On September 8th, the CBS show 60 Minutes II ran a story bringing to light which purported to show that when President Bush was in the National Guard he failed to obey orders. The memos were supposed to have been written in the early 1970s by a Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian. (Who is, as it happens, died in 1984.)
Pretty damning stuff. Just one problem -- there is mounting evidence collected by the blogosphere that the documents were forgeries. And not very good forgeries at that. A lot of bloggers are designers and computer geeks. People who pay attention to things like proportional spacing, kerning, superscript text and the other features of modern word processing. Guess what?
A letter by letter comparison of one of the purported memos with a version typed in Microsoft Word by Charles Johnson at the blog Little Green Footballs reveals: The spacing is not just similar -- it is identical in every respect. To hammer his point home Johnson superimposes the purported memo with his Microsoft Word, typed today version. Literally 1:1, not even fuzzy, not a letter out of place.
But if that doesn't convince you it was faked, the type in the document is KERNED. Kerning is the typesetter's art of spacing various letters in such a manner that they are 'grouped' for better readability. Word processors do this automatically. NO TYPEWRITER CAN PHYSICALLY DO THIS. (Example, in the word To, the o comes under the top of the T or in the word my, the y comes under the m).
Now, unless the government had access to Office 2003 back in the 1970s (possible explanations include time machine, alien technology, I'm sure our Area 51 people can come up with ideas) something about that seems a bit fishy.
Layover example: http://mysite.verizon.net/vze6vxcr/
Source: http://www.techcentralstation.com/091004G.html/
Yiz
Bush Documents a Forgery
by Yizuman 40 Replies latest social current
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Yizuman
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SixofNine
These documents may or may not be faked, but if they were faked, they were not faked with Microsoft Word, and the allegations that they were done using Word came so fast and so furious, with so little regard for evidence, that those making the allegations were quickly shown to be morons. Coniving, intellectually dishonest morons to be sure, but morons nontheless. Yizuman is now, even with the benefit of ample time to correct himself, repeating the allegations of morons.
Meanwhile, the secretary of the purported author of the questioned memos said today that she indeed did type memos with the substance of the disputed memos (though she does not believe these memos to be her work, and believes them to be likely faked by someone with access to the originals), and corraborated the information about Bush's lack of service and disdain for his duty.
The case for the documents NOT being fake is greatly bolstered by the fact that said documents speak to things known about GW Bush from other sources for the most part. -
xenawarrior
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. http://abcnews.go.com/sections/Politics/Vote2004/bush_documents_040909.html
Coniving, intellectually dishonest morons to be sure, but morons nontheless.
Bill Flynn is: "one of the country's top authorities on doument authentication"
The people who are looking at this document and calling it a forgery and a fake are experts in their field. They are not morons.
In her interview with Rather yesterday, Knox repeated her contention that the documents used by "60 Minutes" were bogus. Knox, 86, had worked for Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian while he supervised Bush's unit in the early 1970s.
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/trib/newssummary/s_251803.html
Sept. 14, 2004 ? Two of the document experts hired by CBS News say the network ignored concerns they raised prior to the broadcast of a report citing documents that questioned George W. Bush's service in the National Guard during the Vietnam War.
Emily Will, a veteran document examiner from North Carolina, told ABC News she saw problems right away with the one document CBS hired her to check the weekend before the broadcast.
"I found five significant differences in the questioned handwriting, and I found problems with the printing itself as to whether it could have been produced by a typewriter," she said.
Will says she sent the CBS producer an e-mail message about her concerns and strongly urged the network the night before the broadcast not to use the documents.
"I told them that all the questions I was asking them on Tuesday night, they were going to be asked by hundreds of other document examiners on Thursday if they ran that story," Will said.
But the documents became a key part of the 60 Minutes II broadcast questioning President Bush's National Guard service in 1972. CBS made no mention that any expert disputed the authenticity.
"I did not feel that they wanted to investigate it very deeply," Will told ABC News.
?I Did Not Authenticate Anything?
A second document examiner hired by CBS News, Linda James of Plano, Texas, also told ABC News she had concerns about the documents and could not authenticate them. She said she expressed her concerns to CBS before the 60 Minutes II broadcast.
"I did not authenticate anything and I don't want it to be misunderstood that I did," James said. "And that's why I have come forth to talk about it because I don't want anybody to think I did authenticate these documents."
A third examiner hired by CBS for its story, Marcel Matley, appeared on CBS Evening News last Friday and was described as saying the document was real.
According to The Washington Post, Matley said he examined only the signature attributed to Killian and made no attempt to authenticate the documents themselves.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/Investigation/bush_guard_documents_040914-1.html
So now, in addition to the other experts who have looked at these "documents" and called them fakes and forgeries, the very experts CBS relied on for the piece are saying the very same thing !!
Are ALL of these experts (including CBS') morons? All of them?
Sounds like some wide sweeping conspiracy going on there. Even the secretary, who voted against Bush says they are a fake. Not only a huge conspiracy but a bi-partisan one !! What is the world coming to ?
It would appear that the "moron" here was whoever decided to put this memo together and didn't think past their nose far enough to think about the difference in technology between now and the early 70's or research the timelines of the people he/she was adding to the farce or many other things.
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SixofNine
A quick glance at most all of those bullet points proves them untrue, XW. If Flynn is the leading expert, why are all of those bullet point items proven wrong.
If it's a fake, but it's not a fake for any of the bogus reasoning listed, then the people pushing the bogus reasoning are indeed morons. For instance, these documents can NOT be duplicated in MS Word. They can be made to look very close of course, but geee, where did MS get it's typeface from in the first place I wonder?
Knox is of course very credible, but she is only saying "these arent the memos I typed, the substance of them mirrors memos I typed however, so they must have been done by someone who had seen the originals at the very least".
:the very experts CBS relied on for the piece are saying the very same thing !!
Well XW, why would you say such a thing? Your own quoted text shows that to be untrue! -
willy_think
Bush Sucks
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hemp lover
Yizuman,
Proportional spacing was available as early as 1941.
http://www-1.ibm.com/ibm/history/history/year_1941.html
(I'm on a Mac right now and I don't know how to make the link clickable.)
Perhaps a search of the IBM archives will show that superscript, vertical spacing, etc., were available before the 1970s too. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to do that right now. -
Elsewhere
I want to do the MS Word experiment on my own. Where can I download a copy of the document from CBS's web site?
Here is another interesting web site about all of this... http://www.flounder.com/bush2.htm
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myauntfanny
I don't understand why there is so much focus on these forged documents when we already know that he didn't complete his National Guard service, didn't take the physical, and wasn't penalised for it. These three facts are not in dispute, even by him and his henchmen. The alleged documents make him look like even more of a pratt than he did already, but he was AWOL even by normal people standards, so what does it matter? The central issue is did he fulfill his obligations (during wartime), or pay the price for not doing so? And the answer is no, and no.
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Farkel
Someone told me that he believed the Bush camp faked the documents and gave them to CBS in order to embarrass the Kerry camp.
As long as I've lived, hardly anything surprises me anymore.
Farkel -
xenawarrior
Okay Sixy- if you throw out all of the techno stuff with the equipment and spacing - there is still:
The signatures don't match:
Then there is the thing about Col. Staudt who had retired in 1972- 18 months before the memo was allegedly typed and would not have had any influence in the situation.
Military experts being interviewed have said that the terminology in the memos is not military terminology.
Oh, and this: The paper is the wrong size.
So much about these documents stinks.edited to add:
And if it's not possible to duplicate these documents in MS Word- then how is it that hundreds of people have done just that ??
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. 