Nice work -- 60 Minutes is busted.

Credibility aproaching zero.
 

Lester isn't interested in this kitty kelly, texans for truth business. If he drank so much and did so much coke and is so lazy we should be ahead by twenty points. Kerry needs to find himself fast

Wow! I'd love to track down the "document expert" who vouched for the authenticity of the memos

Brilliant! They did such a bad job, you can't even blame the Jews.

#2 lester1/2jr

Kerry needs to find himself fast

Say lester, why don't you of find him?

Whoops...

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

OT: Iran to screen 'Fahrenheit 9/11' on 9/11

So that's Hezbollah distributing it, and Iran screening it - on the anniversary of the attacks.

Charming fans Moore has these days.

Oh, this is Crushis Majoris if true, and I can't see how it isn't at this stage.

This is enourmous. This will steamroll Kitty Litter Kelly, and leave the MSM on life support. Unreal.

Truly these are historic times.

Credibility approaching zero.

Wait...that would mean that CBS' credibility is improving.

It's hard to imagine someone forging these documents would make such an obvious error. Then again, I find I'm surprised by less and less these days.

Try printing it out and running it through the copier 15-20 times. Maybe you'll get something that looks exactly like the "original document".

Power Line reader John Risko sez:

3) US Navy paper at the time was not 8 1/2 x 11. It was 8 x 10 1/2. I believe this was the same throughout the military, but someone will have to check on that. This should show up in the Xeroxing, which should have lines running along the sides of the Xerox copy.

The fact that a document produced right now with Word is basically identical to the published one casts a lot of doubt on the reliability of the latter.

Indeed, this demonstrates that the published memo definitaly can be a forgery.

hahhhahhhaha! busted!

Can someone forward Charles' handiwork to the RNC and "60 Minutes"? I am swamped at work.

I just can't seem to stop chuckling about this, now that I have stopped gaping! -:)

Clinton killed Vince Foster!

#9 Ilya

By gum, that's a capital idea! Give me a few minutes and I'll post the results ...

In the meantime, what does this mean?

After the broadcast, the White House, without comment, released to the news media two of the memos, one ordering Bush to report for his physical exam and the other suspending him from flight status.

some friends and I did this earlier today. There is a difference if you look at the superscripted th. Try printing it out and seeing if it's a difference in printer fonts vs screen (as one friend suggested), or perhaps there's a slight difference in the times font being used.

There ought to be some way of penalizing CBS for perpetrating this fraud. MSM disgusts me. The once noble profession of investigative reporting has been corrupted and defiled by the likes of Paul Begala. His smarmy countenance is what I see when I think of the MSM today. Hacks like Begala motormouth their way through the 'talking points' like frenetic robots, seemingly oblivious to the stunned incomprehension and revulsion of the rest of us.

But this actual manufacturing of evidence is a disgrace. CBS has lost it's last shred of credibility.

It's pretty obvious from the evidence that Charles is really the late Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian.

#9 Ilya

Try printing it out and running it through the copier 15-20 times. Maybe you'll get something that looks exactly like the "original document".

My thouoght as well (the screen is a little too "crisp" for these photocopies of photocopies).

Also, if I wrote the same document on my Brother ML-300 Display typewriter (bought not more'n 3 months ago) it couldn't do that. Now, yea, they didn't have Brother ML-300's back then, but if this is what $80 or so gets you for a typewriter today.....

Lysander

First lady?

Anyone have an old typewriter handy?

I looked at State Dept documents from the same era (through one of the previous posts) and there is a distinct difference.

.....

The blotching of the characters in the CBS document look like an artifact of fax transmission to me.

You make a good case, Charles.

Now someone send it to an expert so we can find out the truth.

Hang on a second. Didn't the Whitehouse release some of these documents too? What would they be doing with forgeries?

There may be other explanations but this needs to be investigated STAT.

sloppy hack job? That's the only reason I can think why someone who tried to forge these messed up.

Remember that the 'Hitler Diaries' were first 'authenticated by an expert' until further scrutiny.

sloppy hack job? That's the only reason I can think why someone who tried to forge these messed up.

Remember that the 'Hitler Diaries' were first 'authenticated by an expert' until further scrutiny.

I hate to support CBS, but these don't look like identical fonts to me. Notice the serifs on the capital J and the difference in whether the numeral 7 extends below the line.

At any rate, Microsoft didn't invent the Times New Roman font; it's been around at least since the 40's:

history of Times New Roman

Info has been posted to Drudge- good work

Can they do this and get away with it? Has anyone sent this to FOX news?
Isn't there a law about this sort of thing-the FCC is all concerned over Janet Jackson's boob-when we have enough boobs at CBS to open a bra store.
If this is true can we sue?

But.......Kerry was in Vietnam!

/waiting for THAT again

Even if these documents weren't fake, they'd only confirm what everyone knows: Bush's past isn't what it might have been. Unfortunately for the left, that's part of the appeal for most Americans. Bush pulled himself up by his bootstraps, by sheer willpower and faith. Most people know about his past as an alcoholic and a screw-up. But, for the most part, they're willing to forgive him because he is making amends.

Other memos do exist from Killian. This is not an original copy --but certainly someone should be able to compare the newly "found" memos with the older one's that were in the file and released long ago???

This below has "quotes" from a memo of Killian's in 1970.

[Link: en.wikipedia.org...]

In November 1970, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, the commander of the Texas Air National Guard, recommended that Bush be promoted to first Lieutenant, calling him "a dynamic outstanding young officer" who stood out as "a top notch fighter interceptor pilot." He said that "Lt. Bush's skills far exceed his contemporaries," and that "he is a natural leader whom his contemporaries look to for leadership. Lt. Bush is also a good follower with outstanding disciplinary traits and an impeccable military bearing."

why do i get the feeliing that pointing out this forgery to the MSM will hav no effect...

people who say this document is forged are (in the minds of CBS) in the same category as people who say hillary killed vince foster...

Good luck trying to get the mainstream press to report this.

Nice Charles -- you're right it isn't just the font. Everything -- kerning, letter line up, number of words per line, yikes.

This is MIGHTY interesting.

Who / What is the source of the documents?

It should be easy enough to verify the "original".

[Link: www.salon.com...]

"It seems that when Microsoft issued its annual report this year it also provided the document in Word format, downloadable from its Web site. And if you look carefully at the extra information implanted in the document -- say, by opening it in a plain text processor -- you find something odd: The report seems to have been composed on a Macintosh computer. (At least, there are references to an author's G3 Mac and records indicating the file was created using Word 98 for Macintosh.)"

[Link: news.bbc.co.uk...]

"Microsoft is aware of the functionality of metadata being stored within Word 97 documents and would advise users to follow the instructions laid out in [the Microsoft Knowledge Base - see Related Internet Links]," says a spokesperson. "However, Microsoft do not wish to comment on how customers use the functionality within our software."

I suspect fontmeister Lileks can solve this riddle. Yo James!

You have got to be kidding me. I love Charles, but if an LLL had tried to 'prove' forgery through this technique, y'all would have (rightfully) laughed them off the site.

I wonder if CBS will want their money back from who ever they paid to "authenticate" these documents?

Good gravy, can't they even do a decent forgery? Hey guys, they sell old typewriters on Ebay!

How could you let the superscript "th" get through proofreading?

Methinks someone didn't take the advice staring them in the face at the top of the "memo" and CYA.

Similar experiment conducted here - 60 Minutes NAILDED!!!!

Wait Wait don't tell me -- as soon as you're analysis --that any High School sophomore could have produced on Mom's computer -- hits Drudge then Fox then --
CBS no doubt will produce the "source" for the Memo, an IBM selctric typwriter with Times Roman and proportional type.

Any 'ol IBM salesmen out there ? I remember a couple of guys from 1979 selling this stuff. In 1972 our HS typing class had "One" Selectric, but fonts were slightly different from "New" Times Roman. Anybody know when proportional spacing became possible, and what typewriters the Air National Guard was using in Texas and Alabama in 1972 ?

Dang -- Bet 60 minutes, 'ol Ed Bradley, Dan Rather and professional Kvetch curmudgeon Andy Rooney have to cut lunch short to figure how to back fill this story now, eh ? Too bad -- couldn't happen to a nicer group unless maybe 7 time married (he forgot ALOT) and divorced horndog Peter Jennings.

#20 Sean II
Sean-you are correct. She is an embarassment and a disgusting example of what marrying for money will get you. First Lady? That ain't no lady-that's his pimp.

Is LGF under attack or just a kazillion visitors right now?

Hey Charles,

I just got back from Kinko's where I scanned an actual army document from 1983.

Here are my travel orders from 22 February 1983. I did crop and sanitize it a bit.

Seems that the usual suspects (DUmmies) have heard about this. And, surprisingly, not all of them are dismissing it right off the bat. In fact, a few of them are actually admitting that it's entirely possible that these are forgeries. Think something's gotten into the water over there?

Something else smells:

The tone and substance of these "memos" is that higher-ups were pressuring these officers to cover-up for Bush.

Why would there be pressure to do so in 1973? Did they somehow know that in 2000 Bush would be running for president? Why make such a big deal to cover-up for someone about something that no one could have known would ever be of importance?

