Asymmetrical Information

Hurricane Begbee to hit in 5...4...3...2...1...

I'm terribly sorry about your grandfather, Jane.

"Even if our typist were in the throes of an OCD fit hitherto unsurpassed in the history of man, there is absolutely no way you could mill it that precisely......"

What, may I ask, is OCD?

James

Yes, the real mystery is who could've forged these so badly. I can't believe it's a Democratic plot; I can't believe it's even a Republican plot, because surely anyone wanting to foist them on CBS and then explode the hoax wouldn't have been able to assume that CBS would be taken in by something so mindbogglingly, obviously bogus.

The only possibility that comes to mind is a malicious person (of which party I can't guess) so young that s/he's never so much as seen anything produced on a typewriter, and so stupid that s/he thinks faxing a document to oneself a few times over is enough to make it look thirty years old. Pathetic. But that CBS bought it . . . well, words fail me.

"In fact, it seems to me that the "Republicans did this to get Kerry" is almost the best explanation here."

In law enforcement we have the "Chain of Evidence". Where damning stuff is found, and who handled it after it was found.

The Kerry camapign said that they had the documents for 6 weeks, and that they got them through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. So either someone planted the forgeries in the pile of docs before they were handed over to the Dems (unlikely as hell), or else the Republicans have a few moles inside Kerry's campaign to add to the pile afterwards.

I'm sure that there ARE moles in both campaigns, so that doesn't bother me. Since the docs were sitting in Kerry HQ for 6 weeks before CBS got them, I have no problem with the idea that someone could have slipped a few extra pages in while no one was looking.

But someone would have had to have been one of those super-geniuses to imagine that the Dems and the news media would react in this way.

It's so darn obvious that these things ARE forgeries that people who've never, ever given a thought to the science of document verification can tell at a glance that they're bogus. What incredible brain, what nuclear powered intellect, could have possibly imagined that literally scores and scores of people who saw and handled the docs would be so inflamed with the thought of toppling Bush that they wouldn't notice something that rank amateurs saw in a hot minute?

If the Bush campaign has someone like that on their side then we'd better re-elect the guy. If we piss off the super-genius then he might just make a mind-control device out of his microwave oven and enslave us all anyway.

No, this was most likely something that got way out of hand. Some bored, young, stupid staffers in the Kerry campaign office type up a few damning memos and slip them into the pile. It smells to me like a college prank then any master plan by people who have made it to the top of national politics.

James

OCD: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

This is going to test their ability to keep a straight face while everyone in the room knows they're lying out their arse. You know it. I know it. You KNOW I know it, and I know you know it. So cut the bullshit.

NOBODY was deceived by this.

Nobody.

Poop. Michelle scooped me while I was composing my last comment. And she did it in less space.

Good job, Michelle.

James

James,

Poop. Michelle scooped me while I was composing my last comment. And she did it in less space.

Well, maybe. But not with lines like

If we piss off the super-genius then he might just make a mind-control device out of his microwave oven and enslave us all anyway.

And I hadn't heard it confirmed that these puppies came from the Kerry campaign, though I certainly have heard it rumored.

But thanks anyway ;-)

Only problem with your argument is that the memos actually don't line up with word.

The line lenthgs are slithgly different, some of the letterforms are differrent (notice the 4 and compare with Microsoft's Times New Roman 4).

And finally, it virtually impossible for word to produce lines of text where the letters themselves are a bit above or below the basline. But the memos do, which pretty much proves that they were printed on a typewriter.

You really ought to do your homework a bit better before you go off and sling a thousand words on the "motive of the forgers".

If the documents are forgeries they are so bad that nobody could really expect them to withstand national scrutiny. If the target was CBS itself the forger would have to assume that a professional forensic document specialist would eventually see them. Therefor, I think the most likely source of the forgeries is someone who was targeting someone in the Democratic organization for purposes of getting a job, promotion or influence. i don't think the documents were ever intended for a wider audience.

For example, somebody wants to land a job in "opposition research" for some democrat. They produce the documents and then show them to the target in faxed or photocopied form saying, "I don't have the originals but I got these copies." The target is convinced the forger is a genius and hires or promotes them. The forger believes that since they could not produce the originals the forgeries will never see a wider audience.

Unfortunately for the forger, the forgeries get widely circulated within the Democratic organization and eventually end up in hand of CBS who is so hot for the story they don't care that they don't have originals.

Bones -

You must know these are fakes. The documents are astonishingly bad forgeries that line up with Word formatting almost perfectly (and absolutely perfectly on the horizontal), despite degradation from copying and faxing. Futher, typewriters that used fonts similar to Times New Roman were vanishingly rare in 1972, no letterhead documents over Killian's signature use that fontface, and Killian didn't type, according to his widow.

It's stupid even to argue this, as Megan notes. Just give it up.

The problem with your argument is that the documents don't match up with MS word documents. Well, its your main, problem. The others are that you have no expertise in this field and haven't examined actual documents, but online images, which tend to get distorted after copying and scanning. Whether they are real or not, I don't know, but you sure don't make a good or even decent case for them being forgeries.

Bones,

I believe the distortions you are seeing result from scanner imperfections. These documents have passed at least once through a round bed scanner like a fax.

All this is academic. All we need to do is look at the original documents. If they were written on a typewriter, the paper will be indented. If they were produced on a laserwriter or ink-jet they will not be.

CBS needs to produce the original documents post-haste for examination by outside specialist. They will be able to tell immediately if the documents were typewritten or not. They will be able to tell within hours whether they are thirty years old and exactly what typewriter they were produced on.

If CBS cannot produce the originals, then they need to admit that they have no way of knowing whether the documents are authentic or not. Since several noted specialist are already on record as saying the documents appear dubious, the burden of proof is on those who claim them authentic.

bones - You're killing me.

My theory:

It must have been Karl Rove.

In fact, he's still at it.

He or one of his operatives have shown up right here on this here forum under the moniker "Bones" and are making up absurd arguments that make Kerry supporters look like pathetic idiots.

The most entertaining part of this is going to be watching leftwingers shift from defending the memos as completely authentic to swinging the complete opposite direction to saying that the memos were such obvious forgeries that no one who dislikes bush would ever have made them.

To me, this is just a case of democrats passing the memos on to CBS because they really wanted to believe them. You can convince yourself of pretty much anything if you want it to be true badly enough. Unfortunately I think that Dan Rather didn't bother to do a complete check on them for the exact same reason.

Yes, the forgeries are very bad, yes they will make Kerry look even worse than he already did. But your supposition that a republican made them to make Kerry look bad is absurd.

We have no reason to believe that anyone but CBS News and Dan Rather its controller have any culpability. I think a much simpler explanation is that someone at CBS News created these and Rather wanted to believe them, if he isn't the one who created or ordered them to be created himself.

The simplest explanation is usually the correct one. It is far to tricky to introduce such damning documents and hope that they will be recognized as false. Too many things can go wrong. I hardly think that any republican "operative" would do this right after Bush was announced with a 12 percent lead in the polls.

No, the culprits are CBS News and Dan Rather.

Ockham’s Razor

I’ve come to my default position on these documents based on “Ockham’s Razor.” Most people know this is “a philosophical rule that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex.” Yes, it is possible that the Malevolent Republicans led by the Evil Genius Karl Rove somehow cooked this up and slipped it to Rather and company. It’s more likely that Rather and his CBS producers are that incompetent, biased and stupid. They desperately wanted it to be true and ignored the obvious evidence that it wasn’t. Perhaps they thought no one would notice. In 1992 they would have got away with it. Now, ten thousand eyeballs were all over those documents in about two hours and raising questions.

My rule is to never assume evil when stupidity and incompetence explain events just as well.

I like the "Karl Rove set us up" defense -- "They tricked us by taking advantage of our stupidity!"

Despite some people's will to believe otherwise, the documents line up with Microsoft's default settings perfectly.

It seems CBS News is wagering its credibility on people's will to believe that the docs are genuine. And you know what? They might just win.

Bones,

You may not like what you see, but I suggest that you go to LGF where they have a GIF file that alternates between an MS Word and the CBS version of the Staudt "Memo to File".

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=12551_One_More_CBS_Document_Example

Does the initial "S" seems to be a tiny bit lower than the MS Word version? Well, perhaps but, given the stunning degree of match throughout the document, this is obviously due to the fact that the CBS has been copied numerous times. There are small, fuzzy displacements (like the "descending S") in a number of places but the overall effect is quite simply stunning. It is surely enough to convince all but the unreasonably intransigent.

Also, any idea how Staudt could be playing a day-to-day role in the operation of the TANG two years AFTER he retired as this memo implies? Of course, if you are the type who believes that there has been massive right-wing conspiracy - in place since the 1970s - to hijack the presidency for GWB, then I guess there is no convincing you anyway.

Ozanna, with online images they DO NOT tend to get distorted. Copy a PDF a thousand times and copy #1,000 is still matches the original byte-for-byte. And once it's been digitized once, it isn't likely to to be scanned again.

As she said, a lot of other blogs have offered compelling commentary on why these documents are most likely a hoax.

Whoever produced these documents did a really poor job. Just going out and buying a 1970's vintage IBM Selectric would have produced more believable results. Of course that person would probably have had a problem typing them with no errors. Would have added to the authenticity.
Hey, Bones... you should check the memos before you drink the kool-aid.

The argument that "this is so brilliant that only Karl Rove could have done it" reminds me of the islamists who claim that 9/11 could only have been the work of the mossad...

The documents were created with Microsoft Word there is not doubt about that.

The reason the newly printed docs and the fake docs don't line up exactly on every single dot is because the original fake was FAXed. Fax machines are not very accurate at advancing paper unlike laser printers or good ink-jet printers are very accurate at advancing paper.

Since the FAX machines are not very accurate when moving a piece of paper faxing a doc will tend to either compress of expanding spacing between lines. This is why the docs don't line up exactly to 1/10000 of an inch. Anyone can reproduce this effect. Just print a Word doc then FAX it and print it and compare the two in Photoshop. If the docs where faxed multiple times the effect of the FAX inaccuracy will increase the differences. This is a slam dunk closed case.

The CBS documents were not just created recently they were created with Microsoft Word recently. Any other word processor even using the same times font will not match up. The inter-word spacing will be off. Sorry but the fat lady already sang, the game is over.

In addition to the typographical problems, and the biographical issues, and the various people now saying that they were misquoted in support of them, Donald Sensing and others have demonstrated that the memos massively fail to conform to standard Air Force style requirements (including proper abbreviations, left justification of signature blocks, use of letterhead, etc.) in place at the time-- when all the known good documents do match those style requirements.

I'd also like to point out that the XFL did go broke overestimating the bad taste and stupidity of the American people.

But how do we force CBS to allow independent outside experts access to the first generation copies they have? Everyone should email to Andrew Heyward, President of CBS News. Tell him that the integrity of CBS is on the line and the only way to lift the pall is to have an independent investigation. The onus is on them.

"In fact, it seems to me that the "Republicans did this to get Kerry" is almost the best explanation here."

If that was true, wouldn't CBS have burned its source already?

Well said. Although I'm a very partisan Republican, Your closing paragraphs posed questions I have been asking. It does seem that whoever forged the documents is either a fool or did it in such a way as to ensure detection.

I posted a link to your site on my blog, http://hedgehogcentral.blogspot.com/.

Come on over some time.

Michael Richards has a good point to contact CBS, but I think if CBS were going to rein in their own organization they would have done so already.

I would like to see a list of sponsors for the show and write to them instead. That is what pays their bills and that is the only plausible way to get CBS News' attention.

Jane:

Thanks for your talented perspective.

Michelle:

I think you are right. I would be willing to bet that only the forger knew these documents were fake before Dan Rather's sleaze segment on Bush aired on 60 Minutes.

The forger probably passed them off to someone who just happened to have sufficient credibility with Dan Rather.

Dan Rather failed to verify because 1) He is an old Radio/TV guy living in an Internet World he has not met, i.e., he did not realize how intesely Internet users would scrutinize them. Could he have known they were fake and not known how poorly they were faked?

