Here’s a rarity; computer columnist Lou Dolinar takes a detailed, knowledgeable look at the technical issues that prove beyond a doubt the fraudulent CBS Killian memos were created with a TrueType font (Times New Roman) in Microsoft Word: It’s difficult to dupe publishing experts, even if Bush isn’t their type.

Every 10 years or so, I get a nice juicy scandal here on the computer how-to beat. My favorite was when Ollie North forgot that the “deleted” Iran-Contra memos on his hard drive files were still there, subject to reconstruction by Senate investigators. It was a wonderful opportunity to discuss how the fate of the republic hinged on the technical details of how hard drives work and, incidentally, give lessons in retrieving lost data.

Well, this week we’re going to look at font issues and computer type, courtesy of Dan Rather and the allegedly bogus, circa 1972, memos he used recently in a report on President George W. Bush’s National Guard duty.

The CBS anchor has since admitted that those memos were less than adequately sourced. I, like about 5 million other Internet users, was reasonably sure a couple of hours after CBS published them on the Web, because the memos used now-ubiquitous proportional type, scarce outside print shops in 1972. I was convinced the next day, when a Web site known as Little Green Footballs demonstrated with on-screen graphics that, when the document was retyped in Microsoft Word, every character in the memos lined up precisely.

That tore it. We don’t worry about this anymore, but it is a specific characteristic of computer type that a given font will appear identical in all respects - size, horizontal spacing, vertical spacing, etc. - regardless of the device on which it is printed or displayed. This is known as device independence.

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While the bloggers who brought down Dan Rather have obvious expertise and reach thanks to the World Wide Web, I have a hunch that we take them a bit more seriously because their Web sites and the type they use to convey their thoughts are every bit as beautifully rendered and produced as the ones of “professional” journalism.

Read it all; Dolinar explains why the exact match you see blinking at the top of this page is as distinctive as a fingerprint, and you may even learn something about the evolution of computer typefaces.