues are the inconsistency of the "th"s and the apostrophes (some curly, some straight) in the various known-authentic documents and the difference in some of the letter forms. Everything else has been discounted by now as not provable or erroneous.

We'll see what CBS has to say about it this evening. If it's a fake, Bush certainly owes Kerry at least one after the Swift Boat hoax.

Politically speaking:

[1] How about the rest of the revelations released by the military?

[2] Does it really help Bush to have this issue hammered in the media when all it does is call attention to his National Guard lapses?

Posted by: Jules Siegel at September 10, 2004 05:15 PM

Look at the last letter in the second line. It does not line up in the same place with the first line in both versions.

Posted by: Alexander at September 10, 2004 05:20 PM

IBM consumer/business typewriters were able to to superscript by the late 60s -early 70s. Witness the IBM "Selectric II," circa 1970.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Selectric_typewriter

"The Selectric II had a lever (above the right platen knob) that would allow the platen to be turned freely but return to the same vertical line whereas the Selectric I did not. This feature permitted the insertion of subscripts and superscripts."

More at this link:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/06/politics/main641481.shtml

I believe Dan Rather.

Posted by: Bruce at September 10, 2004 06:08 PM

Ty said that "no typewriter was capable of 14 points of leading."

I believe the Selectric Composer had a variable leading dial that allowed flexible leading in 1 point increments from 5 to 20.

Ty, please review the ad at the link below, and note "Leading dial allows flexibility in vertical spacing. type can be leaded in increments 5 to 20 points."

http://ibmcomposer.org/SelComposer/brochure.htm

Posted by: Dr. Winston O'Boogie at September 10, 2004 06:18 PM

The original is a typewriter. The example from MS Word does not match. The raised "th" was originally a problem for me. Not anymore.

Now to see that the original is a typewriter, don't count the words and the carriage returns. Look at the letters r in running, i in regarding, i in rating and s in Austin at the end of the orginal lines. They line up in a perfect vertical line. In the MS Word doc the equivalent letters are r, d, t and s. The MS Word application is doing more sophisticated proporionate spacing than the typewriter could do. Also, note how MS Word closes the space between 1. Standt and 2. Hariss more than the typewriter. Again, MS Word is using a more sophisticated proportinate spacing than the typewriter could.

Or, I could say, if the CBS document is a forgery, the forger took great pains to make it *look* like a typewriter, or used a typewriter not a computer.

I'm convinced the document from CBS is from a typewriter. That does not prove it's not forged. It does dismiss the current argument for forgery.

I'd going to cc Dan Rather. He was never a big hero for me, but I think he deserves vindication.

Posted by: Karl Hudnut at September 10, 2004 06:55 PM

also, check out the relative weights of the diagonals in the "8"s. the NW>SE line ("\") is heavier than the SW>NE line ("/"). in the bottom example, their weights are equal.

Posted by: flatulus at September 10, 2004 07:26 PM

It's beginning to look more and more like the Killian memos are most consistent with IBM Selectric Composer. These device was introduced in 1966...

Check out the 2 vintage manuals for the Selectric Composer in PDF format(links below). They offered superscript and variable line spacing. Different fonts could be changed via "type balls." The Killian memo is probably either from the Press Roman, Aldine Roman, Bodoni or Pyramid type balls. Note how the Killian memo is NOT Microsoft Word Times New Roman. Too many discrepancies.

http://www.ibmcomposer.org/docs/Selectric%20Composer%20Operations%20Manual.pdf

http://www.ibmcomposer.org/docs/Electronic%20Composer%20Operating%20Instructions.pdf

http://www.ibmcomposer.org/docs.htm

http://www.ibmcomposer.org

Posted by: Dr. Winston O'Boogie at September 10, 2004 09:09 PM

You know, with as many electrons as have been expended on this subject, you'd think someone would dig up an old Selectric and duplicate the memos. Don't you think CBS/Viacom has the resources to do this? Has anyone seen such a document? Showing that the memos *could* have been produced in 1973 does not prove they were. However, until someone has a sample of an authentic 1973-era document that looks as much like the memos as the 2004-era Word documents, any skeptical person from either side of the political spectrum would have to believe the memos were fakes.

This ignores the dozen or so errors and inconsistancies in the contents of the memos, even if they were re-typed version of old documents.

Posted by: Preston Earle at September 10, 2004 09:42 PM

Selectric, Selectric, Selectric:

Why is everyone so certain this was typed on a Selectric? The government did own other makes and models of typewriters.

"th" as a Typewriter Character is no problem on an Olympia, though it is not superscripted.

On the ABC Evening News for Thursday, 09-09-04, one of the alleged discrepancies on the documents showing that Bush went AWOL rather than serve was the small "th" character in the word "147th". The narrator of the episode said reported the claim that no typewriter could print this character.

As soon as I saw that, I knew he was wrong. My first typewriter, which I still have, is a 60s-era Olympia SG1-L manual office typewriter. It has a "th" key. I never threw out the Olympia sales literature. Examining it, I see that Olympia offered several keyboards as options - Mathematiacal, Navigation, and Physics, to name three - and that a "th" key was standard on the Olympia American 3 - No. 7397 keyboard. As they say of motorcycles, it could do this right off the showroom floor.

Several typefaces and pitches were available, such as (for typefaces) Diamond, Manuscript, Elite, and Pica, among many others, and (for pitches) 10, 11, 12, 14, and 17 letters per inch.

Furthermore, Olympias had federal stock numbers. That is, they could be ordered for use in federal government offices with a minimum of paperwork. It is entirely possible that an Olympia typewriter would end up at a National Guard facility. Not all typewriters back then were made by IBM. The document could just as easily been typed on a Royal or a Remington too. Limiting the discussion to typefaces available on the IBM Selectric eliminates a lot of possibilities.

I don't know enough to comment on proportional spacing in the documents. One imagines that CBS would have had the documents vetted by someone who is capable of examining them for authenticity. That would strike me as a much more obvious detail than the type of phone cord (coiled versus not coiled) or stock number of Kodak film used in Fox's "Alien Autopsy" TV show of a few years back. The "th" key, though, is not a showstopper.

Posted by: Mahatma Kane Jeeves at September 11, 2004 01:27 AM

From the New York Times

-------------------

CBS Defends Its Report on Bush Military Record
By JIM RUTENBERG and KATE ZERNIKE

WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 - The debate over President Bush's National Guard service turned into a furious battle over the minutiae of Vietnam-era typewriter fonts on Friday as CBS News mounted a vigorous defense against critics who doubted the authenticity of four documents that suggested Mr. Bush had shirked his duty.

Dan Rather, the CBS News anchor, moved aggressively - on the air - to protect the credibility of the news division.

Democrats and Republicans watched carefully from the sidelines, deeply aware that the debate could help shape the presidential campaign some 50 days before Nov. 2.

CBS News executives said they were confident their report on what they presented as four newfound memos from the personal files of Mr. Bush's squadron commander, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, dated 1972 and 1973 and first reported on Wednesday, would stand up to scrutiny.

The memos indicated that Mr. Bush, who has long faced questions about his service in the Air National Guard, failed to take a physical examination "as ordered'' and that his commander felt under pressure to "sugarcoat" his performance rating, because First Lieutenant Bush, the son of a prominent congressman, was "talking to someone upstairs."

The report set off debate on Web logs, in newspapers and on television competitors to CBS News about whether such documents could have been produced 30 years ago.

Some forensic specialists said the documents appeared to be fakes created by a modern computer because they had features that could not have been produced on Vietnam-era typewriters. Others disagreed.

In an interview on Friday, Mr. Rather said: "CBS News stands by, and I stand by, the thoroughness and accuracy of this report, period. Our story is true."

On television later, he depicted questions about the veracity of the report as a counterattack coming in part from "partisan political operatives." On the "Evening News," Mr. Rather interviewed a handwriting expert who he said had helped CBS News verify the authenticity of the documents. The expert, Marcel B. Matley, said their signatures were consistent with those of Colonel Killian on records that the White House has independently given reporters.