2) He is too anxious to see George W. Bush defeated. (I think for ideological reasons).

[If my use of English is less than perfect, please forgive me. I am from Tennessee.]

One thing that the Bush supporters and alleged "experts" who haven't even examined the actual documents can't/won't/don't address is why does Bush or his campaign or admin. come out and say the documents are fake if they are so sure they are? If I document surfaced which suggested I had committed a crime and I knew damn well that I didn't, my defense wouldn't be to sit by silently while others raised silly and demonstrably false reasons why the documents weren't authetic. I would come out and say this is bull (expletive deleted). Bush knows whether he was ordered to report for a physical or not. If he wasn't, clearly the document which says he was is fake and he could clear this up right away.

Here's something else pointing at Rather, though it is only an inference, not a fact. (And we've all just learned to be careful about that, haven't we, hmm?) Joe K. said, "In 1992 they would have got away with it." That's because in 1992 the memos would have been flashed on the screen for fifteen seconds under Rather's narration, probably with everything grayed out except for a highlight box around what Rather was quoting. No one would have had a chance to notice anything wrong. Theoretically a few reporters might have asked to see them, but they might not have noticed anything, and even if they did what member of the journalism fraternity would dare to blow the whistle on Dan Rather?

As it is, CBS felt obliged to post them on their website, allowing thousands of very bright and skeptical people to examine them carefully, and thus it all blew up in their faces.

Which suggests that it never occurred to the person responsible for this that they would be so posted and get such close scrutiny. It is easy to imagine Rather forgetting all about that, as he is in his sixties and totally disdainful of the Internet. It's not possible to imagine a 26-year-old junior staffer forgetting that detail.

Even the IBM Selectric "Composer" -- a $20,000 typewriter (in 2004 dollars) -- couldn't duplicate the memos.

Here's the link to a test.

http://shapeofdays.typepad.com/the_shape_of_days/2004/09/the_ibm_selectr.html

What do we see
On CBS?
That's what we see.
We see B.S.!

:-)

Tom Paine

Actually, there is one point about these memos that I haven't seen addressed yet. Whoever typed them double-spaces after the period at the end of every sentence. (At least, that's the case in the CYA one, which I printed out to check my try at duplicating it.)

Now, that was pretty standard typing practice before word processors, but it isn't now. I learned "double-space-after-the-period" in high school, and had to unlearn it in college.

I co-edit an online journal of classical music reviews that has several dozen writers ranging from music grad students to really long-time professional journalists. About the first thing I do when I get new copy is a search-and-replace to remove any double spaces. A few double spaces are obvious typos in the middle of sentences, but almost all of them are after the period, at the end of the sentence, and almost all by older writers. You don't find twenty-somethings automatically double-spacing after a period, at least not in my small sample. You find people old enough to have learned to type on a typewriter doing it.

So what does it mean? I still think this stuff is so obviously faked that no one in his senses would have run with it, but I'm perplexed by the fake: why would someone take the care to put in the two spaces an ordinary typist would put in after the period in 1972-3, but not bother to go out and find a reasonably plausible typewriter?

Enough of all this discussion already. That's old news by now! In the meantime, CBS has released a brand new document (and this time it's the real deal) which is very incriminating to Bush indeed! Go take a look right now at

http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/597afecn.asp

I think you should take a look at that link before you cast aspersions on its authenticity.

DiscoSTU: are you trolling?

Even if the documents were authentic, Bush would not have known Killian wrote them, and wouldn't have seen them*. The WH has no more ability to authenticate them than the blogosphere.

* except for the document ordering him to do a medical examination, but the WH has already explained countless times that since he wasn't flying anymore, he was not expected, required, or ordered to take the pilot physical examination.

Steve Teeter: You may want to google for "60 minutes don hewitt gennifer flowers" for more information about the 1992 reference...

SchmereL: Didn't I tell you to stop reading my mind?

DiscoSTU: I think Bush & co. know exactly what they're doing. The best thing they can do is stand back with their arms folded and say nothing. As Rather self-destructs, to say anything could only do them harm, as it would look like kicking a guy when he's down. Whether he richly deserves kicking or not is irrelevant. The last thing the Republicans want is to go out of their way to look mean.

"What, may I ask, is OCD?"

Get this man a Monk DVD box set, stat!

I'm not sure this even qualifies as a forgery. I've been likening it to a kid photocopying pages out of the encyclopedia and turning it in as his book report. Although if Rather was his teacher, he'd get an A+!

Sorry about the funeral, but if it took place in Ireland, it must have been one hell of celebration of the life of the old gentleman! May he have been in heaven half an hour before the devil knew he was dead!

Re fake documents -- as one of the world's top notorious 'UFO debunkers', I've seen decades of faked 'Top Secret Gummint UFO Files' leaked out to the world, for various obscure reasons -- fun, profit, ego, malice, misguided gambit to tease 'real' documents loose, whatever. Few were ever traced to their originators, but all were readily exposed as hoaxes -- some clumsy, some clever.

See www.debunker.com, www.csicop.org, www.jamesoberg.com (the 'space folklore' section), and Tim Printy's home page (do 'google' -- can't access URL) for examples.

The Killian ersatz-memos fail the 'chain of custody' test as well as 'only originals can be authenticated' test, and since we have no provable theory where they came from, they're useless to support a hypothesis.

OTHER such fakes, however, might show up if a clever hoaxer pulls some UFO-type hoaxes and (as UFO promoters have done) visit the National Archives to inspect boxes of original documents, and then DEPOSIT pre-created false documents INTO the folders, and leave them there for a LATER investigator to find.

The ersatz-document won't be on the folder's inventory list, but it can then be touted as 'coming from official gummint archives' anyway.

So be prepared -- creative forgers have made good livings for all of human history, and the stakes are higher than usual this year.

Jim O
Houston, Texas
www.jamesoberg.com

Mina, you just made my day. Precious.

Jane and/or Mindles, is there any reason you can see that the "Remember info?" box doesn't work for me? I keep checking it, and yet have to re-enter the info every time. It wasn't always so.

Michelle-- good point, although as a 25-year-old, I still often put double-spaces, because I learned on a typewriter.

I also admit to being confused because these things are such obvious fakes, from multiple angles. Either CBS has a lot of groupthink and very many Kos & Atrios-level Democratic partisans, and thus just wanted these to be true more than they cared to check, or well, perhaps the original source for these documents is a Republican plant. Yeah, I agree that one should "never attribute to malice that which can be satisfactorily explained by stupidity," but still.

If it is just CBS's partisan blindness (and wanting to run a good story isn't enough, or else they would have run some equally bad Republican hit jobs, which they didn't), then we're seeing Mickey Kaus's argument of how media bias doesn't always help Democrats. Making excuses that enable poor arguments and cocooning can backfire badly.

What astonishes me is the number of people who have lashed themselves to the mast of the Good Ship Memo as it's rapidly taking on water. Not only CBS and Dan Rather -- Daily Kos and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, too.

Bones, Times New Roman was designed in 1931 for the Times newspaper, but only licensed out to Microsoft in 1980. As far as I know it wasn't available on typewriters in the early seventies at all.

Anyway, the docs are such obvious fakes, you must be in pathological denial.

DiscoSTU -

There's no need for Bush to say anything about the documents. If they were in Killian's personal files, as they supposely were, he would not have seen them. He can just sit back and let the blogsphere do the work.

"If I document surfaced which suggested I had committed a crime and I knew damn well that I didn't, my defense wouldn't be to sit by silently while others raised silly and demonstrably false reasons why the documents weren't authetic."

Well, they might, if it was written in purple marker on My Little Pony stationery. Which is sillier than this case, but not by much.

The only explanation that makes sense, as to the source of these fakes, is that Dan Rather himself, was involved in procuring the docs. Otherwise, they would have never seen the light of day after being subject to some elementary inspection and questioning. Some have suggested Rather's daughter, an active Texas Democrat, as being involved. Or, Roy Barnes. Or both. In any case, if it were the producer or a staffer who procured the docs, you can assured they'd be walking the plank by now.

As for the suggestion that the Kerry campaign held these docs for 6 weeks, that allegation was made by an unnamed source in the Kerry campaign at the the usually reliable "Prowler" at the American Spectator site. Best guess is that some combination of Rather, his daughter, Barnes, and the Kerry campaign are responsible for this.

To Bones and all the others fighting a hopeless battle:

Give it up.

A few salient prefaces: (1) I'm a lifelong registered Democrat and (2) I have qualified in US Federal Court as an expert on computer document forensics. Also, unlike Jane, I actually used IBM Selectrics back when they represented the state of the art in typewriting (I learned to type in 1968 on a _manual_ typewriter and still managed 55 wpm).

These documents are forgeries, and bad ones at that. End of story.

(And if you _really_ want to challenge my qualifications, recognize that I spent five years as chief software architect for a firm that developed and sold a design-oriented desktop publishing package; in so doing, I worked closely for five years with Mike Parker, a world-class typographer; and that I did most of the actualy writing for a patent that Mike filed for--and was awarded--on automatic scaling of font size and leading in order to maintain text layout while changing fonts.)

Now, were I asked to offer an expert opinion in court, I would do just what most of the other experts have done: I would ask to see the 'originals' such as they are. But we have yet to see a single expert in typography and/or word processing who has said that these were produced on an IBM Selectric (or Composer) circa 1972-73, and you won't.

They are fakes, pure and simple. That was obvious to me within a few minutes of pulling up the first PDF file. The 'net has pulled together lots of proof, from both a technology point of view and timeline/content/provenance point of view. I am staggered that CBS continues to insist these are genuine; frankly, they're amateurish, and as Mickey Kaus allegedly said on TV yesterday, CBS is going to be throwing folks out of windows by the time this is all over. ..bruce..

Actually what baffles trolls like DiscoSTU is that the Bush administration is not as dishonest as the previous Clinton administration. They don't automatically claim that documents are forged when they don't know. It was the Clinton era that saw "The slut is lying" as the first response from the Clinton spokespeople.

Another reason to oppose the Kerry / Edwards ticket.

Fredrick Nyman,

Then why did the WhiteHouse re-release the documents to the media and sent its spokesman out to say that as far as he new, CBS provided him with legitimate documents? Why, unless he is the world's worst spokeman, or being paid by the DNC, lend credence to the documents?

Anybody with Freedom of Information Act or military document archive experience care to explain how a commanding officer's "Memo's to file" might have ended up in a unit's official archives and be subject to a permitted document search?

Aren't "Memo's to file" intended for the writer's own personal information, only to be used as a possible CYA and not meant for the official record of the entire unit? And if so, shouldn't these files - if they had ever actually existed - have ended up with the LTCOL's personal papers, which should now be in possession of his family?

The FoIA search scenario seems to me to be false.

re: DiscoSTU

Oh please. Why would the Whitehouse want to muddy the waters by making a statement of any kind while CBS (and Kerry) are sinking deeper and deeper? Bush doesn't need to defend himself, the facts are doing it for him just fine.

Oh, and one more thing:

> ...why does[n't] Bush...come out and say the documents are fake?

"Never interfere when your enemy is in the midst of destroying himself." -- usually attributed to either Napoleon or Machiavelli

Bruce F. Webster:
Zell Miller is a lifelong democrat too. It doesnt' mean squat.
And being qualified as an expert in Federal court is really no big deal. It really isn't that difficult. You can find experts in just about any subject in a catalog if the price is right. Sorry, but you dont' really impress me much. The CBS expert is one too. What makes him any better or worse that you? Also, you kind of shoot yourself in the foot. NONE of the experts and alleged experts have looked at the originals. Not even the CBS expert. If YOU havne't looked at the originals and admit that is what you need to do, what credibility to you have?

DiscoSTU,

The reason that the Bush people cannot simply deny the memos on the basis of their own knowledge of the situation is that the memos purport only to describe the actions and thoughts of other people that occurred more than 30 years ago. I have no idea what other people have thought of me in the past, so I would not be able to argue the falsity of a memo that emerged recording thoughts demeaning to me on the part of some past acquaintance.

