 |
| |
|
|
notyoueither
|
 |
of naught
Aug 2001
time: 22:23
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by The Mad Monk
ABC NEWS:
quote:
False Documentation?
Questions Arise About Authenticity of Newly Found Memos on Bush's Guard Service
Sept. 9, 2004 — Questions are being raised about the authenticity of newly discovered documents relating to George W. Bush's service in the National Guard during the Vietnam War.
Marjorie Connell — widow of the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, the reported author of memos suggesting that Bush did not meet the standards for the Texas Air National Guard — questioned whether the documents were real.
"The wording in these documents is very suspect to me," she told ABC News Radio in an exclusive phone interview from her Texas home. She added that she "just can't believe these are his words."
First reported by CBS's 60 Minutes, the memos allegedly were found in Killian's personal files. But his family members say they doubt he ever made such documents, let alone kept them.
Connell said Killian did not type, and though he did take notes, they were usually on scraps of paper. "He was a person who did not take copious notes," she said. "He carried everything in his mind."
Killian's son, Gary Killian, who served in the Guard with his father, also told ABC News Radio that he doubts his father wrote the documents. "It was not the nature of my father to keep private files like this, nor would it have been in his own interest to do so," he said.
"We don't know where the documents come from," he said, adding, "They didn't come from any family member."
Connell said her late husband would be "turning over in his grave to know that a document such as this would be used against a fellow guardsman," and she is "sick" and "angry" that his name is "being battled back and forth on television."
Her late husband was a fan of the young Bush, said Connell, who remarried after her husband died in 1984. "I know for a fact that this young man … was an excellent aviator, an excellent person to be in the Guard, and he was very happy to have him become a member of the 111th."
Experts Question Veracity
Questions are also being raised about the memos by document experts, who say they appear to have been written on a computer, not a typewriter.
The memos are dated 1972 and 1973, when computers with word-processing software were not available.
More than half a dozen document experts contacted by ABC News said they had doubts about the memos' authenticity.
"These documents do not appear to have been the result of technology that was available in 1972 and 1973," said Bill Flynn, one of country's top authorities on document authentication. "The cumulative evidence that's available … indicates that these documents were produced on a computer, not a typewriter:"
Among the points Flynn and other experts noted:
The memos were written using a proportional typeface, where letters take up variable space according to their size, rather than fixed-pitch typeface used on typewriters, where each letter is allotted the same space. Proportional typefaces are available only on computers or on very high-end typewriters that were unlikely to be used by the National Guard.
The memos include superscript, i.e. the "th" in "187th" appears above the line in a smaller font. Superscript was not available on typewriters.
The memos included "curly" apostrophes rather than straight apostrophes found on typewriters.
The font used in the memos is Times Roman, which was in use for printing but not in typewriters. The Haas Atlas — the bible of fonts — does not list Times Roman as an available font for typewriters.
The vertical spacing used in the memos, measured at 13 points, was not available in typewriters, and only became possible with the advent of computers.
The White House is declining to comment on the veracity of the documents. Many Democrats are worried that if they are found to be forgeries, it will be a setback for Sen. John Kerry's campaign to defeat Bush in November. |
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/Poli...s_040909-3.html |
Bolding mine.
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
chegitz guevara
|
 |
Ft. Lauderdale, FL Communist Party of Apolyton
Jun 2000
time: 00:23
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by Jaguar
There's nobody defending this except for the news source which broke the story. |
No one else can defend it, since no one else has the copies that CBS has. It's CBS' job alone to defend itself and its stories. Other responsible news organizations are merely reporting on the news, not making judgements.
Two of the main arguments against the documents being legit (the font and the superscript) have been discreditted. That leaves two other knocks against them, the wife's testimony, which is, frankly, not relavent, since she wouldn't really be privy to government documents. The more serious one, however, is the fact that letter lines up perfectly in MS Word. That is extremely unlikely, but within the realm of possiblity.
Curiously, the White House has not gone apeshit, as you would expect them to do if they were truely fakes. Forgery is a crime, and someone passing off fake documents as genuine which smear the President's name should be taken seriously (as were as the fact that if they are fake, then someone may have defrauded CBS).