The CBS News report also disputed critics' assertions that raised, or superscript, characters after numbers like "111th" were not consistent with Vietnam-era typewriters.

"Critics claim typewriters didn't have that ability in the 1970's," Mr. Rather said.

"But some models did," he added, showing an old Guard record previously provided by the White House that such superscripts.

Democrats promised to continue questioning Mr. Bush's Guard service. At a news conference Friday, Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic Party chairman, said even if the documents were forged, there was enough evidence from official records and other news accounts to say Mr. Bush had not been honest about his Guard time.

"It has become crystal clear that the president has lied to the American public about his military service," Mr. McAuliffe said.

At the White House, Scott McClellan, the president's spokesman, told reporters that whether the documents were forged or not, "the president met his obligations and was honorably discharged."

It was the typefaces that consumed much of the news media. For every expert who said the documents looked like the work of computers and could not have come from old-fashioned typewriters because of proportional spacing and some type features, there seemed to be another who said they could indeed have been authentic.

Dr. Philip Bouffard, a forensic document specialist in Georgia who has compiled of database of more than 3,000 old fonts, said people who bought the I.B.M. Selectric Composer model could specially order keys with the superscripts in question. Dr. Bouffard said that font did bear many similarities to the one on the CBS documents, but not enough to dispel questions he had about their authenticity.

A spokesman for I.B.M., John Bukovinsky, said he knew only that the company introduced proportional spacing to some typewriters in 1944, most notably in the Executive line.

Mark A. Robb, team leader of the type development group at Lexmark, which embodies the old I.B.M. typewriting and printing division and now focuses on printers, said specific machines could be custom fitted with the superscript letters in question and that they frequently were.

Some former engineers who worked in the typewriter division said they were not aware of a standard typewriter that could have produced the Killian documents because the superscript letters in question were so rare.

Robert A. Rahenkamp, a former I.B.M. manager who wrote a scholarly history on its typewriters for a company journal in 1981, said, "I'm not aware that we had any superscript technologies back in those days'' on standard proportional space typewriters.

Bill Glennon, a technology consultant in New York who worked for I.B.M. in Midtown Manhattan for 14 years and repaired typewriters throughout that time, said that the Executive had proportional spacing and that its typebar could be fitted with superscript characters. Documents from the period show the Air Force tested the Selectric Composer as early as April 1969. But spokesmen for the National Guard and Texas Air National Guard said it was impossible to trace the machines that Colonel Killian's unit, the 111th Fighter Intercept Squadron, or any unit, used so long ago.

Mark Allen, chief of the external media division of the National Guard Bureau public affairs office, said there was no way to reconstruct the equipment or whether Colonel Killian typed the memos or had a clerk type them.

"It's sheer speculation as to what might have transpired,'' Mr. Allen said, "and it's pointless for us to get into that kind of speculation."

The debate once again engulfed the campaign in the events of 30 years ago when, Mr. Bush and Senator John Kerry made separate choices that sent Mr. Bush into a coveted stateside post in the Guard and Mr. Kerry into combat in Vietnam.

Colonel Killian's family and one-time colleagues were drawn into the battle over whether the documents were real and whether he had felt pressure to give Lieutenant Bush special treatment.

Robert W. Strong, 62, was a staff sergeant in the adjutant general's office of the Texas Air National Guard at Camp Mabry at Austin in 1968, when Mr. Bush enlisted. Mr. Strong said in an interview Friday he was quite sure that he and others used Selectrics in the adjutant general's office. He added that he was not sure the typewriters and devices were also in the 147th Combat Support Squadron at the Ellington base in Houston, home of the 111th squadron.

"I'm skeptical that Killian was working on that," Mr. Strong said.

Mr. Strong was a crucial source for CBS News, insisting that the sentiment expressed in the memos were consistent with "the man that I remember Jerry Killian being."

"I don't see anything the documents that are discordant with what were the times, what was the situation and the people that were involved," he added.

Mr. Killian's daughter, Nancy Killian Rodriguez, said, "We have no idea where any of this stuff came out from under."

Ms. Rodriguez, born in 1971, said that she was a toddler when the memos in question were dated and that she did not know what her father thought of Lieutenant Bush at the time. Asked whether she or the family backed Mr. Bush now, she said: "I'm not even going to say. I'm done."

Experts on documents said the veracity of the CBS memos might never be known because they had been copied so many times. CBS News officials said that its papers were copies, too, and that it did not have the originals. The network said it would not identify its original source.

Mr. Rather said, "We worked long and hard and became convinced that, yes, this person had the capacity to get the documents, and, yes, this person was truthful."

Mr. Matley, the documents expert, said in an interview after the program, that he had examined documents and handwriting since 1985 and had testified in 65 trials. Mr. Matley said the documents the network sent him were so deteriorated from copying that it was impossible to identify the typeface.

"It's sheer speculation to say that you couldn't have done that until a computer came along,'' he said.

As a result, he said, he focused on the signatures. CBS sent him the four newfound documents, as well as others that have been verified as signed by Colonel Killian. "There were significant similarities and the differences were insignificant," he said in the configuration of letters and the angle of the writing.

Jim Rutenberg reported from Washington and Kate Zernike from New York; Katharine Q. Seelye contributed reporting from Washington for this article, John Schwartz from New York and Ralph Blumenthal from Houston.

Posted by: Dr. Winston O'Boogie at September 11, 2004 08:19 AM

In answer to my own comment ("You know, with as many electrons as have been expended on this subject, you'd think someone would dig up an old Selectric and duplicate the memos."), I found this: http://shapeofdays.typepad.com/the_shape_of_days/2004/09/the_ibm_selectr.html (or http://tinyurl.com/5e9h7)

So it doesn't look like the memos were typed on a Selectric Composer (even under the unlikely assumption that at Texas Air Narional Guard had such a machine). Are there any other candidates?

As to the superscripts, I recall some typewriters did use a faux-superscript 'st', 'nd', and 'rd' for the common ordinals, but these had an underscore under the letters. One of the Bush documents on the Internet (not a Killian memo) had one of these "superscripts" with the underscore, but the Killian memos do not have the underscore, so that evidence doesn't apply to this case.

Posted by: Preston Earle at September 11, 2004 08:32 AM

1.) Why is it so hard to imagine that the TANG could have required a Selectric Composer?
Texas Air National Guard had very expensive capital investments. Think how much those planes were valued at--when adjusted for inflation in today's dollars. Think of the technology and beauracracy of this agency. Think of the policies and procedures and paperwork required for day to day operations. The Selectric Composer, introduced in 1966, would have been comparable to a higher end desktop computer in today's dollars. Not far-fetched at all.

2. "th." Selectric Composer offered this superscript key as an option. As someone noted, 111th would have clearly been interested in this feature.

3. Selectric Composer offered Proportional Spacing, consistent with Killian memo.

4. Selectric Composer offered header centering tool, consistent with Killian memo.

5. Selectric Composer offered many interchangeable type face balls (including several Roman serif fonts), consistent with Killian memo.

6. Selectric Composer offered variable leading (aka line spacing) from 5 - 20 points, consistent with Killian memo.

7. People say the Selectric Composer was "too big" for office use.

Take a look: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=41816&item=3839419995&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

Posted by: Dr. Winston O'Boogie at September 11, 2004 08:38 AM

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Selectric Composer.

Posted by: Dr. Winston O'Boogie at September 11, 2004 08:41 AM

For some reason, I'm not able to paste an image source tag to show the photo.

Here it is if you want to paste in your browser:

http://i2.ebayimg.com/03/i/02/72/4f/08_1.JPG

Posted by: Dr. Winston O'Boogie at September 11, 2004 08:43 AM

From the Boston Globe

----------------------

Authenticity backed on Bush documents
By Francie Latour and Michael Rezendes, Globe Staff | September 11, 2004

After CBS News on Wednesday trumpeted newly discovered documents that referred to a 1973 effort to ''sugar coat" President Bush's service record in the Texas Air National Guard, the network almost immediately faced charges that the documents were forgeries, with typography that was not available on typewriters used at that time.