What you are leaving out is the obvious coordination of the Kerry Campaign with Rather.

Now We Know Why

I don't buy the Rove theory at all, but suppose it is true. Who would you rather have running the country, a team with enough savvy and skill to dupe a major new network and their opponents into self-destruction, or the idiots who fell for it?

Regarding Jane's advice for our friends in the left half of the blogosphere, it is interesting to note that they're making the same mistake as CBS for exactly the same reason.

The Rove defense: "They set us up the Rove!"

I can tell a little about the forger. He's under 30, lives in Austin Texas, and is a Democratic activist.

He's that young because whoever did this has no awareness of the technology changes of the last thirty years. For him, things are as they always have been. I know he lives in Austin because one of the documents has the right zipcode for Hobby Field. To know that detail means he lives in/near Austin. He is a Democratic activist because those are the people who hate Bush enough and have few problems with out of the box thinking in pursuit of their hatred.

How is it that these documents were accepted uncritically by CBS and why is Dan Rather being so adamantly defensive? The answers are linked and the link is Dan Rather's daughter Robin, a Democratic activist living in Austin Texas. She got the documents from the forger and passed them on to Dad.

Dad Dan accepted the documents because they came from a trusted source, his daughter. He is being so adamantly defensive because he is defending his daughter.

This has no place to go but ugly.

In reference to the "baseline" arguments of the CBS memos, try this: Draw a STRAIGHT line on white paper, grab some quarters, and head to the nearest photocopier for about 15-20 rounds of photocopying. Note that the line is squiggly after a few rounds, due to the compounded effect of imperfect copying in each round. If the documents were photocopied a few times to make them look old, this is entirely possible, and may have contributed to some degree of apparent baseline shift.

Jim O — I've seen MJ-12 "Files" that were faked better than these "memos."

Michelle Dulak Thomson — I do a lot of typesetting and layout in my dayjob, and we're instructed to put double spaces after each period ending a sentence. It's not rare.

Only people with a terminal case of Bush Hate Syndrome could think a stunt like this would do anything but make them look stupid.

The Swift Vets were effective because they were telling the truth. These memos are ineffective because they are lies. If one rejects the first premise, which requires one to believe that Nixon was President in 1968, it is easy to see how one might infer that fake memos might do the same thing to Bush that the "untrue" Swift Vet book did to Kerry.

Someone should send Dan Rather some flowers, a get well card, and a bottle of extra-strength Prozac for his BHS. The Kool-Aid he's been taking for it has impaired his judgement.

I've been contemplating the question as to how someone could be so incompetant so as to create such obvious fakes. My best speculation is that they were not intended at all to be serious forgeries. I think someone was pulling a practical joke or prank and circulated the doucments for kicks to see what kind of reaction he might get. I suspect he or she had no idea that the documents would be so widely ccirculated that they would end up on CBS news.
This makes more sense then competing theories. A Democrat would have to be stupid to think these would survive scrutiny. I don't think a Republican could possibly have anticipated that CBS News would be so incompetant as to not detect the fakes.
I remember long ago when I was in college. I can imagine myself having a little fun just seeing how gullible people could be.

Nostalgists are invited to cruise on over to http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/natural_disasters/hurricanes/hurricane_carla.html to sample "dramatic CBS News coverage of the sound and fury of Hurricane Carla". Viewers may note the flapping trench coat of Dan Rather circa 1961, then an employee of CBS affiliate KHOU-TV Houston/Galveston. His dashingly dramatic reports from the Gulf Coast got him promoted to New York soon afterward.

Captain Dan the Newsman hasn't flapped anything but his gums for the last 40 years. Menial tasks like typing are delegated to production staff minions. Dan lives in a cocoon inside a bubble. If he didn't, this fiasco couldn't have happened.

I was a bit sad that Begbee hadn't invaded this discussion yet, playing his usual role of crazed moonbat attackbot...but DiscoSTu seems to be filling Begbee's slot nicely.

Sorry, but you dont' really impress me much...what credibility to [sic] you have?

One hell of a lot more than you do, Stu. (Oh, and in the future try to place apostophes where they belong, mmmkay?)

And I'm sure he's horrified at your use of his name.

To me the most obvious evidence of forgery is the "kerning" especially where the tail of the y is slightly under the right leg of the m in the word my. Could never happen on a typewriter!

richard mcenroe,

Michelle Dulak Thomson — I do a lot of typesetting and layout in my dayjob, and we're instructed to put double spaces after each period ending a sentence. It's not rare.

Yes, but you didn't double-space after the period in your own post, did you? ;-) Nor (on a cursory examination) did most of the people posting on this thread.

I'd just suggest that this is another unexplained detail. I think writers who double-space out of habit are much likelier to be over 30 than under. OTOH, I can't see someone who learned to type on a typewriter not noticing how lame these documents look. And on the, er, third hand, I don't see how anyone who wasn't ever taught to double-space after the period would remember to fake that, yet forget to procure a cheap typewriter of the period. It's all a puzzlement.

Brian-
I really like your theory. It fulfills the principle of Occam's razor very nicely. The only problem is that Hobby Airport (HOU) is in Houston, not Austin. It was Houston's main airport until IAH was built in the late 1960s (now called George Bush Intercontinental Airport-heh).
Does Dan's daughter live in Houston or Austin?

Otherwise, as I said above, it's a great theory.

Michelle said.....

"Whoever typed them double-spaces after the period at the end of every sentence." (snip) "I learned "double-space-after-the-period" in high school, and had to unlearn it in college."

Which lends credence to the idea that the forgeries were created by kids fresh out of high school.

Hey, I still double space after every period. But then again, I'm old enough to have typed stuff up on manual typewriters so I figure you young whippersnappers will just have to put up with it.

James

No way this was a Republican trick.

How would Rove know that Kerry or CBS would not hold on to the documents and release them right before the election, before they could be exposed as fraudulent?

No way he could take that chance.

I'm 26 and I have to exert a force of will not to double-space after periods, since that's the way I was taught to type things on the computer in fourth grade.

Note HTML collaspes whitespace. For example, these sentences have each been separated by ten spaces as I composed them. You see only one, however.

Mr. Rather is 72, not in his 60's. Without the source named no one will know about the typography. The facts are correct though for you Bushies. Why do you like fortunate incompetent sons? Would a Democrat get away with this? I doubt it since none have to date. Make no mistake about it, as junior would say, his policies are dismal failures. To deny that is being seriously blinkered.

Touche Michelle! *I* double space after every period. Good catch on Richard.

Excellent post, compelling logic. I'm bookmarking you now and look forward to many visits.

"NONE of the experts and alleged experts have looked at the originals. Not even the CBS expert. If YOU havne't looked at the originals and admit that is what you need to do, what credibility to you have?"

DiscoStu is clearly a moron as he has just admitted that CBS' expert has no credibility. The real question is why did CBS run this story when they knew they did not the originals for definitive verification?

Michelle, I don't want to burst your bubble, but I (who learned to type about 60 WPM on a Royal manual in the early '60s) almost always double space out of habit when I'm posting. Most comment sections apparently take it out. My comments always end up with a single space. I double spaced these sentences. How do they look?

I'm actually open to giving the Kerry people a pass on this, since Dan has been entwined with the Texas Democratic Party and it's high muckety-mucks and supporters for years. Remember, back in the 1980s and early 90s, whenever CBS News wanted to know what the political pulse of Texas was, they would inevtiably turn to Molly Ivins, which is roughly equivalent of wanting to sample the pulse of the average New Yorker by interviewing former mayoral candidate William F. Buckley, Jr.

Anyway, as has been mentioned, Robin Rather is an environmental activist in Austin (SAVE BARTON SPRINGS!) and Dan did speak at a Democratic fundraiser a couple of years ago for a city council candidate Robin was backing. So she's simpatico with the Austin Democrats, who are in general the state's most liberal Democratic group. But while Robin may have connections to both them, and Dan and daddy has his own connections with the state party going way back, the fact is for the past eight years the Texas Democratic Party has been the most mind-boggingly inept group of political asipirants out there this side of the pre-Schwarzennger Republican Party of California. They haven't held a single statewide office since 1998, and their major effort at retaining power -- running off to Oklahoma and New Mexico during the redistricting kerfuffle -- went from a temporary success to a long-term travesty when the group couldn't stand being in Santa Fe any longer.

If this is the group Rather got his "bombshell" information from -- either through his daughter, Ben Barnes or somebody else -- he might as well have been relying on Baghdad Bob for the real inside skinny on the Iraq war during the first week of April last year. And I agree with Brian that staking your career reputation on info from The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight -- who very possibly could have done this on their own with no help from the Kerry people -- makes no sense unless Robin Rather would somehow be implicated in passing false documents, were CBS to admit they've been snookered.

I'm with Brian, had to be someone close to Dan or they'd be toast now. My wife has been typing for a really long time. 40+ years and she spotted the fakes as soon as she saw them on the CBS site.

The double spacing after periods debate came up in my high school class this year. Group of sixty, 17-20 years old, three-quarters of us double space. I didn't even realize until it was brought up that anyone single spaced, and it still looks ugly to my eye. If I recall, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing told us to double space, so anyone who learned from that rather than teachers probably has the tendency. I don't think the spacing tells us anything either way.

The forger *wanted* for this to be discovered. This makes much more sense to me. Consider - the forger used the _default_ settings of the most common word processing program in the world. He or she knew that it employs typography that was quite rare in 1973. The memos were also salted with enough distinguishing features (like the curly apostrophes). I think the forger was quite clever.

re: CBS and honor

It's curious how the left will put their faith in documents and not the spoken word (especially sworn words, to say nothing of how far out of their way they will go to avoid being sworn :-).

The records fiasco highlights how CBS (and the MSM) choose to ignore and deride the SwiftVets as tabloid (because they have little proof other than their own memories and reputation as honorable men, both of which the MSM give the back of their hand), while promoting an argument based on faked documents and selective and deceptive reporting - what else can we make of 60 Minutes neglecting to reflect the comments of principals that did not support their argument? And the less-than-truthful interviews of General Hodges? Mr. Rather denigrates the honorable, and defends those who have been demonstrated less-than-ethical. Shame on CBS.

Strange beasts, these lefties. How can they bear to look at themselves in the mirror in the morning?

The notion that these have been prooved to be forgeries by looking at the typography has been extensively and definitively debunked.

http://juliusblog.blogspot.com/ Has some really excellent examples of why you cannot duplicate these memos with MS Word.

The entire premise of your post is wrong. Bush supporters and my-party-before-my-country-or-my-honor Republicans really want to believe that they are forgeries and so they are seizing on any pretext to believe that they are. Then they can, like you, move on to the next step of trying to convince people that these memos prove something bad about Kerry.

In the end the only thought that Republicans can let themselves think is some variation on "Everything bad is the Democrats fault, and Kerry is their leader." There's a kind of consisntcy in that, but it's the consistency of the unhinged.

All protesting to the contrary; The memo's are likely real, and in any case only serve to buttress an already strong case that Bush did not fulfill his duties or keep his promises to TANG. And that there is very little reason to believe that Bush's honorable discharge is anthing other than the final example of Bush's father's cronies bending and even breaking the law to get him out of a jam.

How you can possibly support a man like that is the real question.

Might I suggest an examination of this article?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/09/11/MNGO68NEKR1.DTL

Of course I know full well that most of the readers here wouldn't believe it if Killian rose from the grave and confirmed that he'd written it, but I thought I'd contribute something to the debate.

Disco Stu,

You wrote:
"And being qualified as an expert in Federal court is really no big deal. It really isn't that difficult."

So tell us Stu, what exactly is the process to become qualified?

Jim English
Chicago

WL, if HTML ordinarily suppressed extra spaces between words in between code items, I wouldn't have to go to the trouble of removing them from copy. But let's test:

Here's one space. Two. Three. Four. More?