I've been saying this since #41 on the previous thread, and I'll add to it here: The letter spacing is identical to that of Times New Roman as currently distributed by Microsoft (among others). In this font, the relative widths of -- for instance -- lower case "l" and "m" are 569:1593. This is a finer gradation than any Monotype machine ever had. (Monotype owns the Times New Roman design.) Therefore, the memos were not typeset in 1973.

Advantage: blogosphere!

Why are western media so tolerant?

I just don't want to keep this aburd and irrelevant Bush Guard story in the news and raise its provile by stoking the debate.

I just can't believe that anyone with the cunning, time and access that would be necessary to plant documents like this would turn out forgeries so amateurish that anybody with Microsoft Word could pull the sheets off.

Something odd is going on here--I don't know what. But the real issue is that Bush's National Guard Record has nothing to do with his performance as president.

#48

"Think something's gotten into the water over there?"

Those at DU have always loved conspiracy theories...what are you trying to say?

I typed it out on Wordperfect in the default settings w/ Times New Roman @ 12 pt. and the word spacing is way off. It only runs 4 lines. If a 1973 proportional type monstrosity can mimic MS Word that well, then I'll eat my shorts.

Somebody said Drudge picked this up, but I don't see it there.

Somehow I keep picturing Karl Rove as Monty Burns over this one:

"Eeeeexcelent"

but...but that 60 minutes memo was seared, seared I tell you.

oh never mind.

Others have pointed out the superscript "th" in one of the numbers, which Word does automatically but most typewriters don't. While we are verifying 1972 typewriters, that capability needs to be examined also.

#47 The Other Les

Welcome to the wonderful world of Courier.

Charles - if you have time/inclination/etc - print the document - photocopy it - SCAN IT - and load it into Pshop and kill anti-aliasing.

guess what....

Curses! I had the same idea and mailed Powerline after I tried it out (and got the same results Charles did), then go and find the update linking here that it's been done.

I mean really, how frelling hard is it for a "real journalist" to check something like this out (let alone a "document expert"). It gives one flashbacks of Bloom County when after extensive analysis the exclusive Elivs diaries Milo sells to Time (or Newsweek, can't recall which) are found to be forgeries because they were written on authentic "Dukes of Hazzard" stationary (Opus explains that K-Mart was having a sale).

There's an obvious explanation:

1. The memo writer climbed into their time machine.
2. They went forward in time to September, 2004.
3. They typed, and printed, the memo on a PC equiped with MS Word.
4. They returned to August, 1973 and put the memo in the file.

What other explation could there be? You folks are just making a mountain out of a mole hill. :-)

Bill Gates is responsible.

#63--

Yeah! Just like on "Quantum Leap"!

I recreated all four memos in Word. The two memos that have addresses at the top have non-standard left and right margins of .9". I did have to type four spaces in front of "suspension" on the second subject line to make it line up, but everything else was positioned with tabs and it all seems to line up just like the PDFs.

I think the spots on some of the PDFs were applied with a pen or pencil. Look at the uniformity in size. Also, two of the PDFs have a vertical line of dots. I would expect to see a solid LINE or at least a repetition of the dot pattern, not random dots all the way down, and a different pattern of random dots on the two memos (O4 May and 18 August).

First, whichever rocket scientist decided it was a good idea to link this story to Fark.com, thereby making it near impossible to access this site, should speak up so we know who to blame.

Next, where did this "White House released copies of the memo after the CBS broadcast" accusation come from? So far, the only thing I can find is that the White House released a bunch of documents, CBS dug up the memos from Killians private files, and the White House has not denied what the memos stated. My figuring is, if the White House is not denying them, that means that they can't prove or disprove their validity. So, they're waiting to see how this plays itself out.

This was all Whittaker Chambers' fault.

He forged the document with the word processor he found in the trunk of the car Alger Hiss gave him.

The Corner is linking to us now. Now, we're really going to get trafficked.

#46 Ms. Andi

Is LGF under attack or just a kazillion visitors right now?

Someone was kind enough to link the Charles' previous entry on this subject to Fark.com and it got "greenlighted" (posted on the front page).

There's an obvious explanation:

1. The memo writer climbed into their time machine.
2. They went forward in time to September, 2004.
3. They typed, and printed, the memo on a PC equiped with MS Word.
4. They returned to August, 1973 and put the memo in the file.

What other explation could there be? You folks are just making a mountain out of a mole hill. :-)

notice to everyone, lgf is getting hammered today and i can bet his server bill this month will be pretty high so why dont we all throw a couple bucks charles' way to help him defray the cost!

some of the documents could be real... but slip in some fakes with them and you have a nice trojan horse.

Not so fast. I agree these memos are quite suspicious. However, font comparisions are typically extremely subtle. The best evidence from your experiment is the kerning, wrapping and spacing.

Fonts are a much stranger thing. Consider the lower case "m" in the word "Memo". The "original" lower case "m" is much more akin to the "m" in the Bookman Old Style font rather than the Times New Roman (angled first hump, rounded second hump). However, the slighly elongated numeral 8 in the original is more similar to the Times New Roman font rather than the rounder 8 in Bookman.

Check out the serifs on the capital "C" in "CYA". In Times New Roman the serifs (on screen display) appear as up-hooks. In Bookman and the "originals" they're down hooks.

All this is to say that there are still subtle differences between the "original" memos and the self-tests we're all doing as well as version, resolution, and print font differences.

this SOOO rich. Richie-Rich Rich. Like a "Richie-Rich Zillion Dollar Adventure" rich.

{sigh - it took forever to get one with all these furners hereabouts ...}

My lame attempt to be a forger...

Two passes through my copier and a scan of a fax.

One thing I learned is that it's not easy keeping the "th" from disappearing as you can see. And the "th" is also lower in my PC version.

Hmm ...

At this point I have nothing more to say on the subject until the documents are analyzed by someone independent of CBS (that and the fact that I'm having a lot of trouble posting), but the "th" bothers me.

#73, rayra:

I considered that, but they're plausibly similar to me, if one is actually signed, and the other is initialed.

Hey I tracked down CBS's Document Experts

It should also be noted that the Boston Globe also ran with the fake Abu Graib porno photos on page 1 back in early May (around the 13th). If the Times motto is "All the news fit to print" is the Globe's motto "we're ready to believe you"?

Yet another example of why the MSM should lay down its' pens in shame. They bit this like a dog on a Kong toy.

The thing I find so facinating is that this match up is with the FRIGGING DEFAULT setting of MS Word. Not tweeks or help from Clippy required! What is the chance that a document from a 1970's typewriter would look like a FRIGGING DEFAULT document from a 2004 word processor?

The "source" who said the White House released copies of the documents has now recanted and said they released copies that were supplied to them by CBS a day before the story broke. HA!

Uh oh, Washington Monthly had it wrong, too...

Does anyone know if "CYA" was a commonly used epxression back then? Also, if the writer really thought he had a legitimate beef, and was standing on prinicple, would he really denigrate his memo by, himself, suggesting that he was only writing it to cover his ass?

Lots of people on right now... Looks like everyone is stopping by from the Corner as well. Once this starts to disseminate throughout the Web, expect it to get even more busy here at Lizardoid HQ.

How many people (especially at that time) actually typed personal notes or journal entries? Probably not many.

This dude's family was going through his crap after he died, found some interesting hand written notes, and decided to enter them into to their hard drive.

Besides, how could you prove that even if the notes were typed by an old IBM or hand written that they weren't forged or done by someone else anyway?

I don't want to get too optimistic (after all the 7 and j do look a bit different), but....

Has anyone noticed that the censor of the address is done so badly that the address is still visible... I haven't seen a US Govt doc where the censor is so incompetant! But, I haven't seen that many...

More importantly, checking President Bush's officially released documents, they all seem to censor his ID number, which is in plain view in these new documents!

"Bush pulled himself up by his bootstraps, by sheer willpower and faith.."

L.O. Freaking L.!!!

Yes it's so hard being the millionaire grandson of a Senator, and the son of a president. I mean, sure, you get to attend Harvard, Yale, and Andover, but you actually have to attend a few classes to get your C's.

Sheeze!

Let's hope this post doesn't disappear into the ether like the last two!

I am waiting for someone to perform a linguistic analysis. You'd need to take some undisputed, authentic Killian memos and compare them to the disputed memos. Is this the way Killian habitually wrote?

The fact that Killian is dead makes this whole thing extremely suspicious in my mind. CBS (or better yet, an actual news organization) needs to hire a reputable document examiner.

hey, why lose with dignity like bob dole! this it so transparent it makes the watergate burgelers look like cary grant's 'john robie!' judging from the ham-fisted oafishness of this sad effort, i'm guessing a lousianan is behind it, perhaps a certain "rabid" louisianan who's physical appearance is akin to a snake.........

Drudge is going to carry this story.

It's getting hot!

#85,

Thought about that too, but what about the signatures?

Or are you saying his family members re-signed the documents and put all the initialing back in?

Sheesh!

#85 - You're an idiot. If these are transcribed notes, why bother to age them? Why not send the clean copies.

Besides which, why the hell would anybody be covering up for Bush back in 1973 when nobody knew, or even thought, he was ever going to be president?

The Corner at National Review Online is linking to Little Green Footballs on this!