But specialists interviewed by the Globe and some other news organizations say the specialized characters used in the documents, and the type format, were common to electric typewriters in wide use in the early 1970s, when Bush was a first lieutenant.

Philip D. Bouffard, a forensic document examiner in Ohio who has analyzed typewritten samples for 30 years, had expressed suspicions about the documents in an interview with the New York Times published Thursday, one in a wave of similar media reports. But Bouffard told the Globe yesterday that after further study, he now believes the documents could have been prepared on an IBM Selectric Composer typewriter available at the time.

Analysts who have examined the documents focus on several facets of their typography, among them the use of a curved apostrophe, a raised, or superscript, ''th," and the proportional spacing between the characters -- spacing which varies with the width of the letters. In older typewriters, each letter was alloted the same space.

Those who doubt the documents say those typographical elements would not have been commonly available at the time of Bush's service. But such characters were common features on electric typewriters of that era, the Globe determined through interviews with specialists and examination of documents from the period. In fact, one such raised ''th," used to describe a Guard unit, the 187th, appears in a document in Bush's official record that the White House made public earlier this year.

Meanwhile, ''CBS Evening News" last night explained how it sought to authenticate the documents, focusing primarily on its examiner's conclusion that two of the records were signed by Bush's guard commander, Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian. CBS also said it had other sources -- among Killian's friends and colleagues -- who verified that the content of the documents reflected Killian's views at the time.

One of them, Robert Strong, a Guard colleague, said the language in the documents was ''compatible with the way business was done at that time. They are compatible with the man I remember Jerry Killian being."

But William Flynn, a Phoenix document examiner cited in a Washington Post report Thursday, said he had not changed his mind because he does not believe that the proportional spacing between characters, and between lines, in the documents obtained by CBS was possible on typewriters used by the military at the time.

Flynn told the Globe he believes it is ''highly unlikely" that the documents CBS has obtained could have been produced in 1972 or 1973.

Flynn said his doubts were also based on his belief that the curved apostrophe was not available on electric typewriters at the time, although documents from the period reviewed by the Globe show it was. He acknowledged that the quality of the copies of the documents he examined was poor.

Also suspicious is Killian's son, Gary D. Killian of Houston. ''I still contend that my father would not have written these documents. I know the type of man he was -- if he felt he was being pressured, he'd confront it head on, not write a memo about it," Killian, 51, said in a telephone interview. His father died in 1984.

The controversy over the authenticity of the documents has all but blocked out discussion of their content. In the first document, dated May 4, 1972, Killian appears to order Bush to show up for a flight physical ''no later than 14 May, 1972." On Aug. 1, 1972, a document bearing Killian's signature notes that he had suspended Bush from flight status ''due to failure to perform to USAF/TexANG standards and failure to meet annual physical examination (flight) as ordered."

At the time of the memo, Bush had not flown since April. He moved to Alabama in May of that year to work on a political campaign, and had not attended drills for more than four months.

In a ''memo to file" dated May 1972, Killian appeared to write that he had counseled Bush about his commitment to the Guard. And the final memo obtained by CBS, dated Aug. 18, 1973, said that the group's commanding general had sought to have Killian ''sugar coat" Bush's annual fitness report -- even though Bush had apparently not trained at his Houston airbase during the year in question.

But reporters and political figures focused much of their attention yesterday on the suggestion that CBS might have been the victim of a hoax.

Bouffard, the Ohio document specialist, said that he had dismissed the Bush documents in an interview with The New York Times because the letters and formatting of the Bush memos did not match any of the 4,000 samples in his database. But Bouffard yesterday said that he had not considered one of the machines whose type is not logged in his database: the IBM Selectric Composer. Once he compared the Bush memos to Selectric Composer samples obtained from Interpol, the international police agency, Bouffard said his view shifted.

In the Times interview, Bouffard had also questioned whether the military would have used the Composer, a large machine. But Bouffard yesterday provided a document indicating that as early as April 1969 -- three years before the dates of the CBS memos -- the Air Force had completed service testing for the Composer, possibly in preparation for purchasing the typewriters.

As for the raised ''th" that appears in the Bush memos -- to refer, for example, to units such as the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron -- Bouffard said that custom characters on the Composer's metal typehead ball were available in the 1970s, and that the military could have ordered such custom balls from IBM.

''You can't just say that this is definitively the mark of a computer," Bouffard said.

Meanwhile, the political fray over the documents continued unabated. At a news conference yesterday, Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, again accused Bush of lying about his record.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan defended the president's service record, but offered no view on whether the CBS documents are authentic.

Globe reporters Stephen Kurkjian and Walter V. Robinson contributed to this report.

Posted by: Dr. Winston O'Boogie at September 11, 2004 08:50 AM

http://www.hermes-press.com/dishonorable.htm

--------------------------

Bush Deserves a Dishonorable Discharge

By Michelle Mairesse

During the second week of February 2004, Press Secretary Scott McClellan defended President Bush’s spotty National Guard service record by stolidly repeating the mantra of the week: Not only had reporters’ questions been asked and answered before the election, but an honorable discharge proved that Bush had met his obligations. On Thursday, veteran journalist Helen Thomas’s opened up a new line of questioning that must have given McClellan an eerie sense of being trapped in a time-warp.
The first time McClellan heard the question was during Bush’s run for the presidency when McClellan was his campaign manager. It came from biographer J. H. Hatfield. Here is Hatfield’s account:

"Presidential campaign spokesman Scott McClellan had previously told Salon, ‘We do not dignify false rumors and innuendoes with a response,’ after the on-line magazine asked him if Bush ever performed community service at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Center in Houston in exchange for having his ‘illicit drug use’ record expunged.

"In the past, McClellan always seemed to be the consummate campaign spokesperson, always in control, never rattled by the sometimes raucous press corps and their continuous barrage of questions. But that impression was shattered when I queried McClellan about Bush’s involvement at Project P.U.L.L. in 1972 as a condition of having his cocaine possession charge purged. There was a moment of electric silence, and then McClellan muttered an almost inaudible, ‘Oh, shit,’ and after hesitating for a moment, finally said, ‘No comment.’" (Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President, J. H. Hatfield, Soft Skull Press, 2001)

Now here was Helen Thomas, in 2004, resurrecting a rumor that could have derailed Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign had the press been paying attention.

"Q: Did the President ever have to take time off from Guard duty to do community service?

Scott McClellan: To do community service? I haven't looked into everything he did 30 years ago, Helen. Obviously, there is different community service he has performed in the past, including going back to that time period --

Q: Can you find out if he actually had --

Scott McClellan: Helen, I don't think we remember every single activity he was involved in 30 years ago.

Q: No, this isn't an activity. Was he forced to do community service at any time while he was on --

Scott McClellan: What's your interest in that question? I'm sorry, I just --

Q: Lots of rumors. I'm just trying to clear up something.

Scott McClellan: Rumors about what?

Q: Pardon?

Scott McClellan: Rumors about what?

Q: About the President having to do community service while he was in the National Guard, take time out for that.

Scott McClellan: I'm not aware of those rumors. But if you want to --

Q: Could you look it up? Would you mind asking him?

Scott McClellan: That's why I'm asking what's your interest in that? I just don't understand your interest in that.

Q: It's what everybody is interested in, whether we're getting the true story on his Guard duty.

Scott McClellan: Well, you have the documents that show the facts.

Q: I'm asking you to try to find out from the President of the United States.

Scott McClellan: Like I said, it's well known the different jobs he had and what he was doing previously, that we know. That goes back to --

Q: I didn't say ‘previously.’ I said, while he was on Guard duty.

Scott McClellan: But you're asking me about 30 years ago. I don't think there's a recollection of everything he was doing 30 years ago.