Just gonna preview this so as to see how it actually turns out . . . whoa, you are right! About this site, anyway. Apologies to richard mcenroe; my bad.

Now how about extra spaces between words?

Nope, all those are invisible too. Wow.

Seriously, in the journal I edit, if there's a double space in the text, you can see it post-publication. Which is why I take them out. I think this must be a feature of this blog's hosting software, certainly not of HTML per se. Spaces, returns, &c. between code items are invisible, sure, but not within blocks of text intended to be visible.

Anyway, WL, I'm 37 and I learned the double-space rule too; I just thought it hadn't been taught for ages. The standard form everywhere now is single-space-after-the-period, and the fact that this very site won't actually let you produce anything else is sorta corroborating evidence, yes?

None of which means I am not convinced of the total bogosity (yeah, it ought to be "bogusity" by logic, but I've been using "bogosity" for a decade, and it sounds better) of this material. I just found the double-space thing odd.

Strange beasts, these lefties. How can they bear to look at themselves in the mirror in the morning?

Beacuse they believe, in their heart of hearts, that they are the good guys and are acting as patriots.

As one of my Dem friends put it, "We gotta do everything we can to get that moron out of the White House. Lie, cheat, whatever...after all, the Repugs do it, why shouldn't we?" (She has since changed her tune somewhat: "I'll never vote for Bush, but Kerry is a total stiff. Guess I'll stay home." Not that it'll matter much: we both live in a state that's solidly blue...I think.)

The really silly thing, even if the documents were genuine, so what? Bush used political pressure to help him get out of (or was it into?) the National Guard in 1973? Are you kidding me? This is important to a presidential election thirty-one years later? This would be like printing a phony Valentine's card on my computer, singing the name of a boy my wife knew in the fourth grade, and using the card as proof of her infedility to me.

I mean, jeebus christmas, people. Can't you come up with something better than this?

JorgXMcKie, Caddie Heddleson, thanks. Jorg, wasn't a "bubble" to be "burst," just something that puzzled me. It's a rare document I see published nowadays anywhere that has double-spacing, that's all. And, as I said, none of my journal's young writers seem to do it.

Our commenters from the left are a bit too nuanced for me. It seems they're simultaneously asserting that the documents are genuine and forgeries that Karl Rove has planted. Anyone care to un-nuance this apparent contradiction?

I worked my way through college in the early 1970s as a typist. I worked on a variety of machines, both manual and electric, in many different offices - from private corporations to local government to the federal government. Later, I worked in typing pool, to the Mag Card machines, to early word processors like the Wang system. (My current profession of programming microcomputer networks, had not yet been invented.) With my experience, one glance at the PDFs of the documents told me that they could not have been prepared on office typewriters of the period: the proportional spacing alone was enough to rule typewriters out.

Much has been made of the fact that a proportional spacing machine was made by IBM at the time. However, the Composer was an expensive machine and was so difficult to use that it required special training. A Composer was used to prepare camera-ready copy for paste-up and publication. It would be highly unusual, to say the least, for it to be used to prepare office memoranda. Remember, proportional spacing in office documents just wasn't seen as a necessary feature in those days.

DiscoStu and others may question my expertise on document preparation. Well, you don't need a doctorate in economics to spot a three-dollar bill. My eight years of experience in working with document-preparation machines of the 1970s tells me that these documents are fakes, and crude fakes at that. Anyone who gives them the slightest credence simply pillories himself as a credulous fool.

I'd just suggest that this is another unexplained detail. I think writers who double-space out of habit are much likelier to be over 30 than under.

Or the word processing software is putting in double spaces after periods for them. I know I have seen (and been irritated by) this before. Unfortunatly, I am not certain what editors/versions/templates do it. The default template in Word XP 2004 does not.

Bush supporters and my-party-before-my-country-or-my-honor Republicans really want to believe that they are forgeries and so they are seizing on any pretext to believe that they are.

Actually, they're seizing on many, many pretexts, documented in many places, most of which carry a lot more heft than Mr Juliusblog.

And you're right: anybody who questions these memos doesn't give a damn about country or honour; they're just Strawman Bad Guys, intent on doing Bad Stuff.

There's a kind of consistency in (believing that everything bad is the other party's fault), but it's the consistency of the unhinged.

Boy, you got that right, sister. Sudden Bush Hatred Fatigue Syndrome will be the death of me yet.

How you can possibly support a man like that is the real question.

Ooh! Ooh! I know this one! How about "Because he's a good president and a decent man, one who doesn't direct his minions to smear his opponent with obvious forgeries?"

What would the TANG be doing with a $20,000 (adjusted for inflation) fancy typesetting typerwriter? To write routine memos for filing?

Neither the IBM Executive nor the IBM Selectric Composer have a "th" ligature. The only way is to change the typeball to a smaller point size and type "t""h".

Donald Sensing pointed out that the IBM SC requires you to type each line *twice* to get proportional spacing, and in pro-space mode it forces auto-justification. The forged docs have unjustified right edges.

A mystery writer once wrote that if you commit a major crime, you make 50 mistakes, and if you can predict 20 of them, you're an absolute genius. The Kerry/CBS crews can nit-pick on some of the points of contention, but the points of contention are cropping up like wildfire. And they missed at least 30 errors in the crime.

Maybe I'm too generous, but I think these memeos were produced by a rogue political agent. Kerry, if caught in this web, would be destroyed. Bush/Rove would likewise be crushed. The risks are really too high for either political party to bet it all on forgeries. Someone who wanted to smack Bush through credible forgeries, or wanted to slam Kerry through obvious forgeries, or else was just a mean-spirited techie who wanted to mess up the whole election process out of malice, pro- or anti-Bush. However, we can't get around the gullibility of CBS or Rather's frothing at the mouth at a Bush-bashing lead with an obvious low credibility quotient.

Whoever wins or loses on this one, CBS didn't have its ducks in line on a major, aggressive story. Not just scary, but terrifying implications for the Fourth Estate.

Blogs rule!

Michelle writes:

I think this must be a feature of this blog's hosting software, certainly not of HTML per se. Spaces, returns, &c. between code items are invisible, sure, but not within blocks of text intended to be visible

Nope, they're invisible within regular blocks of HTML text as well. This is in fact part of the HTML standard, not just moveable type. In order to get multiple spaces to show up, they need to be something like &nbsp;s, or exist within formatting tags like <pre>. They can't just be normal ' ' spaces.

Here is an example:

1. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.

2. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.

3. Now  is  the  time  for  all  good  men  to   come  to  the  aid  of  their  country.

4.

Now  is  the  time  for  all  good  men  to  come  to  the  aid  of  their  country.

The first sentance has its words seperated by single spaces. The second sentance is double spaced (which you can see if you view source on the page). The third sentance seperates the words with multiple &nbsp; elements. The fourth uses "normal" double-spaces within <PRE>

I'm actually quite impressed that moveable type is letting me plug in all the HTML code above. I hope it looks the same after I post as it does in preview!

Jim offers:

Might I suggest an examination of this article?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/09/11/MNGO68NEKR1.DTL

That's a reprint from the Boston Globe. And Dr. Bouffard, whom the Globe quoted, is very unhappy:

"What the Boston Globe did now sort of pisses me off, because now I have people calling me and e-mailing me, and calling me names, saying that I changed my mind. I did not change my mind at all!"

"You talk to someone on the phone and it comes out different than you said!"

Quite enlightening, actually.

Jim also says:

Of course I know full well that most of the readers here wouldn't believe it if Killian rose from the grave and confirmed that he'd written it. . .

Well, I certainly wouldn't believe it, since resurrections are uncommon in my experience. On the other hand, at this point, I wonder if Dan Rather might believe it if Jane walked up to him, showed him an "ID" drawn on construction paper with markers, and claimed she was Jerry Killian.

RMc, first I find it more than a little disgusting how you edited DiscoSTu's post to attempt to imply that he was comparing his credibility on the issue with Mr. Webster's when in fact he was comparing it with other typographical experts. Somehow, based on what I see in your posts here I think your Dem friend is as real as Harvey the Rabbit since if you speak to them the way you write in response here to those who don't kiss Bush's posterior you couldn't possibly maintain a friendship with a non-Republican.

Mr. Nyman, the only people posting here who have mentioned the possibility of the "Rove did it." defense have been the Republicans, not the "commentators from the left".

Ari, in your post you believe the people who say what you want to believe such as the Swiftvets and denigrate the honesty of the ones you don't. Tell me again where this makes you any different than the "leftists" you disagree with?

Are the memos real? Are they forgeries? Unlike many here who should know better I'm not certain because both arguments have their pluses and minuses. Based on what I've read here today not one conservative on this blog would believe they were real no matter what.

Someone who currently serves in the National Guard pointed out to me that it's not TANG. (For Texas Air National Guard.) He said that you refer to the State by POst Office abbreviations. Texas Air National Guard would be TXANG. Or TexANG, which some people prefer.

So no more TANG. I'm full.

James

Please note that I have not referenced blatantly biased blogs as my reference, which is what INDC is.

James, the obvious question is whether or not that might have changed in the 31 years that have passed since then.

"I think this must be a feature of this blog's hosting software, certainly not of HTML per se"

Not so. HTML 4 recognizes only one space. To doublespace you'd have to put in the "non-breaking space" tag.

RMc, first I find it more than a little disgusting how you edited DiscoSTu's post to attempt to imply that he was comparing his credibility on the issue with Mr. Webster's when in fact he was comparing it with other typographical experts.

"More than a little disgusting?" Rather thin-skinned, are we? (Actually, Rather is thin-skinned, now that I think about it.)

Somehow, based on what I see in your posts here I think your Dem friend is as real as Harvey the Rabbit since if you speak to them the way you write in response here to those who don't kiss Bush's posterior you couldn't possibly maintain a friendship with a non-Republican.

*snort* What a maroon. Believe it or not, it really is possible to have friends of a different political persuasion than your own. Try it sometime.

Are the memos real? Are they forgeries? Unlike many here who should know better I'm not certain because both arguments have their pluses and minuses.

Who will win the American League East, the Yankees or the Devil Rays? Unlike many here who should know better, I'm not certain because both teams have their pluses and minuses, the fact Yankees lead the Devil Rays by twenty-eight games notwithstanding.

Based on what I've read here today not one conservative on this blog would believe they were real no matter what.

If CBS would show us the originals and/or point us in the direction of someone with a shred of credibility, I might believe they were real. But panting after silly, suspicious-looking documents supposedly written by a man dead for two decades is a risky business at best. You'd think somebody at CBS would've realized that. They didn't...and that's the real scandal.

For the doubters of the forgeries, here is more evidence:

http://peterduncan.net/CBS_Documents.html

And here:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/
(see the Flash animation)

And none of you have mentioned the "kerning" problem about which I posted earlier. Why not?

And we're still waiting for someone to explain why/how the curly apostrophes Jane mentioned got into the document.

"James, the obvious question is whether or not that might have changed in the 31 years that have passed since then."

That's a good question, Jim. But my source, who is currently a serving National Guard officer, insists that this is the way you do it.

James

* except for the document ordering him to do a medical examination, but the WH has already explained countless times that since he wasn't flying anymore, he was not expected, required, or ordered to take the pilot physical examination.

Of course, if he wasn't ordered to take a physical, then he knows for certain that that document is phoney. Grand and subtle strategies notwithstanding, would be yelling about it. He's not yelling. He was ordered to take a physical. He didn't obey.

Jim,

You wrote:
"Are the memos real? Are they forgeries? Unlike many here who should know better I'm not certain because both arguments have their pluses and minuses."

RMc touched on this but I want to drive the point further home. I have not seen the documents at all, and yet I am fairly certain they are forgeries. Why? Because CBS has not produced the originals. Nobody disputes that fact. Until they do, and the originals are vetted by forensics experts, it is all so much bullshit. Furthermore, Dan Rather knows or should know that faxes of photo copies of documents are not proof of anything. Only originals can be verified. Copies just don't count. So either Rather is a fool or a stooge. Whatever the case he cannot be trusted. Produce the originals or shut up. End of story.