At any rate, I am highly skeptical of their authenticity . . . for the moment.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ogie Oglethorpe
|
 |
Marietta, GA
Dec 1999
time: 05:23
|
|
I'm sorry but Rather is going down. his defense was weak and does not address all the discrepances. my guess is his expert was only versed in handwriting and not so much the arcana of typewriters. Bloggers are pwning away on this one
quote:
September 10, 2004
I've been exchanging e-mails with Jeff Harrell of Shape of Days about the IBM Selectric Composer and we're both wondering if anyone out there still owns one of these dinosaurs and would be willing to type up a sample. Anyone? Bueller? Please let me know.
Meanwhile, via the Kerry Spot, McAuliffe points to Rove. Clearly, the one thing Karl Rove wants to do right now with the entire media lined up against Bush is to risk a forgery scandal emanating from the Oval Office. Clearly, the opportunity to prank Dan Rather while casting doubt on an old incident that doesn't much hurt Bush anyway more than justifies getting caught planting bogus documents about the president inside the Pentagon. Makes perfect sense. Someone had better get McAuliffe together with Edwards soon, though: As Ace points out, Johnny's still operating on the assumption that the documents are real.
Meanwhile, Vanderleun's got the real blockbuster.
UPDATE: CBS says Rather's going to talk about the forgery allegations on the air tonight.
NEW YORK, Sept. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Later today, CBS News will address on the air and in detail the issues surrounding the documents broadcast in the 60 MINUTES report on President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. At this time, however, CBS News states with absolute certainty that the ability to produce the "th" superscript mentioned in reports about the documents did exist on typewriters as early as 1968, and in fact is in President Bush's official military records released by the White House. This and other issues surrounding the authenticity of the documents and more on this developing story will be reported on tonight on THE CBS EVENING NEWS WITH DAN RATHER.
Again, no one's suggesting that there weren't typewriters capable of producing the "th" superscript in 1968. The contention is that there was no typewriter capable of producing the "th" superscript in a font identical to Times New Roman, with letters pair kerned, that was so widely available that it would have been reasonable to expect it to show up in a National Guard officer's office in 1968.
UPDATE: Dorkafork forwards this link to a page offering side-by-side comparisons of text printed in Times New Roman and text from a standard IBM Executive typewriter from the early 70s. No match. The author doesn't have a sample from the Selectric Composer, unfortunately, but he does have this to say: "The Selectric Composer was not an office typewriter, but apparently did use proportional spacing. These were very expensive machines, used by printing offices, not administrative offices." Unless Colonel Killian was doing a little DIY publishing on the side, I can't see any reason why he'd have an SC on the premises.
UPDATE: By now everyone's seen Charles's experiment with one of the CBS memos versus a version he typed on MS Word. Hopefully most of you also saw the similar experiment conducted by Jeremy Chrysler of Spacetown. Both used standard margins, standard Times New Roman font, and standard 12-point type to replicate the documents. One thing they did differently, though: They used different memos. Jeremy used the May 1972 memo and Charles used the one from August 1973.
Assuming against all odds that the memos were indeed typed on a Selectric Composer, then the fact that the margins, font, and font size on the Composer remained consistent over a 15-month span means one of three things. 1) No one changed the settings on the typewriter for that entire period. Unlikely, since the only reason for buying a Composer in the first place was because you wanted something that could change fonts. 2) Someone changed the settings after May 1972 but changed them back before August 1973. Possible, but is it likely that they'd be returned to exactly the same settings for font, size, and margin? And that those settings would just happen to end up as Microsoft's defaults for its word processing program thirty years later? 3) The memos were typed on two different Composers. If it's unlikely that Killian had even one expensive, unnecessarily complicated typewriter in his office, how much less likely is it that he had two?
My head hurts. Let's see what Cowboy Dan has to say at 6:30.