Q: Well, he would know if he had to take time out. . . ."

. . . and so on, for fifteen minutes.

If Scott McClellan doesn’t know whether or not Bush performed community service while he was in the National Guard, he can look up this reference on the official State Department site: http://usembassy.state.gov/seoul/wwwhe906.html.

"During this period, George W. worked for a former partner of his father's, who had left the oil-drilling business to start an agricultural company in Houston that had interests in a wide variety of things, from cattle and chickens to tropical plants. George's job was to travel around the United States and to countries in Central America looking for plant nurseries his company might want to acquire.

"In the spring of 1972, he left this job and went to Alabama to work on the unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign of Republican Winton Blount. Returning to Houston, he became a counselor for African-American youngsters in a program called PULL (Professional United Leadership League). The program brought together volunteers from the athletic, entertainment, and business worlds to work with young people in a variety of ways. George taught basketball and wrestling and organized field trips to juvenile prisons, so his young charges could see that side of life and resolve not to end up there themselves.

"‘He was a super, super guy’ says Ernie Ladd, a professional football player who also worked with the program. ‘Everybody loved him so much. He had a way with people....They didn't want him to leave.’

"His work with Project PULL, Bush says in A Charge to Keep, gave him ‘a glimpse of a world I had never seen. It was tragic, heartbreaking, and uplifting, all at the same time. I saw a lot of poverty. I also saw bad choices: drugs, alcohol abuse, men who had fathered children and walked away, leaving single mothers struggling to raise children on their own. I saw children who could not read and were way behind in school. I also saw good and decent people working to try to help lift these kids out of their terrible circumstances.’"

Three sources told biographer J. H. Hatfield that Bush was performing community service on the orders of a judge. A Yale classmate said, "George W. was arrested for possession of cocaine in 1972, but due to his father's connections, the entire record was expunged by a state judge whom the older Bush helped get elected. It was one of those 'behind closed doors in the judges' chambers' kind of thing between the old man and one of his Texas cronies who owed him a favor ... There's only a handful of us that know the truth."

If the record of an arrest was expunged, Bush apparently received the equivalent of Youthful Offender status at the age of 26.

Another Bush associate told Hatfield, "I can't and won't give you any new names, but I can confirm that W's Dallas attorney remains the repository of any evidence of the expunged record. From what I've been told, the attorney is the one who advised him to get a new drivers license in 1995 when a survey of his public records uncovered a stale, but nevertheless incriminating trail for an overly eager reporter to follow."

Records prove that Bush did get a new drivers license at that time.

Newsweek (July 9, 2000) reported that the Bush campaign "launched a secretive research operation designed to scour all records relating to his Vietnam-era service" while preparing for Bush's 1998 re-election campaign. They paid Dallas lawyer Harriet Miers $19,000 to review the records.

In 1998, retired National Guard officer Bill Burkett said that in the spring of 1997, Bush’s chief of staff James Allbaugh asked Major General Daniel James to assemble Bush’s Guard records so that Bush aides could review them. Days later, Burkett says he saw about twenty pages from Bush’s military files in a trash can.

{http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/02/14/burkett/index.html}

"'His records have clearly been cleaned up,’" says author James Moore, whose upcoming book, ‘Bush's War for Re-election,’ will examine the issue of Bush's military service in great detail. Moore says as far back as 1994, when Bush first ran for governor of Texas, his political aides ‘began contacting commanders and roommates and people who would spin and cover up his Guard record. And when my book comes out, people will be on the record testifying to that fact: witnesses who helped clean up Bush's military file.'" Salon, 04/ 02/14.

Before Bush’s run for the governorship of Texas and the presidency of the United States, journalists were put off by the missing records in Bush’s military files, but as researchers uncovered more records, a clearer picture of Bush’s military service emerged.

On January 19, 1968, Bush completed the Air Force officer qualifications test in New Haven while he attended Yale University. Although he scored 25%, the lowest possible passing grade, and had a record of arrests (2 misdemeanors, 2 collisions, 2 drunk driving citations), on the same day he applied he was accepted into the "Champagne Unit," where the sons of the politically well-connected trained. He jumped to the head of the line of 160 Texas applicants for two available pilot training slots, neatly avoiding a year and half on the waiting list. Lucky for him, because his draft deferment would have expired in twelve days. Former Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes later admitted recommending George W. Bush for a slot in the Texas Air National Guard at the request of a Bush family friend.

On May 27, 1968, another family friend, commander of the Texas National Guard Walter B. Staudt, interviewed Bush, recommended him for pilot training, and arranged to have his picture taken with the aspiring pilot.

In June, Bush, with an undistinguished academic record, received his bachelor of arts degree from Yale.

On July 12, 1968, a three-member Federal Recognition Examining Board bypassed the requirement for 23 weeks of officers’ candidate school and declared Bush qualified for promotion to 2nd lieutenant in the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron. Two days later, Bush attended basic military training in San Antonio and completed training August 25, about 100 hours short of the hours requirement.

From December 29, 1969 to January 20, 1970, Bush trained at Ellington Air Force Base, near Houston.

On August 24, 1970 a three-member board recommended Bush for promotion to first lieutenant.

In 1971, Bush participated in drills and alerts at Ellington. In his civilian job, he was said to be flying for Stratford of Texas to scout plant nurseries in Florida and Central America.

Bush had his last flight physical examination in May. From May 1971 to May 1972 he logged 22 days of active duty.

Then things began to get strange. In May 1972, Bush requested a transfer from his Texas unit to the 9921st Air Reserve Squadron at Maxwell Air Force Base, a postal unit, after he had already moved to Alabama to work as a political director on the Senate campaign of Winton M. Blount, another family friend. The transfer was initially approved by his superiors in Houston but ultimately denied by higher-ups because the unit had no airplanes and met only one night a month. After spending from half a million to a million dollars on a pilot’s education, the National Guard is reluctant to allow pilots to fritter away their skills in a paper unit.

On September 6, Bush was finally approved for a transfer to a flying unit, although by now five months had elapsed since he established residence in Alabama. His orders required him to report to the unit commander, General William Turnipseed at the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group in Montgomery, Alabama, on the dates of "7-8 October 0730-1600, and 4-5 November 0730-1600," but he never appeared. In an interview with the Boston Globe, both General Turnipseed and his former administration officer asserted that Bush didn’t show up. Guard records reveal that Bush performed no military duties in Alabama until late October 1972. Until then, he was busy with the Blount campaign.

The racist, reactionary Blount senatorial campaign plastered Alabama with billboards that proclaimed, "A vote for Red Blount is a vote against forced busing . . . against coddling criminals . . . against welfare freeloaders." Although Blount lost the election, Bush learned the rudiments of dirty-tricks campaigning without over-exerting himself.

He didn’t strike his peers as a go-getter. "Those who encountered Bush in Alabama remember him as an affable social drinker who acted younger than his 26 years. Referred to as George Bush, Jr. by newspapers in those days, sources say he also tended to show up late every day, around noon or one, at Blount's campaign headquarters in Montgomery. They say Bush would prop his cowboy boots on a desk and brag about how much he drank the night before." (First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family Dynasty, Bill Minutaglio, Times Books, 1999)

The Progressive Southerner, February 2, 2004, describes "George W. Bush’s Lost Year in 1972 Alabama":

"Many of those who came into close contact with Bush say he liked to drink beer and Jim Beam whiskey, and to eat fist-fulls of peanuts, and Executive burgers, at the Cloverdale Grill. They also say he liked to sneak out back for a joint of marijuana or into the head for a line of cocaine. The newspapers that year are full of stories about the scourge of cocaine from Vietnam and China, much of it imported by the French. (Remember the French Connection?)

"According to Cathy Donelson, a daughter of old Montgomery but one of the toughest investigative reporters to work for newspapers in Alabama over the years, the 1960s came to Old Cloverdale in the early 1970s about the time of Bush's arrival.