Jim English
Chicago

"Please note that I have not referenced blatantly biased blogs as my reference, which is what INDC is."

So, all information that is handled by a person with a biased position is suspect.

I'll grant that.

What was the ratio of liberal-to-conservative journalists in the print media (as conducted _by_ a liberal print media journalist) again? 18-1?

I'm not particularly offended by discoSTu's questioning my credentials--though I'd suggest that if he thinks it's easy these days to get qualified as an expert in a Federal court, he needs to read up on Daubert challenges. (He can also check out my own background.)

However, discoSTu needs to realize that CBS's expert is a handwriting expert--and I've seen no evidence in his background that he has any expertise in documents, typography, etc. It's telling to note that in the aforementioned case where I was qualified as a computer document expert (Global Tech Inc. v. Global Encasement Inc.; US District Court for the Eastern District of New York), the client who retained me also retained a handwriting/paper expert--recognizing that I was not qualified to comment on handwriting and paper, and that he was not qualified to comment on computer generation of documents.

In short, CBS relying upon a handwriting expert to determine that these documents were authentic is as silly as if they had retained me to compare handwriting samples and render an expert opinion. And the deafening silence that you've heard in the last few days is CBS's inability to find a credible expert in typography and/or computer documents to state that the documents are (or could be) genuine. ..bruce..

In a single blow, Dan Rather can destroy the reputation of the right-wing blogging world and every conservative news outlet that has staked its credibility on the proposition that the Killian memos were forged. All he has do is:

(1) Produce a typography expert to refute each and every one of these 48 independent reasons that the documents are forged, a task that will be quite easy if the documents are authentic, or,

(2) Produce the actual copies of the documents he received; if they're on 32 year old paper from a 32 year old copy machine, he's vindicated, and if they're on new paper from a 2004 copier, all he has to do is go back to that copier and remove the 32 year old copy that was absent-mindedly left under its cover.

Those who have faith in Rather's reporting should be calling for him to do this immediately.

Julie,

The document was faxed or copied with a very low-resolution digital copier (most likely faxed though). That means basically it was digitally scanned and then printed.

This process will tend to introduce some pixel-level errors. The problems you noted on your blog all center around the fact that the multiple copying and the faxing have degraded the integrity of the original text outlines (as was intended by the forger). However the text spacing that Charles Johnson (of LGF) has demonstrated matches MS word documents is basically conclusive.

Don't choose this iceburg to sink your ship on!

My god, Jim!

Please note that I have not referenced blatantly biased blogs as my reference, which is what INDC is.

INDC is the blog that got Mr. Bouffard involved in this mess IN THE FIRST PLACE. The Boston Globe OUTRIGHT MISREPRESENTED what he said. That doesn't fit in your narrow worldview, so you can safely stick your fingers in your ears and pretend it doesn't exist. Jeezus.

Jane wrote:

In fact, it seems to me that the "Republicans did this to get Kerry" is almost the best explanation here.

I dunno, it seems just as likely to me that (assuming that these are in fact forgeries) that the target could have been Dan Rather and/or CBS news. Perhaps these were sent by a rival news network that was hoping that CBS would run with it and damage their credibility when/if they were exposed to be a fraud.

Oh and please accept my most heartfelt sympathy on the loss of your grandfather. I'm sure I speak for a lot of your readers when I say that we all look forward to your return and more posts from you.

Hmmmm.

The single biggest reason why these fake documents were NOT planted by a Republican?

Dan Rather would have dimed that person out by now.

Whoever was the source of these documents must have been a highly impeccable source for Rather. It's unlikely that CBS, without pressure from Rather, would have allowed these documents to be used. Instead it's far more likely that Rather forced their use onto CBS and now CBS is trying desperately to wriggle off the hook.

So whoever was the source, was someone who was personally known to Rather and whom Rather would trust implicitly. Additionally the way the documents are formatted and written makes me believe that it wasn't just one person but at least two people who wrote two documents each.

As for defending Rather and CBS, that's a loser's game. There's no way that either will get out of this without their credibility completely destroyed.

And yes, I think it's hilarious. :)

Hmmm.

"Of course, if he wasn't ordered to take a physical, then he knows for certain that that document is phoney. Grand and subtle strategies notwithstanding, would be yelling about it. He's not yelling. He was ordered to take a physical. He didn't obey."

You should read more as this position has been definitely refuted many times over on other blogs. But here we go.

1. Pilots are required to take an annual flight physical.

2. They have *3 months* in which to do so.

3. The end date for this 3 month period is the last day of the birth month of the pilot.

4. Bush's birth month is July.

5. Ordering someone to take a flight physical 2.5 months early is completely illogical.

6. Writing an order for someone to take a flight physical is ridiculous since it would be far simpler, and more SOP, to direct a sargeant to deliver the order personally. A written order doesn't have any force unless you can prove, i.e. by a signature, that the recipient actually got the order. The memo doesn't have that necessary second signature by Bush.

Hope that helped clear things up for you.

There's another aspect that gets lost in the argument about "could this have been done in '72." The defenders point out that Times New Roman existed, IBM Selectric Composers existed, 13 points of leading was possible, superscripted "th" existed, etc. Perhaps, but the fact remains that the memos are, by the standards of '72, typeset documents. Typesetting was tricky and required training. (I got into publishing in '74, so I know about this stuff.) It's absurd to imagine that some untrained person would be able to (or want to) sit down at a typesetting machine and bang out some memos with nicely centered headings and good word and letterspacing. I've also matched a bit of type in my day, and even if the original was done in the same program on the same computer, it requires some effort. Matching something done years before on a different system is usually very difficult. If you believe that it's sheer coincidence that something typeset in 1972 could be easily replicated using MS Word at default settings in 2004, then I have a bridge I want to sell you.

#1: Re originals vs. copies, I would say that to certify a document as genuine, you must see the original. But to certify it as fake, a copy can be -- not always is, but can be -- enough. For example, a clear cut anachronism, like a letter dated 1862 that says "Beam me up, Scotty," would be a certifiable forgery just from looking at a xerox. Even if you placed the original in my hands, with 1862 paper and ink, written with the right kind of pen, I would still think, boy, what a technically competant, if stupid, forger. [Either that or I would freak out, big time.] I've followed all this with rapt fascination, and I'm convinced the CBS memos are fake.

Oh, you want my qualifications? I'm a museum curator who cares for tens of thousands of historical documents and photographs. This is my bread and butter, folks.

#2: Tinker said he thought the perpetrator was a rogue political agent, as something like this would be too dangerous for either Bush or Kerry to try and pull off. Well, slap my forehead!!! There's the answer!!! IT'S NADER!!!!!!

Michelle, I'm afraid you're mistaken about the lack of double-spacing after periods.  Remember that you're viewing a web page, through a browser that interprets it.  One of the rules of HTML is that multiple, consecutive spaces are rendered as a single space.  To find the real instances of double-space-after-period, do this:
Go to View - Source, which will probably pull up the actual HTML code in Notepad.  Then do Edit - Find, period-space-space, and step through all of the instances here.  You'll see that there are an awful lot of old fogies like me who still put two spaces after the period.  I'm probably just the only one ornery enough to add the &nbsp; code to make it actually show up.

Ed,

Please read my comment, and spare me the condescension. My point was that IF Bush was not given an order to take the physical he would know it. And he would know for certain that that particular document - the one that purports to be a memo ordering him to do so - is fake.

So the fact that the WH is not calling them forgeries because they are not sure means, inevitably, that he did get such an order, your claimed encyclopedic knowledge of procedures notwithstanding.

Now, you can believe that the WH would sit back even if they knew the documents were fake, but that is unreasonable. It would be a golden opportunity to wound CBS, and to imply that Democrats were pulling all sorts of dirty tricks. The strategy the WH is following - make no claims but let the story sit out there - is exactly what they would do if they were unsure, or knew the documents were legitimate.

Bernard Y: "My point was that IF Bush was not given an order to take the physical he would know it."

Oh come on! Do you remember things that were not said to you 30 years ago? Even if the report-for-physical memo were genuine, which I doubt, he still might not remember it, with good cause.

Scenario: Killian writes Lt. Bush the memo and puts it in his files. Bush runs into Killian in a corridor and says, "Sir, don't you remember? I'm off the flight list because I'm going to Alabama." Killian says, "Oh, yeah, I remember now. Forget all about that memo, put it out of your mind."

And Lt. Bush does.

Bernard, by your tortured logic, Bush really MUST BE Hitler, because after four years he's never once called anyone on it.

There are plenty of good reasons for Bush to keep quiet about the documents -- not interfering while the "enemy" is is impaling himself, and not drawing the spotlight away from CBS onto himself are two pretty good reasons, and that's just off the top of my head. Just because *you* think an entirely subjective viewpoint is unreasonable doesn't necessarily make it so.

Michelle,

I'm a lawyer and write, read and edit documents literally for a living. Double spacing after the end of a sentence is a hard and fast rule. It's not unusual to see opposing counsel send you comments to a contract asking you to fix one or two places where you've missed the extra space.

I don't think this is an age thing. When typing on a Blackberry, if you put in a double space, the editing software automatically puts in a period and capitalizes the first letter of the next word. Not relevant to the forgery, but merely trying to provide evidence that the double space is still the norm -- at least outside the publishing context, about which I know nothing other than my law review days (where we used the double space).

If I had to bet, I would wager that these were faked by a lawyer or law student. They are formatted look exactly like the cover letters that law students write when sending in resumes. Self-typed "letterhead" centered at the top, with a centered sig block.

Most business folks, when they do the same type of thing, tend to put the signature on the left margin. Just my $0.02.

Wow Steve Teeter, I hadn't considered that as the most likely leak...

1, Bush was up in the polls (5-11 points amongst likely voters).

2, Nader gets blamed when Bush wins in close races.

3, This is the first time (since the race began) when it hasn't been close.

4, Credibility problems with Kerry could increase Nader's votes (and get his party more airtime and credibility).

5, Nader (via http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110005602#Ralphie%20In%20Excelsior is paraphrased as follows: But when asked what the best news he's gotten in the campaign lately has been, Mr. Nader said it is the knowledge that the Democratic ticket has made so many mistakes that few people are likely to blame him again for electing George W. Bush.

Not "proof" or even conclusive evidence, ok, wild rampant goofy nonsense might be better... but It Wasn't Rove, It Was Nader.

Please read my comment, and spare me the condescension. My point was that IF Bush was not given an order to take the physical he would know it. And he would know for certain that that particular document - the one that purports to be a memo ordering him to do so - is fake.

So far, so good. Then, your thought process goes off the rail into the Valley of the Shadow of Faulty Reasoning...

So the fact that the WH is not calling them forgeries because they are not sure means, inevitably, that he did get such an order, your claimed encyclopedic knowledge of procedures notwithstanding.

Firstly, how do you know they are not sure that they are forgeries? You don't.

Noticed that they released what had been given to them by CBS without comment?

Secondly, your argument that if the White House says nothing about the memo then BushHitler must have known that he got the order is laughable, and hardly invevitable.

Now, you can believe that the WH would sit back even if they knew the documents were fake, but that is unreasonable.

Prove it. How do you know that the evil BushHitler and his henchman, Karl Rove, didn't say to themselves: "Gee, this looks a lot like MS Word. Let's give the Kerry people the rope they need to hang themselves...". In point of fact, I can almost guarantee that the Bush folks examined them, found them to be laughable forgeries, but knew that Dan Rather was too vain to check his ego and his Bushhatred at the door. They also probably figured that the Clown Car outfit that is the Kerry Campaign would try and pull a stunt like this, so they let it ride.

SMART Campaign outfits, run by people like Bill Clinton or Karl Rove, think like this. You ALWAYS try to use an opponents force aganinst him. Basic aiki-do.