#86,

I suspect that CBS did the bad redaction before it put the PDFs up. Obviously they couldn't have been faxed like that...

#75 Serona -- CBS's PDFs are too low resolution to draw any conclusions from fine details of individual letters. That's why its the cumulative effect of spacing over an entire line that pins this down. As I wrote in the other thread, even the almost identical Times built into Postscript printers does not precisely match these "memos", and as I wrote above, a 1972 mechanical typesetter's Times New Roman wouldn't match either.

#85 laughingatyouall,
Why doesn't any of the stories mention they are not the original documents but modern copies?
Why did they get the aging treatment when they are just copies of handwritten (?) originals?
Where are the originals?

Has someone else already noted that when Charles did the superimposition that the difference is between a curved and a flat screen? That may be an artifact of the scanning process.

Charles, which do you use?

I notice that both the CBS and your version of the document use what Microsoft Word calls "smart quotes," i.e. quotation marks (both double and single) are curved and face left or right depending on whether they are opening or closing the quotation. Here, the single quotation mark is used in several places as an apostrophe. I don't know about other typewriters or machines, but I am pretty sure that the IBM Selectrics of that era would have had only one double and one single quotation mark or apostrophe, in which the strokes are vertical and not curved.

Keep cool. Slow down.

[Link: www.linotype.com...]

Fact 1: The typeface has been around for some time.
Fact 2: In 1972 there were typewriters with proportional typefaces around.
Fact 3: Modern typefaces, i.e. typefaces created after 1930, did have kerning tables.
Fact 4: When the kerning was set by one single designer, you can expect all incarnations of the typeface to have the exact same kerning.

That said, Word is not rocket science. Actually, the technology to render proportional type with correct kerning down to fractions of inches was already available in the mid 80's.

Also, what if it turns out that the original document did contain the same letter, but was re-typed so that no one can claim, "that's just too unreadable"?

As I said, cool down, wait.

Favorite FARK comment so far:

FOUR MORE BEERS!

Dubious news website... Little green footballs?

FOUR MORE BEERS!

Can someone forward Charles' handiwork to the RNC and "60 Minutes"? I am swamped at work.

I forwarded links and info to all addresses that seemed relevant at RNC.org and W's official campaign site. Also at whitehouse.org.

NB: karlrove@whitehouse.org bounces. :-(

The August memo works out, but the May one doesn't quite match up, at least not in my version of Word. The last sentence manages to fit on one line, rather than having an orphan hanging off the end. I've got the images posted at my site, and if anyone can see what's different, I'd be happy to hear.

# 69
Best be on good behavior, all. The adults are watching.
;-)

Just getting a mention on Rush. He's glad that people are finally questining MSM. Doesn't comment on whether it could be forged or not (smartly) just making the point that people aren't taking MSM on its word anymore.

Drudge has picked up the story:

'60 Minutes' Documents on Bush Might Be Fake /// 32-year-old documents produced Wednesday by CBSNEWS 60 MINS on Bush's guard service may have been forged using a current word processing program // typed using a proportional font, not common at that time, and they used a superscript font feature found in today's Microsoft Word program, Internet reports claim... Developing...

He links to PowerLine blog.
 

I - Already Emailed this story and links here to all "Right wing conspiracy talk show hosts" national and local listed in the drop down at [Link: www.ksfo560.com...]

"New" Bush National Guard Doc.s Forged - CBS Busted !
CBS Documents Forged - font is exact match to microsoft word 2003, Monotype owns the "New Times Roman" typeface - fine gradations in spacing only possible with computer graphics, not on selectric typwriters in 1972

Fine gradations in proportional spacing didn't exist in 1972,

see the analysis of multiple documents on Little Green Footballs Blog website -
[Link: littlegreenfootballs.com...]

and at Spacetown Blog website here - [Link: www.spacetownusa.com...]

Let's see if this get's airplay today or lgf get's credit.

CBS is trying to stage a coup. They are supposedly famous for high-quality investigative journalism, yet they obviously made zero attempt to verify these memos -- because they already knew they were fake. Ashcroft needs to charge the top brass of CBS with sedition. Promoting obvious forgeries as real is a crime in and of itself; promoting them for the purpose of overthrowing the government is a much more serious crime.

CBS needs to be taken down, and taken down hard.

Another point: I don't know of any device in use at military bases in 1973 that did automatic word-wrapping to set margins. You had to manually (or electrically) do that old carriage return. What are the odds that every single line would have broken at exactly the same point as a Word document with autowrap?

#79 chris_l

Hey I tracked down CBS's Document Experts

Awesome.

What really proves the documents are fake. look at the originals on PDF. Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian provides an e.mail address, not available in 1973.

/just kidding

#87 ralph

Yes it's so hard being the millionaire grandson of a Senator, and the son of a president. I mean, sure, you get to attend Harvard, Yale, and Andover, but you actually have to attend a few classes to get your C's.

You registered to post that?

I take it you know for a fact that Bush Senior being president in 1988-1992 and having a rich grandfather were a significant factor in Bush giving up drink, finding G-d and otherwise sorting his life out enough to become governor and then President?

e-mailed to Drudge if minutes ago --

You are now his lead story --

Way to go charles !

[Link: www.drudgereport.com...]

Jeez. I still can't believe this. If it's true, it's a seismic event in our media culture and a stake in the heart of the MSM. This day would be talked about for decades come.

Think of it: A major "respected" news program run its typical anti-conservative hatchet-piece and is disgraced, tarred, feathered and run out of town the very next day by the blogosphere.

Naw, I still don't believe it yet. Christmas never comes this early!

Let the Backlash begin!

Who's running the Kerry campaign? It's gotta be him.

Yeah, check out Drudge, love the upside-down "60 Minutes" opening shot -- priceless! time to get the early '80's t-shirt "CBS News: RATHER biased" out of mothballs! What's the frequency, Kenneth??

There was nothing commonly available in 1973 that would have likely been available to produce a simple 'CYA' note in kerned and autowrapped Times New Roman and at laser quality. Most likely it would have been handwritten. Don't forget that the tendency to do your own typing is an '80s development...before, others often did the typing.

Users Online: 6,180

Is this correct? Or is it a another DOS attack?

Chalk up another for the "old media". One would expect the cretins responsible for this would have at least tried to find an old copy of Wordstar and a daisywheel printer. Oops - giving away my age. :-)

'60 Minutes' Documents on Bush Might Be Fake

Three independent typography experts told CNSNews.com they were suspicious of the documents from 1972 and 1973 because they were typed using a proportional font, not common at that time, and they used a superscript font feature found in today's Microsoft Word program.

Charles, methinks that this might mark your definitive, major jump into the mainstream media.

Heh, perhaps you should upgrade your server or something, because all that traffic is sure going to grow.

The users online count is correct. That's why LGF is slow, we're getting hit hard by fark.com. I just installed a little software shut-off valve to try to stop some of the fark traffic.

The visitor count for today is not correct -- it should actually be well over 30,000 already, but we had a race condition when fark first linked to us and a flood of users hit us all at once, and the count file got munged.

Do any of the "known" docs that originated with TANG already released by DOD show any of the suspect features of these memos?

USA today has bundles of Bush's records.

Just because typewriters existed with the appropriate options, doesn't mean that they were available in TX.

#102 MadPoet, I read from someone else who had done this kind of test that small discrepancies disappeared when he used OpenOffice instead of Word. It would make sense that whoever made these wouldn't use "Micro$oft" but an open source alternative...

[Link: www.cnsnews.com...]

and some (non-CBS) experts take a look at these memos

RIP Ford

How can there be 6,245 users on line but only 558 today?

I sent an anonymous link to Drudge Report with the LGF link.

#44 - Havoc

"Anybody know when proportional spacing became possible.."

The IBM Selectrics I and II (both of which, AFAIR, could have been in use during the early 70's) never had proportional fonts.

The IBM Executive and the "Selectric Composer" did, but it is highly unlikely that the former would have been used (anyway, fonts aside, it couldn't produce a superscript "th") and as for a Composer being used to produce memos - well, yeah.

Is it just me? I haven't seen something both so important and so silly as this in a long time.

A couple of folks mentioned that Drudge has this story, but I'm not seeing it.

Long live the Blogosphere................ like Rush says............doing the job the MSM used to do.

Briefly: The IBM Selectric was a ball-typewriter with interchangeable balls; it might have had curly quotes and a superscript th but all Selectrics were mono-spaced.

The IBM Executive was a proportional-spaced typewriter but it was a hammer-type and the font could not be changed. Further, the Executive used gearing to advance the carriage from 1-4 semi-spaces, based on the size of the character. These documents can not be lined up unless you have at least 6 sizes of semi-spaces, with [i] being the narrowest, [t] slightly wider, [a, e, o, s, n], [m, w], [P, B], [W].

Just my little contribution.

#122 Charles

LOL WOW!

Congratulations on the excellent work!
Looks like I'm goin' to have to hit the tip jar.

Patrizio,

Charles is now MSM? He can't be trusted either?

#125 kstagger

They seem to think they're forgeries, and the tip off is once again the mysterious "th" ...

OK, that CNS story was good - how is their reputation?

Donald Sagretti, please call your office.
Donald sagretti, please call your office.

re: rat fu%�ng.
message urgent.