‘We did a lot of drugs in those days,’ she said. "The 1970s are a blur." (http://www.southerner.net/blog/awolbush.html)

In April 1972, the military began to include routine drug tests in servicemen's annual physical examination, including urinalysis, an examination of the nasal cavities, and queries concerning drug use. According to the regulation, the medical was scheduled for the month after the serviceman's birthday, August 1972 in Bush’s case.

On September 29, 1972 the National Guard Bureau sent Bush an order that put the seal of officialdom on Bush’s verbal suspension from flying that had occurred in August. Reason for the suspension: Failure to accomplish annual medical examination. Bush was ordered to acknowledge his grounding in writing and the Bureau noted that "the local commander who has authority to convene a Flying Evaluation Board will direct an investigation as to why the individual failed to accomplish the medical examination." There is no record that the investigating board was ever convened. Nor was there any record that Bush served from May 1, 1972 until April 30, 1973, although he should have logged at least 36 days of service.

There is no evidence that, in the 42 months between May 1971 and November 21, 1974, when he was officially discharged, Bush ever had an Air Force physical examination.

In December 1972, Bush returned to Houston, but apparently not to his Air Force unit. In January 1973 he did community service with the P.U.L.L. inner-city poverty program. On May 2, 1973, the two lieutenant colonels in charge of Bush's unit in Houston, one of them a friend of Bush, were unable to rate him for the prior 12 months, saying he had not been at the unit during that period. Later that month, Bush received two special orders to appear for active duty. Because he was officially grounded, during May, June, and July, he served 36 days of non-flying drills at Ellington before leaving the Guard early.

In September 1973, Bush asked to be discharged from the Texas Air National Guard and to be transferred to the Air Reserve Personnel Center. Transfer to the inactive reserves ends any requirements to attend monthly drills. Despite his shabby record, the Guard granted his request.

He was released eight months early to attend Harvard Business School, although he could have been compelled to fulfill his service obligation at a base near Harvard University. In all, Bush completed a total of 51 months out of 72 months he owed the Guard.

Commenting on Bush's record, two National Guard generals declared that Bush’s refusal to submit to a medical examination was, in itself, incomprehensible.

"Brigadier General David L. McGinnis, a former top aide to the assistant secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, said in an interview that Bush's failure to remain on flying status amounts to a violation of the signed pledge by Bush that he would fly for at least five years after he completed flight school in November 1969.

"‘Failure to take your flight physical is like a failure to show up for duty. It is an obligation you can't blow off,’ McGinnis said.

"McGinnis said he, too, thought it possible that Bush's superiors considered him a liability, so they decided ‘to get him off the books, make his father happy, and hope no one would notice.’

"But McGinnis said there should have been an investigation and a report. If there were no investigation, it would show how far they were willing to stretch the rules to accommodate Bush."
(http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/articles/2004/
02/12/bushs_loss_of_flying_status_should_have_spurred_probe/)

It looks a though both Congress and the American people now realize they have been too willing to stretch the rules to accommodate Bush. Let’s give him a dishonorable discharge and send him back to Texas.

Posted by: Elvis Presley at September 11, 2004 09:27 AM

Oh please. Did you not see the report where a reporter opened up Mircosoft Word, began typing the exact memo and the text wrapped EXACTLY where the text wrapped in the memo--right out of Microsoft Word with New Times font. No hyphens in the whole memo. How very convenient. Anybody who has used a freakin' typewriter would know that is ridiculous. Not to mention the supposed typist was horrible, hated typing, and yet there isn't one mistake correction. Hmmm..how convenient yet again! I'm laughing my butt off that you libs would even defend this bogus freaking travesty of reporting. How pathetic.

Posted by: Karma at September 11, 2004 12:03 PM

Hey, it's fun. Try it yourself! Open Microsoft Word and type the memo. It wraps in exactly the same spots and looks exactly the same. Just leave on the default settings and watch the magic forgery appear before your very eyes.

Scott

Posted by: scott at September 11, 2004 01:13 PM

karma and scott,

could it be that Microsoft Word was modeled after the IBM business typewriter standard? chicken or the egg?

Posted by: elvis at September 11, 2004 02:30 PM

Uh, doubtful. (Besides which it's already been established that the typewriter with the ability to do the raised script did not have Times New Roman font). Any typewriter has manual returns which means that the person typing just happend to return exactly when MS Word did? Not likely. Hyphens were standard before computers and auto return. It's pretty common knowledge. This is a sham. No chicken, no egg--just bull.

Scott

Posted by: scott at September 11, 2004 07:09 PM

Scott,

Are there any other Guard memos, which are deemed authentic, and don't have hyphens?

For example, do you know the link to the pdf graphic of the Bush document from Sept. 73 where he requests a discharge? Does this uncontested document have hyphens?

Posted by: elvis at September 11, 2004 07:55 PM

Oh my God! It's unreal. The denial of you all. Listen up people--the guy interviewed by the globe who supposedly "backed" the autenticity is saying the Globe lied and he did no such thing. He's pissed off and wants a retraction because they totally misrepresented him and now he's getting a storm of angry email. He says he's not less sure, but MORE SURE that the documents are forged. And get this--he's one of the top two guys in his field.

The Selectric capable of superscript didn't do superscript that looked anything like this. Even the other guard document that Rather waved around saying it proved him right looked TOTALLY DIFFERENT! There was a line under the th and it sat lower next to the main letters. No selectric or any other typewriter from that era has a times new roman font--and that's from the experts frantically on the search for them.

If you type the memo it in Word it looks EXACTLY the same as the forgery. Same tab sets, same wrapping, same font! The letters line up the same from the top sentence to the lower. That just isn't possible and ANYBODY with one ounce of logic who has ever used a typewriter, any typewriter from ANY FRIGGIN' DECADE KNOWS THIS. Get over it. Rather lied and he lied Rather badly. Either that or he so blindly jumped on this bogus story and didn't bother to include key facts and evidence that he deserves whatever huge lumps he gets. This was a sham of a "report" and it deserves all the outrage it's getting--even from major liberal news sources that are now agreeing--it was a forgery.

Even the DNC is floating wild conspiracy theories that Rove floated this thing. Why? Because even they are able to see that the whole thing is a sham and want to deflect the blame. It's so obvious that it cracks all us "neos" up to read your straw grasping.

Keep grasping...you're now grasping the straw that broke the camels back.

Ta ta...

Scott

Posted by: Scott at September 11, 2004 09:04 PM

Regarding the argument that the "running", "regarding" and "rating" don't line up correctly in MSword, this is because there should be 2 spaces between "1.^^Staudt", and between "2.^^Harris" The usage of this extra-space is consistent across all four of the subject memos, with the glaring exception of the third item on the 01-August memo. If you type these memos into MSword using this two-space style, then it lines up with the "originals" precisely (at least to the resolution of the PDFs.)

One does not need to physically type these memos on a Selectric Composer to compare with MSWord. Just open the Composer users manual online (also in PDF format)
www.ibmcomposer.org/docs/Selectric%20Composer%20Operations%20Manual.pdf
Page 1 states that the doc was produced entirely in "Press Roman" on a Selectric Composer. Therefore, you can try the comparison yourself! Randomly choose a few paragraphs in this doc and type them into MSword. Notice how the consecutive sentences often don't align the same. This is because many of the MSword characters have different horizonal displacement- particularly the upper-case letters. Page 108 clearly states that 'M','m', and 'W' are the same width on the Composer (9-units wide). But these characters are radically different in MSword. The manual makes no distinction wrt which type-font ball is installed.

What does this prove? The Selectric Composer's "Press Roman" type is NOT equivalent to MSword "Times New Roman".

Posted by: John at September 11, 2004 09:42 PM

If you take these alleged forgeries and examine them at maximum zoom in Photoshop, you will see many clear cases where the letters do not have the same baseline. Before believing in the fairy tales of this slime machine, please try doing that. It's NOT possible to "just type it into MS Word".. DUH.