It would be a golden opportunity to wound CBS, and to imply that Democrats were pulling all sorts of dirty tricks. The strategy the WH is following - make no claims but let the story sit out there - is exactly what they would do if they were unsure, or knew the documents were legitimate.

No. You just don't understand how Republicans think: WE are ahead. WE have gotten that way NOT because of the Swifties or Dirty Tricks (well, we don't want you libs to find out about Prescott Bush's homoerotic relationship with Hitler, at least until Dan Rather forces the late Senator out of the closet...) but because Bush has focused on the one issue that is of most concern to Americans: the war. He has argued that he is a better steward of that war than is John Kerry. His arguments are finding favor with the American people.

Why should Bush get down into the mud with Dan Rather? His opponent is Kerry, not Dan. His objective is to win the election against Kerry, not to bring down CBS news? What good does CBS News' collapse do for Bush if Bush loses the election?

Bush is remaining focused on his objective. He is not at war with CBS. He is at war with Kerry.

Your argument, which is basically "the defendant did not take the stand, ergo, he is Guilty..." is faulty, at best.

9/11/04

If you enlarge the PDF document, "Memorandum, May 4, 1972," (http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/BushGuardmay4.pdf) you should be able to read the address for Mr. Bush which seems to be censored in that document. Apparently, Mr. Bush had not lived at that address for several years. Even if, as is not likely, this memorandum is not fake, and was sent to that address, Mr. Bush would not have received it. Where is the copy of the memorandum with the correct address for Mr. Bush on May 4, 1972 (which we would expect his commander to have)?

As has been pointed out, this memorandum is not signed by Mr. Bush. There is therefore no evidence that he was aware of it. If there is a possibility that a document might be real, but never seen by Mr. Bush, it would be foolish to deny its authenticity only to be embarrased later.

It is a logical flaw to argue that the White House considers these documents true because they did not claim them to be false. They did claim them to be irrelivant to Mr. Bush's honorable service in the National Gaurd, as many Gaurdsmen have been quick to assert.

Lonnie Kendall

OK, here's the obvious explanation: A Dem. operative forged and delivered the documents, knowing that they were so bad that the Rep. would be accused of making forgeries so bad that anyone but Dan Rather would see them for a forgery in a minute, thus making the Dem pary look bad, thus now making the Republican look bad....or, no, wait, maybe it WAS Karl Rove, thinking that the Dems would be accused of making bad forgeries and blaming in on the Republicans, thus making...um..somebody look bad (sort of lost my train of thought there).

Ah, hell, maybe it WAS Nader ;)

Ed:

On the Asymetrical Information thread you have identified the silver bullet on this fraud. The "disobedience of a lawful order" is the gut issue that Kerryites expected to use these papers for.

You said:

1. Pilots are required to take an annual flight physical.

2. They have *3 months* in which to do so.

3. The end date for this 3 month period is the last day of the birth month of the pilot.

4. Bush's birth month is July.

5. Ordering someone to take a flight physical 2.5 months early is completely illogical.

I know your assertion was true when I returned to civilian life from duty as a regular office on flight status in 1957, Donald Sensing came very close to identifying the appropriate rule or regulation but he hit a snag and moved on to other things.

Has someone gone to the rule or regulation specifying the argument you laid out? Do you have a link or links that locks this argument down?

This needs to be pinned down and passed on. It is of equal importance to the "Staudt" slip up of the forger(s).

Thanks,

RayC

Ed:

Further, in April 72, Bush was on flying status and flying F-102's and T-33's, wasn't he? The subject of a flight physical would never have arisen, if ever, until the end of July 72, when he had not taken the flying physical within the prescribed window and as a consequence, in August, his status became Duty Not Involving Flying DNIF) which was his intent.

The purported order is obviously fraudulent, as there was no reason at all for it to have been written. The forger(s) picked the wrong time window to document their "disobedience of a lawful order" fraud.

RayC

RayC and Ed:

Before you check out points 1-5, you may want to double-check two things:
0.a. Was Bush in non-flying status at the time because he had moved on to Alabama, where they had a surplus of pilots and none of the planes he was qualified for (the F-102)?
0.b. Would non-flying pilots (aka desk jockeys) be required to take the annual flight physical?

If you were to find that the answers to these two questions are yes and no, respectively, there's no real point in finding the answers to questions 1-5, is there?

I don't know. I think the only people who could believe these documents are authentic are younger people who are two young to have had experience in the world before computers.
I remember when the first MacIntosh computers came out with the ability to produce typeset-like documents. That was in the mid-80's. I thought they were the coolest thing, because they were so different from any typewriter or word processing machine I had ever seen.
Believe me, if anyone in the early 1970's had a typewriter that could produce the 60 minutes documents, it would have created a huge stir just like the MacIntosh did about 15 years later.

Hmmmm.

"Please read my comment, and spare me the condescension. My point was that IF Bush was not given an order to take the physical he would know it. And he would know for certain that that particular document - the one that purports to be a memo ordering him to do so - is fake."

Really now. Does anyone really have to point out that it's a losing proposition for a politician to get into a pissing match with a news network? Especially when so many other people are doing a bangup job of carving up Dan Rather and CBS?

Why on earth would the President get involved? The first part of being, and acting, Presidential is not reacting to every single little thing. Something that Kerry's been having real trouble with btw.

Frankly I fully expect the Whitehouse to not comment officially on this subject until it's definitively proved that the documents are frauds.

I don't know. I think the only people who could believe these documents are authentic are younger people who are too young to have had experience in the world before computers.
I remember when the first MacIntosh computers came out with the ability to produce typeset-like documents. That was in the mid-80's. I thought they were the coolest thing, because they were so different from any typewriter or word processing machine I had ever seen.
Believe me, if anyone in the early 1970's had a typewriter that could produce the 60 minutes documents, it would have created a huge stir just like the MacIntosh did about 15 years later.

And regarding Who Did It, I think it's helpful to remember that the 60 Minutes vs Bush case relies on not one thing (the disputed documents), but two. The other is the testimony (interview) with Ben Barnes.

Since Mr. Barnes is a Kerry operative, don't Terry McAuliffe's suggestions that Karl Rove is behind it come across as a bit... ahh, far-fetched?

The point is: Mr. Barnes surely knew about the documents well in advance of the 60 Minutes interview. So for the DNC conspiracy theory to work, Karl Rove isn't just duping CBS and Dan Rather, but Kerry's own operatives.

That seems rather unlikely to me. In fact, about as likely as the documents turning out to be authentic.

Hmmm.

1. I'm not the source of the information on the time period for a flight physical. That came from a number of pilots, and one flight surgeon, who served in the Air Force.

2. I expect that the reason why Bush lost his flight qualifications was due to his not getting the flight physical by the last day of July. If he were required to take the physical in May I cannot believe that they'd let that slide until August.

3. From what I understand a pilot returning to flight status has to not only undergo a flight physical but also prove their skill qualification by successfully passing a series of tests.

Me. I was an infantryman in the USMC. Fly? Only when I absolutely have to. :)

The documents don't match at all with MS Word. I printed the PDF verson and compared with a Word 11 pt on transparency, and noticed that although the line lengths were close, the individual spacings weaved all over the place.

It's random typewriter jitter you idiots!

Statistics says that with random jitter and about 80 characters per line, the law of large numbers (i.e. central limit theorem) is going to give a valid average spacing.

And no it's not distortion, in that the individual lines have different weaving jitter, just as you would find in a typical random walk experiment.

Sheez, stay out of the detective business.

You've read it already, covered by better blogs than mine

No shit, Sherlock

Uh-huh.

As for being ordered to take a physical question, I read the four documents posted on CNN. Putting the first three in chronological order and summarizing:

4 May 72: Bush was "ordered to report" for an annual physical exam. (No date was given.)

19 May 72: Bush called his commander, needed to get out of drill. They discussed the options and decided on a transfer to an Alabama unit. They talked about the flight physical, and decided that if Bush stayed in flight status he would get it in Alabama.

1 Aug 72: Bush was suspended from flight status because he missed his flight physical (and hadn't had an airplane to fly anyhow). This opened a slot that Killian wanted to fill with a pilot back from Vietnam.

So, even if it's true, all it means is that Bush got out of the way of a more experienced pilot. The "orders" in the first memo were changed and made conditional in the second memo. Since Alabama didn't have flying slots for short-timers, Bush didn't need to take a flight physical.

Other than that, it appears his commander didn't like Bush, and clashed a bit with higher-ups about him, especially according to the 4th memo. No suprises there. Bush has never claimed to act like an adult until he was 40, and probably wasn't quite the ideal officer. In that era (and probably all others), military brass would step carefully around a Congressman's son. It wasn't necessary for the son or the Congressman to put on pressure - just the possibility that they might made everyone careful.

Fredrik Nyman:

You are quite correct to ask the question. Here is the story from Lt. Bush's flight logs:

WJLA-TV

Washington (AP) - George W. Bush began flying a two-seat training jet more frequently and twice required multiple attempts to land a one-seat fighter in the weeks just before he quit flying for the Texas Air National Guard in 1972, his pilot logs show.

The logs show Bush flew nine times in T-33 trainers in February and March 1972, including eight times in one week and four of those only as a co-pilot. Bush, then a first lieutenant, flew in T-33s only twice in the previous six months and three times in the year ending July 31, 1971.

The records also show Bush required two passes to land an F-102A fighter on March 12 and April 10, 1972. His last flight as an Air National Guard pilot was on April 16.

WJLA-TV posted this story from an AP source. You can check it here:
http://www.wjla.com/headlines/0904/172049.html
The fact that Bush did not fly after April 16 means nothing as far as his flight status goes (and does not affect the thrust of the Ed and RayC argument above). That fact would only affect his flight pay.

The forger(s) were trying hard when they picked the date of the "disobedience of a lawful order" fraud forgery, but I am sure that they knew little of the flight status rules (or maybe they didn't think it mattered).

Ray C.

Just so you know, your blog is the top result for "grtug" on alltheweb.com.

Thanks to all who wrote here and via email. OK, OK, I believe you. People of all ages are still trained in certain circles to put a double space after every period. And HTML4 (PHP too) ignores multiple spaces and carriage returns automatically.

(Which means I've been wasting time trying to get them out of my raw copy. Hey, look, my editorial training, such as it was, was all in print media. My HTML4 training consisted of a pre-existing template and a three-page style sheet. The first time I needed to do bullet points in an article, I Googled it. Rank amateur, me!)

Meanwhile, there seem to be a bunch of people who have convinced themselves that these memos are not only conceivably not forged (a thought that I can imagine a sane person entertaining, though I hope he'd immediately qualify it), but "definitely genuine," which is stark raving insanity. Kevin Drum's site's last memo-related thread was populated almost entirely by such beings when I last checked its tail end.

Am I missing something? The negative evidence is inconclusive as to each bit, but utterly overwhelming when you add it up. I've never seen a circumstantial case for anything as strong as this one. And the positive case is . . . one named handwriting expert examining one document and authenticating its signature; possible other experts who may have examined the documents for CBS but haven't been named or come forward independently; and the documents themselves, which evidently were third- or fourth-generation copies by the time CBS so much as set eyes on them, and whose provenance they refuse to reveal.

The only conclusion I can draw from this is that there is a small but vocal slice of the country whose credo is "Dan Rather Would Never, Ever Lie To Me." I fear for our democracy ;-)

But, hey, small thought experiment: Suppose memos purportedly from the personal file of one of John Kerry's fellow officers or superiors, now conveniently deceased, fall into the hands of some news network. Suppose they seem to suggest that Kerry lied about his service in some way. Suppose it turned out that the source was unnamed, that there were only photocopies, that the format of the memos didn't follow standard military formatting directions, that the font looked recent, that the documents looked typeset in a way that would have been very difficult to do in the early 70s. Does anyone think that the Kerry camp would not have immediately labeled that a scam?

kj:

OK, here's the obvious explanation: A Dem. operative forged and delivered the documents, knowing that they were so bad that the Rep. would be accused of making forgeries so bad that anyone but Dan Rather would see them for a forgery in a minute, thus making the Dem pary look bad, thus now making the Republican look bad....or, no, wait, maybe it WAS Karl Rove, thinking that the Dems would be accused of making bad forgeries and blaming in on the Republicans, thus making...um..somebody look bad (sort of lost my train of thought there).