UPDATE: Had to come back for this. Bill at INDC just finished speaking to Dr. Bouffard, the document expert who told him yesterday that the CBS memos are almost certainly fake and told the New York Times this morning that there's a small chance they were written on an IBM Selectric Composer. Dr. Bouffard's been examining the documents more closely today and has concluded that the memos could have been drafted on the Composer only if the machine had also been outfitted with special customized keys to create the "TH" superscript. In other words, says Bill:
[T]he possibility that this memo was not forged based on typographic evidence alone is contingent upon the possibility that an Texas Air National Guard Lt. Colonel typed a personal "CYA" memo on an ultra-modern, super-custom typesetting machine that was typically used for professional or high end applications that demanded camera-ready documents for use in printing. And even so, Dr. Bouffard still noticed "a dozen or so design differences" between the CBS document and the possible type of such a souped up, rare machine, differences that seem apparent but cannot be confirmed to a 100% threshold because of the poor quality of the photocopied document.
Bill also raises some questions about kerning. Dr. Bouffard says he's not 100% sure if the Composer could kern letters but it might have been able to do so if it had sufficient computer memory. Allah directs your attention to the IBM Composer hobbyist webpage linked in my previous post, in which the author says of the Composer: "The first IBM Composer was the IBM 'Selectric' Composer announced in 1966. It was a hybrid 'Selectric' typewriter that was modified to have proportional spaced fonts. It is 100% mechanical and has no digital electronics. Since it has no memory, the user was required to type everything twice [to achieve the effect of justified text]." In other words, and in accordance with what the Encylopedia of Typography has to say in its entry for "typewriter", the Composer couldn't kern.
Bill says "game over".
Allah's inclined to agree. UPDATE: A question has arisen as to whether the documents are, in fact, kerned. LGF says no, Powerline seems to think they are. A reader named "tyem" e-mails in an attempt to explain the discrepancy. Quote:
With a typewriter, each letter has its own block area. These are not custom-sized to tightly fit each letter, and when you type a letter the typewriter does not know to scoot precise variable distances, i.e. moving only slightly for an 'I' and further for an 'O'. Word can easily do this, because word can custom-fit a pixel size for each letter instead of using larger, crude block sizes. Because of this, Word can save space by ensuring that a minimal amount of empty space exists on each side of the letter, even WITHOUT taking the extra step of kerning. So Word has a natural kerning-like effect even when you do not have kerning turned off. It is technically incorrect to call this 'kerning' even though the same basic idea is at work. All this amounts to a "form over substance" attack that parades semantics around while ignoring the visually-supported proof that these letters are not spaced in a way that a typical 30 year old typewriter would be capable of. Considering the exact match of the document with documents printed using modern MS Word, though, the whole debate is mental masturbation. The forgery was typed on Word. Anyone arguing to the contrary is not acting in good faith.
If tyem is right then yeah, there's no doubt it's Word. How else would the CBS memos have achieved the exact same "semi-kerned" effect as in a Word document?
UPDATE: Get this. Jeff Harrell writes:
I've got an open dialogue with the only guy I know of who has a working IBM Selectric Composer. His name is Gerry Kaplan, and he said at 4:33 (10 minutes ago) that CNN was on their way over to see the machine in action. He said he'd get back to me about the memos when he's done with them; it could be several hours.
|
Link for Sava
This will not be resolved until such time as CBS hands over the documents for independent verification. The ONLY thing going for CBS that gives a shred of doubt at present is the reproduction of a reproduction issue. Be that as it may there are a minimum of 4 document experts to the one handwriting(?) and document expert fronted by CBS. (My guess is this guy is more a handwriting expert than someone versed in the arcana of typewriters.)
Last edited by Ogie Oglethorpe on 11-09-2004 at 08:54
|
|
| |
All times are GMT. The time now is 05:23.
Apolyton Time is 00:23. |
top of page
|
| archivepost |
|
Forum Rules:
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
|
HTML code is ON
vB code is ON
Smilies are ON
[IMG] code is ON
|
|
|
|
|
|
11-09-2004 08:29
CBS is teh PWND
Read the wrong part. Anyway, ABC is only quoting what they were told. Even before ABC's erpotr, the original bloggers were already saying it was possible, since the IBM typewriter could use TNR.
|