Think for a second. Would a multi-million dollar news organization allow such a simplistic forgery to get on the air? Wouldn't they AT LEAST go buy a frigging old electric typewriter at a garage sale fer crissakes???

Posted by: wunderwood at September 11, 2004 10:13 PM

But SERIOUSLY folks!! Keep in mind, DUBYA SIGNED A PLEDGE. He promised to keep flying for 5 years! Now even folks that are easily fooled by right wing echo chambers like "The Grudge Report" can figure out that 1969 + 5 = 1974.

Did Dubya fulfill his pledge? Or perhaps you would rather we changed the subject BACK to 30 year old typewriters?

[QUOTE]

Commenting on Bush's record, two National Guard generals declared that Bush’s refusal to submit to a medical examination was, in itself, incomprehensible.

"‘Failure to take your flight physical is like a failure to show up for duty. It is an obligation you can't blow off,’ McGinnis said.

[UNQUOTE]

Apparently, if you are the spoiled brat of a powerful politician, it turns out that in some cases you CAN.

At least for a while.

Posted by: wunderwood at September 11, 2004 10:22 PM

All I can say is that if you type the memo using MSWord and default settings with two spaces after periods it looks almost IDENTICAL to the alleged original. I'm not a typesetter, but that's enough to convince me of "Reasonable Doubt" about the authenticity of the documents.

Mark

Posted by: Mark at September 11, 2004 10:47 PM

Bing! Bing! Bing! Mark wins. Game Over.

Any more players?

Posted by: Preston Earle at September 11, 2004 11:08 PM

Um, ok, Mark, I can agree that you're not a typesetter. I take your word on that. But did you catch that part about baseline? I am fluent enough in typesetting to know that those "e" characters should all be on the same line with the other characters. I can point to a single word where the 'e' characters don't line up with other 'e's in the same word. Can you do that using your test?

I will grant you that it might be "almost identical" (especially if compared at extremely low resolution). That is just is a mighty fine "complement" for Microsoft Word duplicating the "Times New Roman" font that has been around since the 1930's, but "almost identical" is an exaggeration.

Explain how to get those pesky characters to FLOAT all over the baseline like that.

Explain that.

Then explain why Bush broke his pledge to serve 5 years.

Also explain why no one has claimed the $10,000 dollar reward for information leading to the arrest--- excuse me--- leading to proof of George W. Bush serving in Alabama.

I still have good friends from 30 years ago, and I remember who I went to college with 30 years ago. I can name names.

Why can't our President?

Why do the stories keep changing? Did he promise to report for duty in Boston when he went to Harvard? (hint: yes). Did he keep that promise? (hint: NO)

Talking about typewriters is a distraction. Tell me why you support this guy to lead us away from the pursuit of Osama Bin Laden into a war that's cost us over 8,000 casualties.

Posted by: wunderwood at September 11, 2004 11:45 PM

Uhmmm....

Wunderwood.....We're talking about something that is obviously a multigenerational copy of an original document....I gave my point of view on the document. That's all. If you don't like it, fine. I was just contributing my point of view on one specific topic in what I felt was a non-confrontational way. I might change my opinion if I see an accredited authority provide a compelling argument supporting the authenticity of the documents. I don't remember addressing anything else. If it makes you feel any better,I'm not a big Bush supporter but I am going to vote for him because I like people like you even less.

Mark

Posted by: Mark at September 12, 2004 01:18 AM

Mark, in response I first have to admit that my reaction was confrontational. I think made it that way because I was replying to what I viewed as a general "dismissal" of the preponderance of evidence that I strongly feel *transends* any side discussions about 30 year old typefaces. I was trying to refocus on the more important issues while at the same time I was trying to drive a stake through the heart of this "it-was-written-in-MS-Word-forgery" argument.

When I read your reply that basically seemd to say: "All I can say is that using MSWord it looks almost IDENTICAL to the alleged original" and proceed to ignore the REST of the constellation of evidence that indicates Bush was AWOL, I felt as though we already *were* discussing more than just typewriter fonts.

Having said that, you're certainly free to choose your candidate using whatever seemingly arbitrary criteria you wish. I do encourage you to put a bit more thought into it, but it appears that my strategy is hardly convincing you. So, feel free to continue to disregard the rest of "the forest" of unrefuted and more relevant points about our commander-in-chief and allow the cynical spinmeisters to keep you focused on all of those pesky individual "trees".

Posted by: wunderwood at September 12, 2004 02:02 AM

It's amazing how delusional people can let themselves be to argue their side. I see a lot of references to www.ibmcomposer.org, you might want to note that the person on this site does not think the documents were produced with the composer. Some people here think it is quite reasonable that the Texas Air National Guard would have this rather expensive and complicated typewriter. And it really doesn't bother them at all that the only documents ever produced by this machine showed up in 2004, and no other documents from TANG in 1972 seem to have these proportional font characteristics. And of course it seems quite reasonable to people that for the 4 documents ever produced by this machine the operator had the foresight to change the line spacing to the exact default as MS Word. That seems plausible to some people. And the fact that the centered text on 2 separate documents are centered perfectly down to the pixel, that makes sense to people. This guy really must have been anal because he would have to do some work to pull that one off(or maybe he is Rain Man). All this from a guy his family said was a terrible typist.

And for those of you who want to see floating baselines, get yourself a cheapo ink jet printer. I get dizzy reading some of the print from mine.

Posted by: B Smith at September 12, 2004 04:49 AM

Just a thought about MS Word. Didn't Bill Gates make his first billion writing programs for "IBM" in the mid to late 70's.

Posted by: budd at September 12, 2004 09:45 AM

Just to address a couple of things I read on here. If this memo that CBS has was anything other than a copy I would be a bit more likely to take their word, however all they have is a copy. The other thing is that so many document experts have come out and said that there are a number of things wrong. Why would so many document experts come out and say such a thing and only one so far has gone on record as saying that it is genuine?

There was a type ball for Times New Roman however it did not have a superscript feature. There was a superscript feature in some other fonts but evidently not Times.

Another thing someone pointed out is that Word automaticly superscripts th and they claimed that it could not have been written in Word because not all the th's were superscripted however if you look at the ones that are not they have a space before them and the ones that are superscripted do not have a space. That is actually how you keep Word from superscripting a th. To me that only makes it seem more likely that it was done in Word.

It is true that much of the technology was available for various typewriters, the problem is that not all of it was available on the same typewriter, and the same type face. This is why most experts as of today increasingly think the memos are a forgery. The names of the people who think so are the top in their field and I would give more weight to what they have to say than one guy one CBS and some amatures on here.

Posted by: Joe Blow at September 12, 2004 11:26 AM

Oh one other thing. If these memos are not a forgery then explain all the mistakes that the memo is filled with and the fact that none of the other memos from that time before and after look like these two.

From claiming that an officer who was retired for more than a year was pressuring him to several inconsistencies it just adds up to a forged memo... the question really is who forged it and why? That is really the more interesting issue. Who had more to gain from there being a forgery out there that would be taken as a fact and then found out to be false? Perhaps it is the same campaign that did the very same thing in 2000.

Posted by: Joe Blow at September 12, 2004 11:31 AM

Oh my Gosh. Wundernut...

"Then explain why Bush broke his pledge to serve 5 years"

Goes to show how ignorant people can be about this issue. He pledged to serve SIX years and served 5 1/2 and for most years wracked many more points than he needed because he served so well. He was horably discharged having more than met his eligibility in guard points and only asked for discharge at a point when there were more pilots than the guard needed. He got permission to do so. There is NO AWOL evidence. That's a mythology made up by the radical left.

There's other REAL documents about Bush people. Here's what they say: "Lt. Bush is an exceptional fighter interceptor pilot and officer," wrote one in a 1972 evaluation. Another evaluation, in 1971, called Bush "an exceptionally fine young officer and pilot" who "continually flies intercept missions with the unit to increase his proficiency even further." And a third rating, in 1970, said Bush "clearly stands out as a top notch fighter interceptor pilot" and was also "a natural leader whom his contemporaries look to for leadership." http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york200402180840.asp

Funny how CBS doesn't want anybody to see these documents.