Ah, hell, maybe it WAS Nader ;)

The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle; the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true!

Alternating Documents

"No, the pellet with the poison is in the flagon with the dragon.

The vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true."

Interesting thread. Some comments:

RayC - Bush multiple approaches. Without looking at the logbook I have a simple explanation. The entry was something like "two touch-and-go" or "2 ILS." In other words, required PRACTICE to maintain currency, not inability to land the aircraft. Of course, I would want to see the originals to confirm.

If speculating, I'll join those who favor an Austin connection through either Dan's daughter or Barnes, or both.

All the talk about typography, kerning, superscripts may be ultimately dispositive to the pros. I'm here to tell you that to believe Killian wrote these is to recognize that is the least military USAF light colonel ever to have zipped up a flight suit. "Not later than (NLT)." Puhleeze. The language makes him sound like some weenie, ass covering, civilian admin type. Come to think of it, wasn't that what that weenie professor was, the one who responded Friday night and said the TXANG was totally corrupt? Maybe he's a darkhorse candidate as the forger. After Bellisles and Ellis, I know that any academic mendacity is possible.

RMc - nice job with Julie and what liberals expect to see in the mirror every morning. You left out that they don't actually see anything because vampires cast no reflection.

Julie - Crest makes some nice whitening strips. Your teeth are getting a bit yellow and I know you can't see them.

This is fun!

It seems like a lot of people are arguing it was a Democrat trying to discredit Bush, or a Republican trying to discredit Kerry, or Nader trying to discredit both (I kinda like that one, actually). What if we're all going about this wrong. What if the author of the forgery wasn't trying to influence the campaign AT ALL? What if -- instead -- the author was trying to bring down Rather?

Think about it -- if Kerry is behind this forgery he is DEAD in November. And not just Kerry -- the entire party will get shellaced. Who wants to take that risk? Ditto for Republicans. But if the forger wanted to damage Rather, he wouldn't care HOW it affected the election, as long as it embarrassed Dan. And that's the one thing that, for sure, this forgery did accomplish.

I guess we can argue this until we're blue in the face. Still, I have 8 years experience with an IBM Selectric II/III, 14 years experience with various computers/printers (daisy wheel to laser) and 23 years experience in the military. The memos look suspicious to me: they look to the naked eye like Word documents; the usage seems unmilitary (spelling out NLT, etc); the use of surnames is wrong (to "C" my A" I always use military rank in my memos and emails, even personal ones, especially when I refer to superiors (e.g. "Staudt" for Col Staudt who outranked LtCol Killian); some of the dates seem wrong (the 4 May 72 memo says that Lt Bush is to complete his physical "NLT" 14 May 72. 14 May was a Sunday and most physicals are done on weekdays, especially at sleepy Ellington Field -- thus the "NLT" should have been 12 May); lastly the timeline is wrong (e.g. "Staudt" had retired from the TxANG more than a year earlier than the 18 Aug 72 memo).

The preponderance of the evidence leans toward forgery. It is incumbent on CBS to provide unbiased experts access to all the memos so a ruling can be made. If the experts assess that the memos are forgeries, then CBS must divulge the name(s) of their source(s) as confidentiality goes by the wayside when crimes are broken.

Two quid/hour is not outrageous at all for an Internet cafe, though you can do better in London. Travellers to America are often forced to rely on Kinko's, at twenty cents per MINUTE (SEVEN pounds per hour), when they can find an Internet cafe at all.

(Unless there was irony in that second sentence that I missed totally).

By the way, if the memos are forgeries, my moonbat conspiracy theory of whodunit is:

The Clintons!!

Why?

a) Hillary wants to run for President in 2008. If Kerry wins, she has to wait until 2012 at the earliest to run as she can't (shouldn't?) oppose President Kerry for reelection. And if Vice President Edwards, by some miracle, becomes popular, she's looking at 2016 or 2020...
Sabotaging Kerry now means St. Hillary to the rescue in 2008!

b) The Big Media still love the Clintons, so even if they find any evidence of a conspiracy, they'll bury it.

c) Bill suddenly goes has open heart surgery right before the revelations so he can't be interviewed about the issue. Coincidence? I think not!

d) The Kerry campaign is loaded with Clinton advisors (Carville, Begalia, etc, etc) and no doubt has lots low level Clinton moles.

e) Travelgate, FBI Filesgate, Chinese government money laundering, "Lost" Rose Law firm files, astounding cattles future profits, pardoned Puerto Rican terrorists, etc, etc, ad nauseum. This would be child's play!

Mark my words, the Clintons did it!

leaned toward at least two of the memos being fakes not detected by those consulted by CBS because the points were outside their expertise.

Then came the Rather defense: now I'm convinced they are fakes. His argument seems to be:
1. The story is that Bush disobeyed a direct order, not how we got the memos indicating this.
2. The memos support the story.
3. Therefore it does not matter whether or not they are forgeries, and the only evidence for the story, and have no indication Bush ever saw the "order" - which is itself not in any form required by regulations since Old Ironsides made her maiden voyage.

Or another way to settle this: ask Killian's secretary. Killian's wife says he didn't type. I would expect that - in the 70's executives didn't type, and ambitious young women were advised NOT to learn typing, and not to admit to knowing it if they did, so as not to be pigeonholed as secretaries. (This was really stupid advice, but it was universal among feminists...) A Lt. Colonel is equivalent to a fairly high-level executive would have had a secretary to type and retype orders, etc. If for some reason (privacy or working after hours) Killian did operate a typewriter himself for a short memo, the result wouldn't have been perfect spelling with no cross-outs or whiteouts. IF this was done on a fancy typewriter, it was typed by a full-time typist.

Of course, whether Killian's secretary would remember every memo she typed is another question...

I myself was briefly pigeonholed as a clerk-typist (military-speak for "secretary") twelve years later. The new assignment I was transferring to suddenly evaporated, so I was in casual status (available for any random temporary job) for the several weeks it took to locate an open slot for my old classification. Normally this would have meant something like supervising the latrine-cleaning detail, but I could type and the base hospital was short one clerk-typist.

So anyhow, I can tell you that in 1984 Lackland AFB still did not use word processors or type-setting typewriters. I typed on a good solid electric, without proportional spacing, curly quotes, or superscripts. The left-justified signature block was typed by going to the left margin, then hitting Backspace once for each character or space, then typing them. (This doesn't work in proportional spacing.) And for the more important papers, if you made a mistake you typed it again.

I don't know the leanings of the Chicago Sun-Times but at least one of its columnists is unafraid to be fair. He took the words right out of my mouth! Bravo!!!

http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn12.html

Too bad that alternating document "match" is a 12 pt WORD document shrunk by 93%. The actual document is 11 pt and the 11 pt WORD document does not match at all.

You know what they say about trying to fit any equation with 3 or more variables?

lpdbw: Yes, but only because they broke the chalice from the palace!

I think the best theory I’ve heard to date, is that the “Documents” came to Dan the Newsman by way of his daughter Robin. It makes sense really. Given the ruthless nature of journo’s like Rather, it would explain his behavior.

Dan is going to maintain his: “That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!” posture to the bitter end. He is protecting his daughter. There is NO WAY that Dan and CBS haven’t figured out by now that they’ve been had.

The Law of Unintended Consequences:

I believe this was done by operatives within the DNC hoping to do a “Swifty Vets” style job on the GWB. I doubt that it ever occurred to them that what they would do is scuttle themselves and destroy the last shreds of credibility that the MSM had at the same time.

You can think of this event as being equivalent to the Titanics’ glancing blow with the iceberg. As someone else said: “There is no place else to go from here, but ugly!”.

PJ,

Here a hint for all those seeking cheap internet access while traveling. Well, when traveling in the U.S.

It's called the Public Library. Most towns have them and I haven't found one yet while traveling that doesn't have access.

Here's the kicker, it's totally free! Even to the Furiners.

I can give you a 100% water-tight reason why these memos were not produced by Republicans and given to Rather: if they were, you can bet Rather would have made THAT the story. The fact that Rather will not reveal where he got the memos, even though they have been demonstrated to be fakes, is pretty strong evidence that it would hurt Kerry if he revealed the source. Which means it was someone associated with the Democrats.

"Too bad that alternating document "match" is a 12 pt WORD document shrunk by 93%." So? Some fax machines do shrink the documents like this. Copiers can be set to shrink the document.

Michelle:

As Sean said on 12Sep04 at 03:17 AM, "This is fun!" Thanks for letting us all play in your yard. Let's see if we can pull this all togather.

Ed and Fredrik Nyman--ClownPosse has all the information on the flying status regulations and the medical examination requirements. It is a great job that you will want to check out here:

http://www.clownposse.org/forum/news.asp?news_id=203

Basically, the regulation is AFM 160-1, Periodic Medical Examination. That is the regulation the purported Lt. Col. Killiam meant when he referred to AFM 35-13 in the Memorandum (which was actually an Order) of 04 May 1972. (That document is on the ClownPosse site.)

For specified individuals on flight status, of which Lt. Bush was one, AFM 160-1 specifies annual periodic medical examinations with stated parameters. The calendar window for the periodic medical examination was the three months preceding the individual's birthday rather than the end of the month in which the individual's birthday fell. (I suspect, although it is immaterial for our purposes, that there is a provision, for the convenience of administration, that a grace period existed from the individual's birthday to the end of the birthday month, as it appears that Lt. Bush was dropped from flying status after July 1972 ended.)

Where does AFM 35-13, the regulation cited by the psuedo Lt. Col. Killian come in. You can read it on ClownPosse's site. It is not a punitive regulation. It is the procedure that must be followed if the fkyer suspended from flying status because he missed his periodic medical examination, for whatever reason, can follow to regain his flying status. If, as was the case with Lt. Bush, leaving flying status, and in due course the TXANG, was your intent, you simply did nothing and you were grounded until you invoked AFM 35-13, if ever. Until you invoked AFM 35-13 and obtained a favorable ruling by a Flying Evaluation Board, you couldn't serve as a pilot and you would not receive flight pay.

The idea that a Squadron Commander, in this case Lt. Col. Killian, would have any reason to keep track of the birthdays of his squadron pilots and go around writing memoranda to them ordering out of cycle periodic medical examinations is absurd and such an order would have been unsupported by any regulation and totally improper. This purported order was a fatal mistake made by the forger(s).

Fredrick Nyman raised two questions in his post of 11Sep04 at 11:14 PM. Lt. Bush was on non-flying status ((Duty Not Involving Flying (DNIF)) on and after 1 Aug 11972, pursuant to an order dated 19 September 1972, confirming his verbal suspension on 1 Aug 1972. If a pilot wanted to maintain his flying status, in those days, he had to follow the schedule of AFM 160-1 as to periodic medical examinations whether he had a desk job or a job in the cockpit, He akso had to get a certain number of flying hours per month, otherwise he received no flying pay. This rule has changed over tthe years, but it is immaterial to our argument. The operative fact was that on 4 May 1972, Lt. Bush was on flying status in good standing and he was not due a periodic medical esamination until July 1972, The 4 May 1972, is undoubtedly a fraudulent forgery.

From the information on Lt. Bush's Flight Log (In my time it was called a Form 5) that I presented in the post of 12Sep72 at 12:00 AM, Billy Hank may be correct in concluding that the go-arounds might have been missed approaches. If they were actually touch and go's they would have been loged as a landing. This too, is immaterial and is just sand that the Kerryites want to kick into Bush's face. The pilot who says he has never made a go around is like the lawyer who claims never to have lost a case. Don't believe him. It is something that only John F. Kerry would try to get you to believe. It makes no difference to the general argument, but the T-33 time was probably proficiency flying in the absence of available F-102's. It was done with another pilot so that both could log flying hours and the custom was to split the pilot and co-pilot time more or less evenly.