What is the chance that a document from a 1970's typewriter would look like a FRIGGING DEFAULT document from a 2004 word processor?

This is the question to ask.

Excellent point, Rednek.

This is all part of a Kerry plot. Tommorrow he denounces the forgeries, and challenges Bush to do the same to the Swifties.

Charles,

, but we had a race condition when fark first linked to us and a flood of users hit us all at once, and the count file got munged.

Munged. LOL! Over there they call it "Farked."

BTW, it wasn't me.

Plus The Corner has now apparently linked to LGF, so I imagine it's going to be like this all day.

I can understand the expert caveats saying they are not sure what font it is, etc. () (check out CNS article) but if you would try to use ANY other font and superimpose it the way Charles did, it would never line up. Try Palatino or NewCenturySchoolbook or Garamond - it won't even be close. I would be surprised if even an original Times Roman from an old HP LaserJet would line up as well.

Awesome Charles!

I wanted to post this earlier but I kept getting time outs, I'm hoping others sent it to Drudge as well, I sent this; the Powerline URL and the images. And as mentioned above by svegmaw, it's been caught on!

I work for the Air Force. I can't imagine any official memo having such an unprofessional subject line as "CYA".

As --132 Creatureofhabit pointed out about the IBM executive model with proportional spacing it didn't even look like the same type. That's what made it stand out.

I used one and the letters themselves were different sizes.

It's so long ago, I can only remember that it didn't look at all like the type in the memos.

Since this isn't the first time the issue of forgery of military documents has come up in the campaign, I wonder if anyone has the inclination to compare their finding on the Bush memos with the documents posted on Kerry's website claiming naval awards that were never issued?

I wonder if you could produce a similar result with a PC and Word on Kerry's suspect military records as has been done with the Bush papers.

I'll bet if you could B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley at stolenvalor.com would check into it.

I like the way CBS posted the letter so that it wasn't straight on the screen. And I wonder what typewriter puts all it's letters perfectly lined up like that. When it's new for sure, but this was supposedly a personal machine. No doubt he had a secretary for official correspondence. Actually as someone who worked typesetting in the 78 that even with the expensive machines it wasn't that easy to get things to space correctly. Curious

The contrarian that I am, I put forth this idea for you to consider: perhaps this was a modern transcription of an old handwritten memo? Maybe at one point, Killian got someone to go through his old papers and transcribe them for indexability and general neatness?

#131 Praxeus:

Long live the Blogosphere................ like Rush says............doing the job the MSM used to do.

Are we sure that the MSM ever did its job? It seems entirely possible that reporters have always been lazy, biased, and ill-informed. That's actually a bit frightening. How much of what we "know" about history is really crap - the result of some hack journalists grinding their axes?

My devious little mind tells me that these documents were created with and leaked by someone friendly to W.

If the documents weren't published, no problem. Not every arrow hits its mark.

If, on the other hand, the documents were published, the MSM would be revealed as the rabid attack dogs they are.

Isn't it also suspicious that the PO Box is "34567"? Plus, other documents I've seen use the address, "Ellington AFB, Texas," not, "Houston, Texas."

Awesome!

Award for Most Cutting Post in thread goes to Ghost of a Flea: "Advantage: blogosphere!"

Ha! Sums it up rather nicely. First victory of the blogo: SBVT story will not be suppressed; second victory: The Great CBS Document Forgery Debacle of 2004.

Award for Doh! Post goes to Charles: "You had to manually (or electrically) do that old carriage return"

! How could we have forgotten that? Together with all spacing & kerning considerations, I would think that the statistical probability of forgery has gone through the ozone layer...

Wheeee!

Spacing and subscripts are secondary in my opinion to a couple of glaring inconsistencies:

According to Kloognome, the LA Times reports that Colonel Buck Staudt retired in 1972:

Bush's application, as well as his commission, were handled by then-Col. Walter B. "Buck" Staudt, who said, "Nobody did anything for him.... There was no ... influence on his behalf. Neither his daddy nor anybody else got him into the Guard." Staudt, who retired in 1972 as a brigadier general, said Bush was enrolled quickly because there was a demand for pilot candidates.

My question is how much 'pressure' could a retired Brigadier General Staudt bring to bear on 'active' Colonel Killian? Killian's memo (which was written on a Saturday, incidentally) gives one the impression that he is being suffocated by Staudt. It makes me suspicious.

One big question: Was it even possible to write these memos using a proportional font in 1972? Well, you could get proportional pitch out of an IBM Selectric Composer. I worked with a IBM Mag Card Composer between 1976 and 1980. I even used it to type letters.
BUT... these machines don't have a key for ordinal superscripts! If you want to make the "th" in "111th squadron" appear small and raised, then you have to change the font ball and adjust the paper height. Twice. NOBODY is going to do that to type a routine memo. Just no freaking way.
(See for yourself. User manuals are at [Link: www.ibmcomposer.org...]
BTW, in my work, DoD Directives as late as 1991 were published using a fixed typewriter font. My earliest example of an official pubs using proportional fonts appeared in 1994. I think it is extremely unlikely that the Texas Air National Guard was using proportional fonts for routine memos in 1972.

#134

No, I meant that he will get the attention that he deserves and that this exposé should be featured in it. I don't think the media is as bad as you do.

Okay, recap time folks:

Documents were produced by CBS purporting to be from 1972-1973 relevant period in Bush's ANG service that has been questioned. CBS sent a copy to the White House prior to publishing their story. CBS claimed that a document expert authenticated the documents.

Now, today, we've gotten a look at those documents and we find:

1)Problems with the spacing, kerning, "smart quotes/apostrophes," and superscripting of characters within the documents that are not likely to have been done with existing technology at the time (1972-1973);
2) Charles, and others, have made satisfactory replicas of the documents using Microsoft Word using default settings and default fonts/options.

What this does is cast serious doubt on the documents' authenticity. These documents clearly could have been made using current techology to replicate the documents that CBS has claimed in its articles to impugn the President. The real question is whether techology from 1972-1973, and in possession of the relevant ANG unit, could have created this.

Thus far, the experts weighing in here, Power Line, and in the CNS article all lean towards a fabrication.

And this doesn't even get into the suspicious timing of the finds and subsequent publication by CBS.

It's like wadin' thru cold molasses in here........slooowwww.

# 147 Jax

You may be right..........

Another thing I noticed: Single-spacing between sentences is a computer-related thing. In 1973, double-spacing between sentences was the only way to tell you were at the end of a sentence.

In modern software, the program can sense the period and space after it.

Methinks you're right, Charles. Forgeries.

Great job, Charles.

I bet there are a bunch of people whooping it up at RNC hearquarters about now. I also expect there is serious vomiting into corners at the DNC headquarters about now. This is just so awful....it's so nice to see Terry McAuliffe gloating on TV and get bitchslapped in public the next day. I can't believe how fast this story is going around.
By the way, I was in the USAF in 1973, and I did a lot of typing on my trusty Selectric. It was the el cheapo model, of course, but it certainly had no superscripts like the "th" item being discussed. I also worked for the USAF in Germany, in 1972, where they had Selectrics with German-language keyboards. They had a way of putting diacritics over letters when needed, but not that one.

From Cybercast News (?) interviews of typography experts.

Fred Showker, who teaches typography and introduction to digital graphics at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., questioned the documents' letterhead.

"Let's assume for a minute that it's authentic," Showker said. "But would they not have used some form of letterhead? Or has this letterhead been intentionally cut off? Notice how close to the top of the page it is."

He also pointed to the signature of Killian, the purported author of the May 4, 1972, memo ordering Bush, who was at the time a first lieutenant in the Texas Air National Guard, to obtain a physical exam.

"Do you think he would have stopped that 'K' nice and cleanly, right there before it ran into the typewriter 'Jerry," Showker asked. "You can't stop a ballpoint pen with a nice square ending like that ... The end of that 'K' should be round ... it looks like you took a pair of snips and cut it off so you could see the 'Jerry.'"

[Link: www.cnsnews.com...]

For whatever it is worth, having used an Executive IBM --they were NOT as easy for making corrections because of the proportional letters.

They were rarely used in any general typing pool nor would they likely be a standard issue.

Mostly they would have been used by executive secretaries doing official documents or letters. They were expensive.

Anyone remember when the self-correcting tapes came out? I think it was 80's but not sure.

I know the IBM Executive models did NOT have them. Meaning it was erase or later white-out.

That would be pretty good typing for a commanding officer (it was done on a Saturday) if the originals had no corrected mistakes.

#146 Canuckistan:

Maybe at one point, Killian got someone to go through his old papers and transcribe them for indexability and general neatness?

That's not being contrarian, that's plain old grasping at straws.

Bush's application, as well as his commission, were handled by then-Col. Walter B. "Buck" Staudt, who said, "Nobody did anything for him.... There was no ... influence on his behalf. Neither his daddy nor anybody else got him into the Guard." Staudt, who retired in 1972 as a brigadier general, said Bush was enrolled quickly because there was a demand for pilot candidates.

Sorry I should have added this to my previous post. For those of you who may have missed it, the memo is dated (Saturday) August 18, 1973.

#146 Canuckistan,

And maybe John Edwards "channeled" him from beyond the grave :-P

Seriously, while your hypothesis could be possible, I would have to see the originals, have handwriting experts confirm that it was the same guy, carbon date the paper...

Between Bellisiles and Jayson Blair, I think we've seen enough of the "Dog ate my homework" crap from the left to justify a high degree of skepticism when they say the sky is blue, let alone something controversial.

In short, given that most of the time you can tell that they are lying because their mouth is moving, what is the probability that they are actually telling the truth this time?

Gosh some of you posters are really tolerant benefit of the doubt folks.
Here's what life is really like in the academia/MSM ubermenschen world.
Some digi dinosaur meets an equally digi challenged ugly at a Graydon Carter/Tina Brown/Vanity Fair pigout where the two hosts are too busy at cruising for innocent prey to pay attention to anything else.
Then one of the totally out of the cyber revolution types tells the other that he/she knows how they can nail Bush with alleged authen'ic (that's how these superior beings pronounce such words - they've never met a medial 't' they could respect) documents from a dead man.
That's all it takes. Know-nothings who think they know it all set themselves up for this kind of disaster.They are utterly at a loss to understand what's going on in the world today vis a vis the cyber revolution and we should all be eternally grateful that they are so out of it.
Advantage blogosphere.

Hugh Hewett has picked the story up and linked to Power Line

From NRO's Kerry Spot:
"
Kerry Spot reader Ed is awesome. He points us to the Selectric Typewriter Museum at [Link: www.selectric.org...]

(Sigh. Silly me! I had just been thinking about taking Mrs. Kerry Spot to the Selectric Typewriter Museum the other day.)

The available fonts are listed there:

10 Pitch Type Styles: Advocate, Bookface Academic 72, Delegate, Orator, Courier 72, Pica 72, Prestige Pica 72
12 Pitch Type Styles: Adjutant, Artisan 12, Courier 12 Italic, Scribe, Prestige Elite, Courier 12, Elite 72, Letter Gothic

Special Typing Applications: Light Italic, Script, Printing ANSI-OCR, Symbol 10, 108 OCR, Manifold 72, Symbol 12

To my layman's eye, none of those fonts look quite like Times New Roman, or the font on the CBS memo."

Sounds like the nail in the coffin for the Selectric theorists...

Note that INDC Journal also had an expert look at the document, and he also thinks it is probably a fake.

But, but, but, I thought 60 Minutes was infallible?

/sarc

OT - Today's State Post-Convention Polling Data

Depressing that as we speak the NYT, Wash. Post, CNN, MSNBC, Fox etc. are still reporting these BS memos as a serious story. This will be buried...

Here a post with more excellent points from Free Republic:

ANG Docs are Fake
Hank All-American | September 9, 2004 | Hank All-American

Posted on 09/09/2004 12:16:21 PM PDT by Hank All-American

Okay, guys and gals. As a former Air Force officer and special agent for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI), I have reviewed the documents released by CBS and can say with a high degree of confidence they are fake.

1--the month in a military date is always three letters. August is spelled out.

2--no one issues an "order" through a "memo." Maybe a letter, but nothing as informal as a "memo."

3--the signature (initials) of Lt. Col. Killian is clearly a cut-and-paste job. The last letter ("K") is cut off at the top, where two lines start to curve toward each other in a loop. Impossible to to do by hand. This signature was cut from another document and pasted or taped on the document.

4--No letterhead. Do you really think commanders typed out a the squadron on every letter? No. Letterhead was used.

5--No way there were superscripts back then. No way. Even if it was theoretically possible (which it wasn't), the national guard isn't exactly an early-adopter of technology. This ability wasn't even available at any price for several years.

Conclusion. I think they're fake. As a lawyer, I can also tell you this kind of thing is far more common than people think.

Hey, where'd my earlier post go?

In the examples given here, the old font is not identical with Microsoft Times New Roman, but has several archaic flourishes.

The Executive could do proportional fonts, and I believe the Selectrics could do so as a $100 option, not even counting the fancier memory-equiped models.

1968:
[Link: domino.research.ibm.com...]

The rare books librarian is coming out in me.

Do we have a solid provenance for these new documents?

When did they first surface?

Who "owned" them before? Where they found with any other documents? What do the other documents in the collection look like?

I'm old enough to remember when government document manuscripts were typed and then set using courier-like typefaces

These documents don't looked like it was typed on a typewriter.

CBS announces an interview with that Barnes guy on or about the same day that Texans for Truth posts up their website and their commercial. Isn't this about the same time the "documents" were uncovered?

Things to make you go hmmmmm

#146 Canuckistan

Killian died in 1984. MS Word was still many years away from being created (although MS Works for the Commodore was available :)

Whoa, the fonts got a screwy here.

I've email some linguists asking them if CYA was used in the early seventies. I'll post if they respond. Or maybe they'll post online somewhere or in their blogs Agoraphilia and Literal Minded.

Well Charles you proved it for sure...
Proved that you should have a TV show!

I suggest the title: "As many minutes as it takes"

This makes the Daily Mirrors fake torture photos look convincing in comparison.

Remember this?

Here's hoping someone deserving gets fired.

The superscript "th" gives it away for me. Who back then used superscript except typesetters for books or magazines?

Sure you could do superscript if you stopped and clicked the barrell up once, but then it would be the same size type as the rest of the letter. Here it's much smaller.

This stinks.

#108 Charles 9/9/2004 11:53AM PST

Charles,

You are exactly right that the word-wrap is the most damning thing about this forgery (although the superscript "th" is pretty damning as well).

I am a technology consultant who specializes in document solutions in MS Word. The wordwrap algorithm is one of the most complex aspects of the software. Wordwrapping can vary for the SAME DOCUMENT when rendered on different printers.

I once wrote a document conversion program moving hundreds of documents from an early version of Word to a later version. Even given hundreds of manhours of work, it was not possible to duplicate the wordwrap consistently even between different versions of the same software application less than ten years apart.

It is not possible that a document created on a typewriter or even a word processor from 1973 would exactly match the wordwrap on one created in MS Word today.

Wait...

If Karl Rove wanted to discredit the MSM, what better way than to leak a fake document that could be uncovered, then let the MSM run with it like a fish on a line ?

In my mind, 60 minutes has been (finally) BUSTED. Great work Charles. Kudos to you.....

Scott Renner:

BTW, in my work, DoD Directives as late as 1991 were published using a fixed typewriter font. My earliest example of an official pubs using proportional fonts appeared in 1994. I think it is extremely unlikely that the Texas Air National Guard was using proportional fonts for routine memos in 1972.

I think it incredibly unlikely that they were using anything else than what everybody else was using - standard typewriters that were available in two fonts: Pica and Elite. This font is neither.

INDC Journal -- Expert Says Documents Almost Certainly Fake

Check out the story at the link above: one of the countrie's top experts in document analysis believes the documents are probably (90%) faked. He concentrates on the number 4 and the apostrophes, but charles should send him this superimposition analysis in this article. Combined, it is devastating.

Looks like PAPERGATE for the DEM's.

I foresee Kerry bowing down really soon...only to be replaced by...
YARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!

Howard Dean!

LOL

Andrew B.

This thread is hilarious. In the middle of a campaign to elect someone to the most important position in the world, people are relatedly investigating the finer points of typewriter history, fonts and spacing. We are in bizarro world.

EXCELLENT WORK CHARLES!

However, I think I may have found the original...

RIGHT THERE

Can you spot the telltale sign?

Another thought: Was CYA commonly used as an abbreviation for "cover your ass" in 1972?

I wouldn't be surprised either way, but it seems a bit to trendy for a 1972 memo.

#183 snopes.

You're right. This is bizarre (as also noted by Cox and Forkum in their latest cartoon). However, electing a President is serious business and people are willing to do anything and everything to get their guy elected. Fraud, lying, deceptions, break-ins and other criminal acts have marred elections in the past, so when documents that portray one of the candidates in a bad light come out like a bolt from the blue, it is completely relevant to examine them further.

If they're forgeries, this casts the media in a bad light for being suckered (tho the fact that they said they had 'experts' check 'em makes me think they wanted to believe the documents on partisan grounds and hope for the best). It also raises further questions about the journalistic integrity of the media that is incessantly reporting and hyping those very documents, even though their authenticity is dubious at best.

# 107 zombie:

That's a great point!

#184 Smug Monkey

LOL! AOL email address, hmmmm.

Here is someone's account of learning to use an IBM Executive typewriter which is the only one that had proportional type.

[Link: www.well.com...]
The IBM Executive typewriter I found at a garage sale was magnificent, and (having been long since replaced by the Selectric), dirt cheap. Only somebody with a PhD in secretarial skills could operate it. It was a proportional spacing machine: an 'm' was five spaces wide, an 'i' was two. There were two separate space bars (two and three spaces respectively). To correct a mistake, you had to know the width of all the characters involved so that you could backspace the appropriate amount (backspace was the only single-space key on the machine). There was an arcane procedure for producing justified type which involved typing a page a first time (while using a special guide to measure where the lines ended), noting the extra spaces that needed to be added, marking the copy to show where two-width spaces would be replaced with three-width spaces (or, in the worst case, two two-width spaces), and typing the page a second time. Even loading the ribbon (it was one of the first carbon ribbon machines on the market) was a major challenge: its rimless reels would spill their contents at the slightest mishandling, and the thin (less than 1/2" wide) tape had to be threaded through bewildering series of slots, grooves, carriers, and guides. It was a machine only a fanatic could love, and I did.
[Link: www.all-science-fair-projects.com...]

All Selectrics were monospaced -- each and every character was the same width. Although IBM had produced a successful typebar-based machine, the IBM Executive, with proportional spacing, no proportionally-spaced Selectric office typewriter was ever introduced.

Whoever wrote that memo is probably reading LGF or Powerline right now saying, dang.

Don't be surprised if a new doc is unearthed next week with all the "i"s dotted and all the "t"s crossed, so to speak.

I've tried to remain skeptical all afternoon, but I can't keep it up anymore. This document is a fake. The real question is, how will the MSM cover the story? My prediction:

Week 1: Fake documents? What fake documents? We don't run stories about those kinds of internet rumors.

Week 2: Oh, those documents are just reproductions of the real documents. And we just tacked on an image of the signature for the viewer convenience. No, we still can't find the originals.

Week 3: This is all a plot coordinated by Karl Rove and the 527s. And Charles Johnson was Hitler's mistress. We have to photos to prove it!

Can someone please explain 'kerning' to me?

#154 lawhawk -

The real question is whether techology from 1972-1973, and in possession of the relevant ANG unit, could have created this.

We know that the spacing of the "memos" exactly matches that of the current digital Times New Roman, and that the spacing on a Monotype caster -- in the unlikely event that the ANG unit had one -- could not have exactly matched the current digital version. I am not 100% certain that they would be visually distinguishable, but the fact that (for instance) the Postscript version of Times Roman does have visually different spacing supports the notion that they would be.

I also think it extremely unlikely that anyone capable of operating a Monotype caster -- let alone setting the superscript "th" in the May 4th "memo" -- would have so badly botched the spacing of "May,1972.to" and "(flight)IAW". Further, the whole point of a Monotype (or Linotype etc.) caster is that they could automatically justify lines (i.e. align the right edges), and these "memos" are ragged-right.

(PIMF but PITS today. I am not a professional, but a certified type nerd.)

I had a proportional-font IBM Selectric back in the 70s. Very cool stuff. (In fact, I have pages and pages of text because I used it for my daily journal.)

The font DOES NOT MATCH. At ALL.

For one, the variation in the typing pressure on a cloth ribbon produced slight variations in the letter-darkness. And there are artifacts of using a cloth ribbon on the letters. I don't see that in these documents. I see a document produced on a laser printer & somehow 'aged' to make it look authentic.

#184: Very funny!

Charles, if you ran your copy through a fax copier I'll bet the type qualities would be so close they'd look identical.

Gawd I love the smell of burning msm news rooms in the afternoon.

#128 Mashu

#44 - Havoc

"Anybody know when proportional spacing became possible.."

The IBM Selectrics I and II (both of which, AFAIR, could have been in use during the early 70's) never had proportional fonts.

I seem to remember one of those IBM Executive "composer"s used in the Booklet printing department from about 1980.

It was as big as Church Organ -- did nice proportional type, -- exaclty thing a National Guard officer and his secretary would use -- don't ya think ?

Those IBM composers cost about $15,000 back then, inflation adjusted that's about $40,000 today. That and $500 hammers, and $950 toilet seats DOD budget sounds about right for 1972 for a National Guard Colonel Oh -- Gasp ---- in an era when they were downsizing and had too many pilots too.

Hey everyone--

What's that "J" up in the corner of the "authentic" document? Could that be a code for JOHNSON?

Charles, you magnificent bastard! How much did Serpent Head and Dan Blather pay you for those?

Bwahahaha!

Seriously, though, incredible work, Charles! It's amazing how the blogosphere's bitch-slapping the MSM on a daily basis. I love it!

kerning - when you have letters like "A" and "T" where they have overhangs, kerning slightly adjusts the spacing between letters to make them fit more aesthetically. A monospaced font has no kerning, because each letter is exactly the same width (an "m" is as wide as an "l")'; the space between letters is exactly the same (as if each letter were a box), and the space created by the spacebar is exactly as wide as a letter.

A good proportional font will have differing spacing between each letter (kerning), which means the literal space between letters will vary, and the spaces between words will vary slightly to adjust for line length and layout.

I'm surprised a bit by this kerfuffle. It's too obvious. John Kerry jokes about shooting Bush. Yawn. John Kerry's side produces forged documents slamming Bush using the names of dead people. Yawn. Cheney says that making a bad choice now can encourage terrorists - CHENEY IS SAYING KERRY IS FOR TERRORISM! BUSHITLER! HALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLIBURTON!

The contrarian that I am, I put forth this idea for you to consider: perhaps this was a modern transcription of an old handwritten memo? Maybe at one point, Killian got someone to go through his old papers and transcribe them for indexability and general neatness?

If you're going to remain in denial, despite the obvious, at least go for the time travel angle -- at least it's exciting.
 

#184 Smug Monkey

LMAO!

#192 grayp,

It's a font thing. You wouldn't understand :-P
Kerning

In typography, kerning refers to adjusting the space between characters, especially by placing two characters closer together than normal. Kerning makes certain combinations of letters, such as WA, MW, TA, and VA, look better.
Only the most sophisticated word processors and desktop publishing systems perform kerning. Normally, you can activate or deactivate kerning for particular fonts.

Charles, what's with the DoS attack? Taking forever to load a page.

The MSM must be trying to silence LGF right now. God I hope this forging thing is for real.

Yeah my 1980s Audi is accelerating while my foot is on the brake. 60 Minutes have tape of this and a Syrian Jew saying he would fight against Israel. We also know that Afghanistan has no harbors.

Charles. You amazing man. Thank you.

#203

It's the extra traffic I think, a good thing in a way

Michael Medved is talking about this very subject right now.

OT...but I thought I would share this one with you...

War Metaphor of the Day: Portrait of Al Gore

Andrew B.

Proportional font
Superscript "th"
Wordwrap
Date at the default tab setting in 2004
Curved '
Pressured by man who retired a year earlier
Non-military language/style in some items (date most often noted)
Margins, space from bullet numbers to sentences, space between bulleted items identical to default 2004 settings

What am I missing? I'm trying to sum up because people are noticing so much.

CBS doesn't seem to be posting a photo of the original document either here:

[Link: www.cbsnews.com...]

or here:

[Link: www.cbsnews.com...]

Unbelievable.

Charles, you deserve every bit of kudos and congratulations that is coming to you.

#83 Son of a Pig and a Monkey:

Does anyone know if "CYA" was a commonly used epxression back then?

The phrase "CYA" likely dates as far back as the Roman Legions. However, as Mary in LA notes at #142, it is a hell of an unlikely memo subject.

And looking at my own records, some as recent as 1998 while in the naval reserve, and they are all obviously typewritten.

Sorry, found them please ignore previous post.

Maybe my tinfoil is too tight but if these really are forgeries, I think CBS got set up by either Rove or the Clintoons. I suspect the latter, but predict Rove will be blamed anyway.

I don't remember using or even hearing "CYA" until the 1980s.

I've transcribed another document, and posted the screenshot.

Also posted up a video from last night's 60 Minutes.

It's all here:

http://www.dailyrecycler.com/blog/2004/09/how-deep -does-it-go.html

way to go charles!!

#192 grayp - Look at the May 4th example. In the word "You" at the beginning of point 1, there is a relatively large white area between the stem of the "Y" and the following "o". Kerning would reduce that space by moving the following letters left. In the earliest days of hand typesetting, kerning was done by filing off parts of the metal type in order to fit the letters closer together.

This memo does not have kerning. Microsoft Word does not do kerning by default. Monotype machines did support kerning (this was one of their advantages over their competitor Linotype). So, the lack of kerning is another point in favour of the idea that these memos were produced in Word, and against the idea that they were done on the ANG base's hypothetical Monotype caster.

I spent nearly twenty-five years in the military, apart from the numbered paragraphs, the style and quality of the writing in the memo is suspect. Military writing is concise, but flows naturally, the above noted memo doesn't. I doubt a senior officer wrote that memo, it was probably written by someone with little or no military experience. I had to work at developing another style of writing after I retired because I was constantly advised I was being too abrupt with clients.

Allahpundit is linking to INDC Journal, which consulted a forensic document expert, who believes that the document is very likely forged:

[Link: www.indcjournal.com...]

OT But Related: Clinton News Network{CNN} working overtime in Kerry damage control...They claim in their latest poll Bush "only" leads Kerry 45%-42% and race still "competitive"

How rich is that lie ?

#189 Nancy:

I used an IBM Executive a little in 1973 (it was at least 10-15 years old then) and agree wtih everything the writer you found on-line said. It was great to be able to produce camera ready copy for brochures (what I used it for mostly) and very impressive letters. It did a beautiful job, but was quirky to operate (I had to teach myself and I knew nothing about kerning, proportional spacing or any of that when I sat down to it for the first time), especially the ribbons. Most of the time, those things used film ribbons rather than cloth, producing a really impressive document. I did have a cloth ribbon for it once, but the others worked better.

A National Guard unit could have had a hand-me-down Executive in 1973, but I doubt an LTC would use it himself.

I don't remember, but apparently it didn't have the raised "th" or the ' straight single quote of modern Times New Roman and other word processor fonts, and the number "4" was very different. per INDC Jounal.

I guess good news does travels fast. This is all over the AM stations right now. :)

Blogosphere 2
Main Stream Media 0

Renna,

The memo was written on 8/18/73, which was a Saturday. Yet another red flag in my book.

Boy, my 20 years of graphic design/publishing, and 9 months as a company clerk tell me that this smells. I'd have to defer to a truly experienced forensic expert, but all the typewriters I worked on in the army were clunky selectrics. I'm not seeing the jumps and mispacings an abused typewriter picks up, without considering the proportional spacing issue and suspicious characters.

On that score, I don't see a NG unit having that sort of gear on hand (advanced typewriters), not at the command level these memos came from.

If these are forgeries, the White House has some real pinheads working in their press office. Where's the healthy skepticism?

Tim McNabb
fivehundredwords.com

Let me add to those offering kudos to Charles.

I think this day is historic. The straw that broke the MSM camel's back.

Common sense and fact checking over bias.

I'm sure this has been pointed out numerous times but in 35 years working with/for government or privately never.....not even once....did I see a memo whose subject line was: 'CYA'

And an official document of the armed services....? Ha! Let CBS produce the original and explain exactly how they came by the document...

The MSM knows that everyone else knows that they are puppets for the left. There's nothing to hide, any more. So they are now "out of the closet." That's why Michael Moore was chosen to report on the GOP convention for USA Today and why CBS is unabashedly promoting forged documents as real "proof" that Bush was a bad boy 30 + years ago (how really, really stupid, though, when Bush's Guard service is of little interest to most voters, at this point) and why NBC's Today show is supposed to be having three segments with the anti-Bush "Texans for Truth" that may have orchestrated the forged document we discuss above yet they never had the Swift Boat guys on even once.

I said this earlier today on a different thread when this first came up, but.......

Are Kerry supporters/Bush bashers so stupid that they didn't go to a garage sale, pick up a 1970 era typewriter, some old paper that has been in storage and at least make it look real? That's why I was skeptical about the forgery allegations.

One thing I collect is old railroad passes. I've noticed a very large percentage of those on Ebay & elsewhere were issued to the railroad Presidents (1 president per 6000+ employees per RR, what are the odds). The passes are always done using old style type/fonts. So if they are fake, they are done correctly.

Okay, let's see if this posts.

#223 Dirk Diggler

LOL

This just keeps on gettin' better.

Isn't "CYA" an acronym born of internet chat rooms and therefore not in common parlance in 1973?!

Tim McNabb,

These "documents" DID NOT come from the White House. CBS "obtained" them from Killian's files.

The difference between the height of the “th” in your screen shot of Word and the screen shot of the posted PDF isn’t due to a Mac/PC varince, it’s very simple, and even more proof that this is a fake. It’s the difference between a screen shot of Word and a copy PRINTED on an HP LASER JET! I just typed this into Word, on my screen the “th” is the same height as your screen shot example (cross bar on the t close to even with the top of the 7) when I printed it on my laser jet the “th” is higher, exactly like the version in the PDF file. The difference is due to the font conversion on the LASER PRINTER!

Noticed a couple of other points after seeing Bush's request for discharge memo:

Bush writes "147th Ftr Intcp Gp" not "147th Ftr Intrcp Gp" as in the Ag 1st CBS memo

Bush dates his letter "5 Sep 73", the Aug 1 memo has "01 August 1973" and the May 4 memo says "04 May 1972"... doesn't the US military use 3 letter abbrs for months as a standard?

Just wanted to add a little graphic boost to the illustration. Thanks for having such good radar for the big time fakers with small berries in execution.

Bush Memo Fake

Just an update to my #233, Kilian's approval of Bush's request also uses the "Intcp" abbr rather than Intrcp. (Allah has a copy)

#211 AG in Houston

Charles, you deserve every bit of kudos and congratulations that is coming to you.

I've said it before twice recently, and I need to say it again:

Charles Johnson deserves a Pulitzer Prize. If there is no existing category for bloggers, then the Pulitzer Committee needs to get with the times and create a new category for independent electronic investigative journalists.

#230 Klaus

Isn't "CYA" an acronym born of internet chat rooms and therefore not in common parlance in 1973?!

No, I think it is a bit older than the Innernut (I first heard it in the early 1980's), but it most certainly would not have been used in official memos.

Are Kerry supporters/Bush bashers so stupid that they didn't go to a garage sale, pick up a 1970 era typewriter, some old paper that has been in storage and at least make it look real?

Well it a definite possibility. As I posted elsewhere, ignoring all the talk about fonts, subscripts and Charles transcription there are glaring inconsistencies with the body of this document. Staudt retired a brigadier general in 1972, a year before this Saturday memo was written. Killian (or whoever purports to be Killian in this memo) writes "Staudt is obviously pressuring Hodges about Bush." Killian continues 'Staudt is pushing us to sugar coat it (Bush's evaluation)." Why the hell would Staudt do that? How the hell could Staudt manage that? He's retired!

60 minutes is suffering from BBB syndrome... blinded by bias....

Were these supposedly found at the Pentagon?

D'yall remember the Pentagon librarian who showed up here a few weeks back, solid LLL tool, convinced Rummy was on his way out because he was returning all his books.

Just because these came out of a Pentagon file doesn't mean they aren't forged. There are holdovers from previous administrations who might try a stunt like this.

DRE-nice catch, so that explains it!
RIP Ford, I am so gleeful over this. The LSM is cold-busted.

#209 Renna,

I didn't even think about the date until you mentioned it. Back in '86-'87 I worked as a civillian -attached with a Marine tank platoon (which means I did paperwork while the real Marines did their jobs :-) The date should be:

18 Aug 73

Not

18 August 1973

Even if they weren't abbreviating the month (IIRC, we always did) I doubt very seriously that they were worrying about using four-digit years in 1973. I seem to recall that causing a lot of panic back in 1999 :-P

Here's a link to a relatively contemporary document, to compare to a font commonly used at that time:

GWB request for discharge

It is an atrocious deprivation of our First Amendment rights that jurisdiction over content, control and timing of all significant political discourse has been given to a handful of people in the Mainstream Media. We have budding little strutting royalty like John McCain and Dianne Feinstein to thank for that.

Charles:

I just preformed your experiment using your defaults with the OpenOffice software suite, and got a similar result to yours and the original.

Couple of other things occured to me about the "original."

1). Even if there was a selectric ball small enough to produce the "th", you still would have had to move the rest of the line a 1/2 click below the superscript. That means that line would be differently spaced from the one above it than the rest of the document.

2). Even if you had the 'magic type ball,' that's a lot more work than I expect an ANG officer to go through to simply write a memo. Especially if the officer in question, as many officers likely did, "hunt and pecked" instead of touch typed.

fine point of military style re dates...

17 August 1972

17 AUG 72

are both correct.

any combination of those two styles is incorrect.

also day month year.

not that it matters.

Even if the forger had used 10 point courior and dicked around with margins so it looked like a Colonel typing and having to make his own carriage return decisions...

The memos make absolutely NO SENSE in the context of a 1972 national guard colonels life....

Lets say that this colonel gets handed Bush, and Bush never returns his calls, never shows up, blows off his FDME.

So he gets pissed about it... and then he starts gettig pressure from "higher up" to leave the Bush kid alone cause hes connected....

One and Only One of two things would have happend.

1) He says "hey whatever... its 1972, i could care less what some dude whos rates in the F102 does, signs a generic evaluation. And prompty forgets about it.

2) He says "hey bite me... im not signing shit for this punk ass 'connected' 1LT." In which case none of the existing and non forged Bush paperwork would exist.

If we assume that these documents are authentic, then we must assume that this colonel, upon getting pressured to sign a evaluation for a guy who never showed up... decided to sign it, but to cover himself, got out a typewriter and typed out a memo in memorandum format that sort of cryptically describes this pressure....

Hey... I've typed up Cover Your Ass Memorandums for record... they go like this:

On 15 AUG 97 at 1400 hours I accompanied SPC Jones to the housing office where, in my presence he spoke to Mrs. White, the Deputy Head of the housing department...

and so on... in other words... a COVER YOUR ASS MEMO lists names dates times calls conversations...

this thing was idiotic. the only thing CBS has going for it is that there are probably only 4 or 5 million people who know they are full of shit right now... and the font this and kerning that argument is compicated and sounds like a DU rant...

#243 representative doc

Wait a sec - that document says "11th", why doesn't the "TH" go up high like on that other Bush document? Did the secretary not know how to use the little high character button?

Blink.

I hope somebody gets absolutely roasted over this.

When I tried this Word autoformatted the numbered paragraphs like so:

SUBJECT: CYA

1. Straudt .....................
..............................
...............................

2. ................................

Also (and to my mind less explainable) the superscripted "th" in "187th" in the 1st paragraph is different between the 2 versions. In the Word version the superscript "t" does not extend above the 7 in 187. In the original PDF image a substantial portion of the superscript "t" is above the top of the 7 (if you look at the orginal PDF you can enlarge the text to make this even more obvious).

heh iron fist...

we musta had the same XO once and gotten the date thing wrong...

Jeezus....if they're THIS desperate, how long before they put the ol' Smith and Wesson to the noggin' and drop the hammer?

sevenne (#234),

Charles, could you get a screen shot of seven's overlay of the "old" and new memos? The two are identical.

I also just saw one of the officially released docs (one dated "5 Sep 1972" I think on FOX)... it was definitely "5" not "05"

I keep thinking of the old Bloom County strips where the media was going nuts over the supposed Elvis diaries. They discovered it was a fake when someone noticed it was written on Dukes of Hazard stationary. I used to think that was silly; now I see it's not too far from the truth.

I hope this sucker posts!

Thank you all for the explanation of 'kerning'
Iron Fist, LMAO! That was sooome thread, wasn't it?

AND I AM SO HAPPY CBS IS SO BUSTED! Can't wait for Brit Hume tonite, Charles we love you.........

#241 evariste

Yup. I'm as giddy as a little school girl.
It's great to be on the cutting edge of breaking news. Just Awesome.

#248

Put two spaces after the numbers before you enter the text. Your processor is assuming you're writing an numerical bullet and autoformatting accordingly.

That's likely why the 'author' of the CYA memo has a superscripted "th". Word and other processors, like OpenOffice, will look for that form and superscript automaticly, which I noticed after I finished the first paragraph.

That is to say, not only is this a forgery, but it's one done with great haste.

Fox News just reported about the memo's, however the only memo they showed on screen was the "request for discharge" memo, and that one as far as I know is accepted as authentic.

Lets see what the Kerry camp does,
remeber, they are the ones who really
back this with reports = )

Charles,

If this turns out to be what it looks like, you just made some very powerful enemies. Congratulations!

I remember typewriters. I had one my freshman year in college. When I see a document like the "original" you posted, it looks computer-generated. Documents look different now.

Somebody has some 'splainin to do. BDS Sydrome has made someone very sloppy (Dan '1000-a-plate DNC' Rather).

Never mind again, That's what I get for trying to repost 4 or 5 different times after we lock up.

The AP is busted too. Go to Powerline ([Link: www.powerlineblog.com)...] - they are currently under a DNS attack of some sort. They've nailed the AP for what it is: partisan hacks and liars.

Someone ought to have a contest for making LTJG John Kerry vietnam memo's:

Zumwaldt is putting pressure on me not to mention to 11 year old boy incident in LTJG Kerry's fitrep. But I'm covering myself by writing it up in this memo.

The difference between the height of the “th” in your screen shot of Word and the screen shot of the posted PDF isn’t due to a Mac/PC varince, it’s very simple, and even more proof that this is a fake. It’s the difference between a screen shot of Word and a copy PRINTED on an HP LASER JET! I just typed this into Word, on my screen the “th” is the same height as your screen shot example (cross bar on the t close to even with the top of the 7) when I printed it on my laser jet the “th” is higher, exactly like the version in the PDF file. The difference is due to the font conversion on the LASER PRINTER!

Excellent, nice work!
 

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Slow day at LGF...

I looked at most of W's service record today, which is posted in PDF form at the USAToday site, among other places.

Along with a mile-high pile of forms, letters and memos, are a few authentic documents signed by Col. Killian.

There is no question in my mind about this.

The four memos from CBS are fakes.

Edward R. Murrow is spinning in his grave today.

Haven't read the whole thread but since when do you yanks date documents in the English/Australian manner?

Don't you date arse backwards like:

August, 18 1973 - or is this a new invention?

Holy crap.

I don't know what it is, but it appears that some people have really poor reading comprehension skills.

Case in point, look at this article: [Link: www.boingboing.net...]

"Did the White House release forged documents about Bush's service record? Charles at Little Green Footballs presents a persuasive argument that the memos recently released by the White House about President Bush's National Guard service are forgeries. I think the documents are indeed forgeries, but who made them? Could it be a White House dirty trick to make the Democrats look bad? Are there real documents that these forgeries are based on that are even more damning about the President's behavior? I'm sure there's more news to come."

I'm not a big conspiracy buff, but in addition to what others noted (those dot patterns, for example: I never saw so many on any copy, from that era or any other; and shouldn't the May '72 patterns match?), a few other things struck me as odd:

1) the military usually abbreviates dates. "01 August 1972" would be rendered 01AUG72.

2) Same memo: who is "Harris"? No rank given. Odd in an official document.

3) 19 May 1972 header: "Bush, 1st LT Bush"? Sounds normal in a movie script -- "Bond, James Bond" -- but odd on a military memo. It would be "Bush, 1LT" or "1LT Bush".

4) same doc: "memo to file"? What file? Not MilParlance.

5) Ref to pt. 3, Killian would more commonly have put his rank (in abbreviated "LTC" form) on the same line as his typewritten signature line. Equally odd is the absence of his identification of his position, e.g. "CDR, 111th F.I.S., TexANG" or something like that.

6) 01AUG72 memo, lines 1 and 2: verbal orders? Suspending someone from duty? Not done. Especially over the phone (point 2)? And how does point 2 ("I conveyed...request for orders of suspension") square with point 1 ("I ordered [Bush] be suspended from flight status")?

7) Does anyone else with military experience find it odd that the 04MAY72 "memo" would say, verbatim, "not later than (NLT)"? I never had anyone explain "NLT" to me. Hell, they rarely explained anything to me...

8) Post office box as sending address for a military unit? And P.O.B. "34567"? Why not "CDEFG"? An amazing coincidence? A lazy forger? An inside joke? Does anybody know the address of the 111th?

I'd be interested to see exactly what the White House released. Because the CBS scoop smells mighty "Hitler Diary-ish" to me.

Well, the DoS lost my comment. Pity, it was pithy and witty.

My IBM Selectric in the 70s had two spacebars. One for the "two space"
and one for the "three" - I thought of them really as 1.0 and 1.5 spaces.

It was funky to type on. If you've typed on a normal electric or manual typewriter, there's a slight "jump" as the platen moves to left.

On the proportional selectric, the platen jumped in odd amounts to account for the space - and it was annoying.

Also, the typewriter made an annoying buzzing sound, but that was just the motor getting read to JUMP the platen.

I had the typewriter for about 2 years, and then it wandered off somewhere in a move.

Maybe the commander of the air base got a hold of it at a Garage Sale and installed the missing "th" key?

C'mon all, they're still gonna believe in it anyway. Haven't we learned at least that much by now? But then again, only they will, and not the rest, them being who they are and all. And the others joining we? Huh?

evariste: the visitor count file keeps getting reset to zero by some sort of race condition.

The quesion of proportional fonts aside, because they were available in a primitive form, kerning was not. The state-of-the-art type form in 1971 was still the Linotype, and had been since the 1890's. The first maching to apply kerning rules was the Compugraphic in 1974. Today all computers apply kerning rules to fonts.

Kerning rules applied to fonts adjust the position of a letter (character) based upon the letter which precedes the current character. For an extreme example, consider an upper case A followed by an upper case V, which will lookk like AV. When kerned, the top of the V will overlap the bottom of the A. These rules cannot be applied by a typewriter, because a typewriter cannot know what the previous or next character is. The proportional spacing done by typewriters, or old 'daisey-wheel' printers was also only proportional with 3-4 positions, wheras computer generated type is variable
down to the resolution of the output pixel. These rules are not applied to numbers, so that columns can be justified.

The documents I have seen, although poor in resolution, appear to have been kerned using a far more variable spacing scheme than was ever available on a typewriter. The superscript '111th' in the 04-May-1972 document could only have been done by hand even as late as 1974, unless using a phototype strip
with technical symbols and mapping them on the keyboard -- which was very difficult.

SheetWise
Print Consultant

#266

actually the military usage differs from the most common civilian usage.

in the militray we do dates like you guys probably because of a NATO standard. (We also use meters).

The forgery is blowing up in the face of DNC/CBS/MSM. Major topic on Michael Medved still. Still lead headline on DRUDGE. Need Fox to pick this up.

Beautiful, beautiful.

I'm having trouble reproducing the document in Word, although I can come close. Would you please put your file up?

Unbelievably, the AP is still spinning stories off of the memosBush disobeyed order blah blah

Keep digging...

OT -- Not sure if anyone linked to it: Russians call off suicide bomber concert
[Link: story.news.yahoo.com...]

#162 Dirk Diggler:

For those of you who may have missed it, the memo is dated (Saturday) August 18, 1973.

And while you're at it, try to verify that the date is indeed a Saturday using only your Windows machine, no 'net resources. On Windows 2000 I can't set the year any earlier than 1980. And I imagine it's the same for every other version of Windows. I don't have my PowerBook handy, but since OS X is BSD-based, I'm guessing it goes back to 1970.

#271 charles
DOS attack?

OT from Debka

Weapons-explosives cache similar to arsenal used by Beslan hostage-takers discovered Thursday in basement of St. Petersburg cinema. Like the school, cinema was closed for construction work.

Brrr, there was more to come. And apprently, the Russians had seen it coming. They swept all public places to check for concealed weapon caches that could have been use for similare Beslan-type terrorist operations.