So there's plenty of REAL documents about Bush. There's also documents showing he had a dental appointment in Alabama! Oh, and John Calhoun, who served with Bush, says he did see Bush in Alabama several times. And guess what? He probably doesn't take the 10k because he's not a slimy snake. He knows if he did the left would just say he took a bribe and didn't really see Bush. It's an obvious set up!

Get your facts straight.

Scott

Posted by: Scott at September 12, 2004 12:36 PM

"That is really the more interesting issue. Who had more to gain from there being a forgery out there that would be taken as a fact and then found out to be false? Perhaps it is the same campaign that did the very same thing in 2000"

Groan...back to the "vast right wing conspiricy" drivel again? Puulease.

Scott

Posted by: Scott at September 12, 2004 12:37 PM

"All this from a guy his family said was a terrible typist."

Did officers do their own typing? I thought there were clerks in the military.

Posted by: Mr. Billy at September 12, 2004 12:46 PM

The over sloppiness of arguments here is comical.

Karl Huclnut wrote:
"Look at the letters r in running, i in regarding, i in rating and s in Austin at the end of the orginal lines. They line up in a perfect vertical line. In the MS Word doc the equivalent letters are r, d, t and s. The MS Word application is doing more sophisticated proporionate spacing than the typewriter could do."

Sophisticated protional spacing WTF???

The only reason they don't line up is because whoever typed the word version on it hit a single space after the period and before Austin rather than the 2 spaces that are hit in the original/forgery. Can't you notice how the word Austin is the first word that doesn't align with the words above like the original/forgery.

And look at how the first 2 lines none of the words match up exactly between the word and "original". That is because there is a missing space in the word version of "1. Staudt". There should be 2 spaces after the 1. What a shock once you add the extra space I guarantee you all of a sudden those words will align exactly like the original/forgery.

Posted by: Dave R at September 12, 2004 01:00 PM

"Did officers do their own typing? I thought there were clerks in the military."

What the hell. While we are looking for this phantom typewriter, we might as well search for the phantom clerk who typed these memos.

Posted by: Dave R at September 12, 2004 01:08 PM

"Proportional typefaces are available only on computers or on very high-end typewriters that were unlikely to be used by the National Guard. (WRONG. PROPORTIONAL TYPEFACES WERE INTRODUCED BY IBM IN THE 40S. BY 1966, THE IBM SELECTRIC COMPOSER BOASTED THIS FEATURE.)"

Actually, the Composer was included among "very high-end typewriters that were unlikely to be used by the National Guard." It was a typesetting machine, cost about as much as a new car, and actually made a rather poor typewriter for simple memos.

Posted by: cpurick at September 12, 2004 01:55 PM

Airplanes are pretty expensive and yet the air national guard had those (more than a new car too). Were all guard units treated equally with their budgets? Did they all have the same amount of power in getting things? I just wonder if it was similar to the situation with wealthy school districts--those kids had plenty of books, equipment , etc. This guard unit supposedly had the sons of some rather privileged folks. How likely is it that they only got castoffs?

Also, I don't remember that the military has had any reluctance in buying $500 ashtrays...... So spending what, $4,000 or $5000 on a typewriter doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibilities. What did other typewriters cost anyway (decent ones)?

Might be interesting to hunt government archives for inventories of this unit. Also for personnel lists. All this speculating when there could well be a clerk or clerks still alive who would be in a position to know. My old journalism teacher said to me, "always go to the source and ask".

Posted by: Mr. Billy at September 12, 2004 02:44 PM

Btw, has anyone searched for pictures of this air national guard unit in the 1960s and 1970s? What did the facility look like? Was it a nice building? A shack? It might be interesting to see what is in the background of any photos. Like office equipment. Somebody must have snapped a few pictures.

Posted by: Mr. Billy at September 12, 2004 02:53 PM

"And look at how the first 2 lines none of the words match up exactly between the word and "original". That is because there is a missing space in the word version of "1. Staudt". There should be 2 spaces after the 1. What a shock once you add the extra space I guarantee you all of a sudden those words will align exactly like the original/forgery."

They do because I always use two spaces after a period and mine lined up exactly. Those of us who have used typewriters in the past have this habit.

Posted by: Scott at September 12, 2004 04:15 PM

There were three classes of IBM typewriter at the time: The IBM Executive typewriter had minimal proportional spacing. The IBM Selectric typewriter was a monospaced typewriter. It is only the IBM Selectric Composer introduced in 1968 that could have done this at that time with a font called Press Roman--the IBM version of Times Roman. There was no superior capability. Composer fonts were based on 9 different character widths. The letter being discussed uses many more.
However, there was the Varityper typewriter that used proportional fonts made by Addressograh-Multigraph and it would have been capable of this--but its version of Times was much different. The Friden Justowriter was also a typewriter for typesetting but its Times was also significantly different.
It would be a stretch to say that this tyoe is of 1973 vintage.

Frank Romano
RIT School of Print Media

Posted by: Frank Romano at September 12, 2004 07:11 PM

Here's how easy it is to make that memo:
http://img41.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img41&image=60minbusted.swf

Posted by: Greg at September 13, 2004 12:03 PM

Here's how easy it is to make that memo:
http://img41.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img41&image=60minbusted.swf

Posted by: Greg at September 13, 2004 12:04 PM

Here's how easy it is to make that memo:
http://img41.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img41&image=60minbusted.swf

Posted by: Greg at September 13, 2004 12:05 PM

Everybody is missing the boat with all these font comparisons. IF Killian typed these himself (as is claimed) it would be reasonable to look for errors and corrections (easily spotted). There aren't any.

If the memos were typed by a clerk, why didn't the clerk use letterhead? And why aren't the clerk's initials on the memos?

I know that when I started working in 1977, I couldn't get near a typewriter. They were for the typing pool. I wrote everything out in longhand. Why wouldn't LtCol Killian have done this?

Posted by: Randy at September 13, 2004 03:46 PM

The IBM Selectric Composer of the early 1970s had five distinct letter widths its first edition, it later was extended to seven widths. Individual letters did not have there own proportional spacing rather they approximated hand set leaded type by choosing the closest of the five or seven widths. MS Word and the memos created by them have 255 widths, one for each letter in the ANSI set. There obviously is a problem here.

There is a standing reward that is now over $38,000 for anyone who can duplicate these memos using period equipment. I assumed that I would be the most likely to collect as I was a typographer in a print shop 1969-73, an MTSC machine could, with much effort, come very close to these memos, however one would still be left trying to explain why the default settings of MS Word reproduce the memos, and yes I did reproduce all of them myself, in about five minutes actually. I would love to collect the reward and have the training and experience to do it, however I know I could never get the memos to overlay exactly with the "originals," as they did on the first try with MS Word. There really is no point tyring to say this could be done on periord equipment, this typesetter says outside of leaded type, which can do anything, it would be a physical impossibility. Also does anyone remember what these things cost? The generic Selectric was $400 ($6,000 today) the Selectric Composer was $3500 ($40,000 today) and the premium composer the MT/SC cost $28,000 ($336,000 today). Why would such a device be in Colonel nobody's office?

Posted by: Right Brain at September 14, 2004 08:48 PM

How do we move this discussion in the media
forward from parroting the Bush message that
the documents are forged...to understanding that
they are not forged and that the issue is that Bush is as incompetant today as he was then and
as focused on easy answers that don't work today
as he was then.

regards,

steve

Posted by: steve at September 15, 2004 12:41 PM

This may be a lethal blow to the Bush presidency. Watch the Dan Rather interview with Killian's secretary. She's 86, and sharp as a tack.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/15/60II/main643768.shtml

Posted by: Elvis Presley at September 15, 2004 09:34 PM

I just remember using IBM type writers, and HOW EASY it was to change fonts. Usually, several font balls were kept nearby the type writers in offices I was familiar with. Now, my "office" experience is not dated to 1973. I am sure that the th superscript was on one font ball. And if the National Guard has an Executive typewriter, it would not be a stretch to have font balls with fonts/characters (i.e., th), used for your writing needs.