The other fatal mistake of the forger(s) was the iinvokation of the name of Colonel Staudt in the 1973 Memorandum in building the case of improper influence. We all know that Col. Staudt (then General) retired in 1972. I say we all know that fact because ttoday's stories, notably from the Dallas Morning News reports that the paper obtained the official orders several years ago.

One person who did not know that fact is the Administrative person in the TXANG Hqs in 1972 who Billy Hank, in his post here of 12Sep04 at 02;52 AM, called the weenie professor. He is referring to Robert Strong (sorry, no link) who teaches in Austin TX, and who, in his statement bolstering the fraudulent documents, said that he had never seen the documents. He stuck with the story that Col. Staudt was doing the acts claimed in the 1973 memo. Lets come back to Robert Strong llater.

As to the content of the forgeries, we can see that the 04 May 1972 Memorandum (Order) is illogical, unnecessary, and in fact illegal as it is not supported by Air Force Regulations. The General Staudt interference memos are obviously fraudlent as it is inconcievable that Lt. Col. Killian would not know who was in his chain of command and the memos were contrary to the position taken by Killian in the actual records in Lt. Bush's file as well as contrary to what Lt. Col. Killian's widow describes as his attitude toward Lt. Bush at the time.

The only conclusion we can accept is that the documents are fradulent forgeries as to their content,

ed joyce in his post of 12Sep04 at 06:45 AM illustrates some of the evidence that the form of the documents and the usage is suspicious. At this time and date I think it fair to say that there is a consensus that no typewriter in existence in 1972 and 1973 could have produced these documents. Only the IBM Selectric Composer might have been able to produce any one of the single documents with a great deal of skill and effort. It is unlikely that the same machine and operator could have cranked out four separate instruments with the identical features as to tabs, spacing (horizontal and vertical) and superscripts.

Still the IBM Selectric Composer is the only possibile support for Dan Rather's position. There is not one chance in 10,000 that the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron possessed on its Table of Equipment an IBM Selectric Coimposer and there is not one chance in 11,000,000 that Lt. Col. Killian could have produced the four (typographically) flawless documents over the one year period in 1972-1973.

However, Robert Strong, the Group Administrative guy is one man who should know if there was an IBM Selectric Composer in use in the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron. I have asked Hugh Hewitt to try to get a general interview with Robert Strong and see if he can smoke out the answer to the IBM Selectric Composer conundrum. Without that answer we have a case beyond a reasonable doubt. With that door closed on Rather, we have, as Mr. Tenant might say, a Slam Dunk,

Finally, who did it? I have no doubt that when the 60 Minutes Program began last week, Dan Rather, the DNC, and the Kerryites knew that Rather was going to present the forged documents. Here is how I think the deal came down.

The Kerry Campaign, the Gore Campaign, and Ann Richards and all of the left wing Austin crowd have always been frustrated because they have been unable to get traction and defeat Bush over his service in the TXANG. In every instance, right up to last February the absence of documention has foiled their efforts and they have had to give up the effort.

With Kerry's blood being drawn by the Swiftees and the recent events affecting the campaign, the Kerryites became desperate. As Rather's star expert handwriting witness has written something must be done until the cavalery arrives. Ben Barnes holds a high position in the Kerry campaign, frats with Kerry on Long Island, raises tons of money and has more nerve and less conscience that any living Texas politician who has not served a prison sentence.

If documents are what Kerry needs, documents are what Kerry will get and the Austin crowd comes into play. In his post of 11Sep04 at 09;27 PM ghostrider hypothesizes a lawyer or law student author. Someone else notes that the forger(s) is probably relatively young. I agree with both those points. The whole template for the needed documents is laid out in the Kerry website.

A couple of bright, educated, relatively skillful young persons sat down with the template and the Bush documents to weave a legend around the corpse of the late Lt. Col. Killian. Everyone has remarked on the lack of quality of the forgeries. In a way, that is true, but the forgeries wouldn't have had to been too good in the old days. (Think of LBG and Box 13 in 1948.) If the story could have held up for as long as a week or ten days the damage to Bush would have been done and the lies would have gone around the world. Even now Juan Williams is asserting that it is immaterial that the documents are forgeries. As he says, they present issues that need answering. Even Rather has said something of the same sort. The forgeries have been lying arounf for several weeks, probably at the Kerry Campaign.

I have read (sorry no link) that a condition of Ben Barnes appearance on 60 Minutes was the use of the documents. That is consistent. And the Austin link probably includes Robin Rather, as Cit has pointed in the post of 12Sep04 at 03:12 AM. The forgeries were to provide the indispensable two items that the Kerryites thought necessary. a. Documentation as to Lt. Bush's disobedience of a direct order and b. Lt. Bush's use of influence and favoritism to get into and advance in the TXANG.

They almost made it. But for the grace of God and the Blogosphere, Bush's prospects might be suffering tonight and would seriously suffer in the future.

RayC

Superb summary of the pertinent facts, RayC.
Thank you very much!

RMC wrote:

(Oh, and in the future try to place apostophes where they belong, mmmkay?)

I'll make you a deal. I'll place "apostophes" where they belong if you spell the word correctly, mmkay?

I'll place "apostophes" where they belong if you spell the word correctly

Hey! He caught that! Nice job, STu...I was afraid you weren't paying attention.

Oh, and what's your opinon on having these documetns debunked and your credibility shreded?

Rmc, I guess we don't have a deal, then. (oops, I seem to be keeping my end of it anyway. From now on I wont)

My credibility is not at issue since I am not holding myself out as a expert in the field of document verification. As for them being debunked, I'll wait and see until someone actually examines the documents that CBS had (or better yet, an original) and says they are fake. How come not even experts who doubt the documents aren't even as sure as you and the rest of the Bush Brigades? Could it be that they know more about the subject matter than you do?

From Jane's original post:

And it is literally Impossible that on three separate memos, the typist managed to perfectly line up centered text exactly the way Microsoft Word would. It's impossible to get it done that well once, much less three times.

Are we still talking about that centered header? This, I think, is a shaky talking point. All one has to do is obtain a professionally-prepared letterhead or business card, then photocopy it multiple times and save the copies for later use.

Even today this is still done; I have worked in office environments where all business correspondence had to take place on official letterhead, but low-priority communiqués (internal memoranda and such) quite often landed on photocopies of the letterhead, rather than the expensive color-emobossed letterhead itself. As long as the logo is high-contrast, this works just fine.

In my earlier post, I argued that these document has the smell of a made to order production. Today the Washington Prowler in the American Spectator makes the same argument. He says:

PERHAPS MOST TROUBLING to the CBS News staff looking into how its story went off the rails is the timing of the memos' appearance. "Some 60 Minutes staffers have been working on this story for more than three years off and on," says the CBS News producer. "There have been rumors about these memos and what was in them for at least that long. No one had been able to find anything. Not a single piece of paper. But we know that a lot of people here interviewed a lot of people in Texas and elsewhere and asked very explicit questions about the existence of these memos. Then all of a sudden they show up? In one nice, neat package?"

This CBS New producer went on to explain that the questions 60 Minutes folk were asking were specific enough that people would have been able to fabricate the memorandums to meet the exact specifications the investigative journalists were looking for. "People were asking questions of sources like, 'Have you ever seen or heard of a memo that suspended Bush for failing to appear for a physical?' and 'Have you heard about or know of someone who has any documentation from back in the 1970s that shows there was pressure to get Bush into the National Guard?' It was like they were placing an order for a ready-made product. That is the biggest problem I have with this. It's all too neat and perfect for what we needed. Without these exact pieces of paper, we don't have a story. Dan has as much as admitted that. Everyone knows it. We were at a standstill on this story until these memos showed up."

You can read the article here:

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=7099

RayC

Anony-mouse, there are several problems with that:

1) In 1972, it's extremely unlikely that a TXANG unit had a photocopier, as they were still, AFAIK, high-end pieces of equipment.

2) The headers are in the same typeface as the typewriting

3) The office had its own letterhead -- why make your own?

It's fascinating how quickly the Left's talking points on this matter have gone from "Chimpie is toast! Tee-hee!" to "How dare you question Dan Rather?" to "F**k you, you Nazi b*stards!" in what seems like about a minute and a half.

My credibility is not at issue

Oh, but it is. Why exactly are you clinging to the memos as if they were the Holy Grail? Do you own stock in CBS or something? Or maybe you want them to be true...hmmmmm? Just maybe?

As for them being debunked, I'll wait and see until someone actually examines the documents that CBS had (or better yet, an original) and says they are fake.

CBS won't anyone see the documents they have; take it up with them. Originals? Do they even exist? (In Terry McAuliffe's computer, maybe?)

How come not even experts who doubt the documents aren't even as sure as you and the rest of the Bush Brigades?

Dude. Try reading the other 160+ posts in this comment section, or perhaps check out the websites of those well-known Bush-lovers ABC, the New York Times and the Washington Post (which reports the following this morning):

The lead expert retained by CBS News to examine disputed memos from President Bush's former squadron commander in the National Guard said yesterday that he examined only the late officer's signature and made no attempt to authenticate the documents themselves.

"There's no way that I, as a document expert, can authenticate them," Marcel Matley said in a telephone interview from San Francisco. The main reason, he said, is that they are "copies" that are "far removed" from the originals.

Oops.

Could it be that they know more about the subject matter than you do?

Could be. It could also be that I've just won the Irish Sweepstakes. (I'll just sit here and wait for the call from Dublin, if you don't mind.)

No amount of evidence will appease the moonbats, of course, even if Jesus Christ Himself were to appear on "Hardball" and say, "My children, I don't really care who wins this election of yours, but these memos are seriously whack. Wiggedy-wack."

1) In 1972, it's extremely unlikely that a TXANG unit had a photocopier, as they were still, AFAIK, high-end pieces of equipment.

But how rare and high-end? The first commercial photocopier was released under the Xerox name in 1949. Two processes for color photocopies first went commercial in 1968 and 1973. I don't find it improbable that one B&W photocopier would have been available (if not five copiers on every floor like we have now days). Of course, I can't say from experience, since I wasn't even around until the end of the 1970s, and didn't develop full cognitive awareness until some time after that.

2) The headers are in the same typeface as the typewriting

Granted. Although at that time you didn't have the same prevalance of fonts that we have now, as well as the ability to pick any one at random and spit it out of a laser printer. If a professional printer (who might even have the infamous Selectric Composer, for example) had used the same Times font as the clerk running the typewriter (such as a more practical office-spec Selectric model)...bingo.

Again, we're not talking conclusive evidence here, just a very reasonable doubt.

3) The office had its own letterhead -- why make your own?

A fair assertion, and again, the nature of the centered text is suspect in light of the various other available evidences against authenticity. In particular, today's WaPo article noting that many dozens of other typed records from TXANG don't use proportionally-spaced font at all.

On the other hand, IF a copier was available AND someone said, "hmm, this centered address text on my business card looks kind of cool, I think I'll have the clerk use that"...well, given the plausibility of that scenario, I think the centered header text is peripheral evidence, not a direct indictment.

I worked in small offices (which from my understanding, fits the description of Bush's unit) in the mid-eighties; a lot of them were just getting their first copiers.

I find it unlikely in the extreme that the TexANG came upon a printer who had licensed, and decided to use, a font that just happened to perfectly match their typewriter. Remember, too, that photocopies were rather expensive back then; it seems unlikely that Mr Killian decided to save money on letterhead by making nearly equally expensive photocopies.

But more importantly, even if they had, it wouldn't have made a difference, because small variations in the insertion of the paper should have made the text slightly off center. My understanding is that it is centered down to the twip level, which is purely impossible with three different sheets of paper.

Okay, that sounds reasonable.

Actually, now that I think about it, my then-small-town elementary school had multiple copy machines by the mid-1980s, but many assignments and documents were distributed as mimeographs (yeah, those bright indigo things) because it was considered a substantial cost savings.

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