Posted by: Steven at September 16, 2004 03:33 AM

the Executive that I used all thru the 60s had a lever to change (vertical) line spacing: either 5 or 6 lines of type per inch. 6 was the standard for most typewriters. also it had two "space bars" one of them 3 units wide, the other 2 units. most people used the 2. we used 5 lines per inch unless we were tryiing to squeeze stuff onto one sheet of letterhead.

the Executive was pretty much the standard machine for larger and more professional offices till it was replaced by the Selectric (that is, IBM discontinued it - they pretty much did whatever they wanted in those days.)

Posted by: Lovice Becker at September 16, 2004 05:53 PM

Posted by: Lovice Becker at September 16, 2004 05:54 PM

The IBM Executive could and many times was customized by replacing keys that were not applicable for a particular office with other keys that were appropriate for the the job.
Also the typeface would be slightly modifyed
by type clash as the machine aged.

Posted by: Jack Walsh at September 16, 2004 07:53 PM

There's no question that these documents are fake.

Without a memory, a typewriter cannot determine when it is supposed to break the line through hyphenation when the type ball reaches the end of the line. Nor can it know if what you are typing will fit into the balance of the right hand margin by the time the little bell goes off. Therefore, you must manually return the carriage, or type ball, yourself. You, the operator, must either break the line, or start looking for a place to split the word before you hit the return. An Auto-Return feature on memory capable typewriters and typesetters or word processors knows, through its small memory cache, what you are typing. It comes to the end of the line and can make a determination that what you are typing is either going to fit, or it is not going to fit, your set margins. If it won't fit, it knows to kick you down to the next line.

This is important because the line breaks in MS Word today precisely mimic those examples of type that supposedly occurred 30 years ago. And since those examples of type from 30 years ago MUST have had their line breaks created manually, (because the first memory capable typewriters did not come out until Olivetti created them in 1978) this means that we either have a fantastic set of coincidences in the four memos, or they are fraudulent.

There is simply no possibility that a secretary in 1973 would happen to manually throw the carriage at the precise spot in the line that MS Word automatically does today. Over four memos.

It simply could not happen.

Posted by: Dan Zoernig at September 17, 2004 01:06 PM

In addition to typeface, font, etc., what did CBS do about the following:

Military organizations (including the Texas Air National Guard) have regulations governing correspondence, memoranda and orders. The documents originated by or for a Lieutenant Colonel commanding a squadron would have been prepared consistent with those regulations.

Are these documents consistent with the regulations of 1972-1973? Surely, CBS researched that question and knew the answer before it published the documents as the centerpiece of its story.

To make absolutely certain, one should look at the regulations in effect for the Texas Air National Guard in 1972-1973 and match the documents to the regulations of their (purported) time. But, facially these documents are extremely suspect for a host of reasons.

They just do not present themselves as military documents. Deficiencies include (to list a few and without limitation) that a document called "Memo to file" "Subject: CYA" is absurdly, facially deviant from what a field grade military officer would write; that an individual's signature block includes both his/her rank in a particular style and component affiliation (depending on the years involved, an example might be Lt Colonel, TXANG); and that documents show where they will be filed, etc. (under an indication for "Distribution," or "CF" or "copy furnished," etc., depending on the type of document and the regulations of the time) Air Force units used different signature block indentation. Also, military personnel do not write about other military personnel using only their last names, without the person written about’s rank preceding his/her last name, especially when writing about Colonels and Generals.

The above is in addition to the observations others have made that the documents contain linguistic from the military language then in use, wrong address and serial number data, etc.

Also, the notion that these documents are something that a senior military officer such as Killian would believe would “CYA” for Killian’s “A–“ is absurd on its face. To “CYA” you write a document that you file in an appropriate place such that you can point to it later if someone later calls you to account for what you did or failed to do. In other words, you create self-serving evidence that “covers” your conduct. These documents are not written in terms that a rational individual, with years of experience in a large organization, would use to create self-serving evidence, evidence that he would file away in order to be able to show it to a future inspector, if the individual feared he might need to prove that he had not done something wrong, but had acted at the behest of others who had, and thus needed his “a–“ to be “covered.”

Posted by: Retired Military at September 17, 2004 09:33 PM

Well, I got tired of listening to all the "experts" weigh in on this one so I decided to try to recreate the documents myself.

I found that if you type the two "memo to file" documents in Times New Roman 13 pt., the margin breaks are exactly the same place as those presented. The other two documents break in the same place if use Times New Roman 12 pt. Try it yourself.

If you take those documents and reduce them the appropriate amount at printing you will find that WordPerfect on a modern computer makes documents that exactly overlay the ones CBS presented. If you can't seem to get it to line up, remember the number "1" and the letter "l" are not exactly the same width even though they look alike. Also, watch out for proper spacing. Two spaces were used after most periods, but not always. I held mine up to a light and looked at how the two versions lined up. Wow, what a good match once you make all the proper edits. Dead ringers all four of them.

Then there are the odd things that drive the point home even further - "117th" appears as "117 th", "117(superscript)th", and "117th". I don't know anyone who types a space between a number and the th or st. You have to ask why it was done here. In my opinion, this is because whoever typed this wanted to prevent Word/WordPerfect from adding a superscript th. If you insert a space between the 117 and the th or st it won't superscript automatically - you can then delete the extra spaces later. I think this is a very strong trail of evidence that the perpetrator entered extra spaces most of the time, but did not go back and delete them all. In effect they were not terribly attentive to detail. Also, the use of the character "l" and the number "1" is a little inconsistent.

As for trying to match character for character, I think it is largely a waste of time. These documents look like they have been copied multiple times and clearly have many copying artifacts. For instance the bottoms of some characters are curved in one place but not in another. Characters in some places appear squashed badly. There is noise everywhere. Some characters have half of the character moved up relative to the other half. A typewriter couldn't have a damaged character on one line and a good one on the next. I think, this is clear evidence the document was copied multiple times to obscure the fact it was generated on a computer.

Why is the header information typed? I would have expected guard units to have printed letterhead. That seems very odd indeed.

The signature on the 04 May memo looks very much like a very bad cut and paste. What is all that gunk at the top of the J and K? It occurs nowhere else.

I'm pretty sure forgery is a crime. Does that mean that someone will be going to jail soon?

Posted by: K. Novo at September 24, 2004 03:02 PM

Well, I got tired of listening to all the "experts" weigh in on this one so I decided to try to recreate the documents myself.

Why is the header information typed? I would have expected guard units to have printed letterhead. That seems very odd indeed.

The signature on the 04 May memo looks very much like a very bad cut and paste. What is all that gunk at the top of the J and K? It occurs nowhere else.

I'm pretty sure forgery is a crime. Does that mean that someone will be going to jail soon?

Posted by: K. Novo at September 24, 2004 03:03 PM

Well, I got tired of listening to all the "experts" weigh in on this one so I decided to try to recreate the documents myself.

Why is the header information typed? I would have expected guard units to have printed letterhead. That seems very odd indeed.

The signature on the 04 May memo looks very much like a very bad cut and paste. What is all that gunk at the top of the J and K? It occurs nowhere else.

I'm pretty sure forgery is a crime. Does that mean that someone will be going to jail soon?

Posted by: K. Novo at September 24, 2004 03:04 PM

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=897089&mesg_id=897089

this site was mentioned at crushkerry.com and it seems to link a lot of information together. They thought it was a joke that these people were able to link them before the CBS memo story happen. They even have Memos being sent to Karl Rove.

Posted by: Passer of information at September 30, 2004 02:53 AM

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=897089&mesg_id=897089

Posted by: Passerofinformation at September 30, 2004 02:55